Here is a conundrum. I did not see the last live performance that I experienced but I did hear it. I went to Plymouth Hoe, this morning, for the V E Day 80 Civic service and arrived too late to see anything apart from service personnel’s bottoms.
Or the back of the Mayoral Party.
But I did hear some marvelous music and listened to the Churchill V E Day speech in full for the first time. All in all a most exceptional and interesting dog walk .
Even more thrilling, one of the people at the top of the Lighthouse is my friend Jenny. She is the smaller human of the three.
After all the music, marching and speeches of Remembrance Sunday. We took a quiet morning walk at the Plymouth War Memorials. No crowds and some lovely family flowers just quietly laid among all the vivid redness of the more iconic Poppies.
One statue returned to being the favourite perching place of seaward looking seagulls.
Lets see what the shape of the world will be like in a year’s time. We may well remember but we don’t learn. It’s all a bit shit really.
Our dusk/ dark walks are taking us away from our home streets at the moment. Last night we did a circuit of Sutton Harbour and the Barbican. Just an hour’s walk on the eve of Remembrance Day.
All the bustle of bars opening and cafes and shops closing reflected on still waters.
The Barbican has set its normal illuminations to Red for Remembrance.
Remembrance Day in Britain feels like the last full stop before the run up to Christmas. The beginning of noticeably shortening days, colder weather and rampant consumerism.
At home we are still in a flurry of redecoration and reorganisation. Every trip to a charity shop or scrap store feels like a minor victory against ‘stuff’. I am having to channel my creative energies into tidying and sorting, ignoring the itch to put paint on paper or canvas.
But today our busy domestic schedule will stop for a while to observe and consider the costs of war to the community we currently live in.
Wild camping with a five year old. Our plan was to park in a quiet corner of Mountbatten to give our 5 year old grandchild the chance to be immersed in Nature for 24 hours. What had slipped our minds was that a World Championship Sailing event was being held at our chosen destination.
Regardless we found a perfect quiet corner to camp and arrived just as the last races were being held. Tiny sailing boats competing in the early evening sun. The winners heralded with a klaxon call just beyond our bushes.
Our evening dog walk enlivened by the happy chatter of many different languages eager to party and then be on their way. Small boats packed away on trailers.
This morning we awoke to the graceful dance of maritime traffic going about its business in Plymouth Sound. After being lulled to sleep with the gentle thud of Drum and Bass at celebratory parties and International teams slipping away at midnight.
Wild camping, not as planned but wild and memorable in its own way.
I am a mucky watercolour painter. I am also a procrastinator, so sometimes I see disaster as a lovely excuse for a tidy-up. Yesterday afternoon I discovered something messy had occurred in my watercolour storage box. Despite needing to get on with a painting I set about resolving my disaster. Meanwhile, outside, my home city of Plymouth was dealing with a much more serious potential disaster.
BBC News – Plymouth WW2 bomb found in a garden, detonated at sea. Read link below.
The outdoor potential disaster had given me a few daylight hours to start a new painting. All waterfront areas were closed to the public, and many local roads. No trains, busses or ferries. The perfect excuse.
Paints all tidied up. My models were arranged.
And I began the painstaking task of painting and printing a cup of mint tea resting on a bistro table, standing on a tiled floor.
I think there is a delicious irony in painting a cup of calming mint tea; while not 500 yards from my home a bomb weighing over 1,000 pounds or 500kg is being towed out to sea.
Daylight failed me, eventually and I have not managed to finish. Just the dregs of the tea have been painted into the cup. Two disasters resolved successfully.
This painting is on a noticeboard near one of my regular dog walks at Mount Wise. I see it so often and yet until yesterday I had never given it time. It is painted in the style of an Old Master and features a rural bucolic theme of a shepherd tending his sheep, overlooking the Hamoaze. For the first time ever I realised that the painting has modern super yachts moored at one of the pontoons. I am going to have to go back and actually read the noticeboard now. Give it some time in fact.
I suppose I was alert to incongruity yesterday.
Yesterday a German warship sailed, as they often do, up towards Devonport Dockyard. Not something that would have been calmly observed in 1943!
Same view this morning and a completely different reason for looking. Usually I am most interested in the stretch of water between the shore and the swimming buoys. Today my interest lies between the swimming buoys and the island. Later on today I am going on a Tamar River Cruise, not a booze cruise or a tourist cruise but a cruise to see sights of special scientific interest, historic interest and industrial heritage interest. A fact finding cruise on the challenges and projects that working in an area of outstanding natural beauty presents. For now though I am only bothered about the sea sickness quota that Plymouth Sound will serve me.
Looking to the east I’m feeling pretty confident that I will only see breakfast once today. This is a good thing in my opinion. Looking to the west no judgement could be made as everything was shrouded in mist but I am very confident that if the east looks good then the west will be in exactly the same mood. Who knows what shape tomorrows blog will take after an actual cruise, albeit 5 hours rather than days or weeks. For now though another view looking to the east, almost Mediterranean!
A classic ponder involving two subjects that are largely unrelated.
This morning I am wearing a playsuit. Really a preposterously named garment for anyone over 10. This one is left over from my brief days as a hands-on grandparent. Obviously when fulfilling the role of grandparent I felt the need to dress like a tropical forest. This may be the exact reason her parents decided to whisk her half way across the world. Who could possibly need a grandparent dressed as tropical forest when Asia can provide the real thing, the forest that is. The photos above are the tenuous link to this mornings blog. In case you haven’t spotted it, the mug swaggeringly hanging on my playsuit belt depicts a harbour. Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. Our recent move has taken us to live among harbours, although not a Asian ones swanky enough to have thermal mugs depicting the skyline!
I love a harbour, all the glamour and thrills of travel with none of the faff. Today turned out to be a cornucopia of glamour. A cruise ship with 5 masts.
Shyly peeping into Plymouth Sound. Before hiding behind Drakes Island.
If only I could briefly roll back time to when hundreds of ships like this were jostling to dock in Plymouth. On an olfactory note the area where I took this last photo was very reminiscent of times past. I stood on an area of concrete frequented by solitary fishermen and others in the twilight hours, they really do like to build up a historic fragrance, which was still resonating at 7 am this morning. Beer, tobacco, fish, piss and marijuana. Not perhaps the historic experience passengers on this luxury cruise liner are searching for!
The wild flower meadows on our daily walk are tranquil spots for me to walk and the dogs to sniff. Not that the pollinators going about their business are particularly happy to be disturbed by snuffling dog noses. The tranquility of the flower fields took me to an extraordinary sight yesterday. Sailing boats cleaving through the sea faster than anything with an engine. How magical! Two huge catamarans chasing figures of eight in the bay at 50 or so miles per hour.
This was my first glimpse of Sail GP catermerans showing off in the water. So much more interesting and worthy of respect than the speed induced buzz of fossil fuel guzzling speed boats or worse their smaller relations the Jetski that normally whizz in the bay like flashy bored teenagers. Over the weekend I may bore you silly with pictures of these boats as there is a race meeting in Plymouth Sound this weekend. But there is nothing better than seeing something new for the first time.
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