I thought I had the measure of yesterday. About 5 hours of admin for two organisations that I work for. Some dog walking and some domestica. Serendipity however made those things happen alongside some lovely pondering. My early dog walk gave me a rare moment on the most popular beach nearby. For once it was deserted and I could get one of my ‘bad’ photographs to play around with later in the day.
The sun was up, the dogs were happy and I could perch on the drying rocks contemplating my day. But I was not alone, just at the point where the high tide had turned last night, there was a gathering of memorial flowers and some ashes. Someone else had not quite left the beach.
Just a small bunch of yellow roses signifying all the love and sorrow of an unknown person’s death. Somewhere in this Hybrid Printmaking image, of a spring morning at the tidal pool, these flowers create a little bit of the texture that makes this picture what it is.
My phone is my on-the-go note book. Photographs and screenshots remind me of all sorts of thoughts that need to be followed up. I try to clear up my archive on a regular basis, trying really hard not to delete any gems. I have also been having a radical digital Spring Clean of the images stored on my phone. Only time will tell if I have been too brutal.
Monday started bright and early with a swim with the bobbers.
A new bobber joined us, the first in a long time to commit to regular bobbing after her first dip in Firestone Bay. She is wearing the green hat. Brave to join us when the water is almost at its coldest of the year. Brave to agree to join the Bobbers WhatsApp group which carries eclectic messages, only 50% of them stick to the topic of cold water swimming.
I took photos for stereotactic image making later in the day.
The exhibition season is nipping at my procrastinating ankles.
My evening was spent making images as above. Walking my dogs and finding the most beautiful Magnolias and watching TV and finding a friend on screen.
The rest of the undocumented day passed off without need for notes or photographs. Happily all dull tasks and domestic admin were achieved with a sense of a list well achieved.
When I discovered Venn diagrams at Primary School I became a little obsessed and created intersectional circles as doodles when I should have been doing something more meaningful in class. I would create figures and shapes with intersecting circles filled with words and thoughts. This image popped up yesterday on a science website and it just makes me smile inside at my much, much younger nerdiness.
The more mature me loves the associated word, Intersectionality which is most commonly used to describe the less admirable facets of society.
But Venn diagrams and Intersectionality can also be a way of quickly identifying positive and joyous connections in the world and are really useful in decision making and design. A Venn diagram is fabulous for colour mixing too.
John Venn has a fabulous alternativeblue plaque which also makes me smile.
Wikimedia Commons
Which neatly brings me back to the first diagram.
A man who is an acknowledged Logical Thinker is also an Anglican Priest. That’s a whole new Venn diagram for me to ponder over.
Our morning walk gave us a familiar surprise in an unfamiliar place. We used to live in London where street stabbings were, not commonplace, but not unheard of. Street memorials sometimes lasted years. Supermarket flowers and mementoes, kept fresh by friends and family.
Although we knew there had been a street stabbing on one of our dog walks it was a bit of a surprise to find an informal flower memorial to the person stabbed last month.
Sometimes the unexpected makes eyes a little blurry. As we returned people were tidying away the dying blooms. What a very sad job for anyone to have to do.
Monday’s blogs are either early or late. Not because I am sleeping on the job like this sloth. Mondays we do childcare and choose not to be on our phones when she is around. So a blog is written early or late.
This is the late variety while our small person sleeps. I love this picture from a friend’s recent holiday in Costa Rica.
I am very fond of sloths and envious of their lifestyle under normal circumstances.
But dozing like a sloth in a tree and proper pondering is not for me today.
The normal order of things has arrived in our house out of the normal order.
Bunches of daffodils arrived over the weekend. Normally the first cut flowers of January, they were overtaken by beautiful blowsy tulips who arrived en masse for a birthday just over a week ago.
The weather of this curious winter is doubtless to blame. Tulips come from elsewhere and are grown in controlled greenhouses for the early part of the year. Daffodils come from just down the road and suffer the same weather as I do.
The daffodils in our kitchen probably started life as cut flowers a week or so ago in fields near Penzance. Then travelled in temperature controlled luxury to London, were distributed to Marks and Spencer, where they were purchased and then driven down to us over the weekend.
Normally we can reliably buy daffodils by the roadside from early January . Everything is a little bit late and battered by the storms that keep rolling in. Even snowdrops seem a bit behind their usual schedule.
These clumps of snowdrops are usually much more open to posing for photographs. The green stripes of their underskirts are one of my favourite shades of green.
Flowers in January bring a twinkle to the listless, slightly unfocussed days of mid-January. Arriving out of order is a discombobulating experience. But now the daffodils are in the kitchen and everything should fall into place. Onward to the second half of winter. Bring it on and let’s get it over with.
If we are lucky twixtmas is a lull with a little more thinking time than the hurly burly of Christmas and the optimism or trepidation of moving gently into a new numerical year. Perhaps a time to appraise relationships both past and present. My blog hosts posed this question overnight. As we gather people close to us this is a hugely significant question.
What relationships have a positive impact on you?
I would say there are three quality stages of relationships.
Close / Loving.
Intermediate with affection, respect or a combination of the two.
Fleeting.
Of the three I would say only the last can be purely positive, or indeed purely negative.
All other relationships are a balance of positive and negative impacts. Hugely positive relationships come with some inevitable negatives when people close to you break your heart in some way, not always intentionally. Intermediate relationships can be surprisingly lovely with less impactful negatives.Fleeting relationships can be amazingly positive, the negative aspects more easily brushed off.
Some relationships are negative all the way but circumstances force you to carry them around like a piece of pointless heavy luggage.
Twixtmas is a time to reflect on the texture of our relationships. Some regrets but a good balance of loveliness would seem to me to be the optimum choice for a positive impact. We all have to take the rough with the smooth to a certain degree because nobody is perfect or right for us all the time. Or us for them.
Sometimes dumping the pointless heavy luggage is just the absolute right decision and brings the joy of a negative action creating a positive outcome. Not always easy to do.
That is a good old waffle as I stare into the Christmas tree but the festive season often makes us confront some difficult thoughts alongside all the lovely positive ones, about people we share or have shared Christmas/ Life with. The luxury of the time to be able to consider relationships past and present, close or fleeting has a positive impact in itself.
P.s this blog was not written to be downbeat or forlorn. I may have struck a wrong note. I was simply observing that even the most lovely experience will have a piquancy of sadness if you are fully invested. When it ends for instance. And when a dreadful experience stops there is an uptick because the dreadful is gone.
Big question on a blog with a lovely number. #1111.
My favourite month is May with September as a very close second.
September
Weather, nature and crowds are my parameters. Late May is a gorgeous, vivid time of year with nature bursting out in all directions . The holiday season has not quite cranked visitor numbers up to intolerable, even if they are essential to the local economy.
In September Nature is a little dusty and depleted by the Summer and Visitors but the weather is usually kind.
If May is Glamorous,then September is Shabby Chic, both fabulous in their ways.
A bit of googling suggests that my first choice is popular. The second not so much.
I have never worked in education but September always feels like a month of new beginnings and May the sharpness just before the languor of Summer.
May wins because it welcomes Summer but only by a little bit. May also has one extra day.
A Sunday perspective. Are Sundays about reflecting on the past week or looking forward to the coming week?
I am never sure. During the past week we caught up with some former colleagues over a cup of coffee. We had the most delicious conversations about third party former colleagues, that we had all worked with at differing times or hospitals.
Two military men cropped up. The resulting conversation is unlikely ever to be forgotten.
” Oh X, he was always so lovely, I can’t believe you didn’t realise he was gay”
” Y, nice chap, quite a stickler, maybe homophobic”
” Did you know he became a Wizard”
Conversations like this are the bricks and mortar of good friendships. The laughter in that moment was golden.
Here is another golden Sunday perspective. A super low tide and a long walk to the ferry.
Monday fakery, this picture did not make it into the autumn leaf blog yesterday. My Google Pixel phone generated it from one of my photos in the ‘stylised’ setting in picture editing. Stylised uses my favourite settings and gives me a picture I might create for myself. Mostly the image is an epic fail, in my opinion, but sometimes the result is gloriously accurate, as it has been for this picture.
If I suffered from ‘Monday Morning Malaise’ this is a picture that could encourage me to ‘ get a wiggle on’.
My long term career was a seven day a week job so Mondays were not quite as significant to me, but commuting into work in London using public transport it was easy to feel that ‘Monday’ feeling emanating, if not dripping from my fellow commuters. And from the 9-5ers who arrived at 9 on a Monday and worked alongside those of us who worked shifts and On-Call rotas. I was also spared the ‘Sunday Night Dread’. Although the ‘on-call’ dread was very real any day of the week.
Now, I live a self-directed week; my Monday mornings are a little more significant than they have ever been. Monday morning is like unpacking an Amazon parcel. I don’t quite remember what is planned this week. (I can never remember what I ordered) My first job is to check my diary and I am good to go. This picture rather joyfully sums up the optimism of most of my Mondays. I realise I am lucky.
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