Fine Art

Blob came to the following conclusion today:

A picture of a piece of fine art can in no way substitute for the real thing. 

Blob has never been interested in Paintings - she likes performance art, not static imagery, however, recently she has been fortunate enough to see some amazing paintings and they quite took her breath away.  

The wow factor of art cannot ever be replicated in a photograph. 

You need to see the brush strokes. 
You need to stand up close and then stand far away. 
You need to wander around the room in which the painting hangs and see it from every perspective. 
You also need to breathe in its aura and absorb its beauty. 
You cannot get this with a photograph. 
You can get part way with a very good print, but nothing can prepare you for the initial perplexing tilt of the head and lump in the throat and even eye brimming reaction that a few minutes in the company of an original and beautiful painting can impart.

Fine art rocks!

Bob

Bank Holiday Lethargy

It is Bank Holiday Monday and we are doing precious little today.

I am staring mournfully at the wood burner. With luck it will spontaneously burst into life? Or perhaps not.

It is raining outside and I dont want to pay a visit to the vegetable bed because I'll get wet and that will spoil the day somewhat.

I overheard Blob chatting to her sister, and apparently she is going to 'cat proof the veggie bed'. I am unsure exactly what this entails, but suspect she is going to try and keep me out of it. I look forward to that! I do love a challenge! (as long as its not raining.)

Earlier this weekend, Blob decided that her strategy of buying a very cheap bike that would not get stolen was false economy. She hated it so much she wouldn't ride it. So she went to Halfords and in the Easter Sale and bought herself a brand new bike. And another lock. She now has a D lock, a cable lock and a length of chain and a padlock. It is probably going to take her 10 mins at the beginning and end of each trip to lock it and unlock it, but it will be well worth it to have a bike that she will actually ride.

Any how, the sun has broken through the rain and Blob is getting ready to cat proof things. I suspect I need to be involved!

Bob

Of being a big disappointment and being disappointed.

Today Blob got a letter from her mother and as usual was left feeling somewhat tarnished by the interaction.

In the first line, her 'Hi Powered' job was mentioned. Blob doesn't have a high powered job. She is no Richard Branson or Bill Gates. She has a run of the mill kind of mediocre job. She is lucky because she has a job that she loves, but it is by no means a High Powered job. Blobs mother however cannot handle the fact that Blob is not a captain of industry but in order to make Blobs mediocrity more bearable, she has determined that the job must be 'Hi Powered' and no doubt this is what she tells other people.

This upsets Blob.

Blob is Happy, surely that is enough?

Evidently not.

And as for the being disappointed - also in the letter, her mother mentioned that she has another dog. This is yet another dog that has been palmed off on her from her so called 'friend'. This friend has palmed other dogs off on her previously which have seemingly been prioritised above her family, and incurred expenses that she could probably have done without. This is the same friend that Blobs mother chose to be with last year instead of spending time with her daughters and grand daughter.

How much disappointment can there be in one blog?

Bob

Of Chamomile, Landscaping and Clever Grass.

Following the clearing out the shed debacle Blob has turned her hand to the Chamomile Lawn.

She has said many times that the Chamomile Lawn was a labour of love and needed lots of looking after, but this spring, she sadly looked at the weeds, grass, dandylions etc that had made the lawn their home and saw precious little chamomile peeking through so decided that things needed to change.

Thus she started digging up the said lawn and made three piles on the patio of weeds for the dump, top soil for the vegetable patch and chamomile for planting later.

During the process she discovered that not only does grass look like grass, but there is also a variety that notices it is trying to grow unnoticed in a chamomile lawn and tries to resemble chamomile before it gets long and hard to remove. This is clever grass, probably something to do with evolution, and it also meant that should anyone have looked over the fence they would have seen her sniffing the weeds before they were relegated to the weeds for the dump pile.

She dug, and sifted and dug and sifted for hours and then despite the fact that she was covered in mud raced off to the garden centre.

Quite often you hear children whinging about school, particularly about Maths, saying that what they are learning is pointless because they will never need it in real life.

I would like to point out that Blob never thought in a million years that she would need to work out what the circumference of a circle was, but if you take a look at the following picture and understand that there were only two blocks left over you will see how useful Pi and the associated formulae were.

Brilliant Blob!

Bob

Whoops!

Today Blob cleaned out the shed. I helped.

Blob threw out old paint tins - I chased them.

Blob threw out an old tarpaulin - I bounced about in it.

Blob swept out the dust and cobwebs - I rolled around on it.

All in all we were having a good time. Until ...

Blob disturbed a mouse nest in the tray of her electric tile cutter. All the mice fled in various directions, but the one i wanted was the one that jumped and landed on Blobs shoulder.

Now I am a cat and therefore agile and athletic, so I leapt to catch the mouse on Blobs shoulder. I am very familiar with Blobs shoulders, because when I was a little kitten I used to spend a lot of time on them.

Unfortunately, I was not quite as agile as I thought and missed her shoulder by about a foot, but that was ok, because Blob was wearing a sleeveless cotton vest and I climbed up it.

I didn't catch the mouse because it jumped over my head and fled out of reach. I could have chased it but Blob started playing another game which involved her writhing about and me trying to hold on.

It was great fun!

I hope we can play in the shed again soon!

Bob

This is a smiley face. This is included in today's blog because it is just like the smiley face that Blob has been sporting recently. This is because she has been working at Fire Stations for the last two weeks.

So far this has included being chauffered to the Tube Station in the 'Pump' which is the name for a Fire Engine with the water pumping equipment in it.

She has left a firestation after training and has then been hollered at and wolf whistled by the same firemen passing her as they get called out on a 'Shout' (an emergency call - could be a fire, could be someone burning the toast in an old peoples home or could be a student thinking that it is funny to set off the fire alarm in college). This was good because other women on the street all looked at Blob and were jealous because every one loves firemen.

She has also slid down the firemans pole which caused much hilarity for the firemen because Blob made quite a song and dance about it before leaping into the abyss. There was one fireman at the top of the pole with her. There were two down at the bottom to catch her incase she let go and there were two peering through the pole doors and laughing and waving. There was also one who just rolled his eyes and went off to the kitchen to start chopping veg for supper.

Blob would like to state that she didnt need catching at the bottom.

Only two days left of fire stations - she is going to miss it terribly and although she would not wish bad things on anyone, she would love for someone else to go off sick so she could have a few more days on this project. Not bad and very ill sick, but perhaps a touch of the sniffles in a hypochondriac type of sick.

I personally have never met a fireman and suspect it is better if I don't.

Bob.

De-Flea'd

De-jected
De-pressed
In De-nial
De-termined to be a spoilt bratish pussy and a right royal pain in the de-rriere until i've forgotten about the inhumanity of de-fleaing.