Bunny in the garden!

Great day today!  Just published a book about my step father Dennis C Randall, and flooding the internet with it!!  He would have been 100 this June, and although he passed about nearly 20 years ago if never far from my mind, his paintings, his miniatures, I still have a few thankfully...  And the last week before I came away to work I got the book done in less than three days, nearly 10 thousand words and a selection of photographs and newspaper articles!  I must have written hastily and not checked out much of my writing, there were one or two issues!!  MMMmmm to say the least, but I am hoping I have corrected enough now... because it is already available to buy on Kindle....  and soon in paperback, that I can't wait to see!

This I need to remember to water more!

 I am chuffed as my mom would say! So hoping the fall won't be too hard!!!

Frost and the River Wye

Before I get back to work, I have a small poem? sing song?  It came to memory by the lady I am supporting... I have never heard of it before, I should check it out... bare with....

Hahahahaha.... sorry, but that is me laughing... okay, checked it... this firstly is the version I learnt last night!

Quick! quick!
The cats been sick

Where? where?
Under the chair

Hasten, hasten
fetch a basin

Too late, too late
'tis all in vain

The dirty boot has made a stain...

But searching I found this instead!

Quick! quick!
The Cats been sick

Where? where?
Under the chair

Hasten! hasten!
Fetch the basin

Alack! alack!
It is too late
The carpet's in
an awful state.

No! no!
It's all in vain,
For she has licked it
Up again!

(sounds so much like our Phoebe and Purdy)

TTFN
Marian

Hard to believe my step dad passed away 18 years ago yesterday.... time goes too quickly, when we don't want it to, and far to slow when we want to speed it up! Here are some of photos I took the other week when I was going through dads albums...  His paintings are all over the world, N S E & W.... from Australia and New Zealand to Iceland, the States and Canada and all over Europe....

His paintings didn't end where the scene did, you always know there is more behind, never flat, never lifeless... you know there would be a village, or people or a forest just out of sight, just over the horizon, and now its so sad I cannot take all the paintings I have back again to Spain, to have them one behind the other hidden away; its seems the style of 19th century is just not in the mode just now... people seem to prefer a print from B&Q or Ikea, and I must admit some of their prints are very nice, stunning even.... and easy to just change or throw away when a change is needed or wanted, but the paintings of any real interest are.... just not of interest now to the many only the few...

Everything is boxed up now ready to go, just one TV and three cases to bring down stairs... seems early I know, four weeks yet, but our removals men are from Kent and they are here tomorrow to collect already!!  I got all the rest of everything finished yesterday, my fitbit tells me I did over 20,000 steps thats over eight miles and 60 flights of stairs! Today I feel like it, my shoulders are like rock and very sore... My neck is a little sore too, from my most recent tattoo though!!

Will get a better pic, its not easy!  And yet another Tattoo I have that I actually cannot see for myself without use of a mirror or twisting my head all around owl fashion!

Ithanka - The poem I read out when I scattered my mom, as aforementioned...  And the quote beneath is by Vivek Rajan Vivek - You and Your Dodoisms, a book I helped edit a while ago.

A bit hard to see but at the end of the quote is a semi-colon; its not the end....

TTFN
Marian

Sorting through the many photo albums of my mom and step dads... His paintings and newspaper clippings...

I came across one mom took of a mirror with a piece of his art work above, and looks like she roped dad in for a reflection shot... Although of course it could have been me or Brian, his friend who took many of his photographs for him...

And on seeing I thought

'Hello Dad...

How very much more I could have learned from you; if I had just stopped and listened...

TTFN
Marian

Just come across some writing I did in a book when I was a kid... I wrote in the book my name, and that the book is lucky and will give you money! Wow!! Well, maybe not as much if I hadn't written in it! A publication called The Children's Friend from 1896... possibly worth nothing with my scribbling inside it! Just glad I had enough respect not to fold the corners over or lay it down on its spine I guess!

Some of my step dads artwork from after his stroke.... it took us a while to get him to pick up his pencils again... the stroke took so much of his life, he thought he had none left....

So many interesting books I have now of my moms, and my ancestors, books dating back to the early 1700's, one aunt from way back then was in the church army, I know there is a family bible somewhere which seems to be allusive at the moment, with names and dates of my grand dad family in Crouch Hill London...

TTFN
Marian

Dennis C Randall

Today some shots I took whilst going through some of my mom's things today... These are all to do with my step Dad, above a newspaper clipping of something found... in a pigsty apparently!

Above and below Dad restoring old paintings... wish I had leaned even a little of his trade...

Below when he had just one short stint as a model!

More newspapers clippings beneath...

Below copies of the photos the interviewer took...

Below in the days of Dads archaeology days on a dig...

TTFN
Marian