All Set For Our Sunday Lunch,

as we had some cold cuts left from yesterday.

we had them and some Cheddar for our starters,

'Cheers!',

on to our main course,

roast pork, with crackling, I was very careful eating the crackling, the last thing I wanted was to loose another tooth!

happy but not smiling!

for dessert melon, which was really sweet, after our meal it was feet up for the afternoon's films,

 we started with Killers From Space, captured by aliens, but no one believes him,what to do? fight the aliens by yourself! great fun as you might imagine,

followed by Phantom From Space, an invisible alien lands on earth, but how to track him down? again a great 'B' movie from the early 1950s,

then a real treat as Steve and Kai arrived laden with the efforts of their gardening, many thanks to Steve and Kai for all of the produce they brought round, we chatted away for more than a few hours, after saying our farewells it was feet up, for our film of the evening,

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), highly entertaining, the special effects stunning, and at just a tad over 3 hours long took us nicely up to the time when we were off to bed.

You Might Think That,

walking into this room,

you were entering the most pompously adorned room at Versailles, but you would be wrong, you would be walking into Bautzner Straße 79, in Dresden, Germany, a cheese shop called Pfunds Molkerei, it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the German city, with over 500,000 tourists stopping by every year, photograph Jerzy Strzelecki/Wikimedia Commons,

the whole place is decorated with ceramic tiles produced by Villeroy & Boch and hand-painted in the Neo-Renaissance style by local artists, in 1998, Pfunds Molkerei was awarded the title of “World’s Most Beautiful Dairy Shop” by Guinness Records,

the history of Pfunds Molkerei can be traced back to 1879, when German farmer Paul Pfund moved from Reinholdshain to Dresden with his six cows and just as many pigs. He set up a small dairy business on Görlitzer Straße, where it was possible for passers-by to observe how the cows were milked and how the milk was prepared for sale. The following year, Paul’s brother, the actor Friedrich Pfund, joined the business and together they founded the Dresdner Gebrüder Pfund dairy, 

Pfunds Molkerei miraculously survived the Dresden bombings of World War 2, and continued operating until 1978. It was only in 1995 that the dairy shop once again opened its doors, since then, the awe-inspiring shop has become a globally-recognized landmark of Dresden, and no I will not mention the Monty Python cheeses sketch!

Examiners Knew Something Was Wrong,

when 50 applicants who took the exam had answered all 100 question correctly,

the exam they were trying to cheat on was their entrance exam into schools for teachers in the Mexican state of Michoacán, authorities decided to repeat the test on August 21, and thus managed to catch at least 35 women in the municipalities of Morelia and Arteaga trying to cheat with a very ingenious system, the Primera Plana Michoacan Facebook page recently published a video showcasing the very similar painted nail style of the 35 women, which reportedly represented the correct answer pattern to the 100 multiple-answer questions, although painted in different colors, the nails all featured the same dot motif. The pattern consisted of 10 different colored dots on each nail, corresponding to 100 responses in the exam booklet, you can see the video here, I tried to download it but could not, Gabriela Santillán Mora, who coordinated the application of the tests, confirmed that all the 35 women had the exact same color and dot pattern, plus each nail had 10 dots of the same color. It should be noted that the exam questions were answered by filling in the options marked with circles on optical sheets, so it is clear that the dot pattern was the key to how and in what order they should answer, who would have thought it?

If Hyper Realistic Tattoos,

are to your liking,

this tattoo artist will be of interest to you, photograph Oleg Shepelenko/Instagram, Oleg Shepelenko, is a talented tattoo artist from Rostov-on-Don, Russia, he has been getting international recognition thanks to his insanely detailed portrait tattoos, the self-taught artist who works out of the Lucky Style Tattoo Shop knew he had a talent for art when he began painting in school, but never got any formal training. He got into tattoos naturally, and used YouTube tutorials as inspiration, trying to imitate masters of the art and developing his own techniques along the way, developing an interest in hyper-realism, 

photograph from World Famous Tattoo Ink, Shepelenko channeled his entire ambition into producing photo-realistic portrait tattoos, and is now considered one of the top hyper-realist tattoo artists in the world, “Not being able to describe any particular thoughts or emotions that run through his head whilst working intently on a piece, he simply says, ‘I cannot describe. This I must feel,'” World Famous Tattoo Ink reports,I am not a fan of tattoos, but I have to admit these tattoo looks stunning.

A Sign Of The Times In Pattaya,

one of our friends sent us this photograph,

regular readers of our blog may remember that the Robins Nest was one of our Sunday roast restaurants we visited, when we lived in Thailand, a shame that it had to close, but hopefully when the tourist start to return things will be back to normal, having said that so many eateries in the UK are also suffering, I hope for all of them things improve, quickly,

I had an early morning visitor,

who made a couple of calls for the peanuts, I was going to pop out for a walk in the park, but it look like it was going to rain at the drop of a hat, so it was feet up for me, during the afternoon I watched a couple of films,

 firstly Upgrade, which I really enjoyed, basically after an accident, Grey, the main character was left a quadriplegic, but he is offered a chip that will restore and improve his body, which looking at this yesterday may not be so far away! 

I followed that with Freaks (2018), the film was in the same vein as the X-Men series, some humans have special abilities and have to hide from the normal population, another enjoyable movie to watch, I put the date as the film has the same title as one from my B&W collection,

Tod Browning's Freaks (1932),

the cast of the original Freaks, as an aside the original preview version of "Freaks" allegedly ran 90 minutes. After a disastrous reaction from the audience, MGM executive Irving Thalberg deemed the film "too horrific" and had it cut to its present length of 64 minutes, the cut footage is not known to exist,

in the evening time for my pre-meal sherry,

for my evening meal some manchego and scamorza cheese, cold cuts of Serrano, speck, chorizi, salami Napoli, along with gherkins, silver skin onions, walnuts, biscuits and a slice of nutty sour dough bread,

delicious!

'Cheers!', Diana arrived home just after 9.30, so feet up for a coffee and a chat, we watched one from Midsome Murder, next for us we were off to bed.

It Used To Be The Cry Of Fairground Card Trickster,

'find the lady!'

but now that cry can be used in these paintings by German body-painting artist Jörg Düsterwald who is a master of camouflage, taking nude female models and using body paint to conceal them in various environments, all photographs Jörg Düsterwald/Facebook,

Düsterwald has been producing body art projects for the last 25 years, showcasing his body-painting skills in creative projects, including advertising and TV marketing campaigns, but it was his camouflage series that really made him internationally famous,

Jörg Düsterwald has painted models into a number of backdrops, including fields of flowers and grains, car garages or forests. The photo shoots themselves take several hours to complete, but the German artist spends several days planning the project before arriving on location with the model, after painting the nude model, Jörg then places her against an item like a tree log or a wall and adds the final details to help her better blend into the background, scroll down to see if you ‘can find the lady’ in each of the photographs,

the 2008 German Body Painting Champion is one of Germany’s few full-time body-painters and one of the most talented such artists in the world. For more of Jörg Düsterwald’s impressive body art, check out his website and Facebook page, and how many ladies did you find? you have got to admit he is pretty good!

A Bank,

literally in the middle of nowhere,

was not as strange an idea as it seems, the building was used to mock Obrador’s “Fourth Transformation” of Mexico initiative, but a representative of the bank was quick to explain that although bizarre, the location of the branch actually makes sense,

Mario Saldaña, a representative of Banco del Bienestar, told RID Noticias that initially the new branch was supposed to be built in a more central area of Nuevo Casas Grandes, a small municipality in Chihuahua, but Mayor Héctor Mario Galaz refused to provide a plot of land for construction, so the bank had no choice but to accept a piece of land donated by the Mexican Army,

although the current location of the Banco del Bienestar was not the first option, the bank representative assured reporters that the route will be viable for beneficiaries who do not have their own cars, because public transport drops them off 100 meters from the branch, so now I know why a bank was built in the middle of nowhere, and for anyone without their own transport and queuing in the sun, for the bank and buses, thank Mayor Héctor Mario Galaz!

This Is Almost To Weird For Words,

a safe weighing an estimated 500-600 lbs., 

has apparently dropped out of the sky and landed in a agricultural field in New York state, USA, Kirk Mathes was out of town last Thursday, when he got a phone call about a large metal safe that had been found on one of his fields, near the town of Barre, word spread so fast that deputies had to disperse a crowd that had gathered on the side of the road to see the oddity,

the mystery of how it got there deepens because of a mysterious note attached to it, “If you can open it, you can keep what is inside,” the note attached to the safe reads, and Mathes claims that people actually tried opening it to see what’s inside before police came and dispersed them, the farmer is reluctant to solve the mystery of the safe, as it has proven a nice distraction from the pandemic,

“They took a sledgehammer to it, knocked off the dial and handle, they worked on the hinges, kind of beat it up,” the Barre farmer said. “My personal feeling is, leave it as a mystery. If you open it, the show is over. In these times, with the virus and the politics, it might get people a chance to set their problems or troubles aside and have a lot of fun talking about it.” as for who put the safe on his farm, Kirk Mathes doesn’t really know but he suspects it was “a wise guy or kids”, for now, the safe is in one of Mathes’ barns, but he told local reporters that he planned to hide it as soon as they left, to discourage anyone from breaking into his property to open or steal it. In the future, it could become part of a planned history museum in Barre. So we may never know what’s inside, “It could be holding millions of dollars. It could have confetti in there. You have no idea, so just dream,” local woman Cindy Vanlieshout said.

It Started Out A Nice Day For The Fox,

curled upon our sunbed,

I think with all of the wind and rain we have had recently, he is using it more than we are!

the day started out nice as well with a rainbow, Diana started work at 10.00, I had the day to myself, so a water change for the aquarium, and a glass clean for it, I watered the orchids and watched some television,

in the evening I was out to meet Steve at the club,

no cricket tonight,

so no bar-b-q, which was a shame, as on Wednesday I called in to make sure that there would be a match and barby and was told there was, also the kitchen would be open, as it happened there was no match and no barby, also the only thing on the menu was sausage or burger with chips, and yes you guessed it, they had sold out, so much for my evening meal! anyway we chatted the evening away and said out farewells,

just before 1.00 AM Diana called so I was off to the bus stop, to walk her home through the park, arriving home a coffee a chat and we were off to bed.