Monday slash Tuesday slash delicious laborious historic illumination slash cerulean monandæg

But if someone put a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I'd have to say I prefer the buttery golden bling and fat, saucy horses of Mughal and Persian miniatures.

Have you all been having a nice old time up there in the northern bits with all that sunlight and those agreeable temps?  It's just started getting a bit wintery down here in NZ; the ski fields are shrieking about snowlessness but then ski fields are an obnoxious pox upon the montane landscape so boo fucking hoo.

What else?  We went to the Dunedin Gasworks Museum the other day so I'll post a photoessay around that this week.  I do always try to make things less boring than they sound, but you can be the judge of that.

I like typography.  And I love the D, so this slick bit of rendering < was always going to appeal.  

Do you have a favourite illuminated manuscript?  The Book of Kells takes a lot of fucking beating for its sheer weight of hand-drawn peak-celtic WTFckness.

Imagine running a hand, still soft from a rosewater bath, over those heavily-tooled pages, feeling that supple gilding bulge slightly and then lapse with the slow passage of your fingers?  I'm a slut for that shit.  A big slut.

​Notice how I didn't say shit about Turkey or Nice or X Lives Mattering?  You're welcome.

Perhaps you'd prefer some good news.  Iraq's vast and ancient Awhar marshes, home to the Maʻdān 'Marsh Arabs' and a considerable amount of wildlife, has started recovering from Hussein's attempt to drain and destroy them in the '90s.  This gives me tremendous pleasure, especially since I coincidentally bought an old Maʻdān blanket the other day (I'll blog it later).  Also: the fucknuckles in Tasmania who were hoping to log some of its last pristine forest have been cockblocked by UNESCO.  This happened a wee while ago but I only just found out.  Does that make you smile?  It should.

I will say a word about Ocho handmade chocolate for the Dunedin-adjacent and crown it with my highly-coveted personal seal of approval.  The Salted Caramel (above) is a perfect union of bristly saline, crispy chunkettes and sourish floral nocturne.  No I don't get paid or comped to say that.

How.
Does it.
​Feel.

*  Read more idle verbal flatulence  *  Pictures don't speak- they always have that going for them  *
*   The Book is long and strange but don't front like that's not what you're into   *

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