Here's a mater dolorosa in Seville Cathedral. I found many of these in churches across the city, dressed in rich fabrics, hands clasped in an agony of suffering, with rich gems sometimes depicting their tears. It seemed to me the sufferings of Mary are something of a cult for the Spanish, Jesus playing a secondary role in the drama. I liked these churches, some shabby and dusty, at times busy with people or just a solitary priest pottering about. I wondered about these statues, that perhaps the Spanish invest all their sorrows in the Virgin Mary so that they can get on with the business of enjoying life.

These are some of the recent acquisitions at the Museum of Miniature Found Objects. The two metal hearts are the kind donations of Mrs Plimmestine of west London. From left to right:

= the metal heart with an arrow was found at 8.51am on 9 August, in Earls Court Road near Kensington High Street;

= the heart-shaped sweet was found at 10.08am on Friday 29 July, in Guildsway, east London;

= the plastic red heart was found at 11.11am on Saturday 28 May, in Lordship Road, north London;

= the filigree metal heart was found on the paving stones in front of Hackney Town Hall in Mare Street, at 5.59pm on Saturday 18 June.

For the past year my sister Bérénice, an artist, has been working on a project based in an art gallery and our mother's house nearby. My mother moved from this house to a smaller one over a year ago, and took only those things from the house she wanted or needed. Bérénice was fascinated by what had been left behind; as she says, "What is our relationship to the stuff we no longer need? What happens when something as big as a house is superseded by a new life? There are things stowed away in our houses that we only seem to find when we vacate them . . ." One of the project's participants, Mike Ladd, captures the poignancy of this in his film, Ungiven Gifts, which features the voices of Bérénice and our mother Anne, telling the story of the some of the objects left behind. 

Bérénice's blog is also well worth a visit.

I spent the day in Nottingham recently and wandered up to the Castle. I was delighted to find this magnificent Robin Hood in the grounds. He's made of a wire frame, stuffed with compost and planted with about 3,500 tiny plants. It's the attention to detail I like so much - the three pheasant feathers for his cap, and the spare arrows in his quiver. Rufford Tenants' and Residents' Association, who made this fine piece of vegetable work, are to be congratulated. I'm not sure this kind of British municipal park decoration crosses cultures though; as I took the photo, a party of French visitors were guffawing away behind me.

I've been playing around with printing on non-standard paper today. I picked up an old paperback recently in a charity shop. It's got nicely yellowing pages and the paper is very absorbent, so the colours should come out quite flat and, I hope, look rather old-fashioned. I've put together this image to use for the experiment, and if it works I'm thinking of printing out a lot of them and sticking them up around where I live.

This paperback cover is a gem of 1950’s jacket design, jumping out from a crowded rack in a second-hand bookshop in Islington. The image is a dramatic piece of illustration, hinting at a racy story before the book’s even been opened. When I took if off the rack to have a look I discovered a card inside — Walter Trauffer on the Via Cattedrale in Lugano advertising his music boxes and cuckoo clocks. By the look of it The Case of the Empty Tin’s from the same era, with Walter Trauffer’s offerings used as a book mark on an Italian holiday.

Here are two recent additions to the Museum of Found Objects. The earring was found at 3.04pm outside Masala Zone in Bishops Bridge Road in west London on Saturday 4 June. The toy soldier was found on Friday 8 July at 10.23am in Tufnell Park Road in north London.