Scyliorhinus Canicula
(small spotted catshark) a bottom feeder that likes shallow waters.
More commonly named the Lesser Spotted Dogfish, more colloquially known round here as those FCUKNIG FISH that get washed up on the beach.
I did a pre dog walk earlier to check out the beach and could see crows and seagulls were still working, where there were still some remains of washed up Lesser Spotted Dogfish.
Later, on the walk Cosmo’s lead was attached a good 500 yards before this particular section of the beach (which is his favourite at the moment!).
Once the hazzard was passed I was able to remind myself that the glue I was using to make my mosaic had gone rather watery. I make my own glue for this purpose and had made two jars. The unused one, stored in an air tight jar was still all jelly, but the one I was using was open to the air, and over a period of about a month it had broken down and gone too runny. It is making the paper too wet and buckling is a problem. Also I noticed that the paper had got so wet it had soaked through and was well on the way to sticking itself to the table top. As it is so watery it is taking a long time to dry in this damp weather. another problem it would cause would be when I need to cut the mosaic into sections with a scalpal the still slightly damp paper will tear rather than cut. This is to be avoided as well.
So, really I was telling myself that for 15 – 20 minutes of time invested in pouring the glue back into a sauce pan add about another heaped table spoon of flour to thicken it up, a bit more salt to stop it going mouldy and boil it up for a few minutes would make the perfect glue.
This would be time well spent. Perfect jelly like glue enables the mosaic tiles to slide over the surface of the paper easily for accurate positioning. It also has less water in so dries better in these damp conditions and wont buckle the paper quite so much.
The other thing that crossed my mind was that I have two schools projects coming up. One in a rural primary school with children who have started life with an advantage, compared to an urban secondary school where my ‘transition’ group of pupils are definately disadvantaged. I am looking forward to this contrast.
Cosmo is walking home with a slight limp?
