I am at the start of the preparation for the 100th Miniatura. It isn’t until the autumn of 2024 but I need to get a head start.
I have decided that there should be a free porcelain gift for the first 100 shoppers at my stand on Saturday, and the first 100 shoppers on Sunday.
200 free porcelain items will not be dolls but they will be in two parts, various, and glazed and china-painted so that 100 years in the future they will still exist.
At the Millennium, which I also felt was special, I changed my hand-made Christmas cards for a crib in porcelain, over a few years. I stopped about 2004 and still have boxes of unbaked camels in the loft, as you do. So I am well aware of just how much work there is to give large numbers of hand made items away, which is why I am starting now.
I have modelled half of the give-aways and also have the normal orders to do. I had a request for Marie Antoinette in 24th scale, so she is being modelled, along with a couple of her children. I read up on her quite a lot and enjoyed all of the Antonia Fraser biography, called Marie Antoinette. I did know that Mme Tussaud began sculpting wax likenesses in the French revolution, but had no idea that her first head was that of Marie Antoinette which she discovered dumped near the rest of her. Poor Marie Antoinette suffered a fate which has overcome some famous and beautiful women in history. First lauded, then pilloried, many of the most famous never made it to forty. Hounded, sanctified, demonised, lusted after and rarely with any right of reply, Marie Antoinette stood in sisterhood with Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Boudicca and Cleopatra, in my opinion.
The Christmas cards I make this year will be minimal, just Christmas cards. I am getting a little tired of making and posting 70 amazing interactive tours de force and getting 27 purchased bits of cardboard back, (and three good ones, thank you, I kept them,) so a year off is not a bad idea.
Meanwhile news of SMIL, which will not be welcome if you are a carer of someone demented. Sad to say, SMIL has lost the use of her legs and is now in a wheelchair. This can happen with dementia. Any bodily function which is controlled by the brain can stop working at any point in the disease. As I believe movement to be a benefit to the brain, bringing nutrients and oxygen, against the pull of gravity, I am not expecting the course of the disease to be slowed by this development. For the last few days SMIL has been unable to respond in telephone calls at all, not even making noises. I am told she brightens up when I ring and is still listening.
Dementia is very depressing for family members. If you are the primary carer you may struggle to find any time at all for yourself but a quick walk, even if it’s round the supermarket, and as much sleep as you can manage, is a good idea. Of course you know I think hobbies are wonderful for your mental health but I found the hobbies were only possible in terms of time, when the job was finished and the subsequent health issues that caring in me had raised, were addressed.
If you are a carer of a demented relative, fate has put you front and centre of a very large battle happening in our time around the world, with no answers yet as to what begins the process. If you are joining in with the caring and not running away, or leaving the daily struggle to someone else, I salute you, you are a hero in my book. You may get little thanks or none from other relatives who may have absented themselves in order not to know the details, but I know and, if you want to contact me and just have a moan about how very difficult it is, just click on ‘leave a comment’ below and I’ll get back to you.
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