Tuesday 25 April 2017

Recent updates

I gather that some of you have been experiencing difficulty with my Etsy page. Most of you know that I try to add something new every day, but for some reason these new listings are not showing up and I'm getting people asking me if everything is all right because I haven't updated for ages! Sigh. If you are having this issue, and not everyone is, you can manually alter your page by going to the drop-down menu on the right-hand side of the page, just over the pictures. Just select 'most recent' and all my latest goodies will be yours to see. Sorry, I know this is a bit of a pain, but hopefully Etsy will fix the glitch soon and everything will be back to normal again.

Social media – 450 posts on Instagram!

It seems ages since I posted pictures of my earrings, so I think I will remedy that with this lot:





And a closer look at some of my new, and absolutely adorable, ceramics, retailing at £18:




I have a pair of the ceramic birds myself, and they always raise a smile when I wear them!

Sunday 16 April 2017

Easter!

Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate, and a good weekend to those who don't. But perhaps you all will enjoy this little Easter-related poem.

Diary of a Church Mouse
~ by John Betjeman

Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.

Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.

I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.

The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.

My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.

Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun.
 All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.

For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.

I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.

I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows hanging there.

It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.

Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.

A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.

He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes .
.
.
 it's rather odd.

This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preacher's seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear our organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.

A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.

Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.

They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.