Monday 30 January 2017

Consequences Of Having Daughters

Finding yourself the owner of pale green socks with cartoon mice all over them or finding yourself the owner of glittery golden socks .


Being given a kit to make a pair of Latvian mittens in a pattern optimistically called The Thousand Year Old Mitten ... the donor saying that she won't be surprised to inherit the semi-finished kit . Or a raspberry flavoured Matrushka doll lip salve .
Sharing supper with someone who's eaten your version of pizza Margherita since childhood and doesn't expect it to taste like the real thing .
Sharing supper with someone who knows exactly what risotto should taste like and can cook it for you .
Long rambling 'phone calls that stop before Silent Witness .
Talking to someone who knows who you're talking about when you mention cigar bands or shortbread, burnt toast or winning Your Dream Cottage contests .
Going on extraordinary excursions that wouldn't have occurred to you but turn out to be just what you wanted to do .

I know sons are lovely , too , and my grandsons are a constant delight but I would have hated not to have had daughters .

Thursday 19 January 2017

Without The Monkey

When I opened the curtains yesterday morning  , it was  -6 Centigrade , the sky was clear and everything was rimed with frost .The big weeping willow on the other side of the river was a spectacular , glistening filigree but Picasa's gone on strike again  and won't show you my photo .

We'll just have to do with this poster instead and ignore the monkey , the large sticks and the ruin . 


Went to this exhibition of silhouettes a couple of weeks ago and loved it . They'd gathered a surprising number of pieces , many from private collections .
Apparently cutting silhouettes was extremely popular from the C17 onwards among Frisian gentlemen with time on their hands ; and elaborate ones like these were just the thing to present to the young lady you hoped to make your wife .
Some were made to commemorate a victory at sea or the death of a loved one , though the one shown on the poster isn't much bigger than a postcard and seems just to celebrate a day out with the lads . Or a stunning hoar frost like yesterday's .

Tuesday 10 January 2017

Magic

Today at lunchtime , as she puttered back down the river past the flat , she was just an old boat with layer upon layer of fading red paint . As lovely to see as all the old boats are , but no showstopper ...
But on Sunday at sunset , for a moment  


Rosy had been transformed .

Tuesday 3 January 2017

Testing, Testing ....

Still wrestling with Blogger , Picasa and my Christmas-impaired concentration levels .
 So, there may or may not be a photo or two with this and there's no real way of knowing what it'll be of .

Sadly it won't be a shot of the young man wrestling to get a neighbour's new sofa upstairs on his own , yesterday . A very comfortable , fulsomely upholstered three-seater sofa . In the lift whose doors as a result couldn't quite close . He , neighbour and I stood looking at it , arm rest only really very slightly protruding .
 If we pulled it out and started again ? Perhaps  it would fit at an angle  ? Diagonally ? On its side ? Perhaps it could be tipped up a bit and she and I could get under it and prop it up ? Whereupon he stopped listening to us ...
Anyway , by the time I'd got back from the mailbox , he was manhandling it into her third floor front door and and she'd made coffee . Lovely biscuits .
Neighbour and I decided that we didn't really want to go into the removals business anyway . And the young man , who turned out to be her nephew , seemed to agree .

Meanwhile Picasa has decided to post this photo of a Groninger Museum's car advertising their latest exhibition ,
 
 
I'm particularly taken by where the petrol cap is ....