Nature Morte

Nature Morte is what the French call Still Life. I'm not too fond of many Still Life paintings, especially those Victorian ones with a bowl of fruit and a bit of velvet curtain. I find them dull and definitely more full of death than life.

Having said that, here are some things with their legs in the air that I did find interesting:


This is a dead shrew that I came across near the cottage where I was staying in Broughton-in-Furness. I've never seen a shrew before and, although I knew that they are the smallest mammal in the country, I was surprised by how small it was - only about an inch, plus tail.

Here's a dead mole that I found. I've never seen a mole before and it was fascinating - the great big front paws for digging: the soft, velvety coat. Its eyes were so tiny that I couldn't find them and in fact the mole itself was only about five inches long, with a tail about an inch long. Odd that I've seen molehills very often all my life, and yet never seen their creator. The nearest I've come to it was seeing a molehill with a little fountain of soil coming out of the top where the mole was digging.

This is a dog. She's called Meg and is not dead at all, very much alive in fact, and she lives at Ringhouse Cottages where we stayed. Like every Border Collie I've ever met, she was friendly, cheerful and full of energy. When I was a child and we stayed on a farm in the Duddon Valley once, the border collies on the farm would spend all day herding sheep out on the fells and then, back on the farm in the evening, would help themselves to a football and spend the evenings playing soccer.

So: two still deads and one still alive.