Four corvid skulls, waiting to be put away in a little box.
The skulls had been part of a temporary exhibition to illustrate the functionality of differing beak shapes in various species of bird.
It was an absolute joy to get out the boxes of bird skulls again, and to have another little look through them as I was putting away the exhibited pieces. Something as simple as seeing the skull of a heron next to the skull of a wren, so fragile that it’s kept in a sealed glass tube, was just magical.
Last weekend we drove down to Devon, to visit Paul’s family.
We stopped at Paignton seafront, where we played a dancing game on the pier, took lots of photos underneath the pier, and chased a big crow who was trying to break open an enormous shellfish by dropping it on our car! I am full of admiration for the crow for having learnt how to do this, but less impressed that he decided to throw things at our windscreen. Thankfully he didn’t break it, but I do wonder how many tourists return from the beach to find their cars vandalised!
After Paignton we went to Totnes, where we found a proper vintage clothing shop called Revival that almost caused me to go into shock the moment I walked through the door. Paul managed to dissuade me from buying a beautiful red tailcoat, just because the silk lining in the sleeves was completely shattered and the lapels also needed replacing or re-covering. I wasn’t certain how old it was (there was no label), but it was beautifully made. The pad stitching under the lapels was fantastically neat, and there were pockets in the tails, and the buttonholes in the cuffs were all functional. And it still had all of its original buttons!
Damn, I wish I’d bought it.
Mind you, whilst I could have replaced the damaged parts of the jacket, and made the sleeves an inch shorter, I didn’t fancy taking it apart sufficiently to make it short enough in the waist. So I probably would have ended up never wearing it, and eventually selling it on Ebay for less than it would have cost me to buy and restore it. So it’s probably just as well I left it behind.
Probably.
