Thursday 13

'Tis time for she, the lady of Coward's Castle, to don her thinking cap and blow the dust away as she settles it onto her golden (not) locks.

As she does so, she will look at new puppy on floor beside her - a tiny teeny tiny cute as a button Mostly Maltese x Shitsu. Mother is half and half, Dad's all Maltese. So I'll think of thirteen tiny things I love best.

1. This little puppy beside me lying fast asleep on her back. She's black with white paws. Has little eyebrows and a black nose peeking from a white rosette around her mouth.

2. Dolls. As a collector of dolls I am afraid that I have the most wonderful collection of shoes. I'm an impossible Imelda. In fact I make her look like an amateur. Did I ever show you some of them.

Well I will indulge you. It's up the top since I'm too dumb to remember how to insert it here. (Let's pretend heh?)

3. The baby stroller, carriage, buggy, whatever you call it. It was made by a friend.

4. The boy is Avery with an A. He's my little alter ego. He thinks you, since he can't talk. He has his own blog and if you can understand him, you are very smart. And that's his best friend Phoebelou.

5. The real Phoebe who when asked for a Santa List, she asked for Chocolate Milk. She's the most beautiful little girl in the world.

6. My crew. My muses. My dolls. One of them is about to be published in an anthology. Here's a picture of her (insert pretendy URL here but she's up the top because of technological idiocy) Sharra Akasha star of THE SECUREMENT OF GREGGIE DONALD. (See links for web site and blog)

7. Chairs. I have some beauties. They are made by a real upholsterer who makes them as miniatures. My dolls are 16-17 inches tall, they are not Barbie they are much bigger. (another pretendy insert here - yes up there, sigh) I made the lamp myself in case you are interested.

8. My darling little handmade babies. If you want to know the scale, the eggs are real.
(Yes you know the drill - lets call it IPPH = Insert Pretend Photo here)

9. Baby prams. Little ones for the scale of my dolls, not easy since they are 16-17 for grown ups while Avery is four and a half inches of energy... (IPPH) The pram is French and perfect scale for my dolls. Very hard to find and dates to 60's and 70's. It is sprung like an old carriage with leather straps.

10. Miniature food for the dolls. Yes. REally cute. For instance look at Avery again in his highchair. (IPPH)


11. Jewellery. Of course I've got a treasure chest of "sparklies" as Avery calls them. (IPPH)

12. Some white Louis chairs also in the scale of my ladies (and gents) (IPPH)

13. Thirteen is always a doozy. It's so hard to come up with this one because you've just about thought you'd come to the end... struggle through then suddenly the mind opens up with aflood - then you end up with another hundred or so favorites you've forgotten about... but here's the last for this list... it's Jozefina. She's a one of a kind handmade doll. Made by my friend Jozef Szekeres. I love her so much. She's entirely handmade. So lovely.

She's at the top. That's how the order of the pictures go. The bottom one is the number 2. Because I started with the puppy and I haven't taken her picture yet.

Did. Take a bow Penny.

Thought I'd share this with the huge amount of people who don't read my blog.

It's by Clive James and it's called

THE BOOK OF MY ENEMY HAS BEEN REMAINDERED

The book of my enemy has been remaindered.
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered.
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized.
And sits in piles in a police warehouse.
My enemy's much prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book -
For behold, here is that book
Among those ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys,
The sinkers, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of movable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.

Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the glare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyard with a forlorn skyscraper
Of the Kung-Fue Cookbook.

His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed in by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretence,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots- One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment -
And (oh this above all) his sensibility
His delicate quivering sensibility is now as one
with Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
'My boobs will give everyone hours of fun.'

Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been metered out
to the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
'To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error -
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight of element of sadness, it will be offset
By he memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered.
And I am glad.

(Clive James)

Guess this is poetry for authors

I'm back from overseas.

Back to Coward's Castle and sad news that the Silkie Terrorist is, sadly gone. He was a dog with a sad history. Free to Good Home. But he had so many bad habits - had had to be put down because other people were not able to live with he horror that this little beast was. If bite the hand that feeds that was Chester. He was insecure and could have written the handbook of dog behavioral problems. I still niggle that if I move my feet suddenly he will dive at them.

Zara also had a fall at the West Wing of the White House. Got more FBI picking me up than Bush ever did. She ended up with seven firemen, an ambulance, her very own fire engine LOL, and seven stitches. She went back but this time they closed the White House. Guess I'm on the Klutz Files.

I had a wonderful time. Las Angeles, San Francisco, up the west coast to Canada and Victoria Island, Seattle, New York, London. From London we decided to make a quickie to Paris, an overnighter on the train. One and a half hours from London, half an hour on the train, you sit in your car, then two and a half hours to Paris. This meant that we had late lunch opposite the Notre Dame, meandered the east bank and lazed through the evening. One of those cute Parisian style hotels, and back to London the next morning. Then:

Washington.

Teeth went through my top lip hence the stitches. I am a spectacular faller. Problem is I am a dreamer. And dreamers don't watch where they are walking.

Sigh