Back in 2008,
our talented, artistic friend, Alastair
, painted us a man sharpening his scythe of one side of our house. We
live in an agricultural barn, converted into a dwelling by the previous owner.
It seems that, having got round three sides of the building, he ran out of
money for weatherboarding, and the fourth side is sheeted out in OSB. This wall
is under cover, so is the least obvious, but we were happy for the opportunity
to smarten it up with Alastair’s help.
We don’t have deep enough pockets to be buyers of original
fine art, so it was serendipitous to find an artist long on talent and short on
heating wood: we swapped split and seasoned logs from our woodland ready for the woodstove
and cooking range of Alastair and Caroline. So pleased were all parties with
this elegant swap, that we reconvened the following winter and the farmer got a
wife … and we had a problem!
I’m an enthusiastic, perhaps even evangelistic, user and
assiduous sharpener of an Austrian scythe on a wooden snath (handle) so it was
not unreasonable that people reacted, “that’s Stuart” and thus logical that they
would infer the woman was Gabrielle. The problem arose because the painted
scythesman was a handsome chap but the woman, how can I put this? she had a
face like a slapped arse.
Perhaps she’d got out the wrong side of bed but who really
knows why she looked so grumpy … and old … and she was plucking a chicken with
artistically real drips of blood. We said thank you but Gabrielle was never
sure and the more she heard “that’s Stuart and this must be you” we knew we had
to ply Al with more firewood and replace the lady.
A coat of white undercoat magicked away the miseryguts and a
few deft strokes of acrylic and we had an attractive young woman demurely
harvesting something (not sure what, exactly but no drips of blood). Gabrielle
is happy!
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I’ve been occupied
with smallholding duties and article writing deadlines. As if we didn’t have
enough to do, we were visited recently by one of Gabrielle’s girlfriends from
our old town of Brighton. A CEO in the voluntary sector, Jo had some advice for
our holiday cottage for rent business: never mind the blog, we should
be Tweeting and Facebooking.
