Satirical Snapshots Bringing You Whimsy On A Wednesday!

As I ate my breakfast the other day I decided it was time to coddiwomple outta here. 

Breakfast is a favourite meal of mine and a time I like to contemplate things. My breakfast used to be splendiferous before my gallbladder got into a fight with bacon. However, I still enjoy a muffin with a vegan sausage and a Burford Brown poached egg followed by a nice cup of tea in my favourite pig mug. You may wonder why I eat a vegan sausage when England is known for its suspect and rather tasty bangers. Well, I still have PTSD from certain foods that caused me vicious gallbladder attacks. I once ate a sausage cob during that time and spent the next 5 hours thinking an alien was going to burst from my stomach with gnashing teeth. I turned immediately to a Richmond meat-free sausage that tasted remarkably like their normal sausages and I have yet to return to the meat version. I think I’ve rather taken to them. 

After my feed, I do the daily Wordle and 3 crosswords to make sure that I am still able to function in the big outside. 

It turns out I’m not, my friends – because I’m an addict. 

Swim said the mummy fish swim if you can and they swam and they swam right into my mouth

I am totally reliant on these sour jelly fish. Another food faux-pas that has happened since gallstones. These were bought for me by a Fizzy Fish dealer when it was found that I was unable to eat anything with fat in it. That was chocolate, cakes, puddings, and all forms of joy out of the window. Until the fish came swimming my way.

I tried the fish and I fell hard. I don’t know why because they have a sour taste that makes your tabs laugh and has you looking like a bulldog with weeping mouth ulcers on first impact. However, it’s a nice pain; an enjoyable sweet and sour experience that totally snares you. It got to the point that I would get most stroppy if there weren’t any in the house. 

“May I come round and visit, Jules?”

“Only if you bring Fizzy Fish.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Don’t come empty-handed or I’ll feed you to the wolfits. Just bring the damn fish!”

The addiction finally reached intervention stage, particularly when I noticed that my urine was becoming effervescent. 

As a cure I decided to paint them rather than eat them as apparently you can open neurological pathways by painting and drawing and heal yourself from addictions and stresses. I lay the closed packet in front of me and… It didn’t work – I scoffed them all down afterwards like a dependant mess.

Flower Power

Apparently, nature has a way of curing everything and I always feel at my best when outside in the countryside. Perfect. I’ll do that. And take pictures of flowers and pick them. And do flower art!

Vintage Flowers

The art of pressing flowers was very popular in Victorian England and also even more so in Japan where it is called Oshibana.  And we all know how I feel about Japanese things. 

I collected quite a few specimens over a few weeks on my walks with the dogs – just random meadow flowers swaying on the verges. I stuck them in-between books and then later berated myself severely when some of them marked the pages. I’ve since bought a flower press. 

I wanted to make some vintage art in hanging glass frames to adorn the walls of my eclectic house. My daily walk remembered forever. However, I didn’t realise what a pain in the arse this would be.

It’s a funny art, making pictures from pressed flowers, and it requires infinite patience and steadiness – both are qualities in which I am severely lacking. These flowers are extremely delicate once dried and can turn to dust as soon as touched. 

PSH! No, I will not be in your art. I disintegrate.

Sometimes, when you place the flowers on the glass to form a beautiful picture, bits of them drop off just to test your nerve. When you finally get it just so and hold your breath in delight (and because breathing blows petals away and is not conducive to this art) and lower the second piece of glass down onto them, they all move and you have to start all over again. Oh, the rapturous joy! 

When you watch things like Downton Abbey or Pride and Prejudice you don’t see Victorian ladies cursing and stamping their feet and threatening to smash all their picture frames. Not ever. I wonder how pent up they must have been and how they didn’t die of heart attacks or violent rages against humanity. I mean, here they are having to do fiddly- finicky- florals whilst trussed up in a corset and high-necked dress and having to be polite about the matter and to everyone around them. There’s no way I could have done that. I would have rebelled and taken to smoking cigars and drinking whisky with the men and then I would have been shipped off to America on a boat to meet my demise with a gun-wielding psycho. 

Anyway, once done these pretty pictures are a vision to behold. Most fetching indeed. But then I thought, actually, it’s rather cruel. Beautiful flower, your end is nigh. Just when you felt the warm glow of the summer sun on your pretty face along I came to tear you from the ground, slam you between a book until you die of dehydration and then pin you between the glass so I can stare at your faded beauty forever.

Pretty nasty, that.

I have since taken to painting made-up flowers because that doesn’t harm anyone or anything. Anyway, as I was saying right at the beginning of this post, I have decided to coddiwomple because this is the ultimate cure for a whimsically natured, fizzy fish addict. 

At the end of this month, I shall be going to Switzerland. I have wanted to go there for such a long time. The place looks wholesome and beautiful with gorgeous lakes and mountains, yodellers, and pink-cheeked girls that look like Heidi running down hills in duck-egg blue ankle-length pinafores. Well-fed brown cows with big bells around their necks trundle after them and the air is filled with magic and promise. And they have cheese with holes. I can’t wait!

I’m so excited that I have invented a travelling artist’s journal that I made from scratch using beautiful papers and matte lamination.

This is because I couldn’t find a suitable travelling painting kit anywhere. One that I could pick up and take with me.

Mine has a paint brushes section, waterproof pockets for blotting papers etc, removable watercolour paper, waterproof brown paper, and binding clips to hold the paper flat.

There’s a section for pencils and fine pen liners, a notebook, other sewn-in pockets for tapes and sample papers, and a tiny portable palette of watercolour paints that fit in an inside pocket at the back.

All items are removable and can be replaced or changed around so that the book is forever useable.

See, I knew my neurological pathways had been zapped open. You can’t find that kind of genius on Amazon.