And the winner is….

Cee’s theme for her Fun Foto Challenge this week is ‘Smile’.

The nearby town of Le Dorat is hosting the World Sheep-shearing Championships next month and already the place is en fête in anticipation. An amusing feature of the preparations is the decoration of shop windows with paintings related to the theme, including this one.

As far as I know, the Mondial de Tonte, as it’s called, isn’t a sheep beauty competition, but the winner here is certainly smiling, even if the runners-up don’t look too happy.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Smile

Thursday Doors: Perigueux – Shopfronts

So many doors in Perigueux…enough even to allow an individual theme of shopfronts for this week’s instalment.

Since we finished up last week with a blue door, continuity dictates that we start now with another:

Another clearly marked, if less colourful, example:

This is the shop window of a ‘luthier’ – a maker of violins and other string instruments:

Rather less obviously, this is now a boutique, but one with a pretty impressive entrance:

But I have no idea what these two commercial premises may once have been:

Thursday Doors 18 October 2018

Window Shopping

The town of Thiers, in the Auvergne region, is known as the cutlery centre of France. It’s not surprising, therefore, that there are quite a few window displays like this one:

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Through A Window

Boots and shoes

I spotted this juxtaposition of two photographs in the window of a shoe repair shop in the old part of Cahors. Footwear: the same but different.

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Twos

Heroic Failure

A noble name for a noble, but ultimately doomed (curry houses tend not to work out too well in France) enterprise in the back streets of Cahors.

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Store signs

Tuesdays of Texture: Boulangerie

This shop sign provides an attractive juxtaposition of textures with the wall on which it is set, above a boulangerie (bakery) in the town of St Junien.

To put it into context, here is the street view:

Tuesdays of Texture 25 April 2017

Thursday Doors: Chartres (1)

After last week’s detour around redundant shopfronts, we’re back on more familiar ground with the first of a few posts featuring doors from the cathedral city of Chartres. Next week I’ll focus on the cathedral itself, but for now, to maintain some sort of continuity with last week’s post, let’s start with a couple of commercial premises that are obviously still going concerns:

Shutters count, don’t they?

A couple of old doors from the same residential street in the old part of the town:

And this one is obviously a replacement of the original:

Finally for this week, the premises of an Appart’Hotel (for self-catering holidays):

Thursday Doors 6 April 2017

Mundane? Shop Window

A butcher’s window display that I spotted in one of the narrow streets of the San Polo neighbourhood of Venice. The big hand-written sign ‘Oggi c’e il capretto’ means ‘Today we have kid [as in kid goat]’ and there it is, hanging right in the middle.

butcher

Mundane Monday Challenge #93

Thursday Doors: Haddington Part 2

As foreshadowed last week, some of the shop and other commercial doors that can be found in the East Lothian market town of Haddington

This one’s hard to miss:

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And I particularly like this door set into the corner of the building:

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An old building that’s seen rather better days. I derive no reassurance whatsoever from the message on the door:

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A rather more modern – although still dated – shopfront:

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The local estate agencies don’t stint themselves when it comes to imposing doorways:

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haddington8

Thursday Doors 8 December 2016

Weekly Photo Challenge: Optimistic

‘A Vendre’: For Sale. Ladies and gentlemens hairdressers, Perfumery and Angling supplies.

Yes, well….good luck with that.

Optimistic

Weekly Photo Challenge: Optimistic