toothycat.net - phoenix feathers

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Phoenix Feathers is updated on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, this week

Well, we're back, and this week there'll be updates Monday, Wednesday and Friday to make up for last week  ^.^  Never say we're not generous.

We had a very cool week away at Spring Harvest in that wonderful seaside resort, Skegness. After that, we visited Horncastle for a day. Horncastle is an unremarkable little town in Lincolnshire, and we were there because friends of ours live there and we were visiting. However, it is unusual in one respect; it is the Hay-on-Wye of antique shops. For those who don't know Hay-on-Wye, every other shop there is a second-hand bookshop. It's a wonderful place to go. Horncastle is similarly blessed (?) with antique shops, and while wandering round these, we found something we had never expected to find anywhere in Britain and probably not in Russia either; a samovar.

Samovars are the equivalent of a kettle in Russia. The old kinds burned wood and the heat passed up a chimney which was in the middle of a container of water with a tap. The water heated (obviously). Modern ones use electricity, and they're about all you can find in Russia now, and they're expensive. We wanted an old one, and have done for a long time, and, in the back of a junk-shop, tarnished, unloved and missing a chimney-piece, we found an old samovar with a wood-burning chimney (just like in fantasy stories - I expected a genie to appear when polishing it yesterday). On examination, it proved to be waterproof so we bought it and took it home and I've cleaned and polished it, so it's all pretty and shiny. It now stands very lopsidedly, in front of our TV. We cleaned it by immersing it in our bath in Dettol-and-water for an hour, and washed it out with Fairy so when we test it tonight, we should survive. We got some pine cones for it two days ago in Elveden, so the smoke will smell sweet. It's interesting - it isn't Russian, we don't think, and it's been home-made. The top of the chimney was a beer mug in past lives - you can still see the weld mark where a bit was cut out to make it the correct circumference. It is very pretty, however, and far preferable (to my mind) to the expensive, well-built, shiny and looked-after genuine Russian samovar we found later the same day in a different shop (entirely too predictable, really).

So I'm happy, anyway. It doesn't take much... small minds  ^.^

Before I forget, the next chapter of The Boy and The Darkness is up here (Correction - chapter 2-2 is no longer available - see here for clarification - 3.06.03). Do you like the dynamic underlines?  ^.^

- Sun Kitten, 1.4.02

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