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Eccentric villagers... the colonel

                                                                           The wonderful Terry Thomas

On Sundays, many people drop into the local village pub for a quick drink before lunch. One regular visitor is an elderly gentleman who, after seating himself on a stool at the bar is greeted warmly by the barman with the greeting, ‘Morning Colonel, pint of the usual?’ which after being placed in front of him is downed and the froth delicately wiped away with a finger from his 1950’s Terry Thomas style moustache. The difference between him and the other gentlemen in the bar is the fact that he’s sitting there dressed like Margaret Thatcher complete with a two piece tweed suit, handbag and wig.

The last days of February 2012...mood board

mood board

                      

                                                                           

hydrangea - something to see - flickr  /  silk - dyeforyarn - etsy  / blue girl - imaginestudio etsy  /  room - edenclareartfulfairytales.tumbir.com /  fruit painting - edenclareartfulfairytales.tumbir.com  /  leaf - moonlightphotography - etsy  /  painting - Jacob van Loon  /  hydrangea moonlightphotography etsy  /  playing card - Kei Takemora  /  leaf - artpropelled.tumbir.com  /  Edinburgh - sunsurfer.tumbir.com  /   silk - dyeforyarn - etsy  /  painting - Jacob van Loon  /  boy - thebookofsecrets.tumbir.com  / peeling paint ravenmaddartwork.deviantart.com  /  painting - Lela Kay    faces painting - Vladimir Dunjic   

Knitted cushion...

This is one of my hexagon design cushions which sadly sold straight away, I say sadly, only because they take such a long time to knit.

The village...

Matte Stephens

Now if you don’t know the village, you can be forgiven for thinking it’s a hot bed of crime, especially if you've read all the tales that go on such as 'the crims' happily nothing could be further from the truth, It just happens over time to have housed a few of the more successful villains in their retirement. Most of its residents are made up of lawyers, bankers, publishers, teachers and the media, but they all come a close second to medical consultants and for some bizarre reason mostly gynaecologists, to such a degree that you can throw a stone from your house and probably be guaranteed to hit one of them.
                                                                                                                

The fact that it has no underground station anywhere near and only allows one single decker bus under duress to pass through it, may have something to do with it’s lack of notoriety and its ability to keep its head below the parapet, and yet it’s far from cut off.

Film and television love the village, they’re usually filming something. An advert for washing powder in a kitchen, crime drama in a drawing room, murder in the park and on one occasion a lesbian orgy in a friends bedroom. The roads line with pantechnicons full of lights and food buses and the resident’s now quite blasé about it all take little notice. An evenings television suddenly becomes more interesting as you realise you’re watching the police interviewing someone in a friend’s house, or your son tells you a raunchy music video has just been shot in one of the teacher's common rooms of his 17c school. In fact quite a few films have used areas of the school, such as the graduation scene in 'Legally Blond'. The areas varied architecture, green spaces, easy parking and close proximity to its own media working environment attract them. But it wasn't until recently when I was looking at houses on one of the location web sites for film and magazine shoots that I realised just how many of the village houses were represented.

Simplicity...

photographs by Kim Kyung Soo Vogue Korea 

Work in progress...

the start of another hand knitted cushion, each line is knitted with a strand of different coloured wool, which is great for using up all those odd bits! 

         

just a few of the beautiful colours used

the front of a cushion waiting for all the ends to be sewn in

for the backing, a wonderful vintage French hemp linen over 80 years old, and inside a plump duck feather pad.

...and here's one I made earlier as they used to say in Blue Peter

Eccentric villagers... the bookshop owner

Like something out of an Enid Blyton story, the village has all the shops and businesses that villages should have, including a post office and pub.The village book shop is owned by a man who would give Basil Fawlty a run for his money, who does for bookshops what fawlty towers did for hotels. 

You only enter if a look through the window shows it’s manned by his business partner, a lovely lady whose sunny disposition almost makes you buy something in the relief of not having to be confronted by 'Basil', who seems to treat every customer as an intrusion and prospective shoplifter. If you take a book from its shelf to read the blurb on the back, he suddenly materializes at your side breathing heavily pretending to tidy the shelves. You put the book back only for him to remove it with an audible tut and then replace it again himself. If you have the temerity to actually buy a book, the transaction is silent, your purchase shoved into a paper bag and handed over the counter with such a look of disdain it’s as if you’d bought the A to Z of bestiality. In the end, the stress of checking to see if he’s lurking in a corner before entering is too much, and many people have absconded to other book shops, especially the bookseller on the hill, a much more congenial bookshop whose interior you can happily rummage around in for half an hour or more before the friendly man behind the counter even realises you’re there.


  

Liu Bao Jun...