Lou Lou & Oscar

So I managed a shop update today and listed the handkerchief wall hanging (amongst other things) you see at the top of the post. Really it is my favourite so far and I would love to keep it for myself. My Nanny (by Nanny I mean ‘Grandmother’, not the Mary Poppins kind) was fond of the old adage ‘cold hands, warm heart’, she used this expression often, whenever we complained that our digits were freezing, she also had a store of more acerbic sayings in her verbal arsenal, my favourite being “mutton dressed as lamb!”. Nanny would use this phrase to describe women, usually just a little younger than herself, who had obviously made a bit of an effort with their appearance. The last thing my Nanny would do before leaving the house was look in the mirror, pat her hair, dab her face with a little powder (I distinctly remember the smell of her powder puff) and apply lipstick, she had a wicked ‘mirror face’. I am cast in a similar mould to Hilda May Tulett, you wouldn’t catch me out and about without my slap & I suck my cheeks in when I check my reflection! Inspiration for another wall hanging, oh for sure- thank you Nanny.

It would have been nice to insert a picture of my Nanny and Grandad here. When I left my mother’s house under a big black cloud 22 years ago I took very few family photos with me. I have one photograph of myself as a baby, one as a toddler, one of my mother when she was much younger and a wonderful image of my Grandparents looking super sharp in the 1960s. A couple of my brother and sister too. These precious images have disappeared somewhere inside this house. I have looked but to no avail, I am hoping that they will turn up in the huge spring clean I have planned for next month. Sigh.

I have been doing a lot of thinking this week, really I owe the thanks for this synaptic kick start to another, you know who you are! Not *over* thinking which has so often in the past lead to inertia, the beginnings of an awareness, increased consciousness, less lazy work, maybe a story. I have been learning in public this past year, unaware that this is what I have been doing, there will be developments I know.

And, compromising all of the above, I lazily listed some lavender sachets today too, they are nice and pretty, smell good, keep the moths away, that’s it! A question of economics, another path of obsessive rumination, related of course to the above. Yes, they had to go, destined as gifts I think.

To take the taste away, below is a clip from Béla Tarr’s film Werckmeister Harmonies (Ishi was almost named Béla, I confess for Lugosi as well as Tarr!). If you haven’t seen this film rush to do so, it is one of my favourites, it repays the viewer a thousand times, the antithesis of lazy, a dialogue, an engagement. Be patient and you will see, I hope.

Oh, and I am behind with emails again, that old tune I’m afraid. Coming soon good people, you also know who you are!
XXX