when pigs...and COWS, fly

(New sculpture by Gary Rith: Fun stuff here today, huh? The little plane and wheels were made on the pottery wheel, otherwise sculpted)

I read the other day that BUTLER is from "bottler".  In English households hundreds of years ago, bottles were very expensive, and wine was cheap and sold in wooden casks.  A special servant would be trusted to decant wine into bottles for easy serving at the table....BOTTLER became butler, isn't that cool?

All of this leads to what I was dreaming a minute ago:  I was a butler (or footman, or waitstaff?) at a large Downton Abbey type household.  We served this big ceremonial dinner for some special occaision, and we were running around, back and forth with dishes....yes, I dreamt I was running around with other people's dishes.

The guests were very messy and wasteful and THEY TALKED ABOUT US LIKE WE DIDN'T HAVE EARS "oh, these people are so slow, I wonder why these servants are so slow?", meanwhile making a mess for us to clean.

There was a beautiful confected dessert, little cakes with a different icing sculpture atop each one, YES, including a little airplane (see how reality and dream come together here).  It was not against the rules, but it was first come first served, and servants could have the extra food.  I took one of those treats and set it aside to take home, and hoped it would not be ruined or taken by somebody else.  It is so funny, we earnestly wanted to do a good job for these underappreciative slobs, and I was so excited to have just ONE of what they took for granted and barely noticed.

ANYWAY, the head server (OK, maybe I was an underbutler...well, a footman then) the head butler was clever--he had set aside coffee and chocolates in another room for the guests to serve themselves and therefore get out of our way, so we could start the huge task of cleaning up all their mess....did you see SHADOWLANDS?  There is a good scene there when that staff is cleaning up a dinner mess and one butler is drinking wine left in somebody's glass........