Thursday, December 19, 2013

Fairy, 49 and counting...



Our wedding  in November was too close to Christmas for comfort… In 1964 we had little money, and although the nearby farm shop had real trees for a few shillings, decorations would need to cost pennies.

I bought three packs of crepe paper, one white, one pink, one turquoise, and I raided the kitchen for a roll of Bacofoil. My bits and bobs box produced a stretchy pink hair band, some scraps of fabric, bias binding and sequins…

By cutting ¼” slices off the still folded crepe paper, I soon had some dainty garlands to loop between the branches, while tiny slivers of Bacofoil twined round a knitting needle made wonderful dangling ‘icicles.’

The hair band became a fairy’s body. Fuse wire framed  wings put the finishing touch to her ‘princess’ dress, whose flounced skirts were edged with two shades of pink binding and scattered with silver sequins..Her black wool hair had a coronet to crown it, and she clasped a tinsel-topped wand in one hand…

Through the years, she had several changes of clothes and wings, and her wand disappeared - as her magic dwindled, I expect! But in nineteen ninety two she got ‘downsized’ to suit the much smaller artificial tree in my new home. Now here she is, in that same incarnation; still ready, willing and able to take her rightful place this Christmas.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Feast or Famine

Ocean winds blow
across the rooftops...

Gulls screech
and dive
for the breakfast scraps,
scattered
by an old woman.

A land-locked lawn
is a poor substitute
for the green waves' freedom
and Neptune's larder.

Only the small offering of a passing thought for Toad's Open Link Monday today...