The Girls fae the Big Hoose.....

And, no, I don't mean female prison officers (or inmates)! These are the second incarnation of the Fenryll maids/villagers sets that I accidentally received due to freight issues caused by Covid. Rather than just painting them up as another batch of "peasants" I decided to give them all a bit of uniformity, using black and white only for their clothing. Owing to the conservative nature of servants uniforms, I think these ladies would not look out of place between the Renaissance period and our own time, in the right setting. They can also be Quaker/Puritan/Dutch women from the 16th or 17th centuries - so will be able to add a little je ne sais quoi to many games!

I have played around with some of these images and not sure if they are enhanced or not, but they look ok to me. Following the figures are a few more "real life" pictures, as these seemed to be quite popular last time I included them...

Scrubbing m'lords floors...

Fetching in water for the kitchen...or m'ladies bath

Fresh bed linen

Polishing m'lords favourite boots....

Demonstration of my theory the maids fit into a number of eras - 1- Medieval/Renaissance

2 - the 1920's

3 - modern or post modern era

Bringing supplies from the butcher

Following are a couple of images from our 21 year old daughters joint Christmas present to my wife and me, a six course degustation lunch. The restaurant was about 90 minutes drive from rural south Auckland to rural north Auckland, but well worth the trip. The menu claimed the meal would take two hours, at which we rolled our eyes, but in fact, we were there the best part of that time. As my wife was taking a picture of each course, I felt me doing so too would be overkill, so I only have a picture of the "tasting paddle" of local wines (the restaurant is based around a vinyard) $20 for four wines v's one 500ml beer for $17 - I chose the wine option (I am a real connoisseur you see!)

I went with four different reds - they came with an explanation of the after notes of blueberry and hint of cocoa etc - but they all tasted like fermented red grapes to me! (note the cutlery, one course had already been eaten by this time)

View from our table - the place was about half full as it was reasonably late in the day for lunch in NZ - we kicked off at 1245 and finished up just after 1430

Today (Sunday) we went for a short walk with the dog at a local "reserve" - Alexandra Redoubt, Tuakau (pronounced Two - ah - cow). I have blogged about this local military site previously here, but at the time, I only had a couple of people making comments, so most of todays readers will not have seen it..

Bydand: April 2019 (1808534.blogspot.com)

(I think there may have been a second post a week later too...)

Here are some images of todays outing

Hope all of this was of interest. Do you ever trawl back through bloggers posts from three, four or even five years ago? Often, when I find a new blog that appeals to me I will look through their previous posts from years ago, which can be very interesting.