A few months ago when I was in New Zealand the subject came up somewhere in Blogland of pictures which we had in our houses. I have brought some of my pictures back from New Zealand this time and the question has arisen as to where they will be shown. I have many more pictures than I have space to show them so I swap some pictures around. This has the advantage that I become more aware of the pictures and I actually get to see more than I would see if they were always static. Of course some pictures just live in 'their' place and never move. This is happening to more pictures as time and the collection progresses.
Anyway I thought I would accede to the request and show you some of my pictures over the next few months.
The first one (for no particular reason) is one which John and Sue bought me for my 60th Birthday. The story is that John and Sue and I had been having lunch in Angoulême when I was staying with them in France and we went to a gallery and I happened to see this picture and remarked that I liked it because it portrayed the Le Mans race of 1929 and a Bentley 4½ litre 'Big Six' similar to the one which my Uncle Eric had possessed. No 10 shown in the picture won the 1929 race.
The picture is now in my living room over the roll top desk which was also Uncle Eric's and which was and is one of the few 'things' I possess which is of exceptional importance to me. It lived inside the front door of the cottage in Clophill in Bedfordshire that my Uncle lived in when I was knee high to a grasshopper. I always wanted to roll my marbles along the roll-top but Mum forbid me to do so.
My goodness, it is no wonder you treasure this desk. The Le Mans picture is perfectly placed above it; neither to be moved again. I really love it.
ReplyDeleteThey do go well together, Jill, as you say and they've been there for the last 10 years so I expect, DV, they will be there for the next 10.
DeleteGreat story - great picture - great desk. xoxox DD
ReplyDeleteThanks DeeDee.
DeleteThose colourful pens all lined up on the desk immediately caught my eye. You really are a man after my own heart, Graham!
ReplyDeleteNice story behind the picture and desk.
My walls are largely bare; there is an oil painting in my bedroom which a musician/painter friend of mine made. Three of the four walls of my living room have one picture each, of similar style and colours matching the general colour theme of that room. They were chosen by my late husband, and I like them as much for that reason as for their own sake. In my Third Room, there is a black-and-white photo collage behind glass with pictures Steve took during on of our first holidays together, at places like Robin Hood's Bay, Whitby, Pickering and Helmsley. Another treasured memory.
What I do change according to season and occasion are the pictures and cards underneath the glass top of the desk in the Third Room. In the weeks before Christmas, my birthday and Easter, I usually display my favourite seasonal cards there. The rest of the year, there are three pictures from Yorkshire, two are pencil drawings and one is a watercolour from Ripon which my mother-in-law gave me.
Meike I used the picture with the pens from one I took for a post on pens a few years ago. There are so many ways in which I admire the ascetic approach you have to your living space and I would love to think that I could live like that but I would find it very hard indeed. I love being surrounded by my CDs (though they are all copied onto my hard drives for use on the iPod etc), books (although most could be read on the Kindle or various other ireaders), pottery and pictures which are irreplaceable and such an important part of my home. Having said that if it was all destroyed I am very good at putting 'things' behind me (although I do miss the little BMW Dinkey Toy I gave away at the Harvest Festival when I was about 8).
DeleteI wish I could not find one of these. I have to do a few laps of Croft in the blower version. I'd rather do it in a double decker bus. I did have a little go last year. It wasn't funny and I wasn't in charge. Bloody thing went where it thought fit. Much like my dog walks but a bit faster and bumpier.
ReplyDeleteAdrian the blower version had a lot more grunt but was nowhere near as reliable. Did one ever finish a Le Mans? I think not. I'd love to drive an old Bentley (I'd settle for sitting in the passenger seat actually) but a bus at Crofts? I don't think so.
DeleteReally great image. I love this style of painting, and it really goes well above your desk!
ReplyDeleteMersad
Mersad Donko Photography
Thanks Mersad. It's quite different from my other pictures.
DeleteA perfect corner. An invitation to loiter and peruse. Books, pens to hand. Beauty and style. I wish my office at work looked like that! Somehow home is all focused on laptop and work anywhere and I have no defined corner like this.... Actually, that's not true. I realise I have created a dressing table for the application of facial paint and plaster, carefully arranged with paintings, lights and mirrors.... But I'm not photographing it :)
ReplyDeleteFiona because I have not been here in the winter for a long time I've not used the desk nearly as much as I would like to. I do occasionally take my laptop through to the living room but these days I sit with it at the breakfast bar in the kitchen looking out over the Bay. Having a little sanctuary, even if it's for the reasons you mention - in fact perhaps more importantly for that reason, is a potentially important part of our feeling of security don't you think?
DeleteI must admit that I wanted to zoom in on the second picture to check out your bookcase... "The Confessions of a Window Cleaner", "How to Build a Polytunnel", "The Quran", "The Bone People" - these are books I imagine will be shelved there.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough after I did a post which showed part of a bookcase someone asked to see them all. At that time I showed some of them in two posts http://galenote.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/books-1.html and here. Looking at the bookcases today quite a lot has changed. Oddly enough I was given a present a few days ago of a book entitled "The Polytunnel Book" and I do have two copies of the Koran (sic). I have 'The Lovely Bones' and 'A Catechism of Christian Doctrine' which at page 69 does explain all about Confession. Will they do?
DeleteYes. But have you ever read "The Bone People"? It's a wonderful book for NZophiles.
DeleteTo be honest YP it's never appealed to me. It looks a difficult read and an emotional challenge. I've read my share of the former and I try and avoid the latter in my reading these days.
DeleteA roll top desk was one of my Dad's favorite possessions.
ReplyDeleteRed I can understand that.
DeleteI enjoyed this glimpse into your home, GB. I wish more bloggers would do the same. Lots of books...excellent!
ReplyDeleteFrances I think that over the years I've been blogging most of my home has appeared at one time or another but as I show my pictures it will doubtless appear again.
DeleteMy problem is the clutter that I'd have to clear to show bits of my home. Compared to ours GB's is spotless, the advantage of a person living on their own.
ReplyDeleteLiving on one's own means that one can't blame anyone else for the mess and clutter but it also emphasises the fact that all this 'stuff' is the creation of one person. Arghhhh.
DeleteIt is nice to be surrounded by things that connect to memories of people and places that meant something and have become part of one's own history in a good way. Some things for me too have come to be 'connected' so that for example a certain picture 'should' hang over a certain piece of furniture, or certain ornaments be kept together on the same shelf etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree Monica. One problem is that as one gets older one has more memories and more 'stuff'.
DeleteI have to agree about that as well!!
DeleteI have the tendency to swap thing around in my home too...keeps it fresh...since there is just no way to display everything at once....I change things up every few months or so.
ReplyDeleteLove the picture...a glimpse into the good old days.
That's the problem, Virginia, with having too much stuff for our abodes. The good old days are, I fear, sometimes overrated where cars are concerned. It may cost a helluva lot more to repair a car now but they are rather more reliable.
DeleteIt looks remarkably similar to the roll top desk that was in my mother's family home. We were unable to take this with us when the house was sold and I still miss it.
ReplyDeleteI agree it's a good idea to rotate pictures. I try to do it, but my pictures are hung so closely together that it then becomes a complicated jigsaw of finding a replacement picture which both looks OK and also fits in to the space!
Roll top desks seem to me to have a comforting similarity Jenny. I used to have several walls with lots of pictures on but I decided a few years ago that in my relatively small-roomed house they overcrowded it a bit (or a lot actually) especially as I have at least one wall in the living room entirely covered in books.
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