Tuesday 11 September 2012

Three cheers and two chairs


I am obliged to wait in today to take delivery of my latest passport, which is now so valuable that it has to be sent under armed guard to my address, and only handed over when my identity has been established - by showing the courier my passport.  I'll jump that hurdle when I come to it, but meanwhile, I'm going to waste a bit more time by posting up the closest thing I ever get to a lifestyle blog - a pair of kitchen chairs.

No matter how wealthy we are, everyone likes a bargain, so you can imagine how much I liked this one: 2 classic, wooden chairs dating from about 1900 (known, I have just discovered, as 'Oxford Bar-Backs') for £2.  That's a pound each, for those of you who are as mathematically challenged as I am.

They obviously used to belong to an artist who was also keen on a bit of woodwork, so they will need a light sand and another coat of paint.  After that, they will match the existing one in the kitchen perfectly.

This is going to be a very short post (hurrah!), because the door-bell has just gone off and I have received my new passport (hurrah!).  They are extremely pretty looking things these days, with pictures of quaint, English cottages, seagulls, reed beds etc. all over them.  Like the 2012 Olympics, it almost makes me proud to be British.  Hurrah!

15 comments:

  1. They are very lovely chairs. You'll be making some cushions for them, I assume?

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    1. I'm waiting for your give-away competition, Mise.

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  2. I don't even need more chairs, but, for that price, I would have bought them too! Great find!
    m.

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    1. You must need more chairs - you've just moved house and you have 16 children.

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    1. I see you have a maths O-Level, and you watch Antiques Roadshow - Elementary, my dear Magnon.

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  4. We have two of those Oxford Bar-Backs along with two carvers in our breakfast room ........ they all came in a job lot at an auction about 30 odd years ago and the lot set us back about £10 . Many bottoms, small and large, have sat on them and they are still going strong.
    2 squids was a bargain...... you can't get a bag of sweets and a magazine for that !

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  5. We have a couple of these. I shall now consider getting them, sanding them down and painting them in an 'artistic' colour.
    Fancy passports?? Mine is still that boring old dark red - doesn't need renewing for another three years - might be dead by then - and I DO want one with pretty pictures on. Are you sure it is a passport and not a travel brochure?

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    1. It even has depictions of weather forecasts in it, Weave - so quintessentially British, I could have designed it myself.

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  6. Could you post a picture of your new passport cover? I've only seen the dark red ones.

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    1. The cover is the same as all the others, it is the inside which has the romantic images. I'll post up a few pics of it, and you'll see what I mean.

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  7. Interesting about your new passport. We are just about to renew ours. I still hanker after the old British stiff backed Royal Blue ones with the gold coat of arms still bright decades later. Really told the rest of the world who they were dealing with: Her Britannic Majesty's subjects. Respect! (Or once a Sten gun in my 12 year old back - but that's another story.)

    Never mind the namby-pamby bendy EU jobs whose cheapskate golden print wears off before the passport runs out.

    Oh - and welcome to the world of vintage decorative painted furniture. Bargain!

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    1. I really find myself approving of the romantic images portrayed in the interior of this new passport - a bit like the tongue-in-cheek depiction of British history in the opening ceremony of 2012, and I never thought I would approve of that.

      I (and, presumably you) am still Her Britannic Majesty's subject worthy of protection (on paper) so I can forgive the Euro-cover, which - ironically - is the same blue-red porphyry that I have spent weeks trying to simulate. I admit that I like the slim size of the new passports, which can be easily slipped into a pocket.

      I am - it has to be said - an old hand in the world of vintage painted furniture, it's just that I don't normally think it worth blogging about. No offence intended.

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