Are We Ready? No We're Not!



Starting an afternoon snooze ....



Can you believe it’s September?  What happened there?  It’s absolutely not that I’m getting older and time flies when you’re running out of it.  It also flies when you’re not looking, and I have been entirely distracted by I’m not sure what lately.  So oh dear, I haven’t finished all the planning for the trip.  The trip that is happening in a little over two weeks.  But it’s hardly rocket surgery or brain science, so I shall apply myself over the next few days and get it sorted.  Unless I get distracted by that odd shaped cloud, or that pretty butterfly, or some ratbag cats, or whatever.

But can't get quite comfy enough ....

  So okay, not a lot of shop news this week.  That’s why you’re being subjected to yet more moggie photos.  Caleb is increasingly inveigling his way into Klaatu’s good books, and just loves it when Klaatu lets him snuggle up.  Caleb goes into Turbo Purr mode when Klaatu is nice to him, but he can’t help himself from wriggling and wriggling and driving everyone a bit nuts.  And then he wakes up and bites everyone within reach in the neck so it all ends in tears.  But he’s well behaved when he’s unconscious.  Sort of.  This series of photos was taken within a 15 minute period.  You can see the problem.



 

On the shop front, our shop sitters always complain that we have not left enough jewellery for them, which I can do nothing about because I have none spare to leave them.  But they also complain that we have not left enough French pictures for them, and that I can see to so we went into a framing frenzy this week and totally changed the wall.  There are some nice images, some of which I’ve also put on the website this week.  They look much nicer in real life, but I think my photography is gradually getting a bit better for the website.

 

Aw, got me while I was asleep!

I have now sold all the potato baskets, grape buckets and sundry other French wire work, so I’m going to be on the look out for more on this coming buying trip.  Except I have just remembered a couple of quite cool and very heavy wire baskets that I’ve meant to bring into the shop for a few weeks but kept forgetting – part of the dozing off and relaxing too much regime I’ve been indulging in.  So hopefully they will be presented tomorrow.  I’ll really try this time.

It’s been going very well this week, from a sales perspective, and that means we’re looking good for some extra spending money for the trip.  I want to book the ferry from the Cherbourg Peninsula, which I think is the western most part of France, to Portsmouth in the UK.  This is significantly more expensive than traipsing up to Calais to catch the ferry or train to Dover but we don’t want to traipse up to Calais this time, and a good week in the shop helps me justify the more expensive route back to the UK.  And by rejigging the itinerary a little bit I have also been able to fit in a trip from Portsmouth up to London to view the Leonardo da Vinci anatomical drawings exhibition that is currently on at Buckingham Palace. 

 

Settling back down ....

 

I read recently that if these drawings had been published before da Vinci died they would have revolutionized European understanding of anatomy, but he died before they could be published and they were bundled up with his private papers and remained undiscovered for 400 years.  Now people realize what they are, and this exhibition is considered the jewel of the Royal Art Collection so I’m very glad we’ll have the chance to go and see something so wonderful.  What a good Play Day that will be.  It will also be nice to have a look around the Palace, if we can, while we’re there. 




Just can't find the right spot ....

But not quite ....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have wandered unattended through the back corridors of the Palace once before, in a former life, to get to the back door to attend a Royal Garden Party.  If you go in through the Diplomatic Entrance, rather than the Hoi-Polloi Entrance, you get to look at all the Queen’s stuff along the way.  And very nice stuff she has, too.  And that’s just her nowhere-else-to-put-it-so-pop-it-into-the corridor stuff.  The hoi-polloi have to get to the back garden by going through the main gates, skirt the palace itself and enter the garden via a side gate.  But I was having none of that.  I only had lowly consular status so I was not supposed to go in via the Diplomatic Entrance, but all my friends had diplomatic status so I just brazened my way in with the rest of them.  If you look and act like you’re supposed to be somewhere, people often assume that it’s true.  It was a good lesson to remember.



Maybe this side ....

 

Once you’re in the Palace’s back garden for the Party you find there is the Royal Enclosure, where only Ambassadors and High Commissioners can go along with the Queen herself, and also a special Diplomatic Enclosure so diplomats don’t have to queue with the commoners to get their cucumber sandwiches (with the crust already cut off for you) and nice little canapés and cups of tea.  Again, with my consular status I was not entitled to enter the Diplomatic Enclosure, which was guarded by men with spears (Beefeaters).  Nonetheless, I plonked myself on the chairs just outside the Diplomatic Enclosure, while we waited for it to open.  A Beefeater approached me and said Excuse me, Madam, but these chairs are only for the Diplomatic Corps.  Yes, I know I replied, arching my eyebrow at him.  And he apologized and went away.  So the lesson was reinforced.

 

Anyway, having now publicly admitted to behaving a tad inappropriately last time I visited, I swear if you’re reading this, Your Majesty, I will totally behave myself when I next come by your place. 



Nup, try again ....




 

On the moggie front, Calypso turned one year old this week.  Yes, she had to come to work on her birthday, but she received many birthday pats and yet again had a huge number of photos taken.  I learned that someone at the Eumundi Markets now has a snake for which they charge a dollar for a photo and another dollar for a touch.  I could make a fortune with Calypso, if I was more mercantile-minded.  But then I would have to train her to wear dark sunglasses and put her paw over her face to thwart those who hadn’t paid the appropriate fee for her exclusive image.  She already pulls the Ugly Passport Photo Face when she’s sick of having cameras aimed at her.  A lady this week said Make her stand up because Calypso wasn’t cooperating for a photo, but there is no posing the cat I’m afraid.  She does what she does and that’s what you get a photo of – and just be grateful that your photo isn’t of her washing her nether regions.



Perhaps a little closer to Klaatu ....



On her work days Calypso has taken to lolling about in the sunshine on top of one of my jewellery cabinets near the front of the shop.  Doesn’t do wonders for jewellery sales having a big fluffy bum covering everything up, but she enjoys it and only stays until the sun has moved off the window.  So anyway, this week there was a couple looking through the window and they spotted her rolling around on her back, soaking up the sun on her belly and looking like one content pussycat.  Do you want to go and look at the cat? said the woman.  Nah, it’s not real, said the man.  Isn’t it amazing what people think can be done with robotics these days?  If they reckoned that was a toy, it was a dang impressive toy I’d say and worth a look just on that basis alone.

Coz we're good together ....
 

Zzzzzzzzz