Another chores day with a calming picture. The chores were just a list of things that needed to be done. Brightened by the promise of a bowl of cherries for lunch.
Not just any cherries. King Cherries.
But as it happened the day was brightened by meeting a bobber, Helen, during my Farm Shop phase and by not missing the parcel delivery which was only scheduled half an hour after I had left home. I figured I could be super efficient and be at home for 50% of the time slot. Time that I also scheduled for this blog.
But back to the bowl of cherries.
I helped with an end of term tennis club for children last night. The weather was perfect, the children were happy and the snacks were healthy. Which is where I met King Cherries from Lidl.
As luck would have it my early morning chores were very close to Lidl. The cherries called me, I answered and two boxes came home with me.
Cherries posing.
Serendipitous friends and cherries very much lightened my load this morning. No sign of the parcel, but powered by a bowl of cherries the afternoon chores will fly by.
Unlike yesterday my great swim did not propel me instantly into a great confrontation.
Instead a chilled glide around a supermarket. I am not sure a supermarket is the best place to glide in a chilled way but it was essential to our overall household wellbeing. Some practical domestic admin is now needed for household wellbeing.
Stuff needs to go into the attic.
Neither supermarket shopping nor attic hopping is particularly visually appealing. So another swim spot image it will have to be. Full disclosure I did not have the swim spot to myself today. 5 people and a dog were launching there at the same time as me.
One puzzling pile of lost property. A single left shoe and a left knee brace. Makes you think of possible scenarios…
Some days the tide and time come together to create the perfect swim. What I had not expected was for the perfect swim to set me up for the perfect uncomfortable encounter.
Some time ago myself and one of my dogs were attacked by a large local dog who had been allowed off its lead. We were both injured and traumatised, the owner of the dog left the scene of the attack without apology or any obvious concern. The incident was reported to the Police bur despite being initially supportive their interest dwindled to nothing. It has been in my mind for some time to confront this man if the chance arose. Which it did today after my perfect swim. I was somewhat surprised by my calm conversation with the individual. Since his behaviour and that of his dog on the night in question was indefensible, he had little to say and none of it of any value to me. But it feels good to know that I am no longer his silent unknown victim. He is now in no doubt of the harm he caused. A small victory but one that I am glad to have delivered eloquently.
Somewhat shaky when I got home though. Thank goodness for the perfect swim earlier.
It is almost 7 years since I last had a formal interview of any sort. I am completely out of practice of describing myself to others.
Does anyone really listen to, or remember a self-description?
How would you describe yourself to someone?
People are so busy making their own judgements and assessments of the person they see before them.
I care less and less what people make of me as I get older. First and chance encounters are just that. Repeated encounters build a more accurate, nuanced portfolio of my character traits.
I can think of people who have quite the wrong idea of me. But their narrative suits their purpose. Others perhaps know me a little better than I know myself.
I always think people, myself included are a lot like Avocados. Their core values and attributes exist within the enormous seed, but the pulp changes and develops over a lifetime, while the skin just slowly ages but shows evidence of the good times and the harms that shape the whole fruit. The skin of course, is all that is ever seen until a sharp knife is applied. Time to halt the avocado analogy I think.
My Life as an Avocado- the autobiography I will never write.
Just a bit of a blue sky ponder while we get on with chores in an industrial estate. Significantly the campervan needed its roof properly cleaned to remove the sap from being parked under trees. Coxside a 21st century industrial estate does not have the glamour or flawed history of the past.
But it does have an excellent Bikers Cafe where we can while away the hour it takes to remove sap. Serendipity gave me this absolute gift of an image. A biker taking a long drag on his very long pipe.
Men and women would have been smoking pipes like this in this area since the 16th century while taking a break from whatever trade they worked hard at. A bit of digital tweakery and the 21st Century Bikers’ gear becomes a little bit of history.
And he can conjure even more history from the smoke of his pipe.
Hard on the heels of yesterday’s blog comes todays’. I failed to push the publish button yesterday. Too busy getting out of the house to join the bobbers.
The tides and the weather are being kind this week. This is not our usual location for a bigger bobbing group but the perfection of tide and weather had made our usual jumping off spot very congested.
This location with slopes and steps is perfect for solo or two person swimming, but as no one else was there it accommodated 9 bobbers and a dog very well. But it was the previous day swim for two that prompted this illustration that prompted this blog
Rocks as a Snicker Chocolate Cake
A friend and I had planned a late afternoon swim the previous day. Beyond the swim she arrived very much as a woman on a mission. She needed chocolate and she needed it now. So as no swimmer should ever do we headed off to the pub first.
The pub in question the V.O.T serves very good cake.
No nickname ever and so no backstory. The closest I get to a nickname is ‘Bobber’.
As a founder member of a swimming group of just under 20 people including past members who predominantly swim in one location we, as a group are recognisable, we have named sweatshirts, and have a certain positive notoriety in the swimming boom at Firestone Bay.
Groups are not for everyone and ours is as unstructured as a group can be. Just a WhatsApp group to organise our swimming time so no-one has to swim alone.
” So are you a bobber” is a fairly regular question.
Followed by ” Why are you called Bobbers”
Because mostly we just bob about nattering, some focused swimming is involved, but actually the most valuable thing is the bobbing and nattering. Putting our many worlds to rights and our sense of belonging to a supportive and caring community.
I was never a fan of Circuses or Fairs when I was a child. I was not a fan of performing animals or clowns. I was always a fan of a great big tent appearing somewhere locally, just the arrival of the tent was enough for me.
I have become older, and Circuses have reinvented themselves. Music festivals have big tents so live music and skillful human circus acts are both something which I now enjoy in a big tent as an adult. I still prefer to observe the excitement of fairs from a distance and I avoid clowns and, as a subset, magicians.
This freshly erected big tent in a local park still gave me that conflicting thrill feeling, a sense of happy anticipation even though I may still choose not to participate in whatever is going on inside.
Such was my dislike of clowns and magicians as a small person they were often part of my dreaming world. Never nightmares, just quiet dreams where I wandered through whole towns built of big tents, successfully avoiding the things I didn’t like.
I don’t believe I am Coulrophobic because I could easily engage with both clowns and magicians. I just choose not to.
Sadly there is not a word for people who just love big tents for their own sake. But I am that person. Day or night.
For this blog, I pondered what my best big tent experiences have been.
Authors reading their own books or very skillful actors reading someone else’s book to a large and enthralled audience at a Literary Festival.
Discovering a new band or artist in a big tent at a music festival.
The flower tent at agricultural shows.
DJ sets in a tent, wherever that can occur.
New Age stuff, even if it is nonsense dressed in tie dye. The smells are always fantastic.
The produce tent at a village fete. Again the smells but also the people watching.
The absolute silence in this reflective image of Sutton Harbour last night, does not in any way reflect the aural reality. The harbour had the rich sounds of the harbour through history. Tuesday evening dog walks around the harbour have the bell ringers of St Andrews Church as a regular and welcome soundscape. Seemingly performing perfectly, Tuesdays are their practice nights.
Coupled with the nearly still water in the harbour the acoustics were perfect last night. It was also the last day of the school summer term so families were filling the cafes, and their exhausted teachers were finding their way to the bars. The pavements filled with strange adult crocodiles of walkers. Large groups of colleagues making their way to their selected bar informally but formally, two by two. The only thing missing from the human crocodile were the luminous pink-tabarded attendants at either end.*
Live music spilt out from the bars across the harbour, and dancing girls made their, uncertain, way to a Salsa Bar. High heels and cobbles are tricksy at the best of time without the added uncertainty of a pre-class drink in the evening sunlight.
As seagulls circled, greedy for chips, the only thing missing from this moment , which could have been heard any time in the last 500 years, were the Fishermen and Sailors in any significant number. Fish are landed in Plymouth but the huge fish market is just a holding space for the fish auctions that are held on-line. I’m not sure what handsome young sailors en-masse do on Tuesday nights but they were not easily visible. Represented only by middle- class, older men, in two’s and fours. Pink trousered with those non-uniform, uniform caps they all wear to silently call one another from across a world crowded out by non-sailors.
The harbour hubbub and the people watching was just serendipitous concatenation at its unpredictable best last night.
A Golden Moment, I might say.
* I only realised the significance of the teacher element of last nights bar activity when I heard the crisp steps of a man walking from one bar to another. Who walks from one bar to another with recognisably crisp steps?
A man, or woman, who regularly crosses purposefully from one classroom to another. A warning sound of impending trouble that we all learn to recognise from age 5.
*Of course such a lovely evening was rich pickings on which to ponder.
A painting ponder was to sketch Sir Francis Drake and his wife Mary Newman in the contemporary attire of Summer 2025. She will be wearing a spotted flared dress for a night on the cobbles and he will be wearing the older casual sailor outfit with one significant difference. Those pink sailor trousers will be cropped to show off his shapely calves and feet in deck shoes with no socks.
Something that will require a lot more pondering is how to replace the phallic symbol of the hilt of his sword. I suspect an uncapped bottle of beer will have to do. Over-sized of course. No cold weather posing for Frank.
Sir Francis Drake on Plymouth Hoe ( a Spanish seagull has taken revenge on this day)
Domestica has leached into Tuesday. I am not entirely certain why, maybe the success of yesterday has spurred me on. Unlike my grandparents I don’t have to be fully engaged with domestica. Today I loaded up the washing machine and the dishwasher and took off for the morning dog walk, then went to meet a friend for coffee. By the time I had returned the domestic goddesses were ready to be reloaded and so with heavy rain outside I started deeper domestica. I also had to look for a missing note book, amazing how missing things gather together. I didn’t find the notebook immediately but curiously my bank card and a tape measure were hiding side by side in an unexpected place, the place I had hoped to find the notebook. The notebook announced that it was not missing at all, but had been put in the wrong place under a quick watercolour sketch all along. In the midst of a domestica day these three misplaced items had eaten up an hour of my down time created by the Domestic Goddesses.
And just like that another project for domestica downtime was inspired. Superimposing the notebook on the quick sketch.
And indeed on some other images I was pondering today.
A wet feather.
A sunflower
A recent sketch
And lastly, the domestica.
In between these images beds have been made and a bit of a summer clear out. I predict Wednesday will be much the same but there is a good chance the additional summer chores will be done and dusted. 2 weeks early. I still don’t love domestica but having the end in sight of the big seasonal jobs does bring a little smug satisfaction.
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