Interesting reading… 
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loathe to rekindle the crit’air sticker thread
but this info might be useful to some of you… a few new restrictions coming into force on 1st Jan for level 4 vehicles…
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Too late! A new member brought it back from the dead this morning! 
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Not Jan 1st… but actually from 15th April 2024…
and that first tranche only involves vehicles registered before 1st January 2017…
This New Year’s morning my wife and I revisited our long standing composting debate .
“What are you doing with those duck bones and egg shells?”
“They’re going in the compost.”
“But they’ll attract rats.” (citing a favourite S African suburban myth).
“The rats that live in the garden wall already raid the compost bin for fruit and veg.”
Silence…
And then the sucker punch -
“Anyhow, Macron says we have to!”
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I’ve never composted bone apart from the odd rat, mouse or bird that the cat’s bought home for us. But always compost egg shells.
As for bones Mrs W. Freezes them until have enough for a broth / stock cooked up on top of the wood burner with additional herbs spices veggies etc. Funnily have some on the go at the moment. Usually cooked for at least 24hrs. Great source of collagen.
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Our bones have already been used for stock. There’s not a scrap of flavour left in 'em.
I make chicken stock every Monday and duck stock every third week.
Didn’t know that but have followed some of your culinary exploits, and they sound delicious good hearthy food.
For spent bones… This is what I’d do but haven’t done so far, we just bin them.
Crush / make smaller then compost, they will take ages / years to fully compost.
You have a wood burner, dry the bones burn them and put the wood ash with bone ashes on the garden but don’t over do it.
My parents in the UK put the bones out for the foxes but don’t make stock.
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Thanks for that, so for the sake of domestic peace, bones can henceforth go in the woodburner,
I remember that (fifty years ago!) traditional etching ink, apart from Frankfurt black (burnt vine cuttings) was made from burnt bones. In the UK this was called ‘French black’, and I imagine that in France it was probably noir anglais (bit like the differing national euphemisms for syphilis)
Reminds me a little of ‘Mummy Brown’
When is a painting not just a painting?….
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Mummy got everywhere didn’t it. Doesn’t Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi call the Duchess a ‘salvatory of green mummy’. There’s a nice bit in a Neil Gaiman story about poor mummified cats.
Was also known as ‘Egyptian brown’. Today more sensitive souls than myself might feel the need to refer to it as ‘Egyptian colour of colour’.
Indian yellow also had an unpleasant source (and smell)
And then, there is the delicious cinnabar red of “dragon’s blood” mercury sulfide, historically popular in China
Probably best avoided as a TCM for longevity. Or for makeup.
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Unfortunately cadmium yellow and red are both vey expensive paints, but like most modern industrially derived pigments, their permanence is much better than their traditional equivalents.
Re Klimt’s Kiss, encountered the original a few years ago in the unlikely setting of Liverpool Tate
The Vienna Secession and other early C20th Eastern European movements in visual culture such as the Czech Kubismus architecture are often overlooked in Western art histories, while my Rumanian dentist’s waiting room has small intriguing paintings of what presumably are Rumanian buildings inspired by early C20th Viennese architecture.
When I was a printmaking student half a century ago, there was occasional mention of ‘dragon’s blood’', but can’t recall whether it was a traditional etching mordant, something used in lithography or a pigment. Don’t think it was the latter in this context.
We had supplies of blood used for repairing old paintings that used them.
Term comes from the Persian 'zinjifrah’ which loosely translates as 'Dragon’s Blood”. Several sources.
Cinnabar was colorant for natural lacquer in China for over two thousand years and still glows vermillion in seals on Chinese ink paintings. China has long found the colour red irresistible, and a mythical dragon connection always enhances the magic.
Luckily, or more probably by unfortunately fatal trial and error, early attempts to ingest the magic were abandoned. But perhaps not before taking the life of China’s ruthless but amazing, first unifying emperor, 秦始皇 Qin Shi Huang. He died only 15 years after becoming emperor, leaving us it is said with the name “land of Qin”, Chin.
Huangdi was more than a bit consumed by belief in a connection between mercury and immortality. He would have done better concentrating on his two sons because the thick one ended murdering the best one and promptly lost the kingdom he sought to inherit. But that is another tale! The succeeding Han followed the military playbook not unlike contemporaneous military Roman empire to the west, holding the kingdom through 300 years of prosperity.
Perhaps history still holds lessons we should study…,
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The Met says:
What is cinnabar? The word most likely comes from the ancient Greek κιννάβαρι kinnabari , later romanized to cinnabaris . In Persian, it is known as شنگرف shangarf ; in the Arabic world it appears as زنجفرة zinjifrah . Cinnabar, the most common ore of oxidized mercury found in nature, occurs in granular crusts or veins associated with volcanic activity and hot springs. The ruddy hue of this natural mineral pigment embodies the hot and fiery conditions in which it forms.
Vero’s note (The n and the g in شنگرف are pronounced separately) both shangarf and zinjifrah are just approximations of the Greek word. Dragon in Arabic is tinnīn and blood is damm, in Persian it’s ejdeha and blood is khūn.