Postcard Challenge and Paint Party Friday

It's Friday again, and that means it's time for Paint Party Friday, hosted as always by Eva and Kristin, and Darcy's postcard challenge, where the theme this week is Egypt.

Jason and Shannon have been very busy getting their shop ready, and next week they will be opening. In one of the boxes of ‘rubbish’ as Shannon calls it, they find a heavy, black stone statue of a cat, with Egyptian hieroglyphics round the base. Jason is convinced it must be a real antiquity; the rest of the family is sceptical. They take it with them when they meet for their daily fish and chips and sit round the table, with the statue placed rather incongruously between the salt and the vinegar.
Jason says, ‘It’s real, I can feel it in me guts!’ Shannon laughs, and tells him that he’s probably feeling the two portions of fish and chips in there! Cissie, Thelma and Queenie are not at all convinced. Cissie exclaims, ‘Well, first of all we’ll give it a good scrub, it’s filthy.’ Jason is horrified, ‘That ain’t filth, it’s patina!’ ‘Whatever, I don’t like it on my table while I’m eating!’ squeaks Thelma, ‘I bet it’s full of germs!’ Queenie makes a decision. ‘Well, put it back in the box for now, so that the germs don’t jump onto Thelma, and tomorrow you can take it to the British Museum and ask about it. If the people there don’t know, who will?’ They all find this a good idea, especially Latif, who has been eying the dirty statue on his clean table with very bad grace, and finish off their meal happily. On the way home they buy cream cakes for tea at the baker’s, and take them back to Cissie’s and Thelma’s flat.
The next day Jason and Shannon set off for the British Museum in Great Russell Street, and are completely overawed as they see how large it is.

Entrance is free, so they march in, holding their statue. They get stopped straightaway by the security. ‘Whatcha got there?’ asks the man.'You can't come in here with something like that!' Jason and Shannon explain, and after some phone calls, he allows them to go through to the Egyptian department, and says that someone will be waiting for them there.
They are very impressed just by the enormous size of the place, and Jason is thunder struck by all the Egyptian mummies and figures and other artefacts. ‘Blimey, I could make a fortune selling these!’ he says. Luckily, nobody hears him.

 They are met by one of the  museum’s curators, who is very friendly, examines their statue, and says it is very beautiful, but only a replica. He tells them that it is  Bastet, who was a goddess in ancient Egypt, and that cats were worshipped and even mummified. They can hardly believe their eyes when they see some of them in the museum! Bastet was the goddess of love, joy, music and dance.Her duties were to watch over the moon at night so that it didn’t get stolen, or eaten by mice, and she was the protector and patron of pregnant women. Shannon is totally starry eyed when she hears this. ‘We’re keeping her!’ she says. ‘A wise decision!’ says the curator. ‘It’s not an antique, but beautifully made of black basalt, and really beautiful!’ ‘Well, okay!’ says Jason. ‘We’ll put her on the table in front of the window, she’ll look nice there!’ They spend a couple of hours walking round the museum, and look for everything connected to Bastet.

(All photos courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)

After arriving home, they tell the story to Cissie and Thelma. ‘Well!’ says Cissie. ‘When it’s been scrubbed clean of the patina of antiquity, it might even look nice! Who wants tea and cake?'

This is the postcard they send home:

For Paint Party Friday, I have carried on with the Egyptian theme. I painted 2 triangular canvases some time back to use up some leftovers of blue and purple paint. Today I added the glitter, and painted the moon. The picture of Bastet has been collaged. It is not finished yet, and I am not sure which motive to use for the second one; time will tell!

That's all for today. Have a great weekend, take care, and thanks for dropping in!