Handbag for the Wife

[JayInOz]

We certainly need the luxury market and I'm glad it exists too, but even if I was filthy rich I don't think my conscience would ever let me spend several hundred thousand dollars on a whim, when there are so many better ways to spend the money. If you want to see decadence, check out the Dubai gold market on Youtube- see what craftsmen can do with ten tons of gold at any one time:)

I've lived on the land for almost my entire life. Down side currently- this drought that's dragged on for years (spending more than half my income on feed to keep things alive). First lamb born this season and taken by a fox the same night. Sow gave birth to ten piglets two days go and squashed six. Almost our entire fruit crop destroyed by flying foxes. The upside-  being surrounded by trees and gardens and countless birds. Producing most of our own food. Privacy. No neighbors.  Supposed to be a cold change arriving this afternoon so I'll fire up the wood stove and bake bread. Tomorrow the wife and I will pack a picnic lunch and spend the day detecting and panning for gold in a nearby creek.

Mike compulsoryness sounds like it should be a word. "I like to use big words because they make me sound more photosynthesis"     JayInOz

[Reegesc]

1 hour ago, mikesc said:

Come from "farming stock" Irish ( Eire ) you have to deal with the weather, and all the usual small farm stuff..make anyone pragmatic, no sense shouting at the rain when you are lambing outside in winter..I was even military for a while ( RAF ) like my Dad before me ( but he signed up as a youth and stayed in 'til he retired ).."back in the day" the RAF ( and maybe the Army and Navy did it too ) would pay for your university courses, or pay you some "pocket money" while you studied ( still had to do a lot of jobs to pay my way in studies, but any little helps ) if you signed on for a short time with them..Visit foreign parts, jump out of perfectly good aircraft with assorted weaponry, even did marching in lines and what later became known as "yomping" around various bits of Wales and the wilder bits of the UK..Farmers kids ( grew up either on the farm in Eire or RAF bases  around the world, "RAF brat" ) make good military, we can ( most of us ) shoot more accurately than the average recruit, and put up with the weather and the dirt and crap, even put up with Drill sergeants and occasionally idiot chinless pointy head senior officers..plus , it used to pay well..I would not be in favour of any draft or compulsoryness* ( France is introducing compulsory "national service again at 16, IMO huge mistake..any military do not need kids who do not want to be there ) ..Even a short time in the military IME makes you look at life differently..makes you look at civilians differently too..friends in various police services say the same..

What the civilians think are really important "life and death" things..are not..funny, my wife says I'm "pragmatic " too, until, like all Irish, someone steps on my toes, or threatens my family..or does something that I think is really unjust or plain wrong..

*compulsoryness..may not be an actual word..

 

topic drift..how did we get here from handbags..ah yeah..rich people and making things that they want, and people's priorities.

 

Oh we'll come back around to leather working eventually.

I spent a year and half in Dublin and absolutely loved it.  Well, Ireland itself isn't anything to write home about.  If you seen one idyllic farm outlined with an ancient rock wall,  framed in green and dotted with puffs of brilliant white wool from distant scattered sheep,  you've seen them all.  What  makes Ireland great are the Irish.  Just the loveliest people.  Stubborn sonsofbitches but lovely nonetheless.  And singers, my god what beautiful voices.  I'm a singing fool myself and make karaoke covers on YouTube, been in bands back in the day, so I speak from some authority on that topic.  

Back to the stubborn part.  The gig I was on was negotiating a very complicated joint venture with the Bank of Ireland as it turns out.  There was an article in the paper about an international deal that went south  and it was a pretty big news event because had it worked out it was going bring a lot of jobs to Ireland.   One of the deal guys from the foreign firm said " "Negotiating with the < Irish> is like pushing water uphill with a rake."   It certainly felt like that at times.  But after 5 pm, the ties came off and the pints flowed and we were best of friends.   I was the finance guy and hence worked with the numbers and at every opportunity I would get my Irish counterparts to say "third".  You know why.

I had to go to Ireland to discover the deep kinship that exists between the US and Ireland.  Once there I learned that one in four Americans claim Irish ancestry.  I was shocked to discover that Dubliners celebrate the Fourth of July,....fireworks, the whole deal. I've traveled all over the world.  There is no other country that celebrates the 4th that I'm aware of (Google Brain either, just looked it up).   Every Irish person I met had either 1) been to NYC, 2) had a trip planned to NYC, or 3) had relatives living in NYC.  A guy on our team, a born and raised American, applied for and received an Irish Passport and citizenship under the long standing statute that anyone who could prove a grandparent was an Irish Citizen was automatically granted citizenship themselves, and their spouse....which also meant he had a EU Passport and the right  live and work anywhere in the EU.  Lucky Bastard.  With a last name of Caffrey, he was shoe in. Me?  All German, which is fine, but damn to get that Irish deal, geez...

One last Irish story.  A local gal was on my team and she talked about growing up poor in rural Ireland. Some little dinky boring village.  They didn't even have a TV (that part sounded like hype, but anyway) or maybe it was one channel.  She  described their social situation as so boring that it could almost cause illness,   To counter this and just for the entertainment of it, her family would hangout at the Train Station on Friday evenings and target one traveler.  They did this for years, she said, so it was not difficult to pick out just the right person by the way they dressed and conducted themselves.  They were after a young traveling foreigner, a budget traveler, an adventurer.  Once targeted they swooped in on him (always a him) and sort of demanded that he spend the weekend with them free of charge.  They never went home empty handed,   And once home they would quiz him  about the goings on the world and pick his brain dry over the course of the weekend.   She said she got the BEST education from years of those experiences.   Even if exaggerated, that's a helluva story.

Edited June 29, 2019 by cseeger

[mikesc]

Sorry to hear that you too are affected by the drought in OZ..I've seen pictures and video of it..and heard about the feed situation , must be heartbreaking..fair prices for what farmers produce, everywhere, wouldn't fix it, but are desperately needed..and some logic in supply..

I live in the major onion producing region of France..( pigs , and dairy and  and poultry too here, ) I know a few farmers here, ( lived in wine country in the South of France..vineyards right upto my land down there..we all "mucked in " voluntarily there just to get the grapes in for our mate / neighbours ) ..right now all the local supermarkets here are selling onions ( yellow and red ) from New Zealand..at 60 cents ( Euro centimes ) per lb..So farmers in New Zealand are getting almost nothing for their exports ( lot of Middle men in France, plus the transport to here ) and local farmers are told to keep what they produce or sell it cheaper than the importers can get from New Zealand..only the importers and the middle men are making any money..Porc production is ultra intensive ..porc prices only rose a little due to the porc problems in China..Milk leaves the farms at 22cts per litre..and 5kms down the road in the supermarkets is 78cts per litre..with bio ( organic ) 20cts on top of that again..No fairness there at all..Just middlemen's greed..

[billybopp]

2 hours ago, cseeger said:

Oh Santa, you can't say that, even in the off season. If Nordstroms hears that...<shudder>...you'll be on the Bad Santa list like <snaps fingers> that!  It's all downhill from there.

In certain circles, this Santa already has a bad reputation.  In a good way, of course.   Love the video!! 

2 hours ago, mikesc said:

Indeed, agreed Bill but..I'm very happy that the "luxury market " exists..keeps me in groceries and beer etc..means I don't have to tend to sheep and cows ( although I have, and like them ) and be a hand to mouth existence farmer like my ancestors..Same applies to the fetish or fashion, or art, music etc businesses..without people with varying degrees of "spare money" and their "wants" / "desires" and us supplying them with what we make or sell or design or create or all of those things put together..many of us would not have the lives that we do..I'd much rather design , create, make, for the rich, than dig ditches..

Oh, I certainly agree about the luxury market and whole-heartedly support it.  But there's luxury, and then there's excess, followed at some distance by extreme excess.   I'm pretty sure that a bag that expensive ventures into extreme excess.  

- Bill

[mikesc]

She was probably not exaggerating about the no TV..Place I grew up in had 5 actual houses/ cottages..lime washed white stone walls etc ..2 sort of houses"..3 "holy crosses ( great ones for the crosses at the crossroads are the Irish..and the occasional statue of a greyhound)  4 "stills"..our house had no electricity, nor running water..the electric arrived when I'd be around 8 or 9..By the time I was spending more time in Britain, the water was still not in the house, we used to go about half a mile ( Irish mile ) down the lane and fetch the water in two galvanised buckets from the spring, the cows would be drinking from the other side of the spring which was covered by an ould stone hut open on two sides )  in Dublin they have more ornate statues...a floozy in a jacuzzi..and..a trollope with a scallope..My cousins place..about  two miles from us was like the Waltons 19 children..big farm house, run down, a bit of livestock, some of the kids slept in the barns with the animals..so did I when I visited..I and they, went to school "over the fields" bareback on poneys..you can get 3 or 4 kids on a poney ..

In the South of Ireland ( Eire ) before we joined the EU..if you lived in the countryside..it was like 50 years or so compared to most of the UK , most of rural France was the same according to my wife's mother ( now died ) ..her house was like ours, beaten earth floor, cooking over an open fire in the chimney with a "witches pot" ( Irish Stew only needs one pot..and you can boil a ham in it and cook the potatoes at the side in a bucket ) ..I still have the "hook" system ( to hang the pot on ) that was in the fireplace in this house before I built a new efficient closed in wood burning fireplace..

[mikesc]

just noticed..it is nearly 04.30 am here..I have to be up and 25kms from here later in my morning, so I'll look in when I wake to see if the thread has drifted further or back on topic..either way..who needs chat

 

tried to edit my post just above..and for the second time tonight ( despite being signed in and allowing scripts from here ) the system would not save the edited post..just froze..ah well..tomorrow / later today what the French call a heatwave will continue..it is currently 25°c ( and I'm within sight sound and smell of the sea )..and we are expected to have around 28 later, some parts got 46)C today..which is small beer to some parts of drought stricken OZ..Usually in this part of France, we have Irish weather..

[Reegesc]

Ever read "Tobacco Road" by  Erskine Caldwell?.  It's set in the very rural Applachia circa 1932, sort of a precursor to the" Grapes of Wrath".  The way you describe your upbringing reminds me of that novel and how for fun the kids would throw rocks against the side of their house.  It such a surreal scenario you don't know whether to laugh or be empathetically depressed.  That said, there's something to be said for not knowing what you don't know.   I mean you can't long for that which you haven't experienced.  .  Ya know what?  That's bollucks.   Provenciality is a waste of life and its only good because its familiar.   Well, for old folks it doesn't matter much, but for kids;...you can't grow kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown.  From the sound of it, you know this quite well.

[JayInOz]

We were dirt poor when I was a kid, but we were clean, polite, well fed and much loved. We had no 'phone, no electricity and no running water. Dad heated buckets on the stove and Mum heated water in the wood fired copper on bath nights. My Mum had first bath, my sisters next, then my Dad, then me. The water was then taken back to the laundry to wash the clothes, and it was then used to water the vege garden. I got up at first light and ran my trap line, then along the creek to check my fish traps. Then on the bus and off to school.  Weekends were mine- headed to the hills with bow or gun or axe, or panned for gold in the creek. Life was tough for my parents but for me it couldn't have been any better. Now I'm an old fart and seem to spend my time trying to recreate that warm feeling. And I think half the reason I try to learn so many craft things now is so that future generations of my family will have something to show that I was here:)  JayInOz

Edited June 29, 2019 by JayInOz

[Wayne0820]

6 hours ago, cseeger said:

That site looks great and on its way to being awesome if I could figure out how to translate it to English.  Do you know how?  Usually there's a button to "Translate this page"

If you are using Google Chrome, you may right click your mouse and there should be an option to 'translate to ...'.

[Alicia123]

Seems perfect. Beautiful color and size to carry with. I would like to have one. Thanks for the post.