Back to work

Just as I was building up a little post-holiday momentum - reworking the JT Agapanthus story, blogging, reorganizing my studio - I came down with a flu that reduced me to shuffling around the house and coughing for about a week. Today we had significant snow in England, so I walked to work rather than riding my bike. I hadn’t walked along the Cowley Road (our main drag here in East Oxford) for a while, and I really enjoyed browsing. I went into out a Brazilian shop/art gallery, a middle eastern grocery and a retro old-style pharmacy where I found a German liquid iron supplement called Floradix that was recommended by a colleague when, post-flu, I was looking a bit pale. Here is a *partial* list of the ingredients: Carrots, nettles, spinach, quitch roots (?), angelica roots, fennel, ocean kep, aftican mallow, orange peel, pear juice, grape juice, blackcurrant juice, cherry juice, orange juice, red beet juice, lemon juice, carob extract, apple juice, yeast extract, honey, and MORE. I should be leaping tall buildings in a single bound any day now. This is just one more stop on my tour of European health tonics - at Christmas I had the novel experience of imbibing a French herbal remedy delivered in - I kid you not - individual glass pipettes that taper to a tiny sealed point on each end. You are literally supposed to *snap the glass ends* and shake out the contents into a glass. It may keep the contents sterile. It may be great for the manufacturing process. But if you delivered something this way in the US you would be sued before the first batch left the plant. I was really careful, and still managed to stab my finger. And this was a standard product, recommended in two different pharmacies for a common complaint. I’ll try to post a picture of one of these things so you can see what I’m on about. Anyway, I am not abandoning my comics storytelling project, and will post some more sketches ASAP.

Black cat eyes lunch

This was taken in Dinan, Brittany at the 2004 Fete des Remparts, the bi-annual medieval festival. We’ve just returned from there; this year’s festivities were great fun as usual. I was going through some older photos this evening and couldn’t resist posting this one.

Learning about trees

French trees
Originally uploaded by bgaloot.

I actually took this photo some time ago in Dinan, it must have been spring after a severe pollarding and before the leaves come out and reassure you that yes, the trees are really OK. I love weird shapes like this, my abstract paintings often feature similar items. Another favorite of mine is sprouting potatoes. I was thinking about these trees because we recently had someone pollard a tree in our back garden. It’s what you’d call a maple in the States but it’s a sycamore here. Anyway, I don’t think it was planted on purpose, but a tree is a tree, so after hemming and hawing we decided to keep it, but it was very tall and weedy, and it lost a branch in a high wind. After the tree man was finished I thought it was a goner for sure (and this having seen the french routine work so well). It was about half its former height with short little branch bits sticking out. I’ve realized that I have so little faith in plants; I am amazed when they continue growing after what look to me like major setbacks. The maple is now bushy with leaves and doing just fine, thank you, as is the buddliea that resembled four twigs when I pruned it earlier this spring. Stay tuned for garden photos.