Stamp collecting

Many years ago…

Many years ago I joined a stamp collecting club. I don’t know if it was Stanley Gibbons? But every month you got sent sets of stamps in the post to add to your stamp album. I remember the  gummed paper that you used to stick them in the album with. Or you could get albums with cellophane over the top of the page to hold the stamps in place.

I remember Noytia CCCP, Greek stamps, ones from Australia, Magya Posta, some British and American ones. As someone with an artistic eye I used to admire them. I loved the colourful ones. Ones with interesting perforations, old ones and different languages printed on them.

Talking to another WordPresser has bought them back into my mind. I remember leaving home for college as a young woman and giving my collection to my sister who also had stamps. I don’t know what happened to them. They might still be somewhere?

I remember using tweezers to pick them up carefully. The enjoyment of looking through the album. The excitement of waiting for stamps that I had ordered. Oh what memories!

Not everyone can answer this.

What were your parents doing at your age?

Having a parent die early is awful, but a lot of people have this experience with either one or both of their parents.

In my case it was one, and the other was still working to support themselves at my age now. Income can drop drastically when you lose someone. My siblings and I did part time jobs to help support the family. My parent worked in two jobs to care for us. We mostly managed, and had to learn to be strong in the face of adversity. Sometimes we got help, but mostly we coped. Using a coat as an extra bedspread was a normal experience, and cold food more often than not saved money.

No one wants to lose a parent, or parents, and I’d give anything to speak to both of them now as the remaining parent passed away at a relatively young age too. It worries me because I don’t think we are a long lived family, but I want to be around for a good few years more.

My friends dog

Here’s the portrait I painted of my friends dog and a photo of him with it x.

I think I posted it a couple of weeks ago but it’s only just winged it’s way over to America. His owner is really pleased with it. It’s a watercolour painting. Quite small. I enjoyed doing it although it took me a few months because of everything going on in my life. Happy it’s arrived.

Make tax avoidance illegal

If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?

Many people use loopholes in the law to avoid paying taxes. By moving their funds offshore for instance or using accountants to hide their money, and filing tax returns with lots of expenses included so their tax charge is reduced. In this way poorer people on income tax, paying as they earn, can pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than those who are richer than them.

Avoidance is legal, evasion is not. Quote:

Tax avoidance is the legitimate exploitation of tax loopholes to reduce the individual or business’ tax liability whereas tax evasion is the illegal evasion of taxes properly due.

So why do we allow this? Especially the most egregious examples of avoidance? Yes, there should be legitimate reasons to cover normal expenses, but surely we could cut down on loopholes. Maybe every country could have the same tax rates, so no one can get away with it. I understand some countries offer lower taxes to increase their income, but there might be other ways of doing this. I think it would be difficult but not impossible?

It can’t be right that about 80 men have more wealth when its added up than half the world’s population. In other words 80 people have about the same as 4,000,000,000 people! Once you look at it that way it’s not really fair is it?

A house with a studio attached

Write about your dream home.

I need more space. I could build a small studio on the side of my house if I had the money and planning permission. It would be somewhere that didn’t affect the fruit trees in the garden. I would move all my art equipment and works in. That would make more room for all the other things we collected over the years.

I’d also insulate it and add better windows and doors. Maybe underfloor heating.

My income is too low so this is all a pipe dream. Unless of course a Millionaire or Billionaire reads this and feels like making a generous donation? (or I might win the lottery). I would take over the empty house next door to offer accommodation for friends and family and make a gallery downstairs. Then I’d also add a lift to save my knees and hips that are starting to ache more and more x.

Hidden Coots

Blue footed, grey blue bodies, black heads with white blazes above their beaks. Not a good photo but my arm shakes too much so this was the best shot of the bunch!

The other birds which are similar have red blazes above their beaks, darker bodies, those are Moorhens. The photo was taken at Westport lake last weekend. I did think about going back today but I didn’t feel well enough on this grey, foggy, cold and drab day.

Photo from WordPress library.

Frodo portrait

Another digital portrait I did on the Sketchfu site. I’m quite pleased that I could use simple tools and create images like this it’s sketchy round the edges because you could only use set sizes of pens, there was no sliding scale of thickness. But there was a good pallette, opacity and transparency tools so I could blend colours to some extent. This is based on a photo of Frodo from the Lord of the Rings film. He is holding his sword Sting.