Faces in the Furniture: Thatched Roof

The thing about using rustic timber as a finish in buildings is that it will often include knots. For the uninitiated this is a knot:

And the thing about knots is that the grain of the wood tends to go around the knot and sometimes looks like skin. For the sake of economy see photo above which looks not unlike an eye with eyelids and a hint of crowsfeet.

Most of the Chicken Ranch which is not stone is rustic wood. The beams and volige (boards to hold the tiles) which make up the ceilings in the bedrooms are particularly rich pickings for the knot-eye hunter, and human beings are hard-wired to recognise eyes.

The volige has a thousand eyes

Lying in bed looking at the ceiling gives more than enough opportunity to see all manner of things, but for me these are mostly faces, both human and animal.

This is one of the more disturbing images.

For those who cannot see the nightmare vision let me say I had to move the bed to rid myself of this reminder of a very bleak period and a stark-raving-mad woman.

Faces in the Furniture: Bathroom Beats

 For some reason the paint on Mike and Jude’s bathroom wall flaked away leaving these shapes.

For some other reason (mainly to do with it being opposite the toilet) I would find myself staring at it and seeing all manner of things in its form.

These are the two I could be bothered to visualise:

 

There were more but I forget what they were. 

Now the wall is re-plastered and all I have is memories...

Faces in the Furniture: Elvis has left (his mark on) the building.

Lauzerte has two bars in the square at the top of the hill, the Café du Commerce and the Puits de Jour.

The Puits de Jour is the first arch on the left

They have both been there for yonks. The Puits de Jour used to be called the Café Central. It has seen a lot of changes in the last few decades, but few of them are visible as you can see from this photo from taken sometime in the sixties. It could have been the 1860s (apart from the umbrellas).

The Puits de Jour is run by Mathieu and a staff which seems to vary by the day. Mathieu is a ‘muso’, that is to say that he has been in bands since for ever, and everything he does has a soundtrack. We all know people like him, in fact many of us are people like him - obsessed with music and seldom without a toon playing nearby. He has live music in the bar as often as possible. and puts on the occasional outdoor music festival. 

Here is Elvis pressing the flesh at one such event - well that's what I was told.

The bar is in a three story building (see photo above) and has a narrow gallery at first floor level. Looking up you can see the skylight for which the bar is named (puits de jour = well of light). I really should have taken some better pictures, maybe later…

ANYWAY…  the relevant point is that one day while having a beer I looked up to the gallery and there was Elvis, larger than life. I pointed this out to Mrs PJ but she did not recognise him. I took this picture to record the moment:

I have shown it to a few people but none have seen what I saw. 

Here is a clue:

Seemed obvious to me...

Uh, huh-huh.