Septimana Horribilis

Photos: V&A courtyard; Netherlandish Painted Glass 1500-1530AD; St. Matthias, Fairford Church 1500-1515AD; Necklace, Wally Gilbert; Element from a necklace, Max Frohlich; Coral tiara, Phillips Brothers

Hello, dear readers. Sorry that there was no post last week, I kept meaning to write one but the week got away from me. It was a pretty dreadful week anyway; I’ve called it septimana horribilis in cod latin. Inflicting my sorrows on your good graces would have been awful. It started with a bereavement – a very dear friend passed away, and even worse, I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye and thank you. She was one of the kindest people I’ve ever had the privilege to know and if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know how highly I prize that particular virtue, rare as it is. She and her husband really helped me out during one of my years-from-hell and I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it. So, here’s to you Maggie May, hope you’re living it up in heaven, hanging with the angels and doing some serious designing. She made the best handmade greeting cards.

Quite frankly, compared to that, the other problems of the week paled into insignificance but it was all topped by my card getting cloned and used on Friday. My excellent bank blocked it after the third purchase of pay-as-you-go topup cards, thank God. Suddenly, no money at the weekend unless I could get to an open branch. Meanwhile, how many bills do you think I left to sort out at the weekend? Yes, all of them. Broadband, mobile, website hosting, you name it, it was due. Needless to say, this website was immediately taken offline just as I needed some potential stockists to view it. Unbelievable. Still, managed to get it all sorted out by Saturday evening and believe it or not, my replacement card was here by Monday. Now, that’s service! You can see how I was a joke-free zone, to say the least. However, we are always triumphantly proceeding in Christ, so life goes on.

I was actually going to leave off posting till this weekend but then I came across these great images from the previous weekend and that cheered me up. I love stained glass, and I particularly liked these because they are so modern despite being 500+ years old. I love the palette that’s been used – so different from the usual primary colours though I love those too. Plus, how gorgeous is that jewellery; the workmanship is amazing. I guess that’s why I still like hand-pouring our products; everything that’s handmade is just way cooler. I also included a picture of London at play – just watching people chilling in the sun and getting giddy at being able to hang outside without thermal underwear brought a smile to my face. So I guess we just keep keeping on. In that spirit, I leave you with the cheesy jokes of the week:

Did you hear about the drummer who had twin girls? He called them Anna One, Anna Two (say it aloud)

A turtle is crossing the road when he’s mugged by two snails. When the police show up, they ask him what happened. The shaken turtle replies, “I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

And a personal favourite: A man finds a snail in his garden one Christmas morning and throws it over his neighbour’s fence. The next Christmas morning, he opens the door and finds a snail on the doorstep. The snail looks at him and says, “What did you do that for?”

Badaboom! Have a great week.