December - 2017

Auriel Roe

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Happy New Monkey

Dec 31, 2017
1 min

Happy New Monkey

It's to be a very happy new year, with no more getting up for school - 25 years as a teacher and time to hang up my mortar board. Finally time to leave school! All this is helped along by the knowledge that I am capable of writing a novel... a totally unanticipated string to my bow. I have a slew of paintings to do, at least 2 books in the pipeline and a couple of properties needing a revamp so this should keep me out of mischief. So, as I sit here in my last days in Thai

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gazing into the wide blue yonder

getting married, Thai tribe style

for the love of coconuts

Dec 27, 2017
1 min

for the love of coconuts

I have to say that since I arrived in Thailand a couple of weeks ago, I am obsessed by coconuts. I simply must have my 3 a day. I've never had it before - first they knock the top off with a dramatic cleaver and you poke a straw into it and drink it down - I try to savour it but it's so good I usually end up bolting it without realising. After the drinking part, you scrape out the delightfully soggy flesh with a spoon. It was hard for me to imagine coconut in any other for

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the long-neck tribe

Dec 25, 2017
1 min

the long-neck tribe

Visiting an authentic tribe in Thailand, I wasn't expecting market stalls and photo ops. Here I am trying on a fake set of neck rings and I didn't need the cornstarch whitening, being fashionably pale (in Thailand). The Karen people have fled from Burma where they were persecuted, to be hosted by Thailand at a price - they are restricted to living within these tourist attraction villages. The Thai government charges you an entry fee and what the Karens make from their hand

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What is it?

Long-whiskered cat fish

nature goddesses from Crete

Dec 22, 2017
1 min

nature goddesses from Crete

I was so pleased to finally see these in Crete a year ago. They are nature goddesses - so it is thought - with the one holding up the two snakes demonstrating power over nature. (This one also has a small dog on her head, which no one seems willing to explain, but the experts are in agreement that it is indeed a small dog.) Fragments from thousands of these figures were found buried in baskets - they had been destroyed for some reason, but probably something to do with a f

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Jade Altar

Dec 21, 2017
1 min

Jade Altar

Discovered in a Turkish archaeological site, about a metre high and extremely and hypnotically silky to the touch. It is thought to have served as an altar, hence its smoothness with so many zealots laying their hands upon it. In an outlying stretch of the site, we found another, same size and just about as silky despite being grassed over and in an area off the beaten path where no other visitors trekked - memories of jade cherishing, over two thousand years ago, still f

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Musing upon apple sauce

Dec 19, 2017
1 min

Musing upon apple sauce

When you see a tree full of charming apples etched with rosiness, you cannot help yourself and immediately pluck one and bite into it. Such did I do, but only to wince at a horror of starchiness that set my molars on edge. I lamented the waste of the unwanted apples hanging by a thread until they fell, only to rot, on the muddy ground. Feeling a little bold and experimental, I filled a zinc bucket and took the apples inside with a plan to metamorphose them into apple sauce

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THE GLORY OF MAKING STONE LOOK LIKE FINE GOSSAMER

St Pancras relief sculpture by Paul Day

Dec 17, 2017
1 min

St Pancras relief sculpture by Paul Day

I always have a look at this wonderful sculpture when I'm at St Pancras in London, based on the busy events at this train station. Last week I finally thought to photograph it. Note how the dog's head is shiny with the brass showing with people patting it, which is how it always is with animal statues. We love animals so much we automatically find ourselves smoothing the head even of an effigy.

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Moths resting upon brown packaging paper

Rufus

Dec 3, 2017
1 min

Rufus

This fine little dog, who is rather like something that's escaped from a Lowry painting or a child's drawing of a dog, came into our life 13 years ago. We called her Rufus after the book about the bat as she is similar in her glossy ear. She now approaches her 16th birthday and, apart from sleeping more, has the same terrier energy. A lover of all things feathered, when she sees a bird in flight, she stands on her hind legs and becomes a periscope, rotating her stance as s

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I AM A SOAPOMANIAC

Dec 1, 2017
1 min

I AM A SOAPOMANIAC

It is an addiction and, now that I am admitting it, I could well be on the road to recovery. I am a soapomanic. There, I've said it. I don't feel proud of myself particularly as to use this much soap would take this lifetime and the next, and if I come back as a skunk that would be a horrid piece of divine providence. Every day of my holiday, I hide the soap I'm using in the hotel room so the chambermaid, in all her ignorance, leaves me a new one, beautiful in its pastel

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