I vant to be alone!!!( please?)

After a month of entertaining itinerant travellers at the table and being chief cook, bottle washer, laundry maid, property finder and agony aunt for more visitors than I care to count, I have an unexpected window in my calendar.

Today's arrival, someone from an old eastern block country which has changed its name so many times we have now lost track of what it is currently called, was due here at 11.am, but is now not materializing until after 2.30 pm . Wonderful news! As although we shall miss their company at lunch it gives me a much appreciated, if brief breathing space, in this months horribly hectic calendar!!

Of course it might have been even better if they had let us know last night, so that I didn't stay up until some ungodly hour preparing a beef stew marinated over night Provencal style in red wine with a twist of orange zest to give it that little zing and so that I did not , bleary eyed and yawning, have to stumble out of bed at some unearthly hour in order to place aforementioned gastronomic fayre in a slow oven at the crack of dawn in order to be free to entertain my guests when they arrived after their journey. But one can not, after all, have everything one's own way, which is why, perhaps instead of being artistically interspersed amongst the text these tiles images and stolidly sitting at the top and refusing to be moved and why the spell check won't work this morning! Ah me!!

Lunch then will be thankfully en famille without the need to speak anything but French and English which will be a blessed relief I can tell you as it has been a little like the United Nations here recently !

One obvious draw back in all this entertaining is that although I love having friends to stay , I have have had little time to do anything other than domestic duties and fulfilling orders for tiles. Frustrating to say the least!

That is however my problem and not my guests and thus , working on the theory that it is better to let it all out in glazes than lose ones decorum and snap like a snarling beast when greeted at 6 am on a clandestine sortie to the kitchen in search of a peaceful cup of tea only to find ones guests are already there before you and desperate to discuss life the universe and everything, these 3 tile panels came into being!

They are not on my website yet as I haven't had time to go and update it and don't want to add anything else until my patient translator can find time in her hectic calendar to finish checking my French spelling and grammar ! However until such time as I do, if you feel the need to tell the world you too are not the social being people think you are the tiles are available direct from me at 25 pounds sterling for each 4 tile panel plus post and packing. Bespoke character tiles with your own message can be made on request...

So sorry for t eh lack of contact, sorry for the speed of throwing this together and the inevitable mistake in it as a result I live in hope that normal services will be resumed as soon as possible! Now perhaps that would make a good title for a tile panel...hmmmm I can see it now.......

What a load of old Cock and Bull!

Vista Print had a stunning offer on postcards and someone said, go on, get some cards done of your tiles and at the time it seemed like a really spiffing idea...of course my tiles tend to be square so despite all my playing with them I just could not get them the right size for the specifications. No trouble at all, I will just whip off a couple of rectangular panels which of course being postcard shape will upload perfectly well , welll perhaps with a trifle adjustment needed.

So there I was yesterday afternoon doing a panel of a splendid Bull we have in the field and knocking off a couple of white suffolk chooks before school pick up. time , glazed, glossed and in the kiln overnight all ready to be photographed before fast approaching deadline and in between the other little things that get in theway and are called family life.

Cold today, run out of gas, waiting for tanker to arrive so can't open kiln until it reaches room temperature what with thermal shock and all on the glazes, delicate sensitive things that they are, but it being colder than cold its takes far longer to cool down and reach current room temperature which must be, by my reckoning, and the fact I can not feel my fingers, about minus3.

Gave up waiiting and took them out regardless, which warmed up my fingers very nicely thank you, photographed then several times, and then several times again. Finally ended up with image that looked passable.

Now for the easy bit, upload..upload? Not on your Nellie, wrong bleed size..wrong trim size, wrong resolution..everytime I correct something then something else has shifted...deadline getting closer and closer, technically minded husband at work, school pick up time fast approaching ..panic setting in!

Never mind..I am sure it will all come out in the wash, meanwhile, here they are, even if they never get to make postcards thanks to my inability to shrink trim and bleed at least you have seen them..

Vista Print simple free upload ? Ha!!!...nothing but a load of cock and bull really..

Purple Coo

Based on the design of the Coo on the Purple Coo website ( with kind permission of Lixtroll the artist) this is a an exclusive members only tile, painted to order, price 5 pounds sterling plus 1.50 postage and packing. If you want to order more than one tile please ask me about the extra postage costs as obviously these will differ. Overseas members if you would like on please let me know where you are and I will look into delivery costs. Tile size is approx 4.25" which is I am told roughly 10cm .

If you would like to order one please email me with your contact details via unpeuloufoque@free.fr

A germ of an idea

One day, armed with a box of oil pastels purloined from my Mother, I occupied myself for an entire afternoon blissfully drawing stylised orange and yellow flowers with green leaves over the red brick wall against which our rather dilapidated Victorian greenhouse stood. I was about 5 at the time and knew exactly what I wanted it to look like.No one was overly impressed with the resulting work of art, including me.

However no one told me off either. I went and sat in the bottom of the great big wooden cask that served as the Greenhouse's water butt and brooded on my ineptitude at capturing the pictures in my head and translating them onto a flat surface.

Faint traces of it can be seen still, although the greenhouse, and sadly the water butt, has long gone, and I have been painting on fired earth ever since.

So from those first seeds of creativity which were allowed to blossom unfettered by my kind parents, I have progressed from bricks to tiles... and I am going to use this spot to show some of the things I do.

Hope you like them. Pop in when you have a free moment.

Illustration. 4.25" tile Nasturtiums: see my website for details.