I have crisscrossed the Tamar River using these bridges every day this week and sailed underneath them on a ferry yesterday. The river and the sea dominate every journey at the southern end of the Tamar Valley. The first rail bridge was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel between 1854-59. A road bridge was built in 1961.
Before that a variety of ferries powered, intially, by rowers and ropes crossed the river at this point for 800 years.
It was rowers that made us visit again yesterday.
A Regatta with Gig Rowing is always a feast for the eyes. We are ‘resting’ Gig rowers @theoldmortuary.
While the events of a Regatta occur on the water. There is plenty of other action on the Cornish bank.
Regalia and speeches.DrummingBouncy castlesStalls selling stuff
Even our ferry journey home had a curious whizz through history. The banks of the Tamar are edged by small surviving examples of the Atlantic Rain Forest, a habitat that is well beyond being under threat.
Atlantic Rain Forest
In the same small stretch of water we passed this paddle boarder.
A power boat and a Pirate Ship.
And a Nuclear Submarine.
And just like riverside dwellers for centuries have done. We waved to a friend as we left.
Luckily she was wearing orange and white. Which was my theme for making a Morris Dancing/ Tamar Bridges/ Pop Art image later in the day. I was aiming for a Punk anarchy energy.
Saturday turned out to be quite the day of textures. Breakfast in a boatyard and Lola took me on a wild Hedgehog tracking adventure. We never found the hedgehog but her tracking led me to an old boat and I love the accidental colours that old wooden boats reveal.
I also had a curious moment with the new photo editor function on my phone. It uses a couple of algorithms to generate different versions of a photograph. Firstly using the information in the picture and secondly using information gathered from previous edits that I have saved. As a regular tool to use I would say it is a little unreliable. But as a lover of the serendipitous the function is proving to be very interesting. I download RAW data images from my actual digital camera to give the algorithm more to munch on. What it drags up from my past edits is beyond my control but yesterdays trip to the carwash made a fascinating Greek Seascape.
From this.To this.
My last textures of the day were aural. My local community choir sung a Contemporary Pagan Song Cycle on the theme of the Green Man Myths in an old Church of England building. Unusual but then not when you consider that many great churches are built on the sites of Pagan Temples. I love a bit of a sing but am hampered and helped by my synesthesia. I am quite incapable of learning to read music, and I don’t really learn by ear, but by the serendipity of the neurodivergance of Synesthesia, music goes in and I can sing it out. All the right notes, mostly in the right order but not always.
To say I keep a low profile when singing is an understatement. Kind people jab pencils at me and flutter the music sheet at me . Honestly it could be a Cornflake packet but I nod and smile. I am hugely bored by music pedants who bang on about notes. C’s and D’s are just bra cup sizes to me. As for the mystery/ worry of the missing Triangle dinger. I have no idea of the jeopardy involved in that WhatsApp thread. But the percussionists were energised by that predicament.
Fortunately our Community Choir has a composer /conductor who has no time for the niff naff of music pedantary so I can keep my head down and not feel like the musical Village Idiot that I am. Our performance was gorgeous,full of crunchy textured soaring notes and unusual harmonies. The Green Man and mid-summer were glorious in the churchyard.
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
I’m not sure anyone would describe the road in and out of Stonehouse Peninsular as a freeway. Apart from the boy racers, whose noisy car delight is to speed their high-powered and primped vehicles around the circuit of Georgian houses. Or break off to the coast road to disturb the night-time Doggers of Devils Point car park with their squealing tyres and farting exhausts.
As a Conservation Area, I am fairly certain there will never be a billboard. But were there to be one, it would almost certainly be one of those curiously English ones with a polite passive-aggressive message.
I knew the day would come when signing up to Bloganuary would bite me on the bum and a topic would come up that I would not wish to answer. I just don’t think that the colleges I have attended are particularly interesting. I have studied an Arts and a Science subject to degree and beyond. I could throw in a prestigious college or two. I have never studied abroad and I have never academically studied at any of the Oxford ‘Dreaming Spires’.
Coffee and cake has been studied in that beautiful city. Great coffee and cake in memorable locations. The places that I am most grateful to are the institutions that gave me the tools and qualifications to access tertiary level education.
1. Manor Street Primary School, Braintree. My mum and dad also attended this school.
2. Margaret Tabor Secondary Modern. My dad attended this school.
3. Tabor High Comprehensive School.
4. Braintree College of Further Education.
These run-of -the-mill, free, educational establishments gave me the basic educational building blocks of my life. Essential knowledge for the under 18 me.
Each of these places was walking distance from my home until I was 10 and then just a bus ride from my 10-18 home. Each of those places projected my mind to different horizons and to different paths.
I didn’t start to walk on all the paths exposed to me. Nobody could. But I did take the first step on some fascinating paths that started in a small, rural, market town in Essex.
P.S. for added interest my old Primary School is now a museum.
I think it might be time to accept that autumn is in full swing and that summer and even an ‘ Indian Summer are behind us. These last couple of days have been liminal spaces with some spectacular sunshine but dropping temperatures.
This was the view two days ago,but last night our evening swim was a chilly, grey affair. The water temperature was a balmy 16 degrees while the air temp was 12 degrees. There was much talk about putting the heating on at home. Our winter swimming kit is slowly making an appearance and we didn’t linger on the street corner for an extended farewell natter. But moments later I did linger to take this picture of an autumnal leaf resting on a curb stone.
This gives me the chance to recount some second-hand Plymouth history.
As regular readers will know Plymouth was one of the worst harmed cities in Britain by the German bombing raids of World War II. I suppose this little historic ponder is about a small part of the clear up that followed.
So many of Plymouth’s historic streets were blown up,there had to be a very clear plan to salvage whatever could be reused when rebuilding began. I browsed an old book yesterday that described the aftermath as an ‘exploded’ city. The small detail of salvage included the collection of all curb stones from bomb damaged locations. Many of those curbstones carried scars from the devastation caused by shrapnel or hot molten metal from the fires that raged. As the city was rebuilt the salvaged curbstones were reused as streets were repaired and returned to normal use.
The location of this particular curbstone may or may not be its original location. It is an old cobbled street, now thinly covered with tarmac, very close to where there was some significant bomb damage. In the photograph above the autumn leaf has settled almost perfectly into the scar. A lovely visual analogy for nature healing the harm that humans cause.
Yesterday we started a day of dull chores with a free gift of coffee. Just enough for four double espresso. Our gift came from Monmouth Coffee in Borough Market.
And before that it came from Bolivia.
We needed something pretty perky to make a day of chores magical.
As it turns out Finca Floribondio did not do a bad job at all. Our first Industrial Estate of the day, yes, it was ‘that’ kind of a day, turned out to be not what you might expect at all. Commercial Road in Plymouth was an Industrial Estate long before such things were invented. We go there to get our car and van tyres fixed or replaced. That was job number one of the day. Me and the dogs walked while Hannah took the van. The magic or dreamlike powers of Floripondio gave me a great view and water for the dogs to play in.
View of the Citadel from Teats Hill slipway.
Some time had passed since the first dose of coffee so we made a plan to rendezvous at a coffee shop in a Motorbike Dealers. Once again the magic of Floripondo made things a little dreamlike.
A motorbike showroom where bikes are allowed on carpet!
Window view to prove we were in an Industrial Estate.
Now with full disclosure I must say I know nothing about motorbikes beyond an artistic love of sprockets.
Motorbike cafes have a dress code which we only just fitted by accidentally wearing dark colours. Leather is de rigour. Fabulously engineered leather to keep its wearers safe in case of incidental or accidental damage. Human skin and tarmac or gravel at high speed is not a good combination, neither is collision good for bones or internal organs. Motorbike leathers are phenomenal. However they can make their wearers look like a cross between a storm trooper and a lizard/insect. As we enjoyed our coffee and a bacon sarnie every one of these beautiful lizard insects stopped to pay homage to this beautiful object.
Now the coffee at this cafe was also wonderful but without the hallucinogenic properties of Finca Floripondio we were returned to normal humans who had chores to do in utterly banal and dull industrial estates. The magic of a freeby wiped out by normal life.
The magic only returned when we started researching actually buying some Finca Floripondio beans.
The first hit on Google was a surprise and took us straight back to one of our favourite Hong Kong coffee shops. Internet cookies are powerful things, no calories though!
However nothing could tempt us to pay HKD 468 for 200g of beans even as a holiday treat.
Our coffee treat will come from London, when we deserve it.
And so we are in Hong Kong and wall art presents us with two quotes. One, possibly more useful than the other. The one above is the more useful. Below is one that is not quite so immediately thought provoking.
Beyond quotes we plunged immediately into authentic Hong Kong life. Authentic because we were in Sham Shui Po, Hannahs’s birthplace, authentic because much of the architecture is protected and the area is unlikely to become over-developed, and authentic in an @theoldmortuary way because it is the home of independent and intriguing coffee shops.
Colour Brown, Sham Shui Po
Even Tatler talks about Sham Shui Po and that’s fairly rare for genuinely working-class areas.
Accompanying us on our daytime adventure were our growing family, one of whom danced with delight last night when we touched down at Hong Kong airport just after 7:30.
There is also the promise of a trip to an exhibition by Yayoi Kusama. Expect dots later in the week.
It’s not every day that I go for a walk in a completely unknown part of the city and find myself face to face with something very familiar. This Street Art depicts an old pub, previously called The Long Room. The actual yellow building is on my daily dog walk. I had gone to get my flu and Covid boosters and had completely misjudged the parking situation about 2 miles from home. Searching for a space in labyrinth of small streets and cut through footpaths I abandoned the car and hastily found a way to my appointment.
Jabs done I had to find the car again. The route was a curious mix of elegant Victorian town houses and modernist social housing. A sure sign, in Plymouth, that I was in an area that was heavily bombed in World War II.
Something tells me I am going to have to find this mural again and try to make some sense of it, it is certainly not geographically accurate. I wonder if there are a series of them in the area. Finding it again might be tricky but street art is nearly always worth the effort of further investigation.
Let sleeping dogs lie. For two evenings every year Plymouth Sound is alive with the sound , and sights, of fireworks.
We are very lucky that our dogs are not fussed by fireworks. Last night, the first night of the British Fireworks Competition, we set off with them to find a good vantage point close to home. We were lucky and found the ideal spot and saw the first display . Unfortunately our vantage spot was discovered by a young woman carrying a wine glass while wearing a strappy dress and rather a lot of entitlement. Her dog was off the lead and bothering everybody. She remonstrated with ‘Arlo’ who really was way too excited to listen and when she did eventually put him on the lead she couldn’t be bothered to hold the lead. A lethal combination in the dark on uneven high ground. Common sense made us retreat home, our well behaved dogs tucked under our arms. Leaving her to irritate everyone else.
This might have been a real irritation had we not discovered a streaming service broadcasting the whole competition. Our ears could hear all the bangs and clashes as they echoed around our house but we could get a front row seat to see all the fireworks via our lap top.
Tonight the weather was not so perfect and we had already done a really long dog walk, the temptation to enjoy the fireworks on the laptop was too tempting when coupled with tea and biscuits.
Once again the crashes and bangs filled our ears in reality. The streaming service filled our eyes with fireworks and I discovered that I could even get a half decent photo while enjoying a chocolate digestive.
Sunshine and Fl(Sh)owers, mostly showers. So much rain in the last two weeks, the new flower beds in our yard have become mini jungles. After the vivid colour of the late Spring ; Summer is a different yardening business. The greenery is wild and vibrant, the flowers mostly shy and retiring, preferring to stay inside or appearing only as coy buds.
Domestic admin is the winner in this sort of weather, we are a week ahead of the game, which feels very luxurious. The game in question is a family holiday, at our house, followed very swiftly by an art exhibition. The smug feeling of being prepared is almost certainly going to be fleeting. We had double smugness as we tucked into a vegetable curry featuring courgettes from the garden.
The sun came out yesterday evening and just like flowers, people and live music popped out to bask for an hour or so.
The perfect setting for a party at the Tinside Lido
The minute the sun came out we set off for a walk, and a quest for junk food.What better way to finish off after a healthy veg curry than a walk to the lighthouse and some 2 for 1 chocolate. Saturday all sorted.
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