"Stands the church clock at ten to three..."

"...and is there honey still for tea?" 
Thus enquired 
the British WW1 poet Rupert Brooke in his poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, so evocative of the English countryside in May.   

And what better title for a window display based around that most British of events - teatime?   I have been musing on the various names for this event. The French call it 'Le Five O'Clock', the Czechs 'Čaj o páté' which both mean that they believe we take tea in England at 5pm.   I have always thought of teatime as 4pm, and Rupert is clearly even more anxious to partake of his cup that cheers.


The idea for this window display came about when I found 3 teapots at a jumble sale, all in the shape of buildings.

This made me think of looking for some more similar pots in charity shops. My friend Lynda also joined in the hunt..... 

We ended up with seven fullsize pots (two of which did not make the cut into the final window display).

I then found a whole range of tiny ones as well and so the display was born. 



   
Butterfly had acquired a set of library steps - from another jumble sale - which provided the perfect display area for the big pots; a small dresser served the same purpose for the tiny ones.

It was clear, though, that this would not be enough for a full window display so what else could I find in the Small Worlds collection?

A hunt revealed a number of tiny tea sets and then all I needed to locate were suitable tables to place them on.  

Thanks to the glories of the new workspace, where everything has a labelled home, and which you read about in my last post, this was fairly easily accomplished.   

In this photo you can see the relative sizes involved - the mouse house teapot on the left is a fullsize pot and the pink and white rabbit one at the back is a child's tea service....  

The next step was to create some sort of background against which all these items could be displayed. 


Here I have reaped the benefits of a philosophy that dictates nothing should ever be disposed of, in case it might come in useful one day. When we moved into our home of forty years, way back in 1972, we found numerous interesting items in the old garage at the bottom of the garden.   Amongst these were two ancient wooden clothes horses.   My then husband said they were fit for nothing but the bonfire (he loved bonfires) but I demurred.   

And sure enough, time has proved me right.   The larger of the two is now in my bedroom in England, home to around 30 assorted string puppets, mainly Czech ones but with two or three Pelham Puppets amongst them.  

The slightly smaller clothes horse I included in the carload that went over this summer from the UK to the Czech Republic, and it turned out to be just the right thing to support the required drapery.


And what of the drapery?   Well, that's another example of the benefits of never throwing anything out.   Back in 2012 my son got married and the whole wedding was done on a fairly tight budget - you can read about it on Butterfly's blog since she was the main creator of what turned out to be a delightfully decorative day. 

The venue had horrible grey plastic chairs that absolutely had to be covered for the outdoor part of the ceremony.   We begged white net curtains from friends, trawled for more in charity shops, and the final effect was all we could have wished for....  

At the end of the day I bundled all the nets into a suitcase and though I have no recollection of taking them to the Czech Republic, I found the case in the attic of my garage there.   So all the props were ready to hand....

Joy of joys, I now have more than enough space to set up practice runs for new window displays - hugely important this time because I needed to know precisely where everything was placed since the backdrop would have to go into position last and once it was there, shifting anything would be extremely tricky.  Very usefully, the windowsills in The Stables are almost exactly the same size as the display window in Small Worlds itself. 

Not only the library ladder, complete with pots, the small tables and the dresser had to be sited, but also the Ladies who Take Tea, the little chef, and one or two other miniature teapots and services needed to be carefully placed.  

By the way - why are all milk jugs in these tea services clearly out of scale? They are all much smaller than seems correct for the corresponding teapots, not to mention the cups!

Putting the whole affair into the window was a tricky business.   I could not have managed it alone but fortunately I had visitors from Prague for my very last weekend in Bavorov.   Not only did Jana and Ondrej put up shelves and prepare one of the Christmas displays but they were crucial helpers in creating the window display.   Without Ondrej's height and long arms some very delicate rearranging could not have taken place.   It was he too who lifted the backdrop into place once Jana and I had fiddled around for ages. 

This activity of course also involves much running in and out by one of us to view the whole thing from the street, and a lot of shouting through the window to "move it to the right, no not that one, the other red one, right I said, not left...."   This becomes particularly fraught once the backdrop is in place.....

I leave you with a glimpse of the two that did not make it into the window but did get a place on the shelves in Small Worlds, and a picture through the window of the final display.

And finally - a tale that I feel must have some sort of moral to it.  

On my very last day, just as I was leaving the Czech Republic for several months, I stopped by Small Worlds for something. As I left, I noticed that the sign perched on the dresser, "Stands the church clock...." had fallen to the floor.   I decided to leave it - getting into the museum involves unlocking three sets of doors and in any case I could see no way of reaching it without knocking things over.   I climbed into the car, turned on the engine, switched it off again, unlocked all the doors, attempted to reach the sign, could not do so, locked up again, stared at it through the window, decided I really could not leave for the UK with it like that, unlocked three sets of doors, tried again to reach it, failed, locked up, got in the car, got out again, and went through the whole process for what, thank goodness proved to be the last time. By dint of much twisting and turning I managed to get the sign off the floor without dislodging anything - which would have been a total disaster - into place on top of the dresser, and finally locked up for the last time and left Small Worlds to look after itself for the winter.

My grateful thanks to Jana and Ondrej from Prague for their, as always, sterling assistance, and to Jana from Bavorov and Veronika, who open up during the Farmers Markets when I am not there in person.

The blog will be back soon, on Advent Sunday, with the first of four seasonal posts....

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you then.

The Augean Stables? Not really.....

The fifth labour of Hercules was to clean the stables of King Augeas in a single day.   My task was to fill my new stables as quickly as possible, with the help of my faithful family and friends....

Hold on a moment, I hear you cry.   I thought you had a dolls house museum, not a horse-riding establishment?   And this is, of course, quite true.   I have a museum and right from the start it has been bursting at the seams.  

Cue slight diversion: Does anyone remember how Small Worlds looked when we first opened? Until I was trawling photos to put in this blogpost I had forgotten that we began with a completely different layout, not only for the houses, but also in the Children's Corner - a quick reminder:

Original layout in 2013 - one bay

New layout in 2014

Three bays although third is narrow...

But however we fiddled with the layout, not only has there been little space to display any new houses, it has also not been possible to shuffle houses out into a nearby room whilst something else is shown - I had to get things into the car and back to the garage of my house.   In addition, every nook and cranny was filled with boxes, often out of my reach at the top of high shelves.  I never climb a ladder if I am alone in Small Worlds - too many of my friends have come to grief that way - and so any tall visitor was in danger of being enlisted to get something down from the heights.

This usually involved precarious balancing on the ladder whilst opening up many boxes since I couldn't really remember what was in some of them. Many flat items were stored beneath the shelf units and the general effect was very cluttered.

Since I opened Small Worlds four summers ago I have been politely enquiring whether there might not be some available space in the same building - which already houses the town library, my hairdresser, a highly skilled masseuse and a children's doctor. 
 

I was aware that there had once been a playgroup along the corridor, in what I was told had once been the town prison, but I had never seen a child, other than waiting to see the doctor.   For some reason, however, I kept being assured there was no space free. 

3rd door along on the left

So I was more than delighted when my friend Jana, who gives me great support in all my dealings with the town council, and also sometimes takes over in Small Worlds when I am back in the UK and we open for the Farmers' Markets, told me that she had heard directly from the playgroup leader that she was giving up her tenancy of the three small rooms behind the metal door along the corridor and that we could go and take a look at them.

This was right at the end of July, just before I left for a few days in the UK to celebrate a very special 99th birthday, so we only made a swift visit but I could at once see the possibilities.   I was a little daunted by the rather flamboyant colour scheme of lurid pink, orange and lime green, and the enormous pile of empty teabag boxes in the middle room, but Jana assured me that everything would be cleared away (the boxes were apparently left over from a project that the children had been working on) and I knew that much of the wall space would be taken up with shelf units, thus hiding some of the glaring colour.

After viewing the rooms we hastened round to the Town Hall (which thanks to some EU funding, and to my great relief, now boasts a comfy lift) and sought a meeting with the mayor.   He was very willing to rent the rooms to me though apparently it was going to take a while to get the necessary admin done.   I pointed out that my son and grandchildren would be visiting in a couple of weeks time and that it would be fantastic if I could make use of their services to shift stuff.   He saw no problem with that, even if the formalities could not be completed so quickly, and it was agreed that as soon as the rooms had been emptied, I could occupy them. 

Original Children's Corner

I promised Adam that I would only ask for one day's help so as not to encroach further on their holiday, and my aim on that day was to construct six sets of metal shelves, shift everything that was not a display item, or

Children's Corner 2014

part of the Children's Corner,out of Small Worlds, and, if possible, also clear my garage of four shelves full of stuff, along with the shelves themselves, plus many boxes that were standing around.   Ah yes, and not to forget the giant dolls house that was taking up one corner of the garage.

All green boxes to be moved

In preparation for much box and book shifting, and knowing that two of the shifters are quite young, I bought a flat-bed trolley and a porter's sack barrow (neatly known as a rudl in Czech).   I sat down and worked out what had to be moved, including such items as the old video cabinet out of the Children's Corner and a couple of the drawer units.   Then, having just got back from the UK, I sat back and waited for the family to arrive.   

Fortunately, before they reeled back in horror at the ambitious day's work ahead of them, Colin, of the South Bohemian farmhouse which he so beautifully made for Small Worlds after remarking that I really ought to have an example of a local house on display, and his wife Roz, volunteered to spend the day helping us rather than foraging for fungi.   A noble sacrifice!   It turned out that without them Adam and I would have probably collapsed long before we had accomplished half the list.....and the children would have headed back to the house in disgust.

My granddaughter rewrote my list of things to do, thoughtfully adding the phrase "and anything else that crops up during the day" and off we went.   As you can see from the photos we really all worked very hard indeed, from the youngest to the oldest.  

 

Apart from overseeing what had to be moved I also sped home at lunchtime to prepare a worthy repast for the workers who had shifted pretty well everything out of Small Worlds itself by the time it was cooked, and had built all bar one of the shelf units.

After an unhurried lunch it was the turn of the garage and I blessed the fact that we had two large cars at our disposal.  These made several trips from house to museum and by the last one the children had given up and adjourned to the playroom where we left them in peace - they had earned a rest.

Tired but happy we then locked the doors on chaos, said goodbye and a fervent thanks to Colin and Roz who were leaving for the UK the next day,  and enjoyed the rest of the short family holiday.

After Adam & Co had gone home I unlocked the door and gazed at a giant mess, particularly in the central room.  

By the time these were taken...

...most of the boxes had gone....

The three small rooms run into each other, the furthest from the entrance is carpeted so no use as a workroom since much mess ends up on the floor when I am working.   Most of the shelf units went in there, filling up all the wall space.

The other two rooms have lino on the floor so the middle one was scheduled to become the workroom, with a later addition of a large table, and I decided that, since I am hoping to run small workshops (finally!) round that table, this would be the right room to hold all the books and magazines I possess - many!  So three more shelf units went in there.   


The first room is a sort of ante-chamber and will partly be used for shuffling houses in and out if I want to change the display.   It also contains the all-important kettle.   I decided to go for a lilac kettle, figuring that the rainbow effect of the colour scheme could not get much worse!


Hardly had the family departed, when friend Lynda (of the ballet shoes and liquorice allsorts) arrived.   I know from experience that she is a sorter par excellence and had indeed done much of the packing up of miniature things when we moved from our home of forty years back in 2013.

Here was another challenge for her! Some of the boxes she now found herself sorting through were very familiar to her - 
"I remember this from back then" was her frequent refrain.   I had acquired some brilliant plastic boxes (you can see them just above Lynda's bent back), I think they are known as party trays, but they are completely perfect for dolls house items and I kicked myself that I had only bought up the reduced stock of blue and green ones, ignoring the yellow, because we soon found that we could use many more of them than I possessed.   And there were no more to be found in any branch of Kaufland. 

Fortunately the visitor flow to the museum had almost completely died away by this time so I could also spend time sorting and boxing up items, mainly in Small Worlds itself, and by the

Who on earth keeps hangers in a teaspoon?

and by the time Lynda left a few days later the middle room, which had been piled high with cardboard boxes, was almost clear, with "just" the residue on the temporary table to dispose of....

And all gone!

Once that was accomplished I took great delight in labelling..... 





.....every single smart box that is now on the shelves. 







A few more days passed and along came the next set of visitors from England.   Not so much left to do now.....

.....magazines to get into number order and a giant bag of material to sort through and categorise.  

But since Jill and Sheila were only there for two days that was more than enough. And, indeed, Veronika had already broken the back of the magazine sorting...

Getting ready for the table top

And then, at long last, I could enjoy the utter bliss of having a work table big enough to spread out and work properly on a project, knowing exactly where every single item I own is to be found, and is also within reach.   Before, my workspace in Small Worlds was about eighteen inches by two and a bit feet and half the stuff I needed for a project was always somewhere else.

Scheduled for Small Worlds

Now it is all to hand, I can not only work on the table, but behind me is a giant windowsill to put things on - each of the rooms has one in fact.  A painting project like this could only have been done before when Small Worlds was closed.

Doesn't take me long to make a mess!

I cannot tell you with what pleasure and delight I prepared the traditional Christmas Card for the side window, which will be revealed when Advent begins, or set up a trial run of the new display that even more friends and I put into the main window just before I left for winter in the UK - more of that in the next post.   The space is utter, utter bliss to play in! 

And what is more I can work in the Stables and hear if someone tinkles the little bell at the entrance to the museum itself so that I can spend my time profitably between visitors.

Ondrej, shelf-putter-upper-in chief with assistance from Jana

I finish with a list of thanks to those who helped: Adam, Anya, Jakey, Roz, Colin, Lynda, Veronika, Sheila, Jill, Jana, Jana, Ondrej - Small Worlds would be nowhere without such sterling support.   Thanks too to Mr Mayor Fenc and his colleagues. 

And a final view of The Stables ....

Do join me again soon - ah, hang on a minute - did I hear someone enquire why I call it The Stables?

Well - a hobby in Czech is a koníček - a pony. People who visit Small Worlds often say to me you haven't got a koníček here, you have a kůň - a horse.  And where else should a horse live but in a stable?