Progress.

Tuesday 31 Aug 2010 by admin | No Comments
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I hope you can forgive the lack of postings.  I’ve been working twelve hour days.  This morning I was rung from a lorry near Bedford to say kitchen wall units would be here before eight, so I had the fastest shower ever and was downstairs, nearly dressed by five to eight, in time to clear the stuff for the charity shop from the porch to make room for the boxes.

Yesterday I painted until half past night and I’m running out of Ibuprofen gel to put on my painting and varnishing arm.

Progress, however is being made.  Before the long Bank holiday weekend, which certainly wasn’t a holiday here, this is where we were:

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and before yesterday we were here:

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those cupboard doors have all been planed, sanded and given two coats of varnish.  Hopefully they will tone with the wall cupboards, if not match.

Since these pictures I’ve done three coats on the ceiling and one on the walls.  Some genius (me) re-sited the oven so you have to lie on the floor to clean it; it may be impossible get food in or out, that should be slimming.

Ahead of us seven square feet of tiling.

I have also, in between, just to stave off boredom, got two coats of varnish on the inside of the shed.  Today I’ll do the third coat on the floor and move in.  Finally, after several years of construction one bit of wood at a time, I’ll have a place to write in peace.

I shall end up with arms like Popeye but I won’t need to do any of this again (I sincerely hope) for twenty five years by which time I’ll have written a prize-winning novel in the shed and I can pay for someone else to do the lot or move into a very luxurious old folks home.

If there’s time I have an ambition to have a day off before I start work for Miniatura, about which, after this, I shall never complain again.

Later this week I may show you some of the extraordinary things I found in my drawers, so that’s something to look forward to.

JaneLaverick.com – the column with painter’s elbow.

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The gasman cometh.

Friday 20 Aug 2010 by admin | 1 Comment
Filed under: The parrot has landed. Tags: , , ,

Do you recall a song sung by Flanders and Swan called ‘The gasman cometh?’ They started with a gas tap that wouldn’t turn on and ended by calling out every type of tradesman there is. The chorus went: Oh it all makes work for the working man to do.

It’s been like that round here.  Yesterday Ric, demolishing a bit of my wall to expose the toilet soil pipe, in the course of his investigations to discover the reason for all the silverfish I found when chiselling the carpet tiles off the floor, revealed that some previous kitchen improver had plastered over the damp proof course, causing wicking, like you do.  So he removed a lot of the wall, as you would.

The real cause for concern was that I couldn’t find the ladder last night to give the ceiling two coats before the electricians made holes for the down lighters this morning. How can you lose a ladder?  It was tricky looking in the garage which temporarily had no light, which I blithely had agreed to at teatime.  ‘You won’t be needing light in your garage over night will you?’ asserted the electrician.  ‘Well of course not’, I agreed cheerfully because by then I’d had enough anyway.

The having enough anyway had started early.  I’d got up at crack of dawn, thrown clothes on, opened the doors and done the early stuff, such as locating the kettle, then, when I went back to get changed to go  and give Thomas, who was 7, his present, for lo!  I had no floorboards.  Not that that was as much of a worry as not having transport to get there, as the insurers had decided to write off the car, so the courtesy car had to go back.  Then there was the thing about all the workers needing every door in the house left open, which is fine if you’re there, not so good if you’re ten miles away and they’ve gone off for lunch.

Oh it all makes work for the working man to do.  I realised that the ladder may have been moved by Roger, subcontracted by Ric when he realised that he had no idea where the water was going, hence the war zone scenario I photographed on Wednesday.  Roger had moved everything in the garage in order to take two water pipes out into the garage and back in again.  Everything that isn’t piled on top of my kilns, such as the oven, was piled on top of the other half’s golf clubs, though some is piled on the make-your-own-arcade-games- machine abandoned by the web manager when he got a proper job. And, to be fair, some of the piles are piled on pre existing piles of other stuff, as it is a garage.

I looked at the bank account balance online today.  If you’re inclined to visit the shop and buy a doll I may deliver the package personally and kiss you.  If you’ve got fifty friends I’ll do the same for them, possibly, after I’ve finished the painting.  And the tiling.  And the cupboard doors.  We’re re-using the cupboards, for reasons of greenness and poverty.  I’d be happier if the cupboards hadn’t been standing on the drive in the storms for five days, you never think of cupboards as absorbent but they are.

I keep trying to remember that it will all be better when it’s done.  It’s always better to know what’s in your house and who has perpetrated what and where.

I found the ladder with a torch.  It was behind the third pile I had to climb over to see where it was.  So then I got two coats of paint on the ceiling and fell into bed, which was why I had to get dressed in a rush to let Steamy in to do the window this morning.

Here he is considering how to remove the lethal ancient glass:

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While the younger electrician installs the ceiling lights:

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Oh I am so tired.  It would be better if I wasn’t looking after next door’s budgie as well.

It would be better if I was sleeping and not jumping out of bed with crash flashbacks.

It would be better if I didn’t have to start working when they stopped.

It would be better if it wasn’t running. leaping and cavorting away with so much money.

It would be better if this, being Friday, wasn’t the day they’ll all knock off early when I’ve paid them, so that I’ll have to start painting earlier.

It would be better if the other half hadn’t buzzed off to golf leaving me to deal with it all.  Though if he goes off to the pub tonight early, I can crack on with the third coat and start painting the walls, if we have some by then.

It would be better if I was doing all this not on painkillers.

It would be better if it wasn’t only six weeks to Miniatura and it would be better if I could be doing some work for it.

Will it all get better?

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Tune in next week to see where we’re up to, if we are. (I’ll be interested to know myself.)

JaneLaverick.com – thrilling reports from the edge.  And the corner.  And half an inch above the DPC.  Plumber ho!

 

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A bit challenged.

Wednesday 18 Aug 2010 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: The parrot has landed. Tags: , ,

What would be ideal, seven weeks before Miniatura, would be nights full of restful sleep, good health and a nice space in the home or workshop to work hard from morning to night.

Lovely.

Have I got that?

No.  Have a look at this:

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if it had three paratroopers crouching in the corner with their fingers in their ears, it would resemble some of the choicer bits of war-torn anywhere on the news, you name it.  Where do you think it is?  Here’s another view:

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I’d like to draw your attention to the far corner:

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please note the attractive way the pipe coming down from what’s left of the ceiling is dribbling into the strategically placed bucket, to the right (referring you back to the previous picture) of the random electrical cable.

So where do you think this is then?  An unreconstructed bit of Bosnia?  An interesting area of war-torn Afghanistan?  The back lot of Stargate SG1?

No, it’s my kitchen.

Currently it neatly matches the rest of the house, which I would show you except the electricians have turned all the lighting circuits off while they do the rewiring.  They’re managing quite well. considering they are having to step round all the groceries and kitchen contents in dozens of supermarket banana boxes, salvaged from the wet supermarket yard so the whole house smelled of wet bananas until someone found the mouse droppings this morning.  We would go and sit in the web manager’s bedroom but it’s full literally to the ceiling with ten year’s worth of the residue of living in flats.

The dining table, where I should be working, is currently the kitchen.  Conditions have actually improved. Yesterday, I took advice from the doctor on dealing with the problems caused by the car crash, on a borrowed mobile that cut out three times because of the thunderstorm.  To one side, hard-of-hearing husband listening to the telly at full blast, though not watching much because of the drops they’d put in his eyes for his diabetic retinopathy. At the other side of me the workman’s radio and people banging nails into plasterboard.  At my feet the storm-soaked clothes off the washing line. The doctor may have advised me to slit my wrists before retiring for the night, it was certainly what I felt like doing, or he may have suggested running away to sea on a tramp steamer, that would have been a nice change too; as I couldn’t hear, I shall never know.  Later, as I walked around next door shouting ‘yoo hoo’ to the possible burglars that may have caused the open side door, I reflected, in between jumping into rooms going ‘ha!’ that when the neighbours come back from their holiday and reclaim their budgie that has yelled to every bird it can see, every two minutes in my bird infested garden, as opposed to its own, which has children, that things will be a bit quieter then and I won’t feel quite so suicidal.  Also, I may start sleeping again, any night now and I won’t always have to get up at crack of dawn to let the electricians in to turn off the power.

The car, by the way, has been written off and therefore the courtesy car has been reclaimed, so if there’s anything you want me to fetch for you, it would have to be on foot.

And it’s raining again.  Would you like me to show you the slugs on my lawn or the caterpillars all over the cauliflowers?  Nah, let’s not, I’ll save that for another day.  You don’t want all the treats at once, do you?  Incidentally if you want any jars opening, I could probably do it with the teeth I’ve ground down to razors, quite easily.

I am hoping that when it all comes down again, it will land sunny side up.  But then, I’m an optimist, still.  Or, stupid, as it’s sometimes pronounced.

You’ll have to excuse me, the phone has been ringing pointlessly every three minutes for the last half hour.  I just need to go and dunk it in a bucket of plaster.

JaneLaverick.com – plumber ho.!

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We bring you live pictures.

Monday 16 Aug 2010 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: Nostalgia Tags: , ,

The web manager has corrected the set up problems and I, having little choice of activities, still suffering car crash injuries, have been quietly painting.  First here are the pictures you couldn’t see before.  This is my father at 91, we were on the way back from his birthday celebrations when we had the crash. 

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We should all hope to look as good at 91.

The other painting you couldn’t see was the start of Mardol, a street in Shrewsbury.  This is how it looked then:

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I’ve now finished it, removed the traffic and added some people.

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I could have done with seeing it on a brighter day, it was quite damp but not wet enough to make shiny streets.  As you may recall, Shrewsbury is one of the Mercian towns founded by Ethelfleda, as part of her defensive strategy against Viking raiders.  Although she gets merely a footnote in history books, Ethelfleda is well remembered in the towns she founded.  She did so for the protection of the people.  The most basic started as an earthwork in a strategic position, enclosed by a wooden fence but she selected so well that nearly all of them are still in use twelve hundred years later. 

You might wonder why a town would go out of use or why all old towns are still not lived in, or, if you watch a lot of television programmes featuring archaeologists on distant and windswept moors, why any places are continually inhabited at all.  There are many reasons, of which the principle ones are geography and money, which are sometimes the same thing in town planning.  Geographically, the very reasons that may lead to settlement in an area, such as fertile soil, for example, can also lead to abandonment of a site, if the resources are exhausted or cut off.  A potent example of this is Pompeii, the Roman town that grew to exploit the fertile volcanic soil on top of what the ancient Romans thought was just a an exceptionally well blessed hill with lovely rich well-drained soil you could grow anything in, especially grapes.  There are preserved pictures of the hill on walls in Pompeii, it is shown covered in vines, in frames of flower garlands.  If you go to visit the town from Sorrento you can take the Circumvesuvio railway and watch from the train windows as market gardeners use the same soil from the volcano’s flood plain, all along the track.  Even today, the financial advantages outweigh the dangers of living on an active volcano.

Natural disasters can also lead to complete abandonment of a site.  This happened all over Europe during the Black Death, when there were simply not enough people left alive to make the villages work.  There are examples near to Warwick in the Burton Dasset hills where the villages were never used again and survive as seven hundred year old ruins, left to crumble into the countryside.

So it is in every country as people exploit the riches of the earth.  Just occasionally, a place that has proved good to live in is still so useful and well loved that it remains, unaltered, for twelve hundred years.  There is a good example in the Saxon road at the Saxon Mill at Warwick.  The watermill exploits the natural course of the River Avon, which has gently carved the hill surrounded by a natural moat, which Ethelfleda found so suitable for the purposes of founding a town.  A mile or so outside of the town the Saxon road now leads under the tunnel of trees, across a small wooden bridge into the sunny fields, leading to an old church in the far distance.

If the stones of the road could talk, they could tell you of twelve centuries of travellers by foot and horse, coming across the fields to what became the county town.  Initially  Anglo Saxons seeking refuge, over the years the travellers would change to local people paying Norman taxes, plaintiffs for justice in the county court, visitors to the castle of the Earl of Warwick, clergy to the churches, the retinue of the Earl of Leicester between here and Kenilworth Castle, where he lived and entertained Elizabeth the First, soldiers on manoeuvres during the Protectorate, eighteenth century sightseers staying in the Castle, people in search of a quiet day out in the country during two World wars and modern tourists thrilled to see you can walk on the same road, on the very same stones, as the daughter of Alfred the Great.

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JaneLaverick.com – besotted by history.

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2010 continues………….

Wednesday 11 Aug 2010 by admin | 1 Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized

I’ve been injured as a passenger in a road traffic accident and can’t do much of anything at the moment – back in a few days.

JaneLaverick.com – still here, just.

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Cannot get the staff……..

Sunday 8 Aug 2010 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: Site information.

Pictures for the posting below will appear either when the web manager wakes up, or when he gets back from Dundee or when his idiot mother works out what she did wrong.  Der…… more knuckle bandages for Jane.  (My default position is wrogn.)

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Caution, wet paint.

Sunday 8 Aug 2010 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: Site information. Tags: , ,

Postings may be a bit erratic for a few weeks because of activity levels generally.  I think there is every possibility we are going to tackle the kitchen makeover, a task postponed for 23 years, just.  Money has been the problem but it looks as if we are going to do it ourselves.  We both hope with the greatest sincerity that we are not going to end up as the subject of one of those TV programmes where the team rush in to rescue people who have lived in a building site for several years; in the pursuit of which laudable aim some midnight oil may be burned, especially by me, who is never the one to jack it all in and go off to the pub if it gets a bit tricky.  Moreover the task must be complete by September at the latest to give time for getting ready for Miniatura, because when I pour porcelain I do it in the kitchen.

Do take advantage of the gismo that alerts you to postings, it says feeds just to the right of these words; I will post but not on the regular-ish Monday, Wednesday, Friday slots.

Meanwhile, I’ve been painting.  Here’s my father, who will be 91 tomorrow

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I am also half way through Mardol, a street in Shrewsbury.  Shrewsbury, which, for the benefit of non-UK readers, is a town on the Welsh borders, has a long and interesting history.  Like Warwick, where I live, it is one of the Anglo-Saxon burhs, defensive townships, invented by Alfred the Great as part of his battle strategy against Viking raiders.  The burhs in the Midlands, old Mercia, were founded by his daughter Ethelfleda.  She carried on her father’s fight singlehandedly after her husband died and was not only every bit as formidable as Mrs Thatcher in her day, she was loved by the people and called the Lady of the Mercians.  She founded the towns, as did her father, in locations with natural advantages.  Either they were former Roman towns with good supply routes, or previous Neolithic hill forts with ready-built defensive earthworks or they were places with fantastic geographical advantages.  Typically, as at Shrewsbury and Warwick, these were places on a hill surrounded by the loop of a river.  Ethelfleda must have had very good scouts; there is hardly a location surrounding the Midlands with such a river and hill that has been missed.

Having chosen the location and enclosed it with a wooden fence and gates, many of which survive in later building as stone gates to mediaeval towns, she established a cross roads at the centre, frequently the location of the later or contemporary stone cross and market square.  The town plan spread out from the centre in a grid of roads, though in many cases the grid pattern breaks at the edges to follow the geographical contours.  Mardol is such a street, curving picturesquely down a hill.  It has a wonderful selection of buildings from all eras.  As with nearly all the burhs, these places were so loved and lived-in for over a thousand years they have rarely suffered subsequently from wholescale town planning but have been adapted and amended over the years and often only crumbling buildings have been removed or roads enlarged that would otherwise only accommodate an ox cart.  Consequently they are living shrines to the history of British architecture; down Mardol you can spot red brick Victorian buildings, whitened Georgian facades with their large regular windows and mediaeval timber frames with their jutting upper stories, a consequence of timber jointing technology that knew how to stagger the joint of the lower wall, the cross floor timber and the upper wall, for strength.  All this variety surmounts a wonderful selection box of shop fascias from the forties to the present.  I found a cracking fabric shop there, unsurprisingly; Shrewsbury having historically been the market place for textiles derived from the wool of all the Welsh hill sheep.

Lack of space in this crowded isle has been a gift to history students, anywhere with more room would have seen abandoned towns, as people moved on, anywhere with less would have caused more demolition.  It would appear that here we have just the right amount of not enough space to cause ingenuity and thrift to come into play with very edifying consequences.  I only hope the same will hold true for the kitchen makeover.  Like Mardol, time will tell.

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JaneLaverick.com – a bit of a walk through history.

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Middle aged vampires; fangs for the memory.

Wednesday 4 Aug 2010 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: The parrot has landed. Tags: ,

I have a feeling they are going to keep coming back, middle age is like that whether you’re a vampire or not; it’s just one thing after another.

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Well that was a bit tricky; are you all right?

Yeff.

What a thing to happen!

I couldn’t helf it.

Nobody’s saying it was your fault. I didn’t say it was your fault.

Yeff but you’re finking it.

Stop talking, you’ll make it worse.

It hurtf like anyfing. If it bleeding?  It doefn’t tafte nife.

Well if it doesn’t taste nice it isn’t bleeding is it?  Just sit down and I’ll ring the dentist.

It hurtf when I poke it.

Then don’t poke it.  It’s ringing.  Oh for goodness’ sake!

What?

‘You are in a queue, your call is important to us, if the surgery is closed….’ they only do it to annoy you.

Juft ftay cool..

Easy for you to say, annoying is what they do best, and then they dare to publish statistics about the incidence of incidents at surgeries.  I’m not surprised the patients get violent, if they stopped playing you Vivaldi on a Stylophone Ringtone there would be a lot less violence generally.  Now I am number two in a queue.  Well at least it means the surgery is open.  How are you feeling now?

Been better.

Oh you poor old thing.

Leff of the old, if you don’t mind.  Don’t make me talk, it hurtff.

Well don’t, ah!  Ah, hello.  Yes. I need an emergency appointment for my husband please.  Yes it is an emergency.  That’s between him and the dentist.  Why do you have to assess it?  Really?  Well we never used to have to do this.                                  Well I don’t think it’s an improvement.

Whatff the problem?

It’s a new system, we have to tell the receptionist what’s wrong and she assesses us.

Affeffeff uff?

Assesses you then.

Affeffeff me?

Do stop repeating me.  No not you, him.  Yes he can talk and it is that bad.  He’s broken a fang.  No, right off.  Yes.  Half an hour ago.   Well we had to fly home before we could report it.  Incident report!  Wouldn’t it just be quicker to give us an appointment?  Sorry, when I say us I mean him.  Yes, I know an appointment is for one person only.  It is only him.  Yes.

What if fee faying?

Asking questions, no not you, him. Yes I know you are too. I’ll ask. We have to complete the questionnaire, can you answer some questions? 

I’ve fractured a fang!  It’f fnapped off!  It hurtff!  Tell her it hurtff!

I’ll tell her, sit down! 

It hurtff.  Lotff.

Yes, he is.  Eighth June, eighteen forty three.  Yes.  Yes.  Fifteen years.  No.  Yes.  No.  We’re not claiming any pensions, we don’t even have a bus pass.  Yes.  I don’t know.  I’ll ask.  When did you last see the dentist?  Hang on he’s looking on the calendar, it was only about three months I think.  Yes, that’s right, no, it’s ok she’s found you on the system.  Yes well, we were in a perfectly ordinary bedroom and he tried to bite this woman and it turns out she was wearing some invisible strap thing.  Well I don’t know, underwired  microfibre or something.  You know how it is, the pressure to look perfect all day every day even when you’re asleep.  It is, it’s ridiculous.  Oh it is, it’s these celebrity thin women with perfect cleavage and stick-thin thighs right after having babies.  I know.  I know.  Yes.  Anyway, he bit into this invisible strap thing, she turned over in her sleep and that was it.  You could hear the crack as the fang snapped.  She wasn’t even old and bony.  Oh quite.  Oh too right, I don’t think there’s been any virgins since before the war.  Oh no, virgin in a cotton nightdress, not going to happen.  No.  They won’t do the ironing.  It’s all easy care and invisible straps.  No it’s awful.         Did she?  Really?   Well, fancy that.  Really?            Oh I know, we’ve got a niece the same.  Oh don’t they?  Don’t they just.  Couldn’t agree more.  Could you?  Brilliant thank you.  Great.  Yes we’ll bring it.  It’s still stuck to this strap, he had to cut it off with his penknife.  That’s kind of you to say so but it wouldn’t have happened to him if he’d put his glasses on.             Yes.  Well he stopped after he lost the second pair of glasses tangled up in somebody’s curlers, all these straight-haired normals, I don’t know….                      Yes, yes.         Oh can you?  Fantastic!    Thanks, great, thank you so much, we really do appreciate it.  Bye.

Well?

Put your coat back on, it was the fat receptionist with the frizzy hair, she’s fitted us in at the end of the surgery.  We might have to wait half an hour or so but you will get seen tonight and she might even fit us in in the dentist’s iron break.

I hope he can do fomefing clever.  I do hope it ifn’t going to mean a denture.  I can’t fee myfelf wiff a denture. Not one fang in a glaff by the bed.

That was years ago, they don’t do that now.

What do they do?  Whatever it if I hope there’s lotff of anafetic.  If there time to get a quick fnack?  I’m ftarving. I waffn’t hungry at all but I’m ftarving now.

That’ll be the shock.  I’ll pop a bag of O neg in my pocket for after.  Come on, let’s get you sorted out, then have a good day’s sleep, you’ll be good as new.

I wiff.

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JaneLaverick.com ageing good graciously.

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Middle-aged vampires.

Monday 2 Aug 2010 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: The parrot has landed. Tags: , ,

I was watering the tomatoes at dusk when I heard above me the sound you would get if you sat suddenly on a teddy bear.  I looked up to see two bats wheeling away from each other, rather sharply.  Of course, the wonderful thing about bats is that they have the most incredible radar that can detect tiny moths anywhere and, naturally, other bats and it works absolutely perfectly, no matter how old and deaf they get.  And I got to thinking: vampires – they can’t all be in their twenties, can they?

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Have you got the bags?

Bags?

Have you got the bags?

Oh no, I thought you had them.

I gave them to you.

No you didn’t.

Yes, you remember, you were filling the dishwasher and I handed them to you and I said ‘Here’s the bags for tonight, put them in the trolley.’

Trolley?

Oh you haven’t gone and put them in the dishwasher again?

Sorry, I didn’t know they were clean ones. It’s daft handing me clean ones when I’m stacking the dishwasher. Oh well, they’ll just get washed twice.

They were the PET compound ones, you can’t do them in the dishwasher, it distorts the valves and blocks the filters, it’s too hot.

I thought you said you could do them in the dishwasher, they came out sparkling, you said, even with the supermarket tablets.

No, that was the foil bags.  You can do foil vacuum blood bags in the dishwasher, but you have to do the plastic ones by hand, how many times do I have to tell you?  It’s quite simple – silver foil bags, silver dishwasher; wrinkly white plastic bags, hands.

Oh for goodness’ sake, what a fuss.  Why do we have to have recycled ones anyway?  It was so much simpler when we just bought new ones.  It’s not as if they’re expensive.

Every little helps.  It’s no use being wasteful, there’s no knowing what the government will do to pensions in the current economic climate.

Oh don’t get started on that again.

Well somebody has to worry, you just fly through life………Right I’ve found some other bags at the back of the drawer but there’s not many.  Remind me to put them on the shopping list.  No, I’ll do it now.  Blood bags.  There. Just move out of the way and let me have a look in the fridge to see how many we’ve got in.

You already looked.

I know but I can’t remember what I said.  We’re running low on phosphate.  You haven’t put the lid on your jar of liver nibbles again, I spend my life clearing up after you. Platelet pate in the salad drawer, how many times!  Right only three full bags and a half sucked one without a cap on, we’d better get going.

I am going, I’m in the hall.  Waiting.  Where are you?

Have you seen my specs?

They’ll be in your handbag.

They’re not.  Now where did I last have them?

You were reading The Surgeon, you were reading bits out to me when I was trying to watch the news.

I’ll look in the lounge.  They’re not in here….. I wonder…….Oh I know.  I think I was wearing them when I phoned my mother back.

Oh that old bat. She was flittering on all the way though my detective programme. Why does she always ring on Tuesday evening? It’s only one hour a week, it’s not much to ask.

Well if you could work out how to use the recording thing…..ah, here they are.  Right, are you ready, if we don’t get off soon it’ll be morning.  OK I’m good to go.  Now where are you off to?

I’m just popping to the toilet.

Dr Mark Porter said in the Times that you’ll never retrain your bladder  if you go a dozen times before you go out.

What does he know?  He’s not old enough to have a prostate. I’ll just be a tick.

What a palaver.  We’re only popping out for a quick suck and a top up, it’s not like we were entertaining, or the transfusion service or something.  I could do it quicker on my own.  Actually, while you’re doing that I’ll just fly upstairs and put some more Ibuprofen gel on my wing.  Ooh, that is so stiff.

There we are.  Didn’t need to go after all.  Now where has she gone?                  Where are you?

Here.  Can you stand behind me and put some of this gel on the back of my neck? I can’t reach.

Are we ever going to get out tonight?  There, how’s that?

Fine thanks.  Well, it will be soon I hope, I could do with a stronger one.  Just leave it on the hall table.  Right, finally.  Where are we going?  That new housing estate off the motorway?

If you want.

Where are you off to now?

To get the sat nav.  Can you remember how to programme it?

No, you find the instructions while I rummage in my bag for my specs……..

 

Did you see where I put my handbag? I had it a moment ago……….

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JaneLaverick.com – worth reading again with your glasses on.

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Welcome new shoppers!

Friday 30 Jul 2010 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: Site information. Tags: , ,

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A huge welcome to new shoppers who have found me through the ad in the Dolls House Magazine!  If you were a regular reader of my column, interviews and assorted articles in that magazine and wondered where I had gone – here I am!

JaneLaverick.com has been going for nearly a year, it was launched in time for Autumn Miniatura ‘09 (and how long ago does ‘09 seem? can you even remember how you were wearing your hair then?)  This site is all my own work with the help of my computery son, who got it set up and showed me how to get my photos of my work up into the virtual shop.  It has to be said it was uphill work for him poor thing.  At one point during a tutorial I started laughing hysterically – my brain was full!

Anyway nearly a year later I think I may know what I’m doing sufficiently to advertise, slightly, and if you found the advert and remembered long enough to get the computer going, well done you.

There are two parts to this site.  One is all the writing, which is known as a blog, which is short for weblog.  The other is an online shop where you can buy collectables with a plastic card and they will be posted to you.

You can enter the shop by clicking on the shop button to the right where it says: View the Shop ‘Click here to go shopping’.  You can get back to this page by scrolling down to find a picture of a doll on a cotton reel.  It says: View the blog, clicking on that brings you back here.  You can also go forward and back by clicking on your computer’s forward and back arrows in the top left hand corner of your computer screen.

Everything in the shop has been made by me of my own invention to my own designs. Apart from here the only other place you can buy them is at the Miniatura dolls house shows.  Items are for adult collectors, these are not children’s toys but apart from wilful damage, things should last; they are properly hand made in traditional materials.  I’m not a TV shopping channel, I couldn’t afford for you to play with them for a month and then send them back because you were tired of them but I have designed them to be enjoyed; dolls’ house artefacts are meant to be heirlooms, which is why I make mine by painstaking traditional methods.  The dolls are made of proper kiln-fired porcelain, they are not made of modelling clay just dried out in a domestic oven.  Clothes are sewn, not glued and when I say a doll wig is brushable, you really can brush it.  You can make clothes, dress the doll and then brush the hair.  Not violently as a child would a plastic fashion doll but carefully as an adult collector.  Paintings are proper varnished oil paintings on board, they are individually painted by me, with a brush, not printed or reproduced by mechanical means.

Don’t let the prices put you off, some of them are very reasonable indeed for hand made collectable artist’s original works.  I’m hoping you will love them so much you’ll become a frequent shopper, I’m hoping to persuade you to my view of the world which is small but beautifully made and above all things, fun.  However if you are not happy with your purchase, please contact me.  I want you to be happy, I want you to compare what I make with similar things in comparable materials, (if you can find them,) decide mine are better made and better value and then come back and shop again.

If you would like to order, having chosen by setting the filters or scrolling through the shop pages, you will find that the postage charges are per parcel, not per item.  I can do this because I am the packaging department.  I am also the walking up to the post office department.  It’s less work for me to put everything in one parcel and  go to the post once and better value for you.  So I try to make sure there are always little ‘top up’ items at top up prices, so you get a nice full, good-value parcel.  I love a parcel full of nice things to arrive by post, I hope you do too.  Everything in the virtual shop exists in reality, waiting to go, and there is exactly one of each photographed thing.  The one you see is the one you get.  I photograph the items for the shop and then put them through a complex computer programme so they appear in the shop with a zoom facility.  You can pick them up in your virtual hand by clicking on the buttons on the bottom right of a picture. The + button, clicked upon, will zoom in to a magnification much greater than you could get with your naked eye (or even your eye with its specs on – have you found them yet?) When it’s big you can pick the picture up and move it around with your cursor, just as you would if you were having a look at a doll on my stand at the  Min.  The – button smallerates  the pic, the house returns it to the original size and the other button makes it full screen.  Crikey, you can practically see the atoms!

I know it’s a leap of faith to buy something off the computer, which is why I’ve done my best to show the things as closely and clearly as possible, yet I promise, if you like the picture, you’ll like them better in your hand. I have not photographed dolls in settings or houses, what you see on the screen is what you receive with the exception of some props such as cotton reels and postage stamps to show how small the items are. This is the collectables shop that is always open.  I add to items in the shop as I make them.  To the right of the shop pictures there is always the list to click on that explains exactly how I make the things I make and what I mean by technical terms.  There are no secrets here; if you wish to take quarter of a century to learn how to miniaturise, as I did, it is set out in plain language.

The blog, the bit you’re reading now, is completely free and changes for a new bit about three times a week.  It’s all written by me and made up out of my head.  Why would I spend so many hours a week doing something for free?  Partly because I know if you like the blog, you’ll love the dolls but also because of the hundreds of letters I received during all the years that I wrote for magazines. So often readers wrote to me when they were going through a difficult time in their lives and said that articles they read that I had written in magazines lifted their spirits and gave them a laugh.  I know readers reread words I had written many times. 

Early in my show career I was puzzled by visitors running up to my stand, gabbling something, laughing like a drain and running off into the crowd.  Eventually I caught someone to discover the cause of their apparent insanity.  It turns out that people were memorising jokes from my column and, in some cases, entire paragraphs, nerving themselves up and then running to tell me my own jokes back again before they could forget them.  I have also been responsible for some near divorces over the years as miniaturists have forced their significant others to listen as they read extracts from my column to them, and sometimes re-enacted the entire thing.  On one notable occasion the lady reader’s bedtime performance caused so much hysteria she wet the bed and she and her husband had to get up and change  the sheets.  There are buttons to enable you to tell your friends on Digg, Twitter and all the rest about funny things you read here and want to share.  You can have alerts on your mobile phone when I post because, whilst I try to do so three times a week, sometimes a really long bit of writing takes a while to do and sometimes I feel funny more often than three times a week.  Everything I have ever written here is archived – if you’ve just found me you have hours of reading ahead of you.  To access the older stuff either scroll down to the bottom of the endless page to time travel backwards, or click on one of the categories on the right: Miniatura, site information, Werse, The Parrot has landed and so on.  Then select by month.  Or you can select a month and take pot luck.  Clicking on the buttons cannot possibly break anything on the site, please click away all you wish.  It is not possible to buy anything ‘accidentally’ in the shop. There are several screens to go through, the last is a disclaimer to remind you that shop products are for adult collectors.  If you never see that screen you have not bought anything, so if you wish to practise purchase, you can.  Once you have gone through all the steps and checked out, the item will disappear from the shop.  If you are completing a purchase and need a pictorial memory of the doll please print if off before you complete. Whilst the content of this site and everything I make is copyright, of course you can print off your own catalogue and take it up to bed with a cup of tea.  The only qualifications to be here are to like little things and to enjoy a good laugh. There is nothing here you couldn’t show your granny.  JaneLaverick.com is regularly read by people in over 30 countries and twenty five languages.

Coming soon will be profiles of artists, linked to the Miniatura website, for use as a resource for miniature art collectors.  I have always believed that the hobby goes far beyond a dolls’ house.  I was brought up with antiques and collecting; so much that I see  convinces me that many aspects of mini art bear the hallmarks of a genuine art movement.  I see evidence of artists with lifetime skills, working to produce wonderful artefacts by brain, hand and eye that enrich our understanding and provide a window on the world, in a way that I feel is lacking in much so called big ‘modern art’ today. Crucially this is art for ordinary non-millionaire collectors spending pocket money, if it isn’t relevant, attractive and good value they don’t buy it.  In full size art the emperor is not wearing any clothes at all; in miniature, they are hand embroidered and lined and you can inspect the quality as closely as you wish, before you buy one for you.

Finally, if you love this site and want more than one woman has breathing time in a day to give you, the links page, accessed by clicking on ‘links’ to the right will take you by click to other sites I think you’ll enjoy.

And finally, finally do email me. Tell me what you think.  You can make comments on bits of writing, which I’ll post if suitable – join in, please!

And finally, finally, lastly, finally, really (probably) thank you for reading all those magazines for all those years, I hope you’ll be delighted to find I can be silly about a lot more things than dolls houses.  I am, basically, very silly and work hard at it.  I’m here for shopping and fun, for you.

JaneLaverick.com – online shopping and a jolly good laugh.

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All original doll designs, text and images on this site are Copyright Jane Laverick © 2009, unless expressly noted otherwise. Please do not reproduce this site, its contents or products either in their entirety or partially in any form either digitally or physically without the prior written permission of Jane Laverick.