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There is a possibility that I might just have new stuff for Miniatura.  In fact the new stuff should have been the new stuff for the Spring but there was a problem.

Houston, I have an idiot. (Me.)

I did a lot of work to make two new things and a new part of an older thing ready to come out of my head and into reality.  I thought a lot, I made many, many moulds, I poured the porcelain and then I went horribly wrong –

I used the wrong wire.

I use wire of thicknesses from string thick, to finer than a hair, to make stringing hooks.  My articulated dolls have feet and hands with hooks, which I have made from wire embedded in them.  The elastic can go down an arm to a hand, through the wire loop and back up the arm.  In this way the doll is internally strung with elastic and can move.  The wire has to be made into tiny loops using the  very ends of the round nose pliers, the loop ends have to have twirly tails that can be inserted into the wet clay.  The wire has to withstand temperatures up to 1200 degrees, which is the temperature at which the porcelain clay shrinks, undergoes molecular change and turns into a sort of stone with embedded wire ends and a loop sticking out.

At least it does if you use the right wire.

If, by mistake, you go into the wrong drawer of the chest of drawers and find a reel of wire which looks like the high temperature wire but is actually a look-alike bought off the Internet, purporting to be the right wire but actually not the right stuff, but the wrong stuff and then use that to make a million stringing hooks which you subsequently bury in all the tiny hands, feet, bodies and heads then

Houston, you have a right cock up.

This will not become apparent until the second firing when the feet, etc, retrieved from the kiln will have loops that disintegrate when touched and completely jigger the kiln so that it no longer works.

And that was February.

Many years ago, nearly sixty firings, I had a problem and called in a kiln engineer who I found on the Internet.  He replaced my elements and put the control knob on the kiln upside down.  He said it couldn’t be changed and I’d get used to it.

But today the long awaited manufacturer’s kiln engineers arrived, took the kiln to bits and put it right.

I forgot to ask them to change the sensor rod, because I am an idiot and they did take with them my spare kiln which I have never fired.  I bought it from a friend and always thought it was a bit dodgy because it had spent its previous life in a wet shed.  The kiln engineers confirmed my suspicions, that it was not safe to fire.  I can’t use it and wouldn’t sell it, maybe they can take it to bits or put it in a kiln museum or use it for training.

I have spent the last three days pouring porcelain, embedding hands etc. with loops made from the right stuff (from the right drawer).  Now I shall spend a few days rubbing down and then, cautiously, fire the kiln but it won’t be until the second firing that I’ll know if it has worked.

Not exactly up and running, not even up and striding.  Edging towards success in teeny weeny steps, maybe.

The lesson to be learned is to beware of what you are getting off the Internet.  Go to the original source and the trusted name.  It is hard to see through the Internet, there is so much of it,  but it is worth spending time looking rather than quickly buying wire which you will have six months to regret.  It is worth waiting months for the right kiln engineer rather than the one who is good at advertising but can come next week and do stuff that will leave you annoyed for sixty firings, over many, many years.

I will let you know if it all works, and absolutely regardless I will be at Miniatura, maybe with new new stuff, never before thought of or seen. If not still with about a thousand original artist porcelain things to put on the table.

Watch the skies!  Or, watch this space!  Or watch this website:  www.miniatura.co.uk

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Amazingly the OH and I will have been married for 50 years on the 27th of August.

For anyone wondering how you do that, it’s like anything, you keep going and don’t give up.

Our neighbour wanted to take us to dinner in a restaurant as a thank you for his house not exploding, which is always good, so that will be the celebration.

There are ups and downs in everything.  We married in 1976 following a drought, as I came out of the church I put my parasol up and the rain came down.

He found the way to save people with Legionnaire’s Disease in a six year research post for very little money.  I wrote for magazines for twenty pounds a page and taught quite a lot of dyslexic people to read, for five pounds an hour.

He went into local government planning how to save people in a disaster, I started making miniature porcelain things, mainly dolls.

I have done a lot of gardening, he has done a crossword a day, mostly.

We were so lucky; our son did not inherit Downes Syndrome, which is in his family. I’ve had cancer twice, each time after caring for a demented family member at my own expense, in every way, but I’m still here.

We each do our own thing but we do stop to watch the TV news preceded by a quiz show together, each evening.  He now does his own cooking as he still eats meat.  I am mostly vegetarian and grateful you don’t have to cook lettuce.

For a few years we have been able to have a bathroom each; I would heartily recommend that if you can.

Fifty years has gone so fast, I feel as if we are us but the fashions and the politicians have changed round us.

He still has most of his hair, I am still on a diet.  He is still drinking and doing the latest sporty hobby, currently archery.  I am still making things, currently water colouring my drawings.

There have been ups and downs, never much money, nothing like enough holidays but shared laughter and, mostly, the same views about a lot of things.

The way to stay married is to be tolerant of each other’s foibles, and, really, just not to stop.

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Sadly the water colouring of the sketches I made in Venice has to be paused until after Miniatura.  I have really enjoyed them and would still be sitting in my shed with the paints were it not that the OH has broken my shed door.

The shed door was put on at the same time as the shed was constructed but was not the original shed door. It is really a tilt and turn window that was bought from an amazing place that sold second hand, factory overstocks, wrong size, different colour and what do you mean it doesn’t fit? windows and doors.  There was a shop but through the shop there was what had once been a long, no longer than you’re thinking of, garden, chock full of every type of plastic framed door and window you can imagine.  Wooden windows and doors can be altered by any old chippy with a chisel, whereas plastic factory made windows and doors, are exactly as they come off the production line, knocked up according to the approximate measurements and notes written resting on a knee in a van, in a rush before the pubs shut.

Mine was a slim brown plastic door, really a window.  If you turned the handle one way the door opened like a door.  If you turned it up the top leaned out.  This was a very fashionable arrangement well over twenty years ago to allow warmth out and rain in.  I had a notice on the inside to remind myself not to turn the handle down while I was inside because, for some reason, that locked the door.

I obeyed my notice and all was well until the OH built his shed, storing all his stuff in my shed, meanwhile.  Every morning he flung the door open to gaze at his tools, until the top hinge gave up and hung open anyway.  This was fine as long as I remembered to support the door at the top as I opened it but inevitably the door began to pivot on the bottom hinge as soon as a hand was laid upon the handle.

The OH volunteered to fix it by securing the pivoting hinge with a screw through the top of the door.  He even checked with a local window firm to make sure this was a good idea, so it was not until a long screw had made no difference, and had had to be drilled out, leaving a handle that would not move the locking pistons, or itself,  at all, that it became apparent that the mechanism tracked right round inside the plastic frame.

With the door now propped shut with two garden chairs and a block of concrete and a tilt and turn expert muttering about the second week of September and £400 starters in the same breath, the shed is off limits for now.

I do enjoy late summer evenings in my shed, or, rather, I used to enjoy…  Big Yellow Taxi, isn’t it?  You don’t always know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

But before it went I painted this view of Venice

I quite like this, so it is now in a frame on the mantel piece.  If I were to do this view again I would do it differently in some respects but I shall leave it as it is.

What it shows is a mail order delivery in Venice.  I did not stop on the bridge long enough to watch the delivery agent in the boat putter up to one of those doorways with the stanking board keeping the canal out of the dining room, but that’s what he was doing.  I didn’t see a bell for him to ring, maybe he does the same as they do here, chucks it over the board before carefully photographing it in the wrong doorway prior to someone in really high waders coming along to nick it.

It is incredible to know a city state so picturesque that even the mail order deliveries are worth painting. I have to go back to the place where every prospect pleases and then some.

Meanwhile I am dressing dolls for Miniatura, as always if there is something you’d like to see please let me know by clicking on: Leave a comment below.

Details, tickets, information, all things bright and Minderful at: www.miniatura.co.uk

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I did not really time travel in Venice, although  by the time I have finished reading the major history of the city, I may well feel as if I have.

One day, off the beaten track, or, as it is frequently pronounced in Venice, lost, we came upon a very old bookshop.  Sitting in the very old bookshop were the kind of booksellers who would really prefer it if you did not buy the books.  On the doorstep was the sop to the tourists which had probably been there since early last century, in the form of a creaky, rusting, revolving metal postcard stand.  Fighting off the spiders I found a postcard at the back that was, in parts, not bent.  I have every confidence that it had been there since the photograph was taken, possibly in the nineteen thirties.  I have searched for the subject, Corte Della Comare and it is still there, cleaned up and now hosting Airbnb and similar touristy amenities.

I however, loved the nineteen thirties photograph and made a drawing inspired by the postcard.  I am sure much of Venice looked similar nearly a hundred years ago.  The vertiginous steps to the top floor and the well are still there.  This courtyard was apparently, associated with midwives, traditionally, though very good luck with getting the extremely pregnant up the steps to the third floor.

Here is the drawing:

The washing on the line looks odd because it has masking fluid on it so that, once the painting is done I can let the white of the paper show through.

The optimism evinced in wearing white clothes, washed in well water, in seriously grubby surroundings, is admirable, though I notice old Venice is every bit as rubbish-free as modern Venice.

Though most of modern Venice is on mains water, presumably piped under the lagoon, the wells are still omnipresent.  In centuries past, families ambitious to be known as benefactors to the city whilst booking a comfortable seat in the afterlife but not quite up to major patron of the arts status, funded wells.  Some of the wells still have crests on them and they all have fancy carving.  If you’re going to endow a well, well you would want it to look well.

Well I enjoyed drawing this, it is very much my version, though after ninety years I hope the original is out of copyright. Old photographs generally have copyright for fifty years after they were taken, though as I have not used any technical means to make my new artistic version drawn by hand, I don’t think this applies.  Venice itself is full of copies, new versions, tarted-up artworks and just about digital everything. I should think there is hardly an inch of Venice that has not been photographed, drawn, mosaiced  and generally, coloured in. I have five of my original sketches of Venice still to watercolour, which activity, I must say, is eminently suitable for a heatwave.

It is the city of art, and well, you know, water to the thirsting artist.

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It’s taken a while because I’m not rushing anything.  I still have half the pictures in the sketchbook to colour.  I will have to stop and do dolls shortly but it’s too hot again to do anything as active, so water colouring either in a shed or with a fan is the ideal occupation.

I’ll show you some of the pictures from the Basilica San Marco, the wonderful church which was built in 829 AD to house the relics of the body of St Mark, stolen from Alexandria.  Scroll down if you are not sure why anyone would steal body parts in antiquity, regular readers (hello) know all about this.  After a fire in 976 the church was rebuilt in 1063 and continually updated; when we were there conservators were dusting assorted saints with soft brushes.

Here are the saints who have already been dusted.

All very keen on you reading the gospels by the look of it.

The Basilica is full of works of art, like many public buildings in Venice.  The way in which Venice developed is the reason for this.  Ruled for most of a millennium by a council of ten of the most worthy Venetians (for which read richest trading families) who elected the Doge, who had little power on his own, the city state began, quite early in its history, to be a showcase of the best collections of the richest collectors, all trying to outdo each other.

We have parallels in our own time of world famous billionaires who enjoy hiring entire towns for their weddings and are currently engaged in rivalry as to who will get to the Moon, or Mars, first to own large chunks of either.

The Venetian empire builders were quite often at odds with their neighbours, which neighbours, at various junctures, included the Vatican.  In such a Catholic country, endowing the biggest church with works of art had the delightful double objective of cocking a snook at the Pope and securing a place in heaven.

The Basilica, the major church right on the town square, next to the Doge’s palace, was never going to be ordinary, or a bit plain.

It is utterly breath taking.  I could post something different about it every week for a year.  From the tiled floors to the ceiling and everywhere in between there are wonderful works of art.  Part of it is a museum, protecting and safely keeping amazing ancient bibles and textiles, in dark, climate controlled cases.

Liturgical artworks are everywhere, not least all over the walls and ceilings.  As the roof is composed of five domes in the shape of a Greek cross, there’s a lot of ceiling.

I loved the naïve mediaeval depictions of various bibles scenes but the one that absolutely drew me to it was the most amazing mosaic of Christ Pantocrator in the semi dome of the apse.

This depiction of Christ as the creator of the Universe was originally designed by Byzantine artists for the mediaeval construction of the Basilica.  I love it so much I have drawn my version twice, adding a circular pattern, where the original sits simply on the golden background of the ceiling.

As you can see the picture was redone by Venetian mosaicists in 1506.  They had learned the techniques from the Byzantine artists who had (maybe) remarked: Oh this is nothing, you should see our horses!

The restorers also added the Christogram IC and XC.  In the early church, Christians who were persecuted for their faith, developed numerous secret signs.  The I and C to the left stand for iota and lunate sigma, the first and last letters of Jesus in Greek and the second X and C stand for chi, and again, lunate sigma, the first and last letters of Christ in Greek.

I loved painting this.  The first is the version which will go in my Venetian scrapbook.  In the mosaic, Christ is raising a hand in blessing and showing you the gospels.  The mediaeval artists who first designed this must have realised that a golden throne edged with precious set stones might not have been very comfortable, especially for Someone who is going to be sitting there for all eternity, so they have given Him a long, very mediaeval, stuffed cushion.

The second version I have made into a card to send to a friend who is currently looking after her demented mother in another country, she expects to be there until Christmas.  A little divine inspiration would not go amiss, perhaps.

The Basilica San Marco is one of the glories of Venice.  I loved every inch of it.

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Sometimes your plans do not go as planned,  not even slightly.

On Tuesday the plan was that the OH and I would have a day out.  We planned to visit a National Trust property not far from here.  In the end (spoiler alert, as they say, spoilsportingly, now) when we got there and looked round the restaurant the OH remarked, perspicaciously, that we were right in the demographic.  If it is not your ambition to support the National Trust by visiting their properties when you retire, what is wrong with you?  It really is OK to go before you get the walking stick, and, really, accessorising with a grandchild is just a choice.

Accordingly, exhibiting the correct (demographically) behaviour, I rose at seven and was showered, dressed and had endeavoured to get the OH into the bathroom, but still hadn’t brushed my hair, which had one (1) curler in it, and had just made my cup of tea, when there was a knock at the door.

On the doorstep was a very worried young man.  Had I got a key, or a phone number for next door (gesturing) because they’d phoned to report a gas leak but weren’t there and next door the other way had a sold sign but no key?

So I let us in and the gas smell was immediately so absolutely overpowering I was surprised not to find the dog (Socks) flat on the floor with his little paws in the air, choking his last.

The young gas engineer (Nathan) opened every window he could and found the gas meter under the stairs.  I let Socks out into the garden.

The smell was dreadful, no, worse than that, it was dreadful.

I went back home and explained to the OH (who was in the shower) what was going on.  Wrote the phone numbers of Mr Next Door and his Son (who lives at home but is saving up for a cardboard box or similar, like everyone in their twenties) down for Nathan and went back next door into the smell of gas which was now just awful.

By this time Nathan was looking even more worried and asked if I would go upstairs with him and  his device for detecting gas, which had been sounding a loud alarm ever since we walked in through the door.

Upstairs the gas smell was really bad. And, also, everywhere.

Nathan tried to ring Mr Next Door with no luck.  Mr Next Door is an orthopaedic  surgeon with a tight schedule and was probably in the middle of someone’s leg, as it were.  I explained to Nathan that this was the case, so he tried ringing Son (saving for a cardboard box) but his phone was turned off.

Socks was back in the house, also looking worried and getting very barky indeed.  I thought maybe, dog’s noses being so superior to our noses, that he was probably trying to tell us that there was a strange smell, which we knew because it was slightly less dreadful but still pretty gut wrenching.

Nathan had been trailing his device along the hall skirting boards, which was making the alarm sound extremely, well, alarmed.

At this stage, Nathan looked even more worried and the alarm had been sounding a high pitched squeal for about three quarters of an hour, which was about the same length of time Socks had been barking.

I promised Nathan I wouldn’t leave him, took Socks back out into the garden and went next door to fetch my cup of tea, with a small cup of yoghurt (Easiyo, I make it, easy, there’s a website) to have my breakfast next door.

Nathan said the level was going down slightly, but that was only because he had opened all the windows.  He closed the windows, we waited about five minutes, then the alarm went off, the levels skyrocketed, Socks, who’d got back in, barked constantly and Nathan phoned for help, advising me that the levels were now dangerously explosive but not poisonous.

Fortunately I was not stirring my tea with a lit match, so I held the fort while Nathan went off to his van, parked round a corner, to try more urgently to get other gas engineers to attend as soon as possible to turn the gas off in the road before we all went bang.  Well, before those of us not parked round the corner, went bang.

So I gave Socks a dog treat, climbed down the step to the garden without making sparks, and decided to water a plant or two to take my mind off the situation.  Turning on the outside tap, I cleverly sprayed water all over my smart going out trousers, which made Socks, who has stopped barking to eat a dog treat, run round the garden, barking for help from the neighbours, which was a bit pointless, because I was there.

To recap:  an hour in I am in an explosive house with one (1) curler unbrushed hair, wet trousers, a small cup of yoghurt, half a cup of tea (cold) and a dog (Socks) outside running round the garden barking for help.

Happily it was only about ten minutes before Nathan returned having been able to alert other gas engineers (hooray) to the gravity of the situation, with every probability that they might turn up that very morning.

Nathan ran his detector along the skirting boards, it went off and so did Socks.  Could there be gas under the floor, I wondered out loud.  Ooh yes, I was told, it gathers and then…

Being the builder’s daughter that I am, I went into the garden for a stroll round the house looking for airbricks.  I found several.  This, for the unbuilderly, means a suspended floor with a void underneath, which in this case, was full of gas.  Below the suspended floor would be concrete.  Nathan was quick to appraise me of the absorbent qualities of concrete.  The way he put it I felt as if houses were traditionally built on a layer of toilet paper, the situation couldn’t be any worse.

At this stage there was a bit of a breakthrough, in that Mr Next Door, having a quick surgical break, from the surgical break of the leg, as it were, had answered his phone.  He was very sorry, he told Nathan, but he couldn’t get away as he was in surgery.  Nathan looked ready to burst into tears, so I popped back to tell the OH that the day out was off, took the curler (just the one) out, left it in the dining room (on the table) and went back to keep Nathan company.

At least an hour of barking and alarms later two white vans bearing extra gas engineers appeared, parked on the grass outside the house and turned the gas, in the road, right off.

They came inside, Socks went nuts, so I put him in his cage, which is his bedroom and fed him more treats, which each worked for a good three seconds, and the engineers went round the house agreeing with each other that it was really bad, one of the worst they had seen recently and, also, dangerous.

Apparently when a gas leak is this dangerous, what gas engineers would like to do is dig up the drive, because, if the house is full of gas, under the floor, the gas in the road is turned off and it’s been a couple of hours now, easily, has it?  Yeh Kev, the lad rung at half nine, yeh, he did, so what we need is to dig up the drive to find the leak there.  Can the neighbour, like, hello love, give the say-so?

At my instigation, Nathan rang again.  I returned to the OH to beg him to text Mr Next Door, which he was very reluctant to do. ‘He’s busy, Jane.’  I thought he’d be a lot busier if his house went bang and said so.

So I made a cup of tea for all the gas engineers to hold them off for as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea.  By this time Nathan (with a cup of tea in his van safely round the corner) reported a message from Mr Next Door who promised to be there within half an hour.

The OH relented and sent a text and then came round to next door for laddish banter with the gas engineers and within three quarters of an hour at only half past twelve, in his lunch hour, Mr Next Door was seen striding across the green.  Fortunately, being a surgeon, he is quite bright; I was able to acquaint him with the relevant information in a few steps, so that, upon arrival at home he instantly gave permission and immediately the gas engineers took a pick axe to the drive as the Son (cardboard box) who had just turned his phone on, arrived wondering what all the fuss was about.  It also became apparent that he had forgotten to feed the dog (Socks) before he left, so matters soon took a much quieter turn and I went and had my lunch.

After a quick bite Mr Next Door went back to work on the second leg, as it were, Son (cardboard box) was in charge and I could leave, only popping back a couple of times to admire the hole.

At the end of work Mr Next Door, who grew up in a tower block in another country, described the enthusiasm with which tower block dwellers were encouraged to report gas smells. I found it unnecessary to say anything about owning a house, reporting smells and then going to work.

Amazingly, throughout the rest of the day and overnight, gas engineers were parked on the grass, going into the house every hour or so to monitor the levels.  By the following day they had drilled holes in the concrete floor in the hall to let the gas dissipate but it did take another twenty four hours before it all went.  On the following day, having determined that elderly gas pipes were the cause of the trouble, another engineer came and borrowed my ladder to put a new pipe into the house, over the flat roof.

Even more amazingly then the engineers put the drive back, exactly as it had been.

And really very amazingly it did not cost next door a penny.  Sorting out gas leaks in this country is a job for private firms funded partly by the government and partly by the cost of your gas boiler service, so that anybody can be rescued whether rich or poor. It makes me feel I will resent the cost of my next boiler service a bit less, now I know that it not just the responsible thing to do, it may save lives too.

In the Sixties, when I was a teenager, there was a gas leak and explosion, in a house  just up the road.  It was a house in a terrace.  The explosion reduced the house to rubble, making a gap in the terrace and burying the young couple who had not lived there for long. My father ran up the road to help dig them out. The young man was killed and the girl became a wheel chair user.

Although this blog has been light hearted, my neighbours were so lucky.  They reported the smell as soon as it became apparent.  The evening previously they had cooked dinner in the gas oven and not on the gas hob as usual, which was very lucky.  Neither of them smoke, so there were no lit cigarettes.  The lady of the house, away, abroad caring for her elderly demented mother, will still have a husband and son to come home to, which is as lucky as it gets.

And, of course, Socks, the dog.

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