Christmas In July! Not exactly of course but certainly a flavour of the festive season. The last of our furniture and ‘stuff’ arrived yesterday, out of storage. A large old chest arrived ready to be stacked with Christmas decorations. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen our Christmas trinkets in the summer before. Yesterday was probably the last hard day of furniture positioning and curtain hanging. We rewarded ourselves with a Caribbean platter. Nothing rewards hard physical labour in quite the same way as a takeaway.
The work of the day was doubly rewarded with a trip to a comedy club at The Leadworks in the evening. This really was a milestone in the Pandemic, our first night out in a club environment. Normality with just some changes. It felt so good to laugh in public, in unison with strangers.
Chuckling, chortling, giggling, just fabulous. The room was puffed up with happiness and we ordered a cup of tea via WhatsApp at 11Pm because we could. I’m fairly certain I’ve never juggled a cup and saucer in a club environment before. It’s probably not the last time. High on laughter and a warm tummy is a good feeling.
Hard on the heels of the Friday blog is the Saturday blog. The waters between Drakes Island and the tidal pool is a very busy stretch of water. Some of the most regular users are the Dockyard Tugs. This one is Faithful and is a Twin Tractor Unit Tug, built in 1985.
All the Bobbers love it when a Tug chugs past on a swimming session, there is a delicious thrum that goes through the water and resonates in our bones.
The name Faithful also gives me the chance to share a rare Celebrity anecdote. Sharing is the rarity. Having worked in Harley Street and in proper London Hospitals we’ve many an amusing tale filed away but confidentiality is a hurdle to witty celebrity nattering.
We were at a festival a few years ago when we saw some kitten heeled feet sticking out of a bush, closer inspection found them to be attached to a woman, still holding a glass, we grabbed her arms and pulled her out and she carried on walking without comment. Coincidentally a similar thing had happened to us at a different event about a year before. The women’s surnames were Faithful and Pallenburg. It’s not everyday you find someone in an awkward situation but finding two Rolling Stones muses in separate bushes is quite a story. Of course both the women in question were substantial people in their own right, but it can be argued that their fame and friendship began when they were associated with the Rolling Stones which is why I’ve allowed myself to use the word ‘ muse’.
This late blog writing will not become a regular habit. The two things I thought I might write about are so far apart I can’t begin to sew them together but I will try. Coupled with no WiFi and no broadband and patchy signal there is an awful lot of hanging around waiting for deliveries that all the wonderful tracking apps are meant to stop. But currently tracking is not for me and neither, reliably, is a quick call from the driver to say he is close. So we hang around all day waiting for things to arrive. The bonus to this is that there is ample time for unpacking and reorganising, to this end we have sorted out the two large fireplaces that are monumental features in the new house. Not sorted out in a way that will ever see the use of fossil fuels but sorted out in an aesthetic and houseplant kind of way.
The pale gold sofa in the top picture was pulled out of a skip nearly 30 years ago. It lived for years in a conservatory and was the slightly uncomfortable chair of choice for teenagers desperate to think big thoughts away from their parents. Hardly the kindest treatment for a sofa, clearly designed for the finer things in life. A bit of reupholstery brought it back to life and it used to live in the upstairs part of @theoldmortuary. Even that, an undertakers home and workplace was possibly a bit beneath the dignity of such an elegant piece of furniture. Maybe this recent move has brought it more into the surroundings it was designed for.
The houseplants in the bottom picture are gathered together in an old fender found at the house. They need something to control them, it seems not a week goes past without a new one joining our commune. In between titivating and embellishing fireplaces while waiting for deliveries the dogs still need walking and that is how the heart on a lamppost almost inexplicably joins in with this blog.
I spend a lot of time looking at lampposts while Hugo and Lola sniff out the messages left by other dogs and then leave coded notes of their own. Most lamposts are dull for humans but this one kept me occupied for as long as it took my dogs to read the urine news further down. What is going on here? The texture in the heart is keeping me thinking long after our ten legs carried us back to home to more unpacking. Hope your Friday was worthy of the expectation.
P. S I did some digital tweaking on the heart for the header image of this blog. I suspect the heart covers a message that someone no longer wants to be legible…
We are broadband less, WiFi less and with a poor signal for 5 more days. 5 more days of constrained blogging. Gardening however is unaffected. The pot grown garden plants have perhaps done the best out of our recent move, they communicate in ancient ways, unaffected by the whimsy of telecom companies. A North and East facing corner plot swapped for South and West Facing yard suits them very well so far.
The move has not been without its casualties. One Acer struggled a bit with being potted then rallied but was beaten by bad weather and a trip in a van. The numbers of plants has not diminished as some new ones have arrived in the arms of precious friends.
Who needs broadband when you have views like this on the evening dog walk.
The sad truth is that in this techno age it is very difficult to navigate many things without a computer or smart phone or a decent signal. The challenge of going through the preliminary stages of a call centre 5 times or dropping out of an on-line ‘ chat’ is one that I am learning to accept with every day that passes. 5 more days will not be so bad.
In other news one of the Bobbers has escaped to London to visit the Hampton Court Flower Show. Seals and dolphins forgotten she is in Green Park with the Elephants.
Screaming man rock. Not on our usual beach this evening. The tide was high and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, so we moved to the more popular beach near the tidal pool for a safer swim.
We were a split pack this evening with some Bobbers swimming an hour after the larger group set off. Lucky that they did because they caught sight of the seal swimming just behind the earlier group. Not realising such a special swim was occuring would have made the evening a whole lot more dull. Although, as usual, time spent with the Bobbers is far from dull even in the worst conditions.
Another day with a late blog, no broadband, no WiFi and a very poor signal. Also after two days waiting in vain for engineers we now have to wait 48 hours before we can get another appointment. Instead of scrolling through our phones we continue to unpack. Here is a tidy corner featuring tinned products that Have printed tin rather than paper wrappings. We are not avid collectors of anything but we do love some printed tin. We don’t collect fridge magnets either but the tiny collection below is evidence of how far down the unpacking pecking order we have got.
We are off for a swim soon, so with luck tomorrow’s blog will not be a reflection of cupboard curating. Who could begin to guess when a normal service will resume.
Hard on the heels of yesterday’s blog. Facebook memories gave me four images that I can use for the Monday Blog.
This first one is from the birthday some years ago of the friend who we always, apart from the last two years spend together. The rainbow cake rather nicely leads into a watercolour I did about three years ago. I was taking some watercolour classes. The subject of the week was human figures. I chose to paint a cruising site near Crystal Palace in London. It is called Beaulieu Heights and men go there day or night for casual sexual encounters. I suppose this is about a missed encounter. A man on his phone is oblivious to another man watching him from a park bench.
The word bench leads me rather fortuitously to a stool at Coffee Acadmics in Hong Kong.
Life is often a beautiful journey searching for something but this last picture is me just setting out on life’s journey.
This picture was almost certainly taken at the height of summer on the East Anglican coast. A brisk wind or sea mist often makes a cardigan essential beach wear even in July and August. Not such a problem on the Atlantic Coast which is my current location, although I could do without all the rain.
I have my fingers crossed for the successful instalation of a broadband service later today, that will make blogging and everything else a lot easier.
Better late than never. A Sunday morning blog written on Sunday evening. Standards are dropping here. Today is the second year we have missed a friends birthday. The grand Black Labrador Officer is a quirky gift that has still not been delivered. He was unpacked this morning in a box of both random and essential items. Today has completely been about curtains and torrential rain, neither subject particularly blogworthy.
We took the dogs out when the rain, briefly, cleared. The hedge in the middle of this picture is made up of roses that grow wildly on this cliff. Their fragrance is exactly that of Turkish Delight.
The break in the rain was all too brief. Just one look at this sky made us head for home and another few hours up ladders wrestling heavy fabrics onto curtain polls.
Just one more day of tardy blogging. Tomorrow we should have our broadband service connected and a normal service will resume!
Bobbing with bubbles is not a regular piece of behaviour at all but this had not been a normal bobbing week. Even more unusually we managed to use a Winston Churchill quote in the after swim nattering session. Friday bobbing is the most regular session and happens at about 10:30 each Friday morning.
This was our first Friday swim since moving house. Apparently we need to hurry up because the water is lovely once you get in!
Our first Wednesday day swim after moving featured a pod of Dolphins. Friday featured Pol Roger Champagne!
Bobbers getting giddy before noon is definitely not normal. New house owners getting giddy before more unpacking is surprisingly effective. Although not in all corners of a room.
A tidy sofa is essential for a little post-bob, post Pol Roger siesta. It is almost certain that Winston Churchill would not have needed a siesta after drinking Pol Roger in the morning. It was his favourite champagne and he drank it with a traditional Full-English breakfast often. Thankfully we don’t have his responsibilities or the budget for such a lifestyle. But just once with the lovely Bobbers after a sparkling swim was just perfect. Our bobbing friend Helen provided the Champagne. She also gave us the chance to hear her sharing her voice in a graffiti- decorated disused grain store not far from our Bobbing Zone.
Follow the link below to hear her voice paired with great acoustics and gorgeous Street Art.
The sun setting on another day of unboxing and unbagging. When packing pre-move we tried to be as logical as possible, room by room, but the new house has very different aesthetic requirements and unpacking is not quite as simple as we had planned. A lovely bonus is that the new house lies on an East/West axis with the front of the house facing east. Hugo and Lola are taking huge pleasure in chasing pools of sunlight through the day.
Chasing is clearly not exactly the right word but languishing has no sense of action. They have brief periods of action and longer ones of languishing. I’m unsure exactly what the human project for today is but there will be no human languishing. More boxes, more bags for certain. Meanwhile there is always flowers!
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