This is a funny old meandering blog. Caused in part by a day of domestic admin, zoom meetings and long but rather too familiar dog walks. I was tied to the house awaiting a call that would herald the arrival of a gas engineer to service our boiler and hob. It is entirely possible, close to home, to do a really long dog walk but be able to quickly take a short cut and get home in twenty minutes to keep a Gas Engineer happy. His window of opportunity was 8-6. He arrived at 4:30 and was gone by 5, thats a lot of anticipation and not much action. A fair bit of time to fill. Some of it was spent delving in my picture archive to illustrate this blog.

The picture above appeared in yesterdays blog that required staircases to illustrate the pondering. I’ve tweaked it a little to bring out all the colours.It is one of my favourite images of the last few years. Yesterday I was unsure of the location. If asked I would have confidently said it was from an old refugee hostel in Hong Kong. As I had loads of time yesterday I looked its location up and discovered it came from much closer to home and is in fact a rather smelly old staircase from a disused Plymouth night club.

While looking up the location I discovered another favourite picture that shares some of the same colours on a distressed wall but has a completely different feel. Finding this gave me an idea for todays blog. Loosely it is about colour and texture using four pictures from my archive

This gorgeous wall from a coffee shop in Hoi An in Vietnam is shabby, not through neglect but through over use. The under colour bleeds through the newer paint as the top coat is gently worn off by countless customers leaning against the wall while enjoying a coffee and pastry.

Taking the coffee shop theme forward I found this picture which has no easily discernible colour.

Another coffee shop find. This picture mesmerises me with its blandness and impracticality. There is nothing going on here and yet I am drawn to this image because it is beige and my mind is free to explore the texture and shape of the pillows and hard surfaces. The last picture in this quartet has even less colour but is conundrum. Still a pillow but one that has a feather on the outside.

A journey of vivid to white in four pictures and loads of textures. Today, you may be pleased to know, I will get out more…