Ravens & Cranes

I'll have to admit that my new job has rendered me practically jobless.

A contradiction in terms but all too true - since essentially my working hours have shrunk drastically leaving me with plenty of idle time on my hands. Rattling about the vast estate of Netherfield, I've started coming up with dozens of hobbies to fill up my time from painting-by-numbers to glass etchings.

And lately to making paper mobiles.

So how do my DIY projects start? Well I came upon the idea after finding several forlorn paper cranes discarded on my Christmas decoration pile. Sadly drooping wings hoping to take flight again - and who was I to tell them nay?

After all what better place was there to fly than in our suitably Gothic dining room?


Shockingly cavernous, the dining room in Netherfield comes with lofty ten-foot ceilings, thick walls festooned with pink stalactites for tiles and the barest minimum of ambient light stealing in between darkened windows. For reasons better known to herself, the previous landlady - the inscrutable Mrs Elton, prefers to dine in relative darkness, blindly groping for her eating utensils while blithely guessing the contents of the main course.

How else to explain the lone dejected lightbulb flickering miserably just above the sober black dining table?


Always a pleasure having you for dinner at Netherfield!
No doubt offering some respite after the blinding magnificence of two chandeliers in her living room.

Our Mrs Elton always had questionable tastes.

Mrs Elton : See my lovely lovely dining room.
Paul : All it needs is a brooding black raven to complete the look.
Mrs Elton : You think that would make it look better, yeah?
Paul : Don't even think about adding to the haunted mansion, Morticia.

So at least I hoped the cheery pink paper cranes would help alleviate the profoundly dismal atmosphere. A tad less Goth. A little more optimism.

Well, maybe one black bird in the mix :)