Trebouchettes, rain and oxymorons

Rain, rain, rain - splish, splash, splosh.

Weather forecast this morning:

So wet weather activities required. I know I said that a little rain was comforting (for dowsing flames) but honestly a little less wouldn't go amiss.

It was, however, dry for much of yesterday, so we swam, slept in the car, visited a castle, slept at the castle, slept in the car, swam (inside because too cold and damp out) and slept and ate. A lot of collective sleeping!

The castle: Mediaeval fortress with trebouchettes (enormous catapults for flinging death and destruction at the enemy) and a labyrinthe of spiral stairs, narrow corridoors and stone cells ... claustrophobia rising with every step.

All a bit too much for little legs ...

And so to today ... too cold to canoe, too wet for tennis, so swimming and shopping on the agenda.

Apparently, its warmer and drier at home.

As for that oxymoron ... later perhaps.

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Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

Curlews, summer skies and walking in circles.

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Heaven clearly can't wait. Ranting and screaming inside. Growing old and lecturing ... myself, mostly.

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Walking The Dog

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