Odd things in Whitby

We are in Whitby for a wedding. We had a little walk around yesterday and we saw three strange things.

1. An abandoned pair of decent black daps or plimsolls

2. Children smoking fake cigarettes (fooled me)

3. Minstrels here for some sort of folk music festival with blacked faces

[I assumed the latter two were illegal. Apparently the Morris men black face is about hiding not race.]

Unbelief in boxes

I'm in W H Smith, waiting in the queue to pay for my paper. The man in front of me says "two boxes of unbelief, please". I think to myself "it's come to this. You can even buy unbelief over the counter". Then I thought "I've probably misheard him". I had. He wanted Amber leaf cigarettes.

TTRMOMD 02

I've mentioned before that when I was younger my dad rolled his own cigarettes. Consequently tins like this one were everywhere. I still have one or two.

Mole wrench, oil can, etc

This one features my dad's old Mole wrench (the Mole wrench or self-locking pliers have a strong Newport connection but having just looked it up I see that they were not invented in Newport as I once thought) a few more tobacco tins, what must be a hollowed out bottle cork containing three small dice (from Germany I think). Pinned into the top of the small cork container is a white horse, part of a long forgotten promotion for White Horse Whisky I think. There's also an old oil can that was in my grandmother's for years.

Knives, cribbage, etc

Another personal still life. This one features a green tobacco tin (my father gave up smoking years ago but, as I may have mentioned in the past, the old tins survive - I found several in the flat as we cleared up), a small case of tea knives (a wedding present to mam and dad rarely used), a Pontypool Male Choir blazer badge, a home made cribbage board (not sure who made it but it's been round all my life) and the stub of a ticket to Vancouver where my Uncle Peter lives.

Dutch Masters

Like someone trying to give up the weed itself, I'm struggling a bit here to escape this tobacco thread that I started the other day. I have always liked this piece of Focus iconography from 1973.

It's based on a well known Dutch cigar brand, as in this example here.

The original painting is by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). It is called The Staalmeesters (The Syndics of the Clothmaker's Guild) and was painted in 1662 in oil on canvas (191.5 x 279 cm). I have seen it at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

For some reason the painting cries out for parodying as here

Someone with real skill and good equipment should do one with Bavinck, Vos, Van til et al.