Hot and Hotter

Boy has it been hot here.  Really oppressive.  And yet do you see people (mostly men) in public parks during their lunch hour taking off all their clothes except for their socks and jocks?  No you do not.  Do you see men running about with hankies on their heads with little knots in the corners?  No you do not.  Yay for semi-nakedness and bad head-gear being restricted to the beach in Australia!  In England almost the entire population would be unclothed in the streets and lobster in colour by now.

Mind you, we did encounter a man with an extraordinarily big belly and wobbly buttocks wearing an extraordinarily small yellow g-string swimsuit on the beach at Noosa.  Boy did he cause a reaction.  You could actually see a Mexican wave of people’s heads turning as he moved through the crowd walking down to the water.  We were absolutely certain there were cameras hidden somewhere for some sort of hidden camera show, but no.  He was just a dude entirely comfortable in his own skin.  It was a pity he felt the need to share so much of it with the rest of us, though.  That’s an image in my brain forever now, thanks fella.  Mostly, though, walking along the beach in the mornings is good for your soul and in keeping with my New Year’s Resolutions.

Meanwhile, things are going great guns in the shop.  We have spent the last few days getting the first of the big wooden platters and bowls ready for display – though that’s been a leisurely exercise because it’s been done in-between lounging around because it’s been too hot to do much except lounge around.  Thursdays are always Restyle the Window Day, though, and today we’ve gone with a mostly Asian theme.  On the last buying trip I purchased three really big wooden communal rice bowls, and they are nice enough and unusual enough to warrant going straight to the front window.  The lady I bought them from sourced them from northern Thailand, and they date from the mid 1800s so they’re pretty old and they look all glowing and aged and used.  But I really like nice old wooden things, so I bought three that are quite different from each other (because each family made their own, according to their taste and needs) and we’ll see how they go. 

I’ve also got a big French Art Deco chrome lamp shaped like a sailing yacht which has just come back from the electrician after being rewired for Australia, so the window has gone all Asian and ocean-oriented.  Along with the big wooden rice bowls and Deco sailing yacht lamp I’ve also featured some Japanese glass fishing floats, a really lovely brass-topped folding coffee table with a Chinese influence and some Qing Dynasty ginger jars.  I think that Asian and French pieces can complement each other well, so I’ve popped a few pieces of nice French glass and ceramics with a chinoiserie design in the window as well.  Looks completely different from last week.

I was showing a friend some photos from one of our buying trips, and there was a picture of the big castle at Vitre.  There isn’t any buying of note for us in that town, but it’s often a convenient location to stop on a drive south, and we’ve had one of the best stek frites ever in one of its bistros.  The castle is also worth looking through and it looks very much like the one in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so of course I was obliged to stand on its battlements and shriek I Fart in your General Direction, and Your father likes Elderberries and Your Mother Wears Army Boots to passers-by at the bottom of the walls.  And do you know, not one person looked up.  No-one even batted an eyelid.  As I said to Doug, I don’t think I was the first person to do that on these castle walls.

Meanwhile, Mischka was in the chair today, and what a lovely, schmoozy pussycat she is.  Not for the first time she helped a shy little girl overcome her fear of cats by laying very still and being all snugly cuddly when the little girl was finally coaxed by her mother to have a very quick stroke.  And after a few minutes the little girl was telling her mother to move her hand out of the way so she could have more strokes.  My own furry little therapist earned her cat food today.