https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/flight-europa-15805
and ... https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/europa-and-bull-1-15785
... of the seven deadly sins, the eighth and most horrid is emotional blackmail ... whilst for this blogger, the only sacred thing is life itself
https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/flight-europa-15805
and ... https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/europa-and-bull-1-15785
The furnishing industries in Mid 19th century
England were overcome by a kind of artistic decadence.
Minton, Doulton, and the Worcester manufacturers, and just
about everyone went overboard on their inspired and opulent parodies of the
classical Chinese moon flask.
The Met has a heap of ‘em.
https://www.metmuseum.org/search-results#!/search?q=moon%20flask
https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2008/NYR/2008_NYR_02011_0209_000(040041).jpg
https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2006/NYR/2006_NYR_01740_0224_000(011805).jpg
https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2008/NYR/2008_NYR_02059_0138_000(045157).jpg
https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2008/CSK/2008_CSK_05316_0103_000(050112).jpg
https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=6173163&lid=1&From=searchresults
I was at a loose end. I’d just given up school-teaching for ever, after the minimum of commitment, and had also fallen out yet again with a certain flossy fluffy floozy.
I drove down to Spain in the middle of September with the idea of staying away from both sources of grief until I had calmed down a bit. Before setting out, I bought a couple of T-shirts, one was this sort of colour.
I travelled around and after six weeks or so I visited some very kind English friends in a village about a hundred miles west of Madrid, and I hung around there for a few days.
They are people who never never never wake up early. I asked them how to say “café con leche en
vaso profundo, por favor”, because I needed some vocabulary so I could go
down to the 24-hour bar/motel on the main road next morning and get some good
coffee two or three hours before they might be expected to rub the sleep from
their eyes.
At seven next morning, just as I was slouching across the
huge motel car park, there arrived two coaches that had been travelling all
night, en route from a late summer holiday in Lloret de Mar back to Badajoz.
The passengers were about forty institutionalized male
adults, all shapes and sizes, with a variety of physical and mental
abnormalities, and all of their professional and voluntary carers.
Each and every one of the “not quite normal one’s” wore an
identical polyester shell suit, a bit like this.
Anticipating a long wait for my coffee, I darted into the bar and blurted out my order in badly broken Spanish.
The barman was probably about ten years younger than I am
now, and he spoke to me, as far as I was able to understand, very kindly. He pointed to an empty table near the door.
“Sit over there with the rest and I will bring it to you
!”
So I sat quietly and enjoyed my coffee in unusual
company.
And there was no need to pay.