Picture this

Everyone is playing this picture tag game, and Nappy Valley Girl has tagged me. The rules are:

Go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures
Pick the 4th picture in that folder
Explain the picture
Tag 4 people to do the same.

This is very exciting, since there is something I've been meaning to write about and show you all for ages and ages, and haven't got round to it, and now I have to. This involved a small amount of cheating, but very minor stuff. You will see, when I explain the first 3 attempts.

1) The 4th folder wasn't a folder at all, but an icon which was a short-cut to opening Mozilla Firefox. So I just ended up on the BBC World News home page. I deleted the icon. What was it doing there anyway?

2) The new 4th folder contained lots of different pictures of a soccer ball, downloaded from the internet. The folder title was "11-yo's soccer logos". I didn't think that was very interesting for you all, so gave myself permission to pass on.

3) The next folder was titled "11-yo's aeroplane pictures". There were only 3 pictures in it, so I could pass on without even being guilty of cheating.

So on the 4th attempt at finding the 4th picture in the 4th folder, I found this.



Here is the story behind it. When we moved into our new home, in April 2006, having moved half a world, camped out with the sister of one of Husband's colleagues for 2 weeks, and rented a small duplex for 4 months, we wanted to do something special in the children's bedroom. It seemed important. Our two youngest were sharing the largest room.

Husband had bought a painting done by one of his students (he's a Philosophy teacher, but as you probably know, a US degree covers a whole range of subjects, so this girl was an art major taking one of his philosophy classes). I really loved it. It showed a boat on a lake, and was dreamy and impressionist. "Do you think she does murals?" I asked Husband, and that's how it all started.

This was Mylissa's first mural. We weren't very easy clients, or perhaps we were ideal clients, in that we didn't really have a clear idea of what we wanted. I just asked for it to be dreamy and impressionist, and of the sea. Oh how I missed the sea, which we could view from our bedroom window in the house we'd left in Scotland. We painted the room blue, she brought lots of pictures from books and websites, we told her which ones we liked and which we didn't, and she made a start.

It was a mutually very happy arrangement. Mylissa took her time (um, nearly 4 months actually - in sporadic evenings and week-end afternoons) during which period the room pretty much became her studio, and the 2 children slept on our bedroom floor. She didn't charge us nearly enough, and wouldn't. She had most of the vision, but we would chip in our ideas: how about a bird here, or a few fish there? We had a lot of fun doing it, and I loved seeing an artist at work. What a mysterious world is the world of the painter.

We couldn't have been more pleased with the result. The mural is on 3 walls. There's a tropical island, with a sunset and dolphins. There's a boy's side of the room, with a shipwreck (in the photo above), and a sailing boat in the distance. There's a girl's side, with mermaids lazily investigating a treasure chest, and a hazy castle in the clouds. Deep down, I know the mural is really for me, not for the children, although they do love it too.

Mylissa did a couple of murals after ours, but then went off to Hollywood to do clever things with Blu-Ray. Her creativity was, in a way, a key to unlocking some element of mine, which is something else I need to tell you about. Another time. Meanwhile, it's very hard to do the mural justice, but I thought you'd like to see a few more photos of it.











Here's a close-up of that wreck. I was going to say "you can't really see the detail", but you can if you click on it. It's worth a look.


Mylissa added a little Pikachu just by the door of the room (he's a Pokemon for those of you who don't know). We discussed putting him on the sailing boat or the island, or letting him hang out with the mermaids, but for the sake of artisitic integrity, she found him a spot out of the picture.


I am tagging Elsie Button, Potty Mummy, Expatmum, and Antique Mommy. And Pig in the Kitchen which makes 5. It's the new 4. Didn't you know? (But Pig, you're not allowed a food photo; it's got to be something else.)