Cheering up

Freda asks what we are doing to brighten up January.

May I submit my origami wreath

in colours to co-ordinate with a jam pot?

Also a possible kitchen floor colour change.
The blue linoleum of twenty years service
was mysteriously and irrevocably damaged
around the time that the new windows went in.
Yellow is being considered.
It is even more blazingly sunny than this photo suggests.

The cyclamen are doing their best to cheer up the view from the window.

Light play

 A dramatic backlit day.

A day for seeing ghosts

 and banishing them with candles.

Sixteen new candles for the shop, made from 

posh yogurt pots covered with 
old Ordnance survey maps and

dustjackets from vintage travel books.

Even the parakeets were silenced.

On the kitchen table

A small Rye Pottery jug,

( to go with these - I have a weakness for stripes )

with the last of the wallflowers in it.

And my latest find from the Batsford Home front series,

(specially written for people who are now living or interested in living in the country perhaps for the first time.)

The reviews are most wonderfully fulsome and generously punctuated.

The publishers have here eclipsed their own high standard.

The illustrations are as good as they could possibly be.

(A bit double edged that one.)

To the firm of Batsford belongs the credit of producing the most beautifully illustrated book that have appeared in our time on the English - and, indeed, the Irish - rural scene.

And because I am trying to adhere to the space saving principle

that anything new brought into the house, should be counterbalanced  by something leaving,

I have parted company with these Poole Pottery Twintone shells. 

The Beauty of Britain

From the Foreword by Charles Bradley Ford, April 1935:

Regularly each year, towards May, the newspaper reader becomes aware of a mild editorial 'drive' to extol the holiday attractions of this island to a public growing restive of its workaday environment, and beginning to dream of a blissful fortnight's freedom in the country or by the sea.

...we do know that, despite its swollen population and industrial growth, Britain can still provide as fine a field as any for the tourist, from home or overseas...

From the introduction by J.B. Priestley

Even the cottage, which has an irregularity and colouring to make it fit snugly into the landscape (as all good cottages should do), looks nearly as much a piece of natural history as the trees: you feel it might have grown there.

The fence and the gate are man-made, 

but are not severely regular and trim - as they would be in some other countries.

Ours is the country of happy surprises. 

You have never to travel long without being pleasantly astonished.

Chalk downland near Avebury Stone circles, Wiltshire.

I shall be told that the newer generations care nothing for the beauty of the countryside, that all they want is to go rushing about on motorcycles or in fast cars. Speed is not one of my gods; rather one of my devils; but we must give this evil its due. 

I believe that swift motion across the countryside does not necessarily take away all appreciation of its charm... As your car rushes along the rolling roads, it is as if you were passing a hand over a relief map...

The newer generations with their passion for speed are probably far more sensitive than they are thought to be. 

Probably they are enjoying aesthetic experiences that so far they have been unable to communicate to the rest of us.