Thursday night shenanigans at a tennis club.
The Marquee needed to be up and many hands and many bystanders made light work.
First event in the Marquee was the July committee meeting.
Who could possibly have guessed that we had put the table on an ant nest.
The ants took a very dim view of being forced to attend a committee meeting. Smiles turned to squeals as the ants voted with their feet . Finding all the nooks and crannies of light summer clothing . The quickest committee meeting ever.
My day was hijacked , first by a sound then an image and then later again by another image that just nagged away at me until I had sketched,painted and photographed it into existence. Until I was done.
Lola and I were out walking early this morning , almost from the start we were followed by the slightly worrisome and slightly exciting sound of someone hurrying with a suitcase on wheels. At one point we were overtaken by a woman who had laden herself with everything she would need for a day on the beach. She was a woman on a mission. As she sped past me I grabbed a quick photo which I have altered to anonymise . There was no beach, we were both walking at exactly high tide. She was way ahead of us and as I looked over the wall she was patiently waiting for some beach to appear. By the time we passed again, on our way back, she had claimed her spot on a tiny ribbon of wet pebbles.
She had unloaded and set up a one woman encampment. Sun longer, parasols, cooler box and books. She was oiled up like a sausage on a bar b que. She was not alone, the thin strip of pebbles had grown and she had neighbours, but none who had hauled quite so much stuff. When I got home I decided to donate her my empty beach of yesterday.
It was the least I could do. I had an interesting afternoon sketching her arriving on an empty beach then watercoloured and did a pen and ink sketch before sticking them all together digitally.
Sometimes I just have to get an image out of my system. I hope she had a great day, she really deserved it.
Wednesday is hump day. I have the hump, or the grumps with a side order of entitlement. This week has not been kind. What I needed was an early morning walk with Lola and a swim at high tide from any one of the three beaches near my home. Tough weeks require some head clearance and swimming is my place to do that. That is my entitlement in a nutshell.
All three beaches had large black dogs off their leads with no direct supervision from their swimming owners. Not to my taste or Lola’s. Both Lola and Hugo were attacked by the same large black dog on two different occasions. Lola has a long but not specific memory. She takes a very dim view of all large black dogs, on her behalf I exercise caution around large black dogs off leads. To find one on each of the swimming areas was dispiriting to say the least.
I settled into the arches above the middle swimming spot and tried to enjoy a three day old Pain au Chocolat from Lidl. While they are delightful fresh from the Lidl oven they are like old boots 3 days later. The hump/grumps were not resolved.
Even worse the two women using the middle swim spot took forever to get in the water and their dog was all over the place. There is only a narrow entry way to the sea.
So I took my humpy grumpy self off to Tranquilty bay where the large, free- running dog had disappeared. I had a fabulous swim and Lola basked in the sun on my towel. Afterwards, as I walked past the middle swim zone the two women and their dog were just climbing the steps to leave. Without a backward glance Lola and I were down the steps and swim/ basking #2 happened.
Can you believe this? The last beach, as I walked past was completely empty. #3 swim/ bask occured.
The hump/grumps are not completely rinsed out of my system and nothing can rejuvenate a three day old Lidl Pain au Chocolat.
But with patience the black dogs will leave the area both metaphorically and in real life. I just have to give these things some time.
The black dogs were real. It is only as I wrote this that I realised that sadness can also be described as ‘ the black dog’
Sad news from our iddylic swimming/ bobbing spot. Over the weekend a local woman died from a heat related medical event at Tranquility Bay. Flowers from the swimming community absolutely reflect the vibrancy of the people who regularly swim here and who will be feeling her loss.
Firestone Bay was popping this weekend. Early dog walks to avoid the heat. High tide swims to mitigate the heat. Evening dog walks to avoid the heat again. + A piece of outstanding good luck.
On one of our walks we found this mirror in a yard give away. It was very hot to carry such a heavy thing home so we hid it in a bobbing friends garden and drove around to collect it in the cool of the early morning. It is going to live on a wall in our yard.
For now it is propped at ground level but it will be mounted so that it reflects the Olive Tree.
The Olive tree is also planted in a pot that a neighbour gave away. Serendipitous finds.
Alongside the heat of the day a feisty wind sprung up this afternoon . My afternoon swim or dip was spent in a large rockpool. I only ever bother with it in the winter months usually . But today with the heat and waves pouring on it was like a salty jacuzzi.
What’s one habit that has improved your life the most?
I pondered this one a bit, and initially discarded it. But in the spirit of ‘ my blog my rules’ I will have 3 habits that have improved my life.
In no particular order. Retirement. Bobbing. Blogging. Although without retirement the other two would be less possible. Blogging existed in a much lesser way before retirement. Other Bobbers manage to bob without being retired.
All three feed my creativity and nourish my soul. I was creative on the side before I retired. Now I have more time, more thinking time and more down time. Creativity is no longer a side issue. It sits at the centre with voluntary admin and domestic admin taking up the side bars.
Retirement took me away from an amazing group of friends and colleagues. There were some rogue* colleagues of course, people best left behind when you close your work locker for the last time. I have done that a few times!
Bobbing gives me silly , lovely friends to swim in the sea with and made me move into a community that can use my transferable skills and also gives me amazing friends, no rogues at bobbing, maybe some in the community. For the most part avoidable.
Blogging brings everything together old friends , new friends, local friends and some, all around the world that I may never meet. Casting words out into the world, with no knowledge of where they land is very therapeutic.
My blog, my rules, 3 habits to improve my life, and it was already pretty good anyway.
Heatwaves in England do funny things. When we planned our yard to look tropical we never expected it to be tropical. But here it is July 2026 requiring not one, but two sunshades. And for it to be unusable at some parts of the day.
Yesterday we had our warmest ever bob, the sea temperature was over 19 degrees in Tranquility Bay. For the first time ever, Ice cream was the post bob refreshment.
Earlier in the week a trip to the library has an unexpected twist.
A near naked man decided to expose himself to me. Really quite unnecessary and not what anyone needs to see on the way to the library or anywhere for that matter.
Global warming at a hyperlocal level.
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
The hardest of ‘hard years’ were the years when my children were very small and both my parents were terminally ill and we lived 300 miles apart. The support of my husband and friends helped me get through it, but in truth, as an only child with no substantial extended family, what got me through it was me. I emerged from that period changed and damaged forever. The damage buried deep beneath many layers of a woman who was coping with whatever life was throwing at her.
Hard years just like good years are the foundations that the years yet to come are built on. The cracks and fault lines caused by the hard years are just that. Cracks and fault lines, good years build strength and stability around them. I know where the cracks are and they can largely be avoided. Sometimes one trips me up when I least expect it. Flying over Australia recently, opened up a crack I didn’t even know was there. Suddenly I was grieving for all the stuff I didn’t do while I was busy coping with all the serious stuff that hard years generate.
Thank goodness we are not required to mourn missing out on serious stuff when life is all tickety boo. That would be a counterproductive cycle of thinking.
Although in fairness there are quite a lot of people who love a good wallow in their own and other peoples misfortune. Soul Suckers.
If your glass is half empty, top it up a bit.
Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall
Song by Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots
Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is falling in mine
Into each heart some tears must fall
But someday the sun will shine
Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts
When I think of you another shower starts
Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is falling in mine
Into each life some rain’s got to fall
Too much, too much, too much is falling in mine
Into each heart some tears must fall
But someday the sun will shine
Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts
But when I think of you, pretty baby
That’s when another shower starts
Into each life some rain’s got to fall
Too much, too much, too much is falling in mine, oh yeah
Into each and every life some rain is bound to fall
But too much of that stuff is falling in mine
And into each heart some tears must fall
But I know, baby, that someday that old sun is bound to shine
Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts
But when I think of you, pretty baby
That’s when another shower starts
Into each life some rain’s got to fall
These lyrics are about a failed romantic relationship . But I have always hung on to the notion that eventually, after the hard bits of life the sun will eventually shine again. It always does.
For this reason I like in particular these 4 lines from the song.
Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is falling in mine
Into each heart some tears must fall
But someday the sun will shine
What goes into this file ? Anything that I believe deserves the title. What went into todays picture? The answers might surprise you. One of them surprised me!
Two photographs. A standard tidal pool shot and my feet in a paddling pool.
I like my shots of the tidal pool uncluttered by other humans. One on the beach and two swimming is the perfect number. My feet are in a paddling pool, as we are doing more granddaughter care currently because my daughter broke and dislocated her shoulder. We bought a pool to entertain the small person in a heatwave, in the evenings the pool is the perfect place for feet.
I used an app called PortraitArt to turn my feet into a portrait. A paid for App.
Source: PortraitArt https://share.google/wZ1ZXELS2mzac69r0
Then using Snapseed. A free App, I stuck the untouched pool photo and the foot portrait together using ‘double exposure’. Manipulating them to get a pleasing image that matched my imagined image of sitting comfortably with my feet overlooking the pool. The reality is neither comfortable or possible. The angles are all wrong and the rocks not particularly comfy.
Then back to the PortraitArt app for a poster style.
Then some touching up using the magic eraser in Google Photos and I have the image I imagined.
Then, and only then do I use Photoshop, just to save my image at a high resolution for future use.
I have been image manipulating for more than 45 years. Early on, in a wet processing dark room for both photography and radiography. Complicatedly, doing specific and very accurate radiography to produce subtraction or multilayered images to aid medical diagnosis. Then digital radiography became a thing and latterly AI assisted imaging. These things save lives.
Curiously as an artist I often use nearly all those skills to create my Hybrid Prints. These things create Art.
So when a ‘proper’ artist or photographer looks at my Hybrid work and says,
” Oh Photoshop, anybody can do anything with photoshop”
or,
“It’s just AI, no skill in that”
I smile and say,
“Really”
My thought bubble is a little more dynamic.
But here is the surprise to me. A couple of weeks ago I framed a Christmas gift, a print created by a fellow artist called Ian Purvis. I have yet to hang it but in the evenings when I watch Scandi-Noir dramas on Netflix, the framed print looks at me, desperate to be hung.
My colour choices for my image couldn’t be more similar if I tried.
Which all goes to show that there are lots of things that go into an original image, however it is created. It all comes together in my head, a cluttered and very busy space. I hope that this is my last gentle rant about ‘real’ artists or photographers. Somehow I doubt it.
I am unable to provide a link to Ian Purvis website currently. This will be updated as soon as I can.
Below is an image of him with one of his prints. The same one that gave me my subliminal colour choices.
When I look at the Firestone Feet there are so many influences, accidents, concatenations and serendipity that have been incorporated in this image, alongside skills old and new. I think that just thought bubbling ‘Crack On’ is pretty mild really.
Funny things can spark a creative patch. For me it can be a deadline, a creative itch, or a commission, but this month I am aware that my creativity is directly linked to an ‘artistic difference’
I have been mulling over my comments and the comments of others. I am in the happy place of being content in agreeing to disagree. Now, my happy place thinking may affect decisions I make about which arts organisations I join in the future, but it may not.
But for now I am glad my painting mojo has returned with some lovely energy.
These two people on the beach are not having an argument. They are inspired by the many memorial benches I pass on my daily dog walks. The combination of names on benches who have enjoyed overlooking Plymouth Sound are not always traditional couples,sometimes they are friends, neighbours or colleagues. Names however come and go in fashion. Some pairings may never be popular again. Were my parents to have had a memorial bench it would be dedicated to Joy and Keith. One set of grandparents would be Gladys and Leonard. Or in a different marriage Gladys and Reginald. Not pairings I expect ever to be fashionable again.
This couple sit, overlooking an unchanging seascape. I sat them on wooden deckchairs to enhance the timelessness of the scene. The figures are androgynous and could be any two people of any gender or age or race. Most importantly they could be Edith and Herbert, Sharon and Tracy or Amir and Tulip. Just two people enjoying the view any time since 1886 when the deck chair was first patented
I needed a bit of space to add the quote. So the painting needed a good gap where not much was happening.
The artistic difference was based on a statement that ‘real artists’ don’t use digital manipulation tools that could be considered to be on the slippery slope towards AI .
As part of my creative process I use digital manipulation on occasions, but also get painty and dirty just like any other real artist.
Here my initial sketch and the subsequent watercolour have been digitally combined.
Later on I may work into the watercolour with pen and ink to get a similar appearance.
I do rather love the effect a minor disagreement has had on my creative thinking and more than happy to agree to disagree with’real’ artists. Real or not I have been hard at it today.
Detail of the finished piece. I am undecided about my ultimate presentation. As above with lots of space in landscape format or tighter cropped in Portrait.
theoldmortuary.design 