September Song.....

Well the title was actually appropriate when the new window display went in last week.  We have now tipped further into autumn which apparently officially started on September 23rd and I write this on October 1st.

We are enjoying a babi leto (Old Wives' Summer) here in the Czech Republic and the leaves are not yet showing much sign of flame. Other than in Small Worlds.....

I much enjoyed the delightful summer window installed by my granddaughter Annie, with the very necessary help of tall Salve, during their visit here in July, but I was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable with having a display that was about to become completely unseasonal. Autumn comes fast here and along with it come wonderful leaf colours and many mushrooms.  And we have supplies of those aplenty in the workrooms here, nicknamed The Stables since a hobby in Czech is a "pony". (My "pony" is definitely a horse by now....)

Butterfly was willing so we headed over to the museum to see what could be done with said supplies, many of which long time followers of the blog will have seen before.  But that was back in the mists of time - in  2013 and then again in 2015. Yes, this year saw the tenth anniversary of the opening of Small Worlds! Needless to say, even more supplies have been accumulated since then.  

We have had a very busy and successful season this year but by Friday 22nd it was quiet in Small Worlds so I headed into The Stables to find all I could that was even vaguely autumnal. In the meantime Butterfly dug around in the chest of artificial flowers at home and came up with a giant potato sack full of possibilities.

We went in before opening time on the Saturday morning, hoping too that it would stay quiet if we weren't finished by 11, which it helpfully did, and removed the previous display, leaving a blank windowsill to play with.

And this time Butterfly did nearly all of the playing, with me occasionally acting the part of a surgical assistant, handing her the necessary items as she built the scene.

In between I also restored the camp site to its previous home, following its removal from the window, and found a suitable balloonist to take the biggest of our new balloons to further heights at the other end of the room.  Oh, and added another picnic to the maxi beach display. (Yes, we also have a mini and a midi beach.....)

 

This is really a blogpost where the pictures more or less speak for themselves. Those who are particularly interested can head back through ancient history by following the links above and finding the previous incarnations of many of the items, but really everything looks pretty comfortable in its new venue.   Not all the gnomes made the cut this time, but those that did have a story to tell....

You will notice the preponderance of the (not entirely) deadly Amanita Muscaria, the Fly Agaric - the favoured fungus of children's drawings and fairy tales.  It actually will probably not kill you if you are foolish enough to devour it, but the Lapps living in reindeer country are rumoured to chew it in order to enjoy hallucinations of flying (no balloons perhaps?).  Here's the tale..... (well I was always told Lapps, not Siberian Shamans).

But in the Small Worlds Forest, the reason the gnomes are so busy gathering them is not for food for themselves or the hedgehogs, nor to enhance their flying capabilities (do gnomes fly actually?) but to remove them from the forest in order to save foolish humans from danger. 

All except this one that is......  

 - we suspect him of deliberately cultivating them in a far corner of the forest to serve his wicked ends of enticing those same humans into trouble.....

I find it very satisfying when we are able to reuse items to create something either completely, or somewhat, different. As I keep saying to museum visitors as they admire repurposed items such as a tooth serving as a miniature computer mouse, we never throw anything away. One example is the material acting as the necessary backdrop to the scene, needed because one cannot view from outside without one. 

The very cheap material first featured as table runners at my son's wedding way back in 2012. That was also created by Butterfly.....

I leave you with a few more photos (particularly of pet hedgehogs) and hope you have enjoyed this expedition into my favourite season as much as I have. 

And now I really leave you with, given the post title, the inevitable song to play you out.  (I have already used "If you go down in the woods today" in another blogpost, though I can't find where. Can't resist it though, straight from my childhood). 

September Song was my mother's favourite song, and it became one of mine. Until I sought it out again just now I had no idea it was written by Kurt Weill. Or that it has been covered by so many people, among them Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Perry Como, Liberace, Ute Lemper and Anjelica Huston. She is the granddaughter of the only person I can truly associate with the song, Walter Huston, for whom it was actually written in the 1930s. It always makes me cry but I don't love it the less for that...... 

My thanks to Butterfly for lending me her window-dressing/story-telling skills.   I wish you precious, golden autumn days and hope to see you again before Christmas. 

When my granddaughter came to stay.....

 ....ten days ago I was contemplating the next window display and I suddenly realised that Annie was the perfect person to instal it.

After all, she grew up with tiny objects of all kinds - Playmobil houses and people, Sylvanian families, and of course my own dolls houses and string puppets.  In fact she spent a long time when she was around four years old trying to explain to us which "town" she wanted.   I offered her various sizes of tiny wooden houses and they were all rejected.   It wasn't until I remembered that on a visit to Germany she had played with two or three Playmobil houses belonging to the by-then adult

children of a friend, that we realised that was precisely what she had in mind.  Some years later we had a whole town's worth in the spare room and it wasn't just children who enjoyed playing with it!

I had already decided that the window theme would be something truly summery and at first thought inspiration might come from the TV programme Midsomer Murders (Vraždy v Midsomeru) which is very popular here. I suspect that many visitors to Britain from Europe will avoid UK village summer fetes like the plague, fearing that they will fall over a dead body at the back of the flower show marquee or the tea tent.

However I realised I didn't really have enough stalls to make it an easy installation. I do however have a great deal of children's playground equipment and the makings of a small camp site.  And I also have many Sylvanian families whom you have met before...

So if my granddaughter were willing to set the whole thing up, life would be very easy for me. Just as well, because the visitor numbers to Small Worlds are rising exponentially at the moment and I never seem to stop talking.  It can be quite tiring to repeat the same thing many times a day, sometimes in different languages, and to remember which couple you have said what to....

And of course it wouldn't be Annie's first rodeo (when did this phrase turn up in British English by the way?). I have blogged before about scenes she has created.  This time I am also handing over a bit of the blog to her as well...

Here you go Annie....

Thank you, GG.

It has been a while since my artistry and creative flair have blessed a blog. Today is the day that my talent with tiny toys resurfaces, and it does so in my (if I do say so myself) wittily curated, character-rich and detailed Sylvanian Family display for Small Worlds!

At first glance the scene is sweet, playful and colourful. 

It features many a Sylvanian Family animal, lots of props and furniture, a campsite nicked from elsewhere in the museum to grace the animals’ holidays, a painstaking picnic setup, and lots of greenery that truly brings the scene to life (I would even go so far as to say that the trees and moss are my favourite part of the display bar one – we’ll come back to that one later!)

On closer inspection, however, past the lovely greenery, the happy families and the playground, are many stories. In fact, the final reveal of this park’s intricacies likely isn’t too far from the Midsomer Murder TV show previously mentioned…

The first example of small storylines taking place within the display, is amongst the tents in the campsite. A meercat sister (who started here as a wife, but as you can see from the small photo, that storyline did not honour Butterfly’s previous LGBTQ+ meercat marriage lore in an earlier blogpost),
is scolding her brother for not understanding how to read a map, therefore leaving the responsibility with her entirely. To me, her expression perfectly conveys a: “Really?”

Next, we see a squirrel family having a picnic (this is the one I previously referred to as painstaking because I had to place the food bit by bit with tweezers due to how tiny and fiddly it all is.) Both squirrel parents are exasperated, tired and frustrated because their son just Won’t. Get. Off. The.

Swing. Boat.

“Get off and come and eat or you will not eat at all!” The children are out of control at this park. (Note from GG: These are clearly not Czech children!)

However, I would just like to draw your attention to one part of the picnic I am quite proud of: Bagel Boy.

He doesn’t care that his brother isn’t present. He’s got his bagel. That is all that matters.

Reminiscent of the squirrels' problem, is an issue ramping up for the bunny couple close by the picnic…

The bunnies did what bunnies do best, and now cannot go out in public without a toddler mutiny!

One is asleep in the pram........

.......two refuse to leave the seesaw behind.......

......while three have run off all at once. 

What is a bunny to do? The two parents are arguing, trying to figure out what to do next, while two of their bunnies are heading for the lemonade stand, and I don’t think it’s going to end well…

But really, what can you expect with seven toddlers?

Finally, most scandalous (and frankly evil) of all, is the featuring of the cannibalistic pig hotdog stand.

I’m not sure if this is a father selling his child or a case of kidnapping, but regardless it is deeply disturbing and I love it. It began as a joke and an attempt to shock GG, but she (and Butterfly) liked it so much on the mock-up table that it made its way to the final window display. Mind, the other animals don’t seem too fazed, considering the hot-dog vendor has animals queueing up for his food!

Thank you GG for suggesting I create this display! I really enjoyed it, and I can’t wait for next year’s window! xxxx

Excellent work Annie, both on the stage and in the script.  Definitely wittily curated!   Shame you live so far away.  Thank you and come back soon.

The campsite was nicked from here: 

and was hastily replaced with this which actually features my son Adam (Annie's father) as a little boy armed with his birdwatching binoculars....

We were very grateful for Salve's height which allowed the magnificent, recently donated,  balloons to fly free.... 

I think Annie and Salve both enjoyed themselves:

I will end with a few more photos of happy (?) scenes from the countryside....:

And a reminder that if all else fails for the frazzled parents they can always go Up Up and Away!  

Or of course launch the children....

A huge thank you to Molly and family for the balloons - here is the third one currently in temporary quarters - all the balloons are scheduled to fly across the museum at some point in the not too distant future, so watch this space!

In the meantime Butterfly and I are now contemplating Agatha Christie as a possible source of further material....should it be Poirot or Miss Marple?

Have an excellent summer and if you get a chance to visit Small Worlds we should love to see you.