Messiaen on Birds II / Synaesthesia in Art

I'm holding a workshop on Monday for my painters and the theme is " Synaesthesia". That is how we often see colour or line when we hear music and in the case of a few even experience different tastes. How extraordinary. This is Messiaen, who was the most wonderful French composer, and based so much of his works on bird song. Don'tcha just love it!

Syd's last cherry tree.

On a regular basis, Alan's late dad Sydney, bought and later discarded fruit trees! If they didn't come up to scratch within an appointed time, often merely a year, out they came and a new one was installed. And so it happened that as he was newly out of hospital after a heart attack, his concern was that the cherry tree was not doing as well as he wanted. Alan helped him to remove it and plant a new one. Sadly Syd died shortly after this and never got to see the beautiful harvest of cherries from the final tree. It is planted stoutly in the back field now near my greenhouse. Handy for popping out to snatch a cherry or two at the end of June!
I noticed some cherry brandy in the supermarket in Marbella last week while stocking up on goodies for the family. Thought , maybe I could have a go with the fruit from Syd's tree so here is my attempt.
I make damson gin and plum brandy each year from the fruit in the field and thought that it should be a fairly similar procedure. Time will tell!

I put a layer of cherries and a layer of sugar until all were used up.

     

Then poured in the bottle of brandy.

Gave it a good stir about.

And as they say Bob's your uncle although actually Syd was my father-in-law!

                                                        

A Mad, Mad Hatter's Party

The Mad Hatter's Parties that I have seen on the blogs that I follow are superb, and longing to be part of this wonderful world, planned in my head an amazing display of Warringtonian eccentricity. Ah me, the book took over and even the Rev. C. Dodson would have been amazed at the goings on that afternoon!

Over to the party.

Alice arrived, looking rather bemused. She was decked out in finest saharan robes with a neat little dutch titfer on her head. She appeared to be in one of her rather large moments, But that may only have been an illusion.

 The table was spread from end to end. Such strawberry coloured strawberries, such raspberry flovoured raspberry smoothie, such smart smarties it would have been difficult to find any where else than at that party that day.

The cup cakes cupped themselves lovingly into their snuggly holders, each one convinced that she was the most beautiful, as she siddled up to the glorious red spotted teapot.

Presiding at the top of the table was the beautiful enigmatic white queen , gently humming a sweet melody about mushrooms, while the dormouse tapped a rhythm along with her tuneless humming.

Sweet little dormouse ,kindly creature, inviting the pig to join the party and even if possible....the dance.

It was not often that pig was able to escape the arms of the cook, but she had lost the black pepper and in all the confusion he took his chance to come to the party.

The mad hatter had a table to herself as her table manners left somewhat be desired .

Such as drinking all the milk, much to the dormouse's distress.

and often  losing the plot all together.

The caterpillar seemed to be unsure about whether to stay or was it time to turn into a chrysalis. A lot of twisting and turning that was quite entertaining.

The white rabbit was not quite as white as he should have been as he said that he had recently been abroad, but the white queen graciously acknowledged him and made room for him at the table

She even invited one of her guards to sit and have a bite to eat. Which shocked the caterpillar so much, she almost jumped out of her skin, rather prematurely.

All settled down to enjoy the food.

                                                         

The white queen was especially fond of the fine white cucumber triangles. Mmmmm...mmmm.

Alice still appeared to be rather confused about the whole proceedings, but managed to address the party wearing a rather smart greek hat, which gave her the confidence to cope with the size that she had become.

And through it all the cheshire cat sat and grinned as so he should as he was very much in cheshire where he belonged.