Art Deco.

Posted on 6th July 2025 by admin

It is quite  a while since I showed you a doll sitting in her underwear waiting for me to make the rest of her clothes.

Here she is, dressed

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turned out very glam, didn’t she?

The underwear is not removable, everything else is.  Her bolero is made from an actual art deco mat which some patient person crocheted long ago.

I have a collection of antique bits and pieces, not much.  My father. lifelong collector, used to find scraps for me when he ran his retirement business as a dealer.  Long before that he brought me a real art deco beaded bag, which I did take out once.  As it is a hundred years old it is fragile and now lives in a box.  Although the doll in the photograph is thoroughly beaded, the beads are to modern taste.  My bag is beaded with brown and orange beads with rather too much brown for today.  I discovered early on that people do not like buying dolls dressed in brown.

Colours in clothing are an interesting topic.  I think folk memory is at work in the distaste collectors have for brown.  From the neolithic, when people wore brown fur or tanned leather, right through the early and late mediaeval periods when the majority of the population were mostly wearing mostly brown, the shade has had associations with poverty.  Except for the exceptions,

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which, in the twenties and thirties would certainly be mink.  This lady is wearing a mink stole made from a fragment of the real thing, probably of a similar date.

The prestige of owning a mink garment lasted right through the war and up to the fifties.  I had a cousin who was so determined to inherit my grandmother’s mink coat that she reminded our grandmother at every opportunity.  I don’t know if she did eventually get the coat but she did marry someone nice and rich and could probably afford her own fur coat.

In the early eighties my parents gave me a rabbit fur gilet, which almost instantly I could not wear, as the anti fur movement took hold.

Our attitudes to this type of clothing are very interesting.  My father, raised on the Boys Own Paper and all things Baden Powell was heavily invested in the noble boy pursuing the wild tiger and the man of the species covering the cave sleeping bench with the pelt of something he had hunted.  I have written previously of Bertie Adams, who I loved. 

Bertie Adams was a leopard skin rug with a stuffed head, glass eyes and a green felt scalloped edging.  He got his name when I was a baby with big ears.  One day my father tripped over his head, a frequent occurrence when the floor has a covering with a snarl, teeth and ears that stick up.

‘Oh!’ he exclaimed, ‘that damn’ at which point it was less the leopard’s ears he was aware of as mine, hence he finished, creatively ‘Bertie Adams.’  I loved Bertie Adams and talked to him frequently, he might have been the reason our cats at home were so well behaved.  Sadly when starting his retirement business in antique dealing my father saw fit to put Bertie Adams in the window, and sold him.

I was as cut up as I would have been had he sold a family member, I thought Bertie Adams was a family member and had anticipated caring for his old age in my old age.

Of course the fur was always better on the living animal, as was every other body part.  I have been vegetarian for a long time, though I do eat fish.  I don’t know how long this will last.  The latest news is that whales and sharks are trying to talk to us, we already know dolphins have a menopause to help them look after their grandchildren and if we find lobsters are philanthropic, I’m stuffed.

Meanwhile the doll is wearing a fragment of a fur at least a hundred years old.  How much detail I bring to doll dressing that is authentic constantly interests me.

Clothing affects the way we are and the way we interact with the world, as does technology.  I am so used to showering once or twice a day and putting clean clothes on I barely remember bath night once a week and the same blouse for school worn every day for a week and I don’t remember my winter school tweed coat ever being cleaned at all.  Grown out of, yes, washed, no.  I do recall my grandmother talking about washing the goodness out of things, which may have been making a virtue of necessity.

As we view the past through the screens of the present, dolls are only ever going to be an adaptation of history.  My dolls, however, were never meant to be realistic looking miniature humans.  They live doll lives in doll clothes and smile all the time. They hurt no one and only ever cheer people up.

I am so happy to be able to think of something that will make someone happy and then conjour it out of my head and into reality.  If you thought that was art you wouldn’t get an argument out of me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Normal.

Posted on 2nd July 2025 by admin

Who is Normal?

I am not talking about Normal June who turned into Mary Lynne Manroe on some other planet, I’m talking about us.

To which the response may well be, ‘Of course we’re not normal. we’re miniaturists (or quilters, or railway modellers, or or.)’

Normal is not an absolute, despite what home blood pressure monitor booklets tell you.  Normal is a range.

The longer you live the wider you know the range to be. 

The normal that gets touted about to children: grow up, work hard, get a job, get a spouse, get a house, get children seems increasingly unlikely.  The corollary: do right by the children and get grandchildren doesn’t seem to work either.

I do have grandchildren, two of them.  It is an amazement to someone who came from an orphanage to find that inherited traits are not just a chapter in a book about genetics but real.  I have genes, apparently.

I also have friends who will not have grandchildren.  The number of my friends who belong to this group is growing. In ‘normal’ life a hundred years ago when those who could have children had several because infant mortality was common and antibiotics hadn’t been invented, it didn’t matter if one child turned out to be infertile, gender fluid or career focussed, there were plenty of others to test the genetics theory.  This sometimes meant someone saying, ‘And what do you know he turned out like Alfie!’ and everyone else sighing.  As there were many grandchildren there were many possibilities.

Another big fat lie is married happily ever after.  My adoptive father did break off the relationship with my adoptive mother when they had been going out for some time.  He had been brought up in a family where they were given religion rather than love.  Given the possibility of actually being able to kiss someone and maybe take things further, he went back.

The rest of your life is such a long time.

Sometimes action to end a situation is not possible.  In my case I don’t abandon people because I started my life abandoned.  I have friends whose difficult person in their lives is a disabled child.  I have friends whose children fell down the potholes of drink and know those whose loved ones stepped on the drugs slide.

It’s a long road that has no turning, though I could do with one at present.  I keep walking into comments as hard as the edge of a door, increasing in frequency and very damaging.  They might be related to the drinking reaching the brain, they might be related to fear of loss.  I have managed since March to lose over half a stone because my intestines have healed and are working.  I’ve worked out for quarter of a century but now I’m beginning to look as if I do.

I have written quite a lot of words to help anyone dealing with someone else with dementia but there are many other very difficult situations in life caused by numerous other ailments of the body and brain, from which there seems to be no escape.

There is, of course.  Police cold case files in every developed nation in the world are stopped at the bit where the missing person just couldn’t take any more and walked out of their life.

The Internet has given us all access to the biggest library the world has ever known. One of the topics I have followed since about 2004, or 5 is Near Death Experiences.  These are the experiences of people who have technically died but been revived.  At first on the Internet they were brief written passages.  Now there is an institute to study them and numerous video casts and interviewers of those who have experienced the phenomenon.  If you are going to search for these take a pinch of salt with you and be prepared for more pop up adverts than you knew existed as people try to make money out of death, previously an occupation only available to funeral directors.

Nevertheless the similarity of the experience in numerous cultures is startling, though the way people interpret their event is certainly culturally biased.  One of the common themes drawn from the incident is that we are all here to learn.

How you deal with the difficulty of learning situations caused by those closest to you is quite a question.  I might find myself at a loss as to how to answer had I not been answering the question for 35 years without knowing it.

Hobbies, jobs, crafts, pastimes, engaging novels, somewhere else to put your weary head away from the problem not of your making that is going round and round and sending you crazy.

In the absolute thick of it, such as when a demented person is hitting you with their walking stick, or someone in withdrawal is so nasty it makes you gasp, or some actual physical occurrence is an all hands to the pumps situation, except that there is only one pair of hands and they’re yours, you have to stay focussed.

Afterwards when you get the clever reply or the edited highlights in your head, this is the time to scrap bust, miniaturise, upgrade your layout or do the shopping and planning, or, even, just, plan for the shopping.

And to remember you are not living a perfect life, you are not even living a normal life because there is no such thing.  Normal is a range not an absolute.

I believe there is a possibility that the harder it gets the more you are learning.

But you are allowed time off, time out, recovery time.  The safest way I know of to get your own back, to be yourself, to think of something else, is to ride that hobby horse as hard as you can when you can.  This is the mode of transport outta Dodge.

I have a stable of hobby horses.  When I’ve finished writing this (writing is one of my favourite ponies, had you guessed?) I’m off to do the garden before the heat gets started.  Then I have several wigs to make for dolls and I’m going to fit in a workout somewhere.  These are the current runners for today.

I may metaphorically walk into a door in the day, these comments are coming out of left field and thick and fast currently.  When I’ve stopped seeing stars I’ll get on with being me.

Being yourself is the best hobby there is, I hope you do it a lot, apart from anything else, it’s normal for you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in About artists., The parrot has landed. | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Art deco dressing.

Posted on 29th June 2025 by admin

Sorry for the radio silence, I have been and still am, dolling for a collector.  There is a deadline so I have to get on with it.  The collector would like a couple of glass eyed twelfth scale ladies, so that is what I’m doing.

The era is art deco.

When you first begin researching European and British history, Art Deco and Art Noveau are often confused.  Art Noveau was the style that took inspiration from nature.  It was a reaction to the very mannered and stiff art, which preceded it.  This included the dawn of photography, where ordinary families, dressed in their best late Victorian and early Edwardian outfits at the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth, took themselves off to a photographer’s studio and sat to attention or, if you were the gentleman, usually, stood ramrod straight with your neck or head in an actual metal grip to stop you wriggling because the glass photographic plates took up to fifteen minutes to register the image.

Along came the new art, Art Noveau, which was the opposite, it favoured nature rambling free and ladies without corsets.  Here in England William Morris was the great exponent.  Had he lived now he’d have been podcasting, then he travelled all over England giving talks from the back of a cart.

Art Deco was named after an exhibition in Paris in 1925.  This was the year when the tomb of Tutankhamun was finally opened.  The discovery of fresh Ancient Egyptian art, which was licensed by the state, and therefore very similar stylistically for hundreds and hundreds of years, had a huge effect on fashion of the Twenties.  Huge Ancient Egyptian beaded collars were seen intact, with their magnificent rows of glass, precious and enamelled beads and suddenly beads were everywhere.  Stylised natural forms such as papyriform pillars supporting roofs, and regular repeating patterns based on lotus blossom intermingled with geometric forms, were repeated in cinemas, theatres, public buildings and bars of the Twenties.

My antique mad father gave me a Twenties beaded bag.  The work in it is immense.  It is a clutch bag, every inch is covered in beads.  I did take it out and use it once but it is very fragile.

I am beading the dresses of the dolls, each bead is sewn through twice and the beaded clothing is removable.  Each garment has taken a week to make and bead.  I’m sure my collector won’t mind me showing you the work in progress.

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Here is the first lady.  She is wearing her underwear, French lace knickers, a bra you cannot see, a short petticoat and a beaded top which buttons up the back.  She is looking out of the window and keeping me company while I bead the rest, which is a skirt and an unbeaded bolero made from a real nineteen twenties lace mat.

One of the advantages of having spent so long hanging around antique shops, apart from knowing what to put in each dolls house, is that I have seen the real full size items and own some fragments, which I can use for special dolls.

Currently Clarice Cliff pottery commands massive prices at auction.  It is as Art Deco as you can get but I remember it being in antique shops shoved to the back of shelves in the Sixties because no one wanted it.  I even remember Aunties who were still using Clarice Cliff  tea sets and milk jugs  as everyday tableware because they were originally sold in Woolworths.

If you are old enough you realise that fashion is a roundabout, if you wait it comes back again.  I think Art Deco will have a huge revival this autumn which is the 100th anniversary of the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

We shall see, meanwhile, on with the beading.  More pictures later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Polly ticks.

Posted on 19th June 2025 by admin

Polly ticks is a parrot that’s swallowed a watch.  You will rarely find me addressing what some TV commentators identify as ‘the perlitical situation’.

I have, moreover, filed this bit of thinking under The Parrot Has Landed, which I usually reserve for light humour or whimsy, though the topic of politics currently is less light than it has been for some time.

There are now more wars going on in the world than have been since the Second World War.  Those of us who are old enough to have been alive at the end of WW2, or just after, may recall that the Peace Dividend included a feeling of optimism, safety and the bad stuff being behind us.

Other than children, who I hope are mainly protected, there cannot be an adult alive in any country, let alone those being destroyed by war, unaware of the terrible state the world is in.  I read in a newspaper magazine of tech savvy people being kidnapped, trafficked and forced to work online duping citizens, mostly the unwary elderly, of other countries, out of their savings.  Some of the kidnapped were from African nations, the traffickers were from Asian countries and the duped were mainly Westerners.

It is impossible to turn on a television without being aware of the news of the current state of the crisis in the Middle East.  Currently there are over a hundred countries round the world actively engaged in conflicts with other countries.  I am writing this in Britain, where the current hot topic is what to do about people fleeing wars, putting their lives at risk, having paid all their savings to traffickers, crossing the channel, one of the world’s busiest seaways, on inflatable boats about as safe as a Lilo.  We are not alone, Norway and Sweden have designated reception centres for illegal migrants, to name just two countries.  France and Italy have reception centres, mostly inundated.  I could go on, almost every liberal Westernised country is seen as a safer place to be than a country at war with another country.

What is going on?  How do we get past this?  What should we do?  Whose fault is it?

I was very fortunate to teach English as a Second Language in a language college in the Seventies.  This brought me into contact with students of all ages from many countries, when I was still only in my Twenties.  Teens and Twenties are good years to have your opinions changed and your ideas broadened.  It is true that the language college was private, therefore the students were drawn from those that could afford the fees, or whose parents could afford the fees.  Despite this rein on all of humanity who wished to learn English, I came into contact with many ideas and many opinions.  Some young people were sufficiently inexperienced to be solely reflecting the values of their parents, especially it seemed to me, those coming from restrictive countries, some of whom had difficulties being taught by a woman.  However, at a certain age, the reproductive urge is so strong that ingrained prejudices took a back seat to the need to get out there and mingle.  I watched attitudes shift, almost by the day.  The need to communicate with other young people when the only common language was English, was helpful to my purposes to say the least, you wouldn’t believe how fast you can teach students chat-up lines.

The college had a policy of host families.  Occasionally the arranged host family failed and I became the host family.  One of these students is still part of my extended family, loved as well as my cousins and definitely on the catch-up and Christmas card list.

What I learned in those years is that people are people are people. All round the world.

We all want to make friends, we all want to be happy, we all want to do the best we can do, we are all interested in the future and our part in it.  In fact I would go so far as to say that everyone I’ve ever met is doing the best they can do with what they’ve got at the time.

I must have taught, children and adults, absolutely hundreds of people.  Given that my first class had 43 children in it, probably hundreds of hundreds.  I have also spoken to and interviewed hundreds of artists working in miniature.

In all that time I only met one person, a seven year old girl, who I considered to be genuinely bad.  I don’t think she was bad to the bone.  She was child number six or seven and the first, longed for girl, after all the others being boys.  She was, as the saying goes, spoiled rotten.  She was used to her opinions being law, her needs being met without question and the stamping of her little foot being a cause for turning the world around.  The slightest thing that was not to her liking provoked instant screaming rage, that lasted until her needs were met.

I did, of course, teach many difficult children.  I began teaching at a school that was designated special needs some years after I began there.  Quite a number of parents were in prison and some home conditions were dreadful.  One little boy in the class next to mine had only jelly sandals to wear and no socks, the only hot meal he ever had at home was chips that the local chip shop saved for him.  On pancake day the school kitchen served pancakes that were actually Yorkshire puddings served with watered down golden syrup.  Children could eat as many as they wanted and he always won the contest to eat the most.  He was a fat,  cold, mottled white, neglected, unhappy little bully.  I felt so sorry for him.

What you do about a bad childhood is up to you.  In the Seventies many children who were classed as difficult would now be diagnosed with a range of mental problems.  I had many arguments with colleagues about dyslexia, some teachers thought the children were just idle, I could see they were trying their socks off and have subsequently taught many dyslexic people to read with a system I developed from various teaching reading schemes.

Very often the dyslexic people I taught went on to do extremely well in adult life.  They were so used to finding life less easy than others, they got into a habit of trying extra hard at everything.  This is a very good habit to get into.

Some people get into a habit of trying hard because they have a horrible or needy parent. Early learned skills of appeasement can produce skilled negotiators in later life.  Finding the balance between that and constant people pleasing is a great life skill.

Not everyone regards the trials of life as a chance to collect some skills or an opportunity for self improvement.

Some people want to get even.

Some people don’t even want to get even, they want to win, at any cost, though not to them.

Here we come to politicians.  I have only personally known one person who was very keen to be a politician.  He was controlled by his grandmother from the moment he was born.  She decided he would be a solicitor and keep her in her old age and frequently told him so.

I also, of course know many teachers.  Teachers are often people who had little choice in childhood.  Their desire to correct the failings of their own youth can extend to teaching others to improve the world in general.  The fact that the teacher only has six hours in the day to help the child whereas the child’s family, good or bad, has the other eighteen hours, might be the reason homework was invented.

There is an almost endless list of dictators both ancient and modern to whom you could attach a bad childhood as causality.  Dictators starting wars, invading other countries on the slightest pretext, depriving their own citizens of rights, property and freedom.

However, it isn’t what happens to you, or even physical or mental disabilities that start the descent into madness, and the desire for unfettered, addictive and toxic power, itself the most destructive force; it’s what you do about your own perceived deficits and grievances that counts.

All politicians who have any reasonable length of tenure go either slightly bonkers or stark staring mad.  It’s just not good for anyone to be surrounded by yes men and yes women 24/7.  Disputation is the foundation of democracy, the well spring of consideration, the start of seeing someone else’s point of view.  Moral relativism is the doctrine that says in various forms that there is no right or wrong, just different points of view.

Here in England we were so lucky to have had the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century.  Cheerless Oliver Cromwell had a very different point of view from the monarch, Charles 1st.  Parliament got going, which at the time, could be suspended by the king if he didn’t like what was going on.  We know the outcome, Charles lost his head and the country became a protectorate, but only as long as Oliver Cromwell was alive.  His son was not his father, Charles the 2nd was fetched back from abroad and gradually there developed the wonderful system we have now where elected politicians can make laws which are not legal until they are signed off by the monarch, a person with an hereditary job with no actual powers, who we keep in a gilded cage which belongs to us.  It is a most beautiful balance which favours the people of the land and denies permanent power to anyone who fancies it.  It also gives us an apolitical monarch whom we can use to make friends with other countries for us, regardless of the political affiliations of their rulers.

All of the above might be the start of an answer to the question: whose fault is this? The answer being, possibly, the rection to negative influences in the formative years.

It is not a problem either to answer the question:  What is going on?

The world is out of balance.  Wealth and power is in the hands of a few people, vast numbers of people have very little, including very little freedom.  However, this is a generalisation.  Any television reporter, reporting from almost any country in the world, is doing so against a back drop of shopping centres, full of people shopping, and cars.  You have to get right into the middle of a war zone to find only donkeys and carts.

Throughout history vast imbalances have a way of righting themselves.  Dictators go about their lives surrounded by bodyguards for a reason.  Caligula, Caracalla and Commodus were all really nasty Ancient Roman Emperors who were assassinated by their bodyguards.  Quis custos ipso custodes?  they may have wondered as the Pretorian Guard forcibly ducked their head under the custard until the bubbles stopped.

That’s what is going on.  What history would teach us about that, is to stay safely out of the way and wait for the change.  Change is the only constant in the universe, it will come.

What should we do?  If you are what they used to call on television ‘of a nervous disposition’ it is recommended that you do not watch every bad newscast, doom scroll, or in other ways stick your head too far into situations you cannot control.

My SMIL, who was prone to depression, was given the above advice in the form of ‘Turn the TV news off’ by her doctor.  He pointed out that there was nothing she could do about the awful things she saw.  He added that the likely outcome of watching every depressing bit of news was only to make her more depressed.  The possibility of one elderly lady stopping a war in a country several hours away by aeroplane being zero.

The OH likes to read the newspaper to find things to be outraged about.  He never reads out loud the cheerful bits and he is undoubtedly addicted to doom scrolling on his phone, interspersed with videos of birds, dolphins and rather more useful instructive videos of woodwork.  These would be more helpful if he had done something about the collapsing floor of his shed, other than moving everything into the sun room in the perfect spot to trip over.

Here we come to the crux of another problem.  If you allow all of the awfulness to overtake your life, it prevents you living your life, yourself.

Access to all the bad news in the world is a recent development.  In most of history up to about a hundred years ago most people knew what was going on in their village.  Any news was not only local, it was so local you could do something about it. Popping round to borrow a cup of sugar, or see if someone who had not been seen for a while was alright, was standard practice.  This state of affairs was of demonstrably lengthy duration.  A Yorkshire farmer, whose views of the Civil War currently raging, were printed in a book, is on record as saying:  Oh yes, the King and that lot in Parliament.  I knew they was at each other’s throats but that don’t affect me.  I’ve got the harvest to get in.

I have a couple of phases of my life which, were I questioned about popular songs, political movements or art exhibitions in a quiz I would have not one clue about the answers.  The phases were for the first five years of motherhood and the years during which I was carer for my mother.  I can, however sing you the theme tune of Postman Pat, and I have a reasonable grasp of the law in relation to the responsibilities of the borough to the rate payers who live there if they become long term incapacitated.  If WW3 had started then I’d have been very up to date with what I could do for the care of the people for whom I was responsible, any of the wider questions would escape me completely, I was too busy living my own life.

I love miniaturists, I really do.  Having interviewed so many I am still in awe of people who have had really awful life experiences, and, instead of getting bitter and twisted, or vowing to get their own back, or seeking control over other people and making their lives a misery to show them, they get busy modelling the world.  They make a model and put all their control and skill into it.  All the bad stuff goes in.  Out comes art.

Here is the answer to the question: what can we do about it?

Very little unless you want to become a politician, even so you’ll have to wait for the next election and get elected and you’d better have some good ideas about a whole load of other questions too.  You could, of course be a protester.  One of my favourite cartoons is a Snoopy one in which Lucy is parading around with a sign on a stick.  The sign says : Help stamp out things that need stamping out.

For normal people happiness lies in the answer of the seventeenth century farmer, every miniaturist and doll maker.  Get your head down, get busy.

If WW3 breaks out, you can be sure I shall give another perlitical sit rep.

Until then I have dolls to dress, quite a lot of backed-up gardening to get round to, some birthday cards to make and then stuff to do for the next Miniatura.  As always.

If you want to be happy, make like a miniaturist, sweat the small stuff.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Posted in The parrot has landed. | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Clever squirrel, careful cat.

Posted on 17th June 2025 by admin

This is a high speed posting in case you might fancy I have dropped off the universe.  I have not.  It was Father’s day on Sunday; the S&H announced he was bringing himself and his family.

I am not as fast a learner as I wish I were.  I spent a couple of days tidying up.  The OH announced he could see dust under the dining table when he was sitting in his easy chair and, amazingly, fetched a mop and bucket and washed part of the floor.  It was surprising but not the miracle of washing the entire floor one might have wished for, if wishing for clean floors, rather than achieving them, had been the aim.

Following the visit it took Sunday evening and the whole of Monday to tidy up again, including removing enough crumbs from underneath the table to feed a small third world country.

Before all of this and during the work up there was a pleasant distraction in the form of wildlife and tame life.  I have recently discovered that the garden birds are so enthusiastic about the Range’s range of wildly tasty suet pellets with insects (who is the chef, where do they get all the insects from?) that I have had to invest in a new bird feeder when assorted corvidae destroyed one  of those hanging off the fence.  I replaced it with a metal feeder, filled with pellets and sunflower hearts.

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Along came the squirrel who is almost undetectable behind the feeder.

However, next door’s cat is a very good detective.  She is grey with a white bib, which she is aware makes her rather more visible than she would like.  So

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having positioned herself, wonderfully hidden beneath the lilies, excessively hopefully poised for vertical take off, she realises that her white bib is high viz for squirrels so, in between glancing at the object of her dentition, she scrunches down, looking at the ground to hide her white bib.

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Too late, the squirrel has spotted her and is off

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even though the cat is now engaged in extra dark crouching, chin down.

Free entertainment.  Back to vacuuming the carpet to make room for crumbs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Electricity and so forth and happy birthday.

Posted on 7th June 2025 by admin

First, the birthday.

Happy Birthday Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the Internet without which you would not be reading this, and there would be no point in me writing it.  You’ve got to hand it to him, that was jolly clever.  His invention has enabled me to write for sixteen and three quarter years what is basically a newspaper column without a newspaper, and you to read it for free.  Readers of my miniatures hobby magazine columns asked if I could write for free about things that interested them.  In the early days I was plagued with advertisers who told me it would be profitable to annoy you with pop-up adverts, but I was sufficiently into the Internet to know that such things drive people extremely insane very quickly, so I resisted.  I am always on the side of the reader.  Reading words uses a lot of your brain and keeps the blood flowing through it.  Keeping the blood flowing at speed through the arteries and veins in your brain is like squirting a high pressure hose down a drain, the rubbish gets washed out, the channels are kept open, everything works.  You couldn’t be reading this for free and helping to keep your brain working, for free, were it not for Tim Berners Lee.  So very happy birthday Tim and thank you from me and readers round the world.

The saga of the water in the utility room and three washing machines may be at a conclusion.  I have just washed a small load in the second new washing machine, the floor is dry, birds sing, the sun rises and all is well.

Yesterday a plumber arrived.  The whole sorry saga might have ended much sooner had the plumber arrived two weeks ago when I first noticed that I was paddling.  Twenty years ago SWDC (Skint With Dependant Child) the OH and I would have attempted to do the plumbing ourselves.  Younger and stronger we would have shifted the machines and stared at the pipes.  Thus we alone would have gazed upon the dishwasher feed hose dripping gently upon the skirting board, the resulting rivulet obeying the laws of gravity and running not under the adjacent dishwasher but taking the slight ox bow lake under the washing machine.

Was it simply age and the  weight of the washing machine that deterred you, I think I hear you ask.

No.  When we had the extensions done three years ago the person building the two inch thick built-in counter over the machines chose to make a thin neat tunnel in the back of the counter that only fitted the leads of the machines.  The electrical plugs appeared above the counter and were plugged in to the safely situated sockets half way up the wall.

We had already dodged this design singularity once, voiding all warranties by cutting off the moulded plug supplied with the appliance and, pulling the wire through the hole, moving the old washing machine, then, replacing it in place, powering it by rewiring a new, unwarrantied plug.

But with unknown water issues affecting both machines the OH gritted his teeth, grasped his tool of all work and cut a hole of sufficient size to admit a plug.  It took him well over an hour, because no one appreciates a two inch thick counter top as much as the man who has just cut through it.

Having done all of this and purchased a new extension lead for the dishwasher plug which only ever just surfaced above the counter and never made it to the dizzying heights of the sockets, the OH lost the will to work, so I called the plumber.  I was worried that the problem might be the old drain down for the central heating which was put in a much smaller utility room forty plus years ago.  This device, a plethora of pipe ends, terminals and blind pipes also supplies the cold water feed for the outside tap and the cloakroom.  I have gazed upon this structure in awe, wondering as people have wondered who gaze upon the pyramids:  How did they do that, and also, why?

One cannot, however, crawl behind the washing machine and gaze upon the wonder of the pipe ends because someone long ago made a little wooden box to cover the piperamids, making it impossible for the householder upon her ancient knees, with torch, to identify the origin of the shiny water upon the floor.

So, as Flanders and Swan remarked, it all makes work for the working man to do.

The plumber secured the hose very firmly with an extra doo dad. I gave my hamstrings another work out cleaning the floor in the tiny gap, and the skirting board and the machine hoses and pipes, and paid the plumber.

All that remains is to have a go with the dishwasher and go to the electrical store and apologise profusely for the second machine and thank them for the trouble they went to, and tell them I will buy a new machine whenever this one gives up without demur, for the receipt for the first machine went off in the plastic instructions bag with the instructions and the first new washing machine, with the cheerful chap who delivers all over the West Midlands and Wales, in case you were wondering.

If the dishwasher washes tonight I will breathe out and get on with life, after what has been a lengthy but not Icelandic, or Operatic saga.  Kingdoms did not fall, Ancient Gods did not appear to carry off comely mortals whilst warbling, though there was a lot of paddling, some fretting, little sleep, at least half a kitchen roll and sufficient expense to ensure the rest of the month will be quite slimming.

My grandmother never had these problems with her washboard and poss stick.  She possed her clothes in the kitchen sink and, in the nineteen seventies, was still grateful that water came out of the taps, already hot, instead of having to be fetched in a jug from the pump and heated in a basin over the fire.

Modern life is a miracle balanced on a knife edge.  If the teenage consortium of a hostile power decided to take out the electricity, there would be a rush for the washboard in the quaint Victorian laundry room of the Museum.

Because if the electricity was out you couldn’t even make a lot of washboards and sell them through the Big River retailer.

Round here we’d all  be down by the canal with a basket of socks and a bag of rocks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

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The electrical life 4

Posted on 5th June 2025 by admin

Last night, on my way to bed I thoughtfully pushed my socked foot gently under the side of the washing machine, for the joy that retrieving it dry would afford.

You know, don’t you?

Wet toes.

I subsequently slid a sheet of kitchen roll under there because that is what every householder does just before bed.  I showed the resulting wet kitchen roll sheet to the OH who was happily sitting watching television.

But not for long.

To be fair all he did was some utterances.  Then he continued watching television.

Do you recall my recommendation some posts ago for worry as to where the water is coming from as being the perfect recipe for sleeplessness?

It works.

However, a different sheet of kitchen paper inserted under the dishwasher produced more dry fluff.

This morning I am going to have some breakfast before I start sliding anything under anywhere.

I am also going to spend time wishing I had not accidentally put the original receipt in with the instructions and handed them back to the man taking the first machine away.

######

The OH has accompanied me to the utility room and we have both watched as I inserted kitchen paper under the dishwasher and retrieved it dry and under the washing machine and retrieved it wet.

Stay tuned.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

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The electrical life 3.

Posted on 4th June 2025 by admin

If you are new here, welcome!  If you are as fiercely bright as most of the miniaturists  who pause here you may have noticed the number 3 in the title, for this is the 3rd description of my attempt to get a new washing machine.  If, so noticing, and familiar with the way blogs start with the newest entry and work their way down and back in time (this being one in which you can time travel backwards for sixteen and three quarters years.  The post that tells you how to leap forward in time should be will be haven been posted in 2030 or thereabouts.) you will know to scroll down two postings until you get to the unnumbered electrical life and commence reading.  If you were previously unaware, you are now aware and able to time travel up to a week backwards, in which case enjoy the good weather while you can.

The new machine having been observed to be standing in a puddle on Sunday, the puddle diagnosis team arrived with admirable dispatch on Monday.  The diagnostician peered at the hose inlet, the hose outlet and the side of the machine for about five seconds before announcing ‘Cracked drum.  Ring them and pop in, it’ll be replaced.’

Congratulating ourselves on having spent extra on the delivery and fitting service, as opposed to the manhandle it into the back of a borrowed van method we used to use when younger and skinter, I rang the shop, who assured us that all that was necessary was to pop to the shop as soon as could be with the purchase form and all would be well.

I was sceptical.  I often am.  I find it to be an attitude that settles upon one, unbidden, with age.

As the morning was wearing on the OH had some soup, which he makes in quantity, and I did without and off we went to the shop, which is one branch of a national chain.

We arrived to find several staff outside waving at customers as they arrived.  ‘Go and see Fred*’ they said, ‘All the computers are down, nationally, we’re probably not able to do anything.’

Inside we encountered Fred*  who was wearing a badge saying Fred* and brandishing a very small worn stub of pencil and a partial sheet of paper.  He explained that the computers, no doubt anticipating our arrival, had just gone down five minutes ago.  We gave Fred* our details and showed him the purchase form and watched while a different assistant explained to a lady why she could not sell her the toy her small child was jumping up and down about.

Was it cyber crime taking down all the stores?  Was it inefficiency?  Was it a virus spreading among the white goods like water under a washing machine?

I never found out but we were promised someone would ring us back at home and I noticed the home phone number on the purchase order was identical to the mobile number on the purchase order and explained about landlines.

We returned and they rang promising delivery on Wednesday, because on Tuesday I had a dental appointment.  They said they would ring again when they knew the time of deliverance, a time of interest to all parties.

The phone call, which came when I was at the dentist’s the following day was intercepted by the OH, who, feeling  left out, asked for a text notification of delivery.

Meanwhile in the next town, feeling battered and bruised from a dental encounter with a new crown and a dentist with abnormally strong fingers, I was driving up a narrow street with cars parked on both sides when I heard a police siren.  The police car, racketing down the street was bumper to bumper with me at speed.  I managed to swerve backwards into a tiny gap.  It was an unmarked car, sufficiently full of police to be Keystone Cops, with a roof full of flashing lights.

Recovered from the shock, I crossed a larger road carefully and proceeded up the next winding street with parking both sides and little room when there was another siren.  I waited and the Keystone Cops came bursting down the road and were bumper to bumper instantly, the one in the back gesticulating with two middle fingers  making me feel glad I could not lip read.

I reversed without breathing for several cars until I found a gap to reverse into.  The mouthy chap in the back never letting up for a second; quite how he imagined that would assist the situation I cannot say.  To get to where they were they must have either gone down two one way streets the wrong way or round in a big circle through the pedestrian streets, breaking the speed barrier.

At home the phone rang, annoying the OH who had been hoping to regain control with a text.  The new machine would be delivered next day.

It has been.  It has washed three times.  So far, so dry, so good.

My grandmother never had this problem.  She used a washboard and a poss stick from 1896 until her death in the 1970s.  Her clothes were always clean and her laundry equipment had the advantage of being able to be used musically, although she never did as far as I am aware.

I hope that is the end of the washing machine saga, though you know where to look if it isn’t.

I am now hoping to return calmly to some doll orders.  I know I promised more dolls in the shop and these will occur, eventually.

Meanwhile I thought you might like to see the 24th scale family who went to live with Anne.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The poor baby has a vegetable crate pram, which I enjoyed so much there may be more at Miniatura.

~~~~~~~

*Not his real name.  They did say his real name.

*Not his real name this time, at all.

*Not his real name written down, either.

*Still not his real name.  I haven’t changed it to protect his identity, I just can’t remember what it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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The electrical life part 2.

Posted on 3rd June 2025 by admin

The date for the arrival of the Washing Machine version of the Star Ship Enterprise was a surprise which would be vouchsafed unto me in a telephone call.  I spent time stressing that I have a landline, which means that I do not have a telephone in my pocket, that you have to let it ring until I get there.  This is the result of interesting experience. Usually the people who get me out of the shower are cold callers trying to sell me something, but you never know.

Waiting for the store to inform me of the day of arrival, and having paid for the old machine to be removed and the new one to be installed, I then began to doubt myself.

In anticipation I began to clear the utility room for the installers.  You would not believe how much junk can assemble itself in a utility room.  I had had a deep counter top fitted over the machines, which had collected numerous bottles of elderly wines and the sort of gift wines made from grated quills and gooseberries housed in a half timbered bottle that people bring back from holiday because they were a really cheap gift intended to make you believe that they were thinking of you in cold rainy Britain whilst lying on a sunbed in Alicante.

Every bit of rubbish I cleared revealed more flooding on the floor.

Could it really all be coming from one antiquated washing machine?

If ever you lack something to keep you awake at night, I cannot recommend wondering where the water is coming from too highly.  Therefore, paddling, I pushed  many pieces of newspaper under the dishwasher and the washing machine.  Were they in cahoots?  Did they have a suicide pact?  Where was the water coming from, so very endlessly.

Finally on Saturday evening a piece of coloured A4 emerged from below the dishwasher, clutching elderly fluff with a light coating of dry filth.  So it is just the washing machine after all.

On Friday I had been informed that the arrival would be on Sunday and that a phone call on the day would acquaint me with the hour or, even, half hour in question.  Any fool with less experience of life would then confidently go about their normal work out or gardening.  I waited, still cleaning in proximity to the landline, for the call.

As the afternoon wore on and the OH’s pleas to ‘ring them!  ring them!’ became ever more urgent I checked the order form and discovered that the hours of work and white goods delivery were from 7 in the AM until 8 of the Evening. On a Sunday! I had finally found a job with worse hours than those that hurl packages down the drive from nine till five.

We gave in and started to make tea at which point a huge white van drew up outside.

The delivery, removal and installation were singularly simple.

So it was not until three loads of washing were on the line that I noticed that SS Enterprise had landed in a puddle.  The puddle was under the left corner. but where was it coming from?

I am surprised that you don’t see water entering marathons, because it is undoubtedly, very, very runny.

So I rang the store and was advised to return upon the morrow.

So, thinketh the new reader, you went back, got a replacement and that was it right?  Right?

The next episode will be posted when I have recovered from my dental trip, which featured irremovably set dental glue and two encounters with an unmarked police car, with sirens.

And, of course there will be cyber crime, currently very fashionable.

And it’s only Tuesday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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The electrical life.

Posted on 1st June 2025 by admin

When the house next door was built in the seventies, Ted’s wife, who designed it, made it all electrical because she thought it was cleaner, safer and better.  A mere half a century later public opinion has caught up with her. 

We do have a new boiler for the gas central heating, installed when we had the extension done.  Otherwise we are electric.

I keep getting small candles, I think they are called tea lights, as free gifts, which I stockpile because we have the electric light, don’t cha know?  And also, I was a young teacher in the seventies when we didn’t have the electric light for phases, when the rubbish was piling up in the streets, strikes were everywhere and the entertainment of an evening was reading a book by candlelight, which makes you squint.

So I am very grateful to have elected to have the electric, until it all goes pear shaped, which is the wrong shape for electricity.

I came down one morning with the washing basket to find the washing machine sitting incontinently in a puddle.  The washing machine is old, it is the only appliance that survived the destruction and rebuilding of the utility room.  Like all other appliances, it lived in the garage with the builders, like them, sheltering under plastic sheets when the roof was off and the rain was on.

Subsequently, moved back into the newly floored utility room, the dishwasher didn’t and the fridge made an audible pop when switched on and switched itself off.  Apparently if you move fridges you need to let them settle before you turn them back on.  Who knew?

The only appliance to be plugged back in and switched on that behaved as before was the Bosch washing machine.  It has washed for another three years, except now it wouldn’t.

I receive emails from our local electrical retailer frequently after I bought video games for the grandchildren there.  Irritatingly the washing machine became incontinent the day after I had deleted the latest special offer email.  However, the following day, which the OH spent scrolling and reading out loud from his phone, I received another fabulous urgent take advantage now these prices will not last email, causing me to use gallons of ink and sheets of paper printing endless specifications of numerous white goods, which neither of us could be bothered to do much more than glance at.

The following day was pay day, hooray, and I had discovered how to isolate the washing machines for printing another sheaf of paper which no one could be bothered to read, which I took with me to the out of town electrical retailer.

In the store we learned that the washing machine assistant was on her break, no other employee was even sure which appliances were the washing machines and there were no customer toilets.

It is not just elderly washing machines who like to know where the toilets are, in this case they were in the supermarket opposite.

Rinsed and spun we returned to the electrical retailer and began perusing washing machines.  Having established by the usual means of violent argument that our price bracket was not the ones that cost nearly a grand and played tunes, or the ones that also made toast, neither was it the ones clearly made from old baked bean tins with sharp edges and sharp prices.  We were in the middle.  This helped quite a bit and simplified the field to a number like a few and we were nearly at choice when matters were complicated immeasurably by the OH asking the opinion of the Washing Machine Mastermind Colleague returned fresh from a break.

This lady had obviously suffered much at the sharp end of retail and had therefore developed a defence mechanism of agreeing with all customer opinions.

I began to wish I had brought sandwiches.

The OH fell for a machine from a brand I had never heard of, mainly because it was black.  It did not completely resemble the deck of the Star Ship Enterprise, though if you’d sat Ahura on top with a phone, you’d have had to look twice.

We kept going round and round the rows, the Mastermind assistant kept firmly to the affirmative and I kept holding out for the slightly less expensive but not cheap models.  The Star Ship Washing machine, at the upper upper bracket, suddenly coming into play when Mastermind vouchsafed the information that the unknown brand was merely a new imprint of a very familiar brand, changed to match Star Ship Status and that you could get it for £100 less in white.

However, the white one still had a black control panel and, crucially for me, a black glass door.

This is daft.  The utility room has no window, only a half glass door.  How am I supposed to see what is happening behind a black door?

The OH, beguiled by the look of a domestic appliance whose predecessors he has never previously been known to operate, argued strongly and so speciously he could be a politician, for the Enterwash, that I was obliged to bribe him by sending him to look at hobs, while I actually had a good look at what the machines did, with the fabulous expertise of the individual who actually utilises the item in question.

I quickly discovered that the SS Washing machine had a touch panel lint filter, whereas the slightly cheaper, this week’s special offer machine I liked, had a pull open, razor sharp lint filter door that I couldn’t open at all.

So the SS Washing Machine won, despite the black door.

Then we had the finance argument, assisted by the assistant.

Happily I prevailed and we are not going to mortgage the future in very easy instalments, we paid all at once and will not eat for the last three weeks of the month, which is the method I used to afford the tree surgeons while the OH was on holiday, that cost a mere £595 in unmarked notes.

I am off on Tuesday to have the new crown fitted on my crumbling tooth which I have already paid through the nose for and there are still the bushes on the spindles of the front wheels of my car to come.

I really could do with a month with no unexpected expenses.

So, I think I hear you say, brightly, that’s the saga of the washing machine is it?

Welcome inexperienced reader!  Read on, as long as your device is not candle powered.

Though, if it is, would you like some free tea lights?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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