Precious Moments.

They happen from time to time, those moments I call treasured moments. You meet somebody and it leads to something  more. Or it is a moment shared with a friend that gives a moment of sheer joy and laughter.

I had such moments yesterday before the day had hardly even got started.

One was when a friend noticed an ancient tree and remembered I had been drawing and painting such trees and creating abstracts inspired by the barks to those trees, sent me a photograph of the tree and I immediately felt the colours and the inspiration of the above abstract. And this is one I really am happy I produced.

Out on my early walk with my friend we said good morning to a local gentleman. He returned the greeting and began to converse with us. Turns out he was a German who owned a house here in France where he lies five months a year. Depending on the results of the election and the expected outcome it sounds like an attractive option. No more politics.

He invited us into his garden and home and  took us out the back to his balcony with a view to die for. he told us a joke I will not repeat but we all laughed together. The Scotsman the Englishman and the German indeed.

It started my day off in a most surprising and happy way.

We walked past a house most morning and up into the woodland. Over the past few days we have heard a bird in the vicinity  and we tried, as we always do to identify it. After much debate we came to the conclusion, with some doubt in out minds it was a Jay. There are many jays in the woodlands around us.

Can you imagine the humour when we discovered that the house had a large cage in the back garden and in it was a large  Parrot. One for nature.

I could not resist telling my friend the tale of the parrot.

This parrot had been left when an old man had died. The minister who had known the old man for many years and had conducted his funeral decided to give the parrot a home.

The trouble was that the parrot had a foul mouth. it could speak very well but it did so with the inclusion of many swear words.

The minister warned the parrot to stop that bad language or he would do something about it. The parrot paid not head and another string of swear words came out.

The minister opened the cage grabbed the parrot and threw it in the freezer. he left it there for a good ten minutes and then released it from its agony.

Sitting in its cage warming up the parrot very politely spoke to the minister. Not a swear word was heard. it seemed the lesson had been learned.

Then the parrot spoke again. Again very politely it said, " Please minister can you tell me one thing?" "Of course, you are being very well behaved , go ahead." "Can I please ask what did the turkey do?"

Have a wonderful day.