Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for supporting martinsonlinesketchbook this year.
This sketch is of Samuel at the Checkout in Asda last week as we finished our Christmas shopping. As we loaded the conveyor belt I looked up to see that Samuel had taken off his dull grey woollen hat, to replace it with a shiny Father Christmas hat from the handy checkout display. £1 a hat, that’s Asda price. Good job he can’t reach the sweats yet!
Urban Sketching an old road I used to walk down to Junior school. Not much has changed but there is a definite bump in the path where the cable television cable has been laid. Silverdale road is slightly up hill, the estate was built a long time ago, before I was born. Later Lower Earley would be born in the backs of the gardens on the houses on the left of the picture.
I particuarly like to include telegraph poles and tv antenna’s in pictures as they are slowly disappearing. It’s amazing how many wires actually cross the road when you look up and they all appear quite randomly placed, Maybe why the broadband is slower in England! I might do a sketch of the old style lamp-posts as some of them were built from concrete – again something you do not see too often these days.
Samuel can be quite shy, but he is also has an adventurous spirit. Maybe that’s why a 6 year old talking fluent Spanish attracted his attention. See-saw’s are not as I remember them, nowadays they have springs as well as a pivot – maybe so that you don’t need equal weights. The little Spanish girl was definitely not he same weight as Sam and her enthusiastic see-saw action left her mother feeling quite ill at the thought that Samuel might be catapulted into orbit over our local housing estate. You could be forgiven for thinking that the little girl did not know any better but she had a tiny brother, about Sam’s age and her mother who shouted – ‘ reducir la velocidad - no es 1558.’ – while looking sheepishly at us as if to explain that her poor parenting skills are only to be expected in this mean world.
Sam actually enjoyed being thrust into space…
Last Saturday Debs took Samuel outside to sweep up the leaves. I was indoors frantically decorating our Christmas tree as we had friends coming round for a bit-of-a-do. I couldn’t help laughing as with Deborah’s back turned to Samuel he helped to redistribute the leaves across the lawn. He seemed to be having such a wonderful time that I didn’t tell the other half why it took so long to rake the leaves. Sorry Debs – Good one Sam!
‘Bangs’ how Sam described the fireworks that he saw at the mother-in-laws house. A display at the end of the road gave us hope that Samuel would not be scared by the noise of a professional display that we had paid to see. We were even more surprised that Samuel wanted to look out of the window to see his bangs. In fact it has now become a request every time we turn up to collect him - that we go out side to see the bangs. Not convenient when its cold and raining and there are no bangs because firework night was 5 weeks ago...
Isla ‘G’ came to Thrive just as I was leaving but I hope I have educated her in health and safety...Years ago I watched a video presentation on VDU health and safety - I also put up a poster illustrating the best position to sit at a desk. And those were the qualifications that alerted me to Isla’s bad posture not the way she was using her mouse in the right hand on her left hand side with her arms folded and resting on the desk, her head slightly slumped to one side.
Following on from Sue Twiggs cartoon, I thought I would introduce Misty the Dog to the blog...Misty was my Heinz-57 cross mutt who was found tied to the back of a car in Asda carpark. We collected her, under the impression she was a border collie cross but it turned out she was a collie with a little grey hound - as she could move and vanish quite fast. She was an expert escapologist, leaping over our 6ft high garden fence, and disappearing like the littlest hobo. However in all the time we had her Misty never tried to escape through the front door.
One of my favouritest memories is Misty taking off around a field or in this case Bude seafront and collecting as many dogs as she could behind her. The game was to call Misty, who despite her nomad ways, was very obedient and she would return to us but leave a beach full of dog owners all searching for their pets in her wake!
For dog behaviour issues please register with Cesar the dog whisperer.
