NB! · Observations · Nature · Humour

Just look at those eyes!

Just look at those eyes! This charmer of a flying fish all but begs to be picked up and cuddled

NB! · Museums · Observations · Nature

I had only ever seen the European anglerfish in Donat Naumov's "The World of the Ocean" and in the children's encyclopaedia "Pochemuchka", and I am greatly impressed by this handsome grump on display at the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco

NB! · Museums · Observations · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour

The Giant Fossil Turtle from the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco: This Is How I See Russian Officialdom

A pale stone vase with relief decoration on a short pedestal, with long green blades of grass hanging beside it.

NB! · Observations · Humour

Vase on a veranda in Monte Carlo with a relief resembling both a duck and a ribbon

A vase on our veranda in Monte Carlo has made me look afresh at the "duck or rabbit" puzzle. So then: duck or ribbon?

Architecture · Observations · Heritage

Riviera Palace in France partly converted into apartments as restoration work continues

The Riviera Palace is not in the best of states at present, of course. The century of its grandeur has passed, when expensive motor cars crowded before the main entrance, celebrities lounged within and fountains of iced water bubbled. Now part of the building has been remodelled and the public

Architecture · Observations · Mores

I Was Lucky Enough to Stay in One of the Most Beautiful Buildings in Monte Carlo

I was lucky enough to stay in one of the most beautiful buildings in Monte Carlo. Formally, of course, this is France: the town of Beausoleil, founded in 1904, which was even proposed to be called Upper Monte Carlo. But in the end the name Monte-Carlo Supérieur went to

NB! · Observations · Humour

relatable

Books · Observations · Ethnography · Humour

The author issues a warning without specifying its subject

Welsh Folklore of 1909 records this omen: if you wish to die, eat cabbage in August. As they say, I have merely done my duty and warned you.

The East · Geography · Art · Observations · Nature

Senchikhin's 1969 painting of the Aral and the disappearance of the Aral Sea

The Aral Sea, a boat, 1969. This picture hangs in my home in one of the most prominent places, beside several similarly unassuming subjects, all of them from the Aral. It is a fairly simple specimen of the genre study in the Impressionist manner, by an author who is not

A faience lidded vessel shaped like a hen on a scalloped platter, with an egg and chicks beside it, in a museum display case.

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

Brussels faience in the form of a hen with an egg and chicks

Such faience is a purely Brussels trade. Looking at these sweet chicks, I want to become a vegetarian

Observations · Humour

And You, Too, Beauties, Shall Be Touched by Decay

Recognised them all, comrades?

Art · Monarchies · Observations

Symbolism in portraits of Maria Leszczynska, wife of Louis XV, with lilies, a sphinx and oak

I have three similar eighteenth-century portraits for you. The first shows Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, mother of Louis XV; the others show his consort Marie Leszczyńska, who adopts the pose of her mother-in-law in order to please her husband. But the other details of Leszczyńska's