Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Painting can be rewarding whilst also being frustrating and depressing..look at what Van Gogh ended up doing..the fact he was a crap painter hadn't occured to him or maybe it had so when a painting was not turning out well he went and cut off his ear'..and Gauguin didn't try to stop him which showed he must have been a bit of a weirdo too.

These are tetchy times and if your feeling a bit tetchy... it seems painting can bring out severe tetchiness..look at Munch (The Scream).. and Goya fared no better (Satan devouring his son) as he went doolally at a mere 46.

Just saying Jem and whatever you do if you do try to copy the Picassos style.. resist the temptation to use your good lady as the model as once she sees what you have done to her likeness she may not be so good and lord knows what she would be tempted to cut off.

I have given up watching these reports on COvid as I can't believe what a Nanny state we have become. Whilst there are hurdles to face for many.. all these questions of " what about me..what am I going to do..how do I cope with this... and how do I do that" questions just indicates that people seem no longer able to think for themselves and have become used to being molly coddled. I have yet to hear or see a pensioner ask some of the obvious questions we too face. Made of sterner stuff comes to mind.

Enjoy and I would forget Picasso

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Good video that, so he was a real painter just acting the maggot. He reminded me of a young Jim Carrey.
I heard about Van Gogh slicing off his ear, and how the poor demented devil had to wear an earwig for the rest of his life.

Yes I think I’ll leave the painting off off a while Solo, one has to be in the correct mood for it, anyway I have something else to do, I cut a stout branch off the rambling rose tree and want to make a walking stick out of it, decorate it with engraved silver bands and the knob with Celtic scrolls, that’ll take me a while as I’ll have to melt the silver and hammer it out to plate form, but I’ll do that while the stick is seasoning otherwise it could crack right down the middle. I’ll enjoy doing it.
Phyllis had asked me to cut back on the tree as it was getting a bit out of hand and I noticed this lovely thick straight branch with a beautiful curve at the thicker end, I’ll give it time to season in the weather outside then smooth it down and clear varnish it to show up the natural colour of the wood. The knob or handle is in the shape of a shillelagh so I can leave it by my bedside to double as a burglar basher.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Glad to hear you have ditched Picasso...he was just another crap painter who didn't know his a**e from his elbow and had the cheek to put it down on canvas.

That's a good looking piece of wood to be working with and as you have not said what tree it was it will be interesting to see what colours show when you have finished smoothing it down. Look forward to seeing it develope.

I too have been using this good weather to chop back and it's only when you have mad spurts like these that you realise your muscles were not in tune with your thinking and are not backwards in coming forwards to let you know they deeply resent your actions..what do they say "Aging is not for wimps"

Living by the sea I get plenty of opportunity to wander along the beach looking for interesting stones and have found some lovely ones. The fascination for me is seeing what looks like an ordinary bit of stone that has been polished come alive so beautifully. For me it is yet another gift the waves wash our way. There are a few that collect drift wood to make into various things like picture frames and so on ...but it's stones or sea glass for me.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

That wood is from a rose tree Solo, I don’t know me woods very well, would that then be rosewood? anyway we’ll see how it turns out.

I’m getting pains in muscles I never even knew I had. When I was a youth I was a thin lad and I never pulled a muscle because I couldn’t find one to pull.

I use a similar tumbler for polishing awkward articles, instead of using grit in the barrel I use 2 and 3 mm steel ball bearings and a soapy compound called Mersel, does a great job after tumbling for 6/7 hours.


I heard a song coming over the radio today and the bloody thing won’t go out of my head.
The old lad and his wife two houses away were out enjoying the sun as was the missus and myself, it was donkeys years since I heard this old song and I hated it then just as much as I hate it now, he had it blasting away.
“Nymphs and Shepherds” is the song I’m talking about, more of a hymn than an ordinary song to my mind and I never liked hymns ever since I was forced to sing “Faith of our Fathers” in front of the whole class as a nervous shy schoolboy, mortified was I.
What have nymphs and shepherds got in common anyway, should not the shepherds be watching their flocks by night and not galavanting about chasing nymphs? randy buggers, That reminds me of that old chestnut, what did one shepherd say to the other shepherd when he saw a thunderstorm coming? “Let’s get the flock outta here”

Errol Flynn had a name for that Hollywood gossip writer Hedda Hopper, she had the goods on most most of the big names and they were all terrified of her, they licked up to all the time to keep in her good books, Flynn called her “The Nympho with the Info”, he must have had some inside info about her sexual encounters. She had tried acting herself but never got very far, so she took to what a lot of women are brilliant at… gossiping.
In the 40’s her annual income was $250,000 and she lived in a mansion which she referred to as “The house that fear built”

Hedda Hopper quote:
“I got around a lot, and lot of people talked to me, I salted down stories by the barrel load”

I like this one of hers “She looks like she combed her hair with an egg beater” Women can be very cruel to each other where looks are concerned.
But that’s nothin’ Hedda, my wife once combed my hair with a rolling pin, boy did that hurt.

And now for all those with nothing to do, try counting flowers on the wall.

https://youtu.be

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Ahhh Hedda Hopper.....but more on er later...at the moment I am all for this Nymphs and Shepherds thingy...Dig for Victory and back to the land I say and why not with many having nowt to do all day. It worked back then and it would work again putting food on the table.

Just think of the fun that can be had ...mucking out...putting yer ands up a sheeps bum... turnip gathering in the sun..finding out that milk comes from a cows udder and not a plastic carton...these new experiences could be life changing in so many ways

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Them’s fine strapping women working on the land in that video, fit as fiddles and strong as horses, neither paint nor powder and their figure is all their own, crisis was just another word to those fine lassies God bless ‘em, marry one of them and you’d be on the pigs back for life, grub and happy wise that is, alas they are almost all gone now, off to that big sprawling farm in the sky.

How well I remember my old country sweetheart Josie Molloy from the lovely county Leitrim, happy days they were too, wonder what’s she’s doing now, staying indoors would drive her nuts, she was the real outdoor type, the outlaw Josie Wales had nothing on her.


A country girl that I once knew
A very long time ago
Asked me down to her daddy’s farm
To show me what she could do.

She groomed the horses and fed the pigs
In her usual joyful manner
And before we mounted the tractor
She fixed it with her spanner.

A fine all rounded she turned out to be
She certainly knew her stuff
And when she had a bath that evening
I saw her in the buff.

And then when darkness fell
We strolled where the lazy cows lay
We ended up in her daddy’s barn
Rolling in the hay.

Josey Wales quote: “Around here, we got something known as a Missouri boat ride”

Well it certainly wasn’t Missouri, and we hadn’t got a boat.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Now doesn't that little poem show the highs and lows (if you'll excuse the pun) of past loves.

Whilst we are still in the 'country' Those clever shepherds oop North used to tally their flocks using a 20 numbering system. They’d count a score of sheep using the words...

Yan, tan, tether, mether, pip,
Azer, sayzer, acka, konta, dick,
Yanna dick, tanna dick, tethera dick, methera dick, bumfit,
Yanna bum, tanna bum, tethera bum, methera bum, jigget

and here's the clever bit...having counted the twenty they would use a stone.. mark the ground or score a stick before commencing the next count.

Good hey..mind you a bet it was a bit of a b****r trying to remember that poem after a few bevvies.

Funny how past loves always seem to pop into our thoughts for better or for worse ...especially our first loves

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

“Yan, tan, tether, mether, pip,
Azer, sayzer, acka, konta, dick,
Yanna dick, tanna dick, tethera dick, methera dick, bumfit,
Yanna bum, tanna bum, tethera bum, methera bum, jigget”


I love that, reminds me of the Goons yin tang song.

I do try to avoid talking about the virus thing if at all possible, but it’s becoming harder everyday as the rules keep changing, both of us in our house are over 70 so we are officially “Cocooning” together, what a terrible word, isn’t that what worms and maggots do?

The wife is unusually cranky today with all this cocooning she’s doing, it was a sunny day sure enough but there was no cocooning down the river on a Sunday afternoon for us two cocoons, the wind was fierce and very cold so sitting out or even working in the garden was not on, she was on edge, usually at this time of year herself and the daughter invade the garden centres seeking out all types of plants, but they are closed now on account of the extra safety measures introduced last night, and rightly so, I’ll go along with anything they come up with to contain this dreadful virus, we just have to grin and bear it.
I feel so sorry for my daughter in law, her parents are in a nursing home in Rome and we all know how bad things are in Italy, their health is not the best and I pray they will come through this OK.

We were listening to the news earlier and they were saying to cough into one’s elbow if one hadn’t a hankie handy, I asked herself a simple question and she nearly went through me for a short cut, I asked her was it possible to catch this virus from a fart, say you were in a lift and a carrier farted, a simple locical honest question.
“It’s not funny, there are thousands dying from this”
I hadn’t intended it to be funny, I was just medically curious that’s all, honest to God.

Hey diddle diddle
She can’t go to Lidl
Because we’re in a cocoon
Our little dog laughed
At the wife’s long face
And he got a whack of the spoon.

No particular reason for playing this song, other than it always cheers me up, hadn’t Cass Elliot got a lovely voice God rest her soul.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

So young, so always been on the fringe
This being the case, never forget the smell of the singe.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Good to know you are OK spitty and that you are still smoking hot with your one ...and two liners.

Jem...with little else on the news but Covid19 it's bound to pop up into any conversation ' now and again'.. ..did I really type that !!!.

I am sure the impact would be far greater if they had 3 daily main news sessions with just the facts pertaining to the Covid crisis and not all the blethering scare mongering tripe that we are being bombarded with rather than spend time putting some decent up to date programmes/films on to cheer us all up.

We will all cope with this in our own way with it's highs and low points and what would normally pass over our heads will no doubt irritate the life out of us at times like this...So if your loved one wants to whack you with a spoon.....grin and bear it and think 'I am helping to relieve her stress levels'

In answer to your fart question....but there again would you trust anything coming out of China these days

In a lengthy and seemingly humorous yet serious article on its WeChat account, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of Tongzhou district in Beijing clarified that farts, normally, do not constitute another transmission route of COVID-19, unless someone takes a good and rather close sniff of gas from a pantless patient.

Being whacked with a spoon is hopefully the least of your problems