A Face in the Shadows?

The picture in question

An amusing story of accidental art..... or maybe NOT accidental? There hangs on our bedroom wall a perfectly good picture; a framed poster sized depiction of French café society. It is in the 'Impressionistic' style, so all dabs of colour suggesting people, parasols, advertising hoardings and so on but lacking any fine detail. We are both Francophiles and we love these pictures and objects that evoke France and especially café society, so we have a few knocking about the house.

This shows all the café elements crowding the paving in front of a row of cafés in a tree lined avenue; people sit with drinks or food, waiters in black waistcoats squeeze between tables taking orders or delivering trays of food. A fiddle player and an accordionist stand in the road, presumably serenading the customers. Two big white flat-cone parasols shade a group of customers and the mature trees cast a flecky shade on the buildings. I imagine that possibly this is the Bois de Boulogne or some leafy part of Paris but I also think that the picture is generic and modern, rather than a classic artwork. I can see no signature and a brief hunt around in Pinterest and on Wiki has not shown our picture up as a famous Monet, Manet or Renoir. I am happy to be corrected on that - my knowledge of the history of art is very sketchy.

Can you see the face?

But why is this of interest? Well the picture hangs on the wall directly facing you if you sit up in our bed, leaning on the headboard and gazing forwards across the 15 feet or so of bedroom as I, with lots of time on my hands at the moment, have frequently done. When I go to bed or for a nap, I have to spend a half hour or so upright while my lungs clear and calm down BEFORE I can lie down, otherwise I just start that ticklish cough and can never get to sleep. Not a major problem but I do get to spend hours looking at that wall and therefore that picture.

Get too close and the 'face' dissolves back into a mess of leaves
and white wall.

I was thinking I was 'losing it' and seeing things when I spotted, one day, a face at the top of the picture in a white patch. To me it looked like a perfectly good, handsome young man's face reminiscent of the classic Michelangelo stature of David, his head tilted slightly forward and his gaze down at the two musicians. Go up close to the picture and the face un-resolves into leaves, shadows and the white wall, but back at 15 feet away I could not 'un-see' it.

First frozen windscreen of 2018/9 winter

It took me a while to decide to ask Elizabeth had she seen it (she has enough worries about my health without thinking her husband is going gaga!), but when I sat her down on the bed and asked she was straight in there with "Oh yes! The face! That's why we have the picture!" It came from Mum-in-Law by all accounts and she'd spotted that face shortly after losing Theo. She had thought it looked a bit like him and had been a bit spooked by it as a result; no longer comfortable with the thing on her own house wall.

Back in the duck egg game. I think these are being laid by
Mumma-duck back on line, but it is possible that one of the
female 'babies' has now reached point of lay. White duck egg
is on right.

To me, it is such a clear face that I got to wondering whether hiding faces in your picture might be a thing. Do we just have a coincidence here or is it deliberate? Hence the Wiki searches, but I can find no word on this, so I will have to leave that to the art experts.

Almost complete restored chair. Just needs a
bit more waxing on the woodwork

Enough on shady faces, though.... what else have we been up to? The Woman of the House has come (regretfully) to the end of her run of evening classes on furniture restoration. She has thoroughly enjoyed these, as did many of her fellow 'students', so she is trying to set up some more classes for around Easter. Regular readers will recall a small bedside chest of drawers which was the first 'victim' of these labours, but the biggest share of the classes have involved the restoration of a much loved (by me) easy chair.

This piece needed all manner of work, so has been an excellent subject for applying the new skills and techniques. All the soft furnishings, webbing and detail had to be carefully removed (noting carefully how they were so that she could rebuild it!). The frame was also starting to sag backwards so that the legs were no longer vertical and the sides were going diamond shaped; that needed straightening and glue-ing.

30+ years of old varnish and dirt had to be stripped and sanded away from the wood so that it could be built back up with our home-grown beeswax polish. The cushion covers were dumped and new ones made using the sewing machine here. The back padding was completely rebuilt as new and I can vouch for its comfort and support. As the classes ended, the chair has now come home, though it still needs more polishing but it is superb and Elizabeth is (and should be) very proud of it. No pressure 'boss' for the 2nd chair - this one's partner!

Hey Dad! Sun's going down. Surely supper
time!

Meanwhile the weather has turned bitingly cold and there was a first frozen windscreen for us this morning. One of the ducks has started into lay - we suspect this is Mumma-duck now done with her child rearing responsibilities for 2018 and come back on line. Sorry if these posts have gone a bit 'sporadic'. Enough for this one.

Fettling the Trailer and failing to grow Tomatoes

A time to relax, kick the wellies off, grab a coffee
and a good book and be invaded by various cats.

A genuinely short post this time as we are definitely 'between' bursts of excitement. We are recovering from some, bimbling along on others and waiting and preparing for the next batch.

Proper cheese mould with follower "piston"

In the 'bimbling' section would be a tech improvement in the cheese making, in that we have acquired a couple of proper plastic cheese moulds. They do nothing for the flavour (they don't need to - it is gorgeous!) but they give us professional looking cylinders of cheese without the strange indents in the ends which you get if you use (clean) plastic flower pots.

Kato

Firmly in the 'preparing' section is the arrival of our new Help-X student, our second bite at this cherry after (readers will recall) Pedro and Manu who came for 2 weeks in August. This one is Augustin, a lad from Paris, who is 18. I collected him from his bus in Castlerea at 4 pm and he's now in, established, had a good look round, met the pigs and sheep and all the rest. More on how this all goes when we've had a chance to get to know him.

The trailer gets shored up with rather dodgy
skirting boards made from pallet laths.

And while I'm on 'meeting the pigs', that is my other 'prep' story. The pigs go off on their final journey on Tuesday so I was worried at the bad timing for our French guest in case he might be a bit squeamish around animals being killed for food.

Always very late. These yellow kniphofia
just coming into flower in our yard for the
Equinox

No problem, apparently. Although he has no farming experience what so ever, he loves his pork, knows where it comes from and is very practical around the high welfare, outdoor reared, old-breed stuff. He has no worries with helping to trailer-train the victims or coming with us to betray them into the slaughterman's lairage pens.

Good weather for puddle-ducks.

Friends of the Blog will know that we make the job of loading the pigs on The Morning a whole lot easier by feeding them all their meals in the trailer for the 2 days prior, so that on the day they trot up the ramp obediently expecting the normal breakfast and barely notice when you quietly close the door behind them. That's the theory anyway. Wish us luck.

However, at 6 years old the trailer is starting to look the worse for wear. The lower sides are of fairly thin marine ply and have started to rot out at the bottoms, so that daylight was starting to be visible down there. I was worried that one good bulldozer move by a pig snout and the whole would flap open like a big cat-flap leaving the pigs a 2 foot tall gap through which they could skip out onto the tarmac.

A bit of a pig-flavoured pattern forming in the beer purchases
this week? It wasn't deliberate. 

The answer, of course, is to rip all this wood out and replace with new but short term, I think (famous last words?) I can get away with adding skirting boards to those walls made from decent pallet laths. That stopped the daylight, so I think the pigs will not even know to try the bulldoze thing. I am hoping to be able to breathe a sigh of relief as we un-ship the pigs at the correct destination in a few days time.

Pathetic, weedy, diseased tomatoes with no
ripe fruit even by mid September. 

In the 'past tense' bit is just the dismal failure (again!) to grow tomatoes out of doors here. We are declaring it a truth universally believed. This year we did all the right things - started with plug plants, grew them up a south facing wall, fed and watered them. We still have poor, pathetic, diseased looking straggly things with hardly any fruit and no ripe fruit yet despite it being the Autumn Equinox. We have never yet produced a tomato outdoors in time for the salad season. Ah well. Plenty other crops to grow.

Gay Pareeeee

Project Erroll rumbles on and passes a significant milestone. The depot in Maidstone which has been Dad's place of work for the last... oooh... 20+ years, despatches its final cases of chilled goods (ready meals, meat, fish, cream, yogurt, cut flowers etc) and shuts its doors.

There is abit of bitter-sweet ceremonial fun as they select the longest serving employees to throw the switches which kill the refigeration for the last time. The plant here is based on CFC gases which are now illegal. The site has some future as a non-refrigerated depot but this wont involve Dad.

Mum and Diamond, meanwhile, swan off to Gay Paree to catch up on the shopping trip they normally make before Christmas. Bit late Ladies, but we'll let you off this time, especially as Mum has left Dad with explicit instructions re our expectations as to sweeties at bedtime. This is normally Mum's job as Dad is snoring by then! Mum manages to forget her phone charger, so communications have been sporadic and minimal from Le Continent but sufficient have got through to warn Dad up to be at Ashford International at the prescribed pick up time on the required date. Woe betides.....

Dad swerves work for the afternoon, booked to meet Boss of Cambria Volunteers, Basil down at the barge where they have to show a group of History Students from a local school round the barge, the visitor centre and the diminutive gunpowder barge SB Lady of the Lea. This latter is built small (and very well) to be an army ammunitions barge carrying gunpowder and ammo from the works in Waltham Point, down the narrow River Lea with its many locks, past Tottenham and into the Thames proper. She is like a half-scale model of Cambria and could ship 47 tonnes of cargo (Cambria's payload is 170 tonnes).

Dad rushes away from that 'meeting' thinking that next stop is a dental appointment in the Medway Towns, but gets a voice mail saying Dentist has thrown a sickie and all this afternoon's dates must be postponed. Shame! (says Dad in his most convincing voice!)

As for me, I have a "hurty back leg" which is a serious affliction for a dog as it impedes my ability to jump up and scrounge sweeties and to lep' on the furniture. Dad can't see anything wrong but I squeak convincingly when he probes around my toes looking for splinters etc, so I am being officially rested up a day or two to see if it goes away. The theory is I'm such a scatty bird I just caught my toe in some crack or crevise while chasing a c*t.

It's the weekend!

Deefski

Shopping in Paris

Retail Therapy! Mum and that Diamond have been in Paris for the last 4 days, shopping. Sounds fabulous - Galeries Lafayette, Printemps, Bon Marche; all the make up and parfum counters - Chanel, Sisley, Fragonard..... ahhh sigh

Mum is home now (collected by Dad from the Eurostar last night) and is buzzing with tales of the bright lights, the window displays, eager-to-please assistance who naturally ask whether your purchase is "une cadeau" (a gift) which they will then beautifully gift-wrap in a neat pretty little box with ribbons and a bow.

Mum also collects all the designer shopping bags she can find (the pic is me diving into a Sisley "Soir de Lune" one to see what I might find. A dog sweetie? Maybe just possibly Dad snuck that in there to get me to stick my head in the bag?) I LOVE to smell hand cream and to lick it off Mum's hands, so you can imaging how I am as the car is unloaded - nose everywhere. Mind you, the Angel B, rather ungraciously says my nose is "everywhere" even when she is hoovering or tidying, curious to see if the hoover should unearth anything edible.

This way, Mum gets a break in Paris, Dad gets 99% of the Christmas shopping done without lifting a finger, so everyone is happy.

Hmmm... Christmas shopping. I wonder if there's anything in there for 3 angelic dogs.....

Have a good weekend

Deefer

Le Brushing Dogs

What a lot to talk about!

Bit confused just now about the family dynamics. Mum went off the Paris for le Christmas Shopping, and while she was still gone, Dad took off on a business trip. In between, the Angel Betty (Bless Her) ministered to my needs, and reported back to both M+D my brilliance at nipping out to perform all functions you'd expect of a pup without keeping anyone waiting

Eventually (!) Mum returned from Paris and brought me the most beautiful harness and lead in girly red/pink check. It comes (don't you know) from a shop called "Brushing Dogs" from Rue Damremont in Montmartre. "Brushing" might look like an English word, but it is the word used in the sophistimicated Paree salons, for what we know as a blow-dry. They don't go in for any of this boring "laver les cheveux" (wash your hair) nonsense, like you'd learn in school. It's all "le shampoo-ing" and "le-brushing" (said in your most alluring French accent to make dad go all goo-ey). So "Brushing Dogs" is not, in fact a boring name for a shop, but a clever tilt at the poshe dog-grooming market. This shops sells, I am told, all manner of collars, leads, grooming stuff, dog beds etc, so I am very proud. Now I can go out and meet le publique and hold my head up alongside la Duchesse Meggie et le Captaine 'Aggeeeees. Mais oui!

However, these highbrow notions were not long lasting, and the first thing Dad heard when he came back from le business treep to find me confined behind the "stable door" into the laminated floors of the dining room was Mum, in best Irish-Landlady tones, saying "She's BARRED, the little demon!" . It's outrageous! I only did a FEW poo's and MOST of them were on the newspaper. So now I'm grounded in the laminated floor bits of the house

Soon though - freedom. 2nd jab done and this a low risk area for parvo and distemper, there is talk of me maybe getting a first walk on Saturday

I'll keep you posted!

Deefs

La Shopping Parisienne ... ooh la la!

Oooh la la! I am a single parent family. Mum has departed today on the Eurostar train to Paris, with my "Auntie" Diane (owner of ASBO the dog, who I have not met yet, but whose reputation precedes him). She has filled me with wonder and exciting dreams - Galeries Lafayette! the Barbes Market! Montmartre! the Christmas Lights, posh restaurants where (quiet, well mannered) dogs are welcome, seedy smoky tabacs where tired shoppers can take the weight off their feet with a calvados and a ciggie, hydrants that are turned on daily to flush the dog poo down the gutters into the drains (ah.... what a romantic idea!)

Mum tells me she will buy me not one, but two collars, while she is in Paris (indeed, she tells me that that is the main reason she is going :-)) ), one for while I'm puppy sized, one for when my neck is thickened up to grown-up size. Sounds good to me, though I have not yet actually had a collar on. Meggie's black-spotted, dalmation coloured collar and Haggis's tartan ones both come from Paris after all.

2nd Jab tomorrow, then in a few weeks time, I'm allowed out in public

Ahhhh! Just scared myself silly. Was idly lying on the put-up bed chewing the nearest thing that came to hand (which happened to be the front paw of one of the "singing westie" toys I told you about yesterday. How was I to know that the switch to start them singing is in the paw of the "boy" toy! Suddenly started off on "They say we're young and we don't know.. we won't find out until we grow". Blimey! Didn't know my little legs could leap off that bed so stylishly and run that fast out into the landing

Scarier than "Torchwood" last night!

(Panting) Deefer