Saturday 15 April 2017

Love and Marriage


To prove I did both yesterday and as requested, here is a photo of the bluebells. Not yet at their prime but getting there. This is obviously a newly-planted wood, built on the foundations of an old one, hence the stumps and bluebells.

There is a documentary about Mata Hari on at the moment, but I don't want to listen to it. It is  her centenary year I think. I don't think I could bring myself to shoot a female exotic dancer, but I suppose rules are rules.

I could have shot the young men who all lined up to piss in our doorway last night though, but that would have been a crime of passion. They all piled out of a car and went into our porch. I only saw the last one as I looked out of the window, and just had enough time to tell him to eff-off via the intercom. The voice of God mid-stream.

I am modelling woodland animals and birds in plaster at the present. The cores of the creatures are polystyrene and this is roughly shaped using a stiff wire brush. The brush produces thousands of single granules of statically charged balls which stick to your clothing and hands. The rats in my workshop must think it very convenient to have so much nesting material so close to hand at this time of year. They really love aluminium foil for their nests, presumably for the reflected warmth. They are not stupid. I am spoiling them.

I try to never drop food particles there for obvious reasons, but it turns out that one of their favourite foodstuffs is linseed oil putty, and they eat a hole through the plastic tub to get to it then eat the lot, leaving a squeaky-clean interior.

I offered to make a rat as a typical - though rarely seen - woodland creature, but it was declined in favour of the more cuddly foxes, badgers and pheasants. I foresaw the revulsion and suggested it should be in the talons of a large hawk, but even this concession was unacceptable. No matter where you are, if you are close to water you are close to rats, but I believe it to be a myth that the proximity is never any more than ten feet or whatever it is said to be. If that were true then our upper two floors are infested.

How pretty Spring appears to us, but if you use your eyes and ears, it amounts to nothing more than a prolonged period of sex and violence.

13 comments:

  1. For a moment I thought you had one of those Disney plaster of Paris modelling kits!

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    1. I did once make the Seven Dwarfs. I think they started me off on my career (if such it can be called...)

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  2. Beautiful photo; wish I could've seen the bluebells myself.
    Interesting rat behaviour. Could you save the linseed oil putty by placing the tube in a sealed glass jar?
    Greetings Maria x

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  3. The stumps and new new saplings growth in the wood would indicate that over the years, the probable chestnut trees, have been coppiced back to the ground to utilise the wood for for fence stakes ect. New growth shoots up from the stumps and after about ten years the whole coppicing cycle takes place again, and so on.

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    1. This isn't a coppice wood. The trees are all regimented and young and the stumps are elsewhere.

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  4. They all wait all year for the orgy though don't they?

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  5. We had Rats when we had hens. I poisoned them with tasty red wheat, and later found one inside my compost heap complete with a stash of the stuff. He, or she, was a beautiful creature, and I rather regretted having poisoned it.

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    1. Yes they are good looking things. Shame they are so bad for us.

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  6. Lovely photo. You're new project sounds interesting. Any chance you would share a photo of the work in progress? Is there room for a nice owl in the mix of creatures?

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    1. There is already an owl, made by someone else. I cannot show pictures I am afraid.

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