What a greige day! Greige Day activities are damp dog walks, mindless domestica , working from home admin. Reading a good chunk of the freshly collected bookclub book and a little photo manipulation to the above image. Despite the greigeness of the day Firestone Bay near to the tidal pool was filled with the joyful sounds of a Sri Lankan New Year party carrying on nearby with no concern for the glumness of the weather.
If I add the joyful sounds and happiness floating over the pool the whole image takes on a different atmosphere.
However if I add the feeling of the absolute drama of the drenching that Lola and I endured on our second walk of the day then things look different again.
Greige, it is not what it is but what you make of it.
Yesterday’s blog slipped off my schedule almost as my fingers hovered over the keyboard.
Lola had been let into the yard, the sun was out, and my neighbour was clambering up a ladder in the sunshine. In that wrinkle in time the blog was lost.
He, my neighbour, asked me to unlock our back gate as one of his chickens was in my yard. At that moment, out of sight, but not sound, Lola and the chicken met. Lola had the chicken under a citizens arrest with a very firm grip on its feathered armpit. There was no catching them , the chicken broke free , scuttled into the house and I decided to leave them to their own devices whilst letting our neighbour in the back gate. Another human gave me a better chance of conflict resolution.
Armpit feathers
There was no sight or sound of them.
We searched rooms. Lola appeared calmly on the stairs but no chicken.
A chicken bottom feather.
Just one chicken bottom feather laying on the stairs.
I thought I could hear a fluttery feather settling sound coming from the kitchen. Janner the chicken had escaped the jaws of Lola and returned downstairs and was roosting inside a dark bag that had been left on the floor.
Both chicken and dog had a winning look in their different locations. The chicken, victorious, by settling in enemy territory. Lola,perhaps, because she had driven the chicken downstairs and plucked a feather out of Janners* enormous bottom.
Chicken and neighbour went home. Lola went into overdrive. Every moment of the chickens journey through our house relived by sniffing and tracking every glorious moment of her hunting frenzy.
*I have no idea where a Janners apostrophe goes.
Two chickens, one named Argyle to honour the local football team. The other called Janner or Janners the collective name of Plymouth Argyle supporters. Or indeed Plymothians in general.
And that my friends is how the day started and I was given my earworm for the day.
Which leads nicely into the intended blog of the day.
One of my digital photo manipulation apps has a new ‘Romantic’ filter. I never normally use just one app or just one setting,preferring to amalgamate different settings from different apps to create a more unique and interesting image from my daily walks . But ‘Romantic’ seems to be a bit of a wonder filter. My daily walk never looks like this but there is nothing in this picture that doesn’t exist at some time of day or at some time of year from this viewpoint. Never, though all together. My romantic head conjures up something similar to this when I am away from home and imagining what our regular swimming beach looks like. The other thing I love about this ‘Romantic’ image is that someone wrapped up warmly against the cold and sitting enjoying a cup of coffee is obvious in this digitally enhanced image. I had completely missed them on the original photo. Are they reading or sketching?
How do I even feel about romanticising things as someone who believes that I am a pragmatist at heart?
A deep dive into quick AI definitions throws my pragmatist belief into a quandary.
Honestly who could imagine a filter causing so much thought. If only the app had called it a beautiful filter that would have been fine. I would have tried it the minute it appeared on the drop down menu, but the word romantic put me off for several weeks.
Just another pair of words for me to float between.
And just like that the shortest day is here and my inner pagan skips and jumps.
I am a closet minor melancholic from the minute the Summer Solstice brings the longest day. Shortening days and looking towards the gloom of winter from the 22 of June is my secret USP. I keep it well hidden until late November but from then on I grump and moan a bit.
Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong reset me like nothing has ever done before. Long days of sunshine in December perked me up like new batteries in small electrical devices.
Buzzing would be the word. Never have I had so much va-va-voom in December.
Even the adverse events of this week have failed to dim my physical energy. My heart and soul might be mightily bruised and hollowed out, but I have been ready to meet the day at stupid o clock. Thanks to being super charged by the Southern Hemisphere.
I have been a bit of a ‘natural’ light pedant this weekend. I am creating a woven collage abstract of the tidal pool.
Natural light because I am weaving and colour matching.
Early weaving placement.
Glueing, weaving and moving strips is curiously time consuming.
Close up.
I am slightly obsessed by the colours of the sea in Firestone Bay and the way the rocks and concrete collect lichens and marginal seaweed.
Close up.
I am about a quarter of the way through the sticking and moving process and daylight is in short supply. I am loving this new process . I quite fancy doing something similar as a flower meadow in pastel colours that would be completely out of my comfort zone.
Sometimes painting out a burning pondering is exactly the right thing to do.
During my long, lone swims of the last couple of weeks I have been pondering my personal moral compass and its origins, inspirations and foundations.
It will be no surprise that I am a habitual ponderer, questioner and re-evaluater. Add to that a procrastinator, although I procrastinate to re-evaluate and also to allow time and nature to rebalance.
In deciding to paint my moral compass I realised that every day my moral compass is slightly recalibrated by the previous days experience.
To match the 32 points of a compass I wrote 32 words that inform my moral compass. Today I know that I will edit those words a little after more pondering or experience. I wanted to show some core values and the flood of information that we all process on a daily basis. This is very much a work in progress but the compass looks like this currently.
Work in progress
In other news my 50 year old compass is defunct.
I have lost a whole family of watercolours. They were in a really slim, discrete hinged tin. Pale silver in colour. I know I took them out on an adventure but I suspect they were so discrete I completely missed them on my clear up and pack away.
Thankfully I am a watercolour magpie so no real harm. Irritation massive though.
My apologies for the repetitive nature of this week’s blogs but the swimming conditions this week are almost perfect. I had a quiet lonesome bob last night. Squeezing a swim out of a gap between a dog walk and supper.
Although not seen from this view there is a small defensive castle, built 500 years ago. Hidden by the bushes on the right.
For some reason I pondered on the exitement of moving-in, to a new-build castle. Although this one would have been a place of work and not a home. But on evenings like this in 1525 there would have been soldiers tossing pebbles into the sea from the small beach and others looking out at the small island from the tiny battlements. I don’t even know if recreational swimming was a thing then.
They wouldn’t have had my excellent swimming entry into the bay . But scrambling over the rocks or swimming from the beach would be easy options for a Tudor Bobber.If sea swimming was a thing for him.
Weirdly despite the peace and tranquility of my swim, there was a drama unfolding in the distance , on the green stretch of land opposite the steps. Many emergency vehicles with blue flashing lights had gathered at the site of a new car park. Bringing me swiftly and ponderingly back to the 21st Century.
Flashing blue lights just above white stick. Small castle to the right.
21st Century Drama, a 16th Century castle and a peaceful swim all squeezed into one little bay.
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…
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.
theoldmortuary.design 