What would your life be like without music?
In theory, rather empty, but my head has the most delightful, personal Juke Box, playing in my subconscious, on demand. Sometimes in the form of earworms, when I least expect it.
As I write this Avalon by Roxy Music is playing. Absolutely no idea why.
Yesterday, I managed to tackle all admin work while Hugo enjoyed a longer walk without him needing pain relief. It was a productive day with a refreshing sea breeze as I balanced work and caring for Hugo. This was my working-from-home location during one of his rest periods.
I suspect Hugo is loving the attention of the last week since he hurt his back. My route yesterday around the harbours of Plymouth is one of his favourites because there are many cafes that he approves of. Yesterday we chose a cafe themed towards bikers with engines.
Predictably their dog biscuit offering is fairly butch. Far too challenging for fluffs with small mouths, but the industrial concrete floor soon turned a bulldog style biscuit into something a poodle could nibble at.
The slower pace of this week’s walks gave me a moment of contradiction yesterday. Despite walking past and walking into this old building on the edge of Sutton Harbour, many times, I had never read the blue plaque.
The Custom House was built in 1586 or round about. The time when Plymouth was at its zenith as a Pirate port.
Usually when I see old doors I like to romanticise about the people who have passed through them but certainly I cannot imagine too many pirates saying,
” Have you seen the new Customs House, we must pop in there on our way to the bars and whore houses, when we dock”
” I just cannot enjoy myself and really let go until my Import Tax is up to date”
That must have been quite the job to have in Elizabethan Plymouth. Everyone strolling right past pretending they haven’t seen your open door and welcoming toothless smile.
No playing Wordle in a quiet moment.
It is somewhat ironic that these two information boards are just a few paces from the old custom house.
The things I get to ponder on restorative, slow, dog walk days.
My rain soaked blog of yesterday was written on St Swithuns Day. Traditionally if it rains or is sunny on his name day then rain or sun will be with us for 40 days. Thankfully this morning is dull with no rain. Which put St Swithun on the spot somewhat. I thought I would check his credentials. An Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester born in about 800. A quick google suggests that his actual career has been eclipsed by folklore and his miracle. Folklore is the 40 days of rain or sun theory. His miracle, apparently, was to restore to perfection some eggs broken by builders on a bridge.
Unlikely, I think. But if those two things have eclipsed his career it suggests he may not have been a particularly effective Bishop in the 800’s. Sometimes these Saints are best left unresearched.
How do you waste the most time every day?
At home or abroad I waste the most time pondering. Pondering looks unproductive to the outside observer but the time is never truly wasted. Pondering also occurs when I look gainfully employed. Pondering often gets me out of trouble because pondering sometimes causes a change of direction with human interactions and different endeavours. Mulling things over or reflecting are just other words for pondering.
Holiday pondering is just the same as home pondering but in a better climate. Today I pondered Donkey Milk. Unknown to me it has been a beauty and health product from the beginning of time. Donkey milk is the closest thing to human milk . Which puts a whole different view of the Christian Nativity. When I was young I wondered/ pondered why a nine months pregnant woman would want to ride a donkey. When a mule/pony/horse would have been more comfy for her blessed lady garden and or pregnancy created piles.
But here I am the daft one. Joseph on a last minute shop before they set off was sent for some formula, just in case. Breast milk substitute and transport all in one cute package.
I’ve just gone for a face cream. Two choices 24 hour, or wrinkle.
The wrinkles arrived a while ago so that seemed like a lost cause but 24 hour cream regularly applied could give me eternal life should I choose. Warding off the grim reaper one day at a time.
A day of transforming a yard from off-white to white turned out to be both extraordinarily colourful and a self-limiting occupation. The colour change can be seen just by the O of off-white. The early morning dog walk set the colour bar high when I noticed that the luminous cows had moved.
To make way for a very fancy shoe, advertising a Theatre show.
Nature also created wild flower paths between cows and shoe
Dog-walk over it was time to flip off the paint pot lid. With just a moment to tweak Pure Brilliant White into something a little more lively, with fingers still clean enough to touch my phone.
Radio at the ready and I was off.
6 hours later, I had not reached the end of the job but the end of the pot of paint was a most welcome sight.
So much for providing myself with many different audio treats, mucky fingers meant I was stuck with Radio 4 for the day. My ears and mind were taken to places I might not necessarily have chosen. Other people pondering the concept of unconditional love. Very thought provoking. I had some thoughts to add, but radio isn’t like that unless the show offers a phone-in and I would not have had clean enough hands for that sort of shenanigans. Rolling news reports. And some poetry, who could possibly have predicted gentle tears while painting.
I love a complicated image, first thing in the morning. Coffee and a complicated image, which is what this was, is even better.
On reflection, I fear I may have been a bit harsh with May. All my moaning on, about rain and dull days. I blame my genes. I was reading about the wettest and dryest cities in England yesterday. If you were to draw a triangle with each corner being a top 3 driest city. Cambridge, London, Chelmsford. All in the East of England. 75% of my gene pool comes from that geographical area, making me wet-intolerant. The other 25% comes from Wales and Norway. If I was a plant nobody would set my roots in the 3rd wettest city in England , Plymouth, and expect me to thrive. But that is exactly what I have done to myself. So if I am a little droopy in the long, wet, autumn/winter/spring months I have only myself to blame.
On a positive note the roses of Plymouth are just fabulous this year. Our local municipal park has an informal memorial rose garden and after a few days of proper good weather the fragrance and colours are vivid in the late afternoon. I am hoping for a similar transition myself.
I may even do a whole blog about roses, particularly those with their roots in cremated remains.
I am not usually a fan of formal rose gardens but the randomness and slightly scruffy haphazardness of this particular one intrigues me enough to go back.
Somewhere in a cupboard I have a cremated cat called Jasper,I wonder if he fancies going in a pot with rose roots , he might make a wonderful show.
P.s My parents cremated remains are buried in a dry old spot in the East of England, their choice.
Not for them the gaudy,giddiness of a mish-mash of blowsy multicoloured roses. They have a quiet country churchyard and were dug up by moles. I think I prefer gaudy giddiness as a memorial.
First , proper sunshine swim of the year yesterday. We thought it would never come. The refreshing end to a day with the normal day to day events all achieved without a raincoat or indeed any coat at all. Even better the stone steps and walls in our swim zone had been warmed by the sun and radiated a little heat out as we changed after the ‘bob’
May the 4th be with you. A late start to Spring.
Thanks to Facebook Timehop I have been able to look at other more Spring-like May 4ths.
A vintage road trip
A Fox on the table.
Both London May 4th’s
Wisteria
And a delightful English Eccentric
Both West Country May 4th’s.
Who knows what today will bring but I am hugely happy that one of my favourite months has finally heralded some Spring Vibes. We have a destination of choice and so far, as I write this the weather of choice and we are off to enjoy a Christmas gift.
For full disclosure, I must admit to getting a little over-hot as I weeded the yard yesterday. The irony was not lost on me as that thought skimmed through my head.
4 days late welcoming May, what kept you?
Even my phone got a little giddy in the sunlight yesterday. This photograph took itself as I threw the phone into my swim bag.
Giddy is one of my favourite words, in my head it means silly exuberance caused by an external force. When I was a small person I was often told to ” Stop playing the giddy goat”
Are goats giddy creatures? My only real experience of them is at Agricultural shows or in Greece. In those environments, they always seem rather doleful animals. 50% of them suffering from over-large and cumbersome testicles.
Goats came to mind and then giddiness because two of our regular ‘bobbers’ were unable to swim with us yesterday . They sent this picture of their walk in Sussex.
No idea at all why I went down this particular Goat Path for the blog.
But it is Saturday and the sun is out and who doesn’t need to know about Giddy Goats?
https://idiomorigins.org/origin/actplay-the-giddy-goat
May the 4th be with you
When do you feel most productive?
I am erratically productive. Naturally most productive from 7 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. Sunshine helps enormously. At 3 I am ready for lunch sometimes the first meal of the day. Then there is a creative hiatus until about 7 in the evening. 7 pm is my creative planning and thinking phase. Unrecognisable to outside observers who might think I am just being a regular human doing regular human stuff, but outside appearances can be deceiving. Inside my skull, all sorts of schemes are being hatched and discarded. Google Research is my friend at 7, both ends of the day if I get the chance.
Colour was my stimulation yesterday. Some Green Man Choir singing is always a good inspiration for some thinking,usually about the patriarchy and folklore. When I got home there was a lovely, accidental, Primary colour placement of some supermarket lemons.
Actually all the citrus fruits were feeling photogenic yesterday.
Only purple was missing from the mornings colour ponderings but as luck would have it Facebook had a timehop from more than 10 years ago in my Cornish garden. Obviously, a better Spring than we are having this year.
Creativity is such a strange phenomenon. Trapped by being close to the results/ punishment/rewards cycle of Productivity. Nobody gives credit for creative/productive thinking or experimentation. A huge amount of creativity never creates a tangible ‘thing’. But sometimes intangible things gather together to become something. Sometimes failure becomes success and sometimes the other way round. Sometimes I creatively ponder around in circles.
What makes you nervous?
I am not by nature a nervous sort of person but I suffer from retrospective nervousness when I hear that something I have been involved with has not gone to plan. I question myself as to whether I had done my best in that situation, done what was required of me and done anything extra that would have smoothed the wheels of a positive outcome. I wonder if that is a normal reaction. I would say I am a fairly confident person but not supremely confident. As a woman I am without balls, both real and metaphorical. Here lies the pondering part of this ponder. I have often wondered what it would be like to try out some testosterone for about a week. Nothing whatsoever sexual in this,just a week of being in someone elses size 10 boots being male about everyday things . Goodness I know so many absolutely lovely men who are just a pleasure to know. But in life I have met some absolute corkers of bad examples of malehood, men who I really struggle to empathise with or understand at any level. Would a week with testosterone give me any level of understanding or insight?
The reason this question prompted this quite random ponder is that some men would not bother to consider that anything they had done would contribute to a less-than-positive outcome. Cocksure springs to mind.
There is no female version.
Quim Questioning has a nice ring to it.
” The Marquee blew over the sea wall, he was somewhat Cocksure that everything had been done correctly”
” The Marquee blew over the sea wall, she immediately Quimquestioned if everything had been secured correctly”
A week of feeling cocksure might be quite revelatory, no retrospective nervousness.
Shall I start the week with a ring of bright daisies or a daft question from my blog hosts.
Lets put the daft question away.
Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.
Nobody in their right mind would answer this and not expect some trouble. Our family is a supportive force for good with a side order of niggles. Just as a family should be. Having a supportive family is the positive thing. Niggles are normal. But to pick one family member out for doing a positive thing would hugely increase the niggles to an unmanageable level. Everyone would wonder why their positive action has not been mentioned. Can you imagine the flip of this question being helpful.
Tell us something negative a family member has done to you?
Unimaginable in a well functioning family.
How is any of this linked to daisies?
These two pictures of daisies demonstrate that positives and negatives are not always clear cut and that pointing out a positive or a negative is not always good for the bigger picture. I love both these pictures.
These daisies are growing on the edge of a grimy boatyard. They are a welcome piece of nature in an ugly urban environment. Hard to pick out the most positive aspect of this picture.
Less than 500 yards away.
Another daisy family, easy to pick out the most positive aspect of the bigger picture
My family is just like these daisy pictures. Impossible to pick out the one positive that deserves a mention. But we thrive.
Here is the nubbin, the crux of my daisy ponderings on the bigger picture. Anyone looking at these two pictures would find it easy to point out the one stand-out positive feature in the two pictures.
The daisy family in the picture with all aspects being largely, equally positive survived untroubled. Nothing too outstanding to see
The daisy picture with the larger-than-life, perfectly placed tennis ball did not survive.*
* At least three committee meetings and many person hours sealed the fate of the tennis club daisy family.
My apologies for a meandering, not precise blog. I’m not certain I demonstrated my point perfectly.
Praising one individual publicly nearly always diminishes the others in their team( family) in some way.
Lost? You are in good company, find me in the daisy patch
