Consequences Of Having Daughters

Finding yourself the owner of pale green socks with cartoon mice all over them or finding yourself the owner of glittery golden socks .

Being given a kit to make a pair of Latvian mittens in a pattern optimistically called The Thousand Year Old Mitten ... the donor saying that she won't be surprised to inherit the semi-finished kit . Or a raspberry flavoured Matrushka doll lip salve .
Sharing supper with someone who's eaten your version of pizza Margherita since childhood and doesn't expect it to taste like the real thing .
Sharing supper with someone who knows exactly what risotto should taste like and can cook it for you .
Long rambling 'phone calls that stop before Silent Witness .
Talking to someone who knows who you're talking about when you mention cigar bands or shortbread, burnt toast or winning Your Dream Cottage contests .
Going on extraordinary excursions that wouldn't have occurred to you but turn out to be just what you wanted to do .

I know sons are lovely , too , and my grandsons are a constant delight but I would have hated not to have had daughters .

Without The Monkey

When I opened the curtains yesterday morning  , it was  -6 Centigrade , the sky was clear and everything was rimed with frost .The big weeping willow on the other side of the river was a spectacular , glistening filigree but Picasa's gone on strike again  and won't show you my photo .

We'll just have to do with this poster instead and ignore the monkey , the large sticks and the ruin . 

Went to this exhibition of silhouettes a couple of weeks ago and loved it . They'd gathered a surprising number of pieces , many from private collections .
Apparently cutting silhouettes was extremely popular from the C17 onwards among Frisian gentlemen with time on their hands ; and elaborate ones like these were just the thing to present to the young lady you hoped to make your wife .
Some were made to commemorate a victory at sea or the death of a loved one , though the one shown on the poster isn't much bigger than a postcard and seems just to celebrate a day out with the lads . Or a stunning hoar frost like yesterday's .

Magic

Today at lunchtime , as she puttered back down the river past the flat , she was just an old boat with layer upon layer of fading red paint . As lovely to see as all the old boats are , but no showstopper ...
But on Sunday at sunset , for a moment  

Rosy had been transformed .

Testing, Testing ....

Still wrestling with Blogger , Picasa and my Christmas-impaired concentration levels .
 So, there may or may not be a photo or two with this and there's no real way of knowing what it'll be of .

Sadly it won't be a shot of the young man wrestling to get a neighbour's new sofa upstairs on his own , yesterday . A very comfortable , fulsomely upholstered three-seater sofa . In the lift whose doors as a result couldn't quite close . He , neighbour and I stood looking at it , arm rest only really very slightly protruding .
 If we pulled it out and started again ? Perhaps  it would fit at an angle  ? Diagonally ? On its side ? Perhaps it could be tipped up a bit and she and I could get under it and prop it up ? Whereupon he stopped listening to us ...
Anyway , by the time I'd got back from the mailbox , he was manhandling it into her third floor front door and and she'd made coffee . Lovely biscuits .
Neighbour and I decided that we didn't really want to go into the removals business anyway . And the young man , who turned out to be her nephew , seemed to agree .

Meanwhile Picasa has decided to post this photo of a Groninger Museum's car advertising their latest exhibition ,

 

 

I'm particularly taken by where the petrol cap is ....