Technology has changed every aspect of my life in millions of different ways for millions of years.
How has technology changed your job?
Any job I do only exists because of technology and is easier than it was last year or even last week because of evolving technology. But as someone who writes or draws I could take a trip to Lake Turkana and use a sharp flake of stone and write or draw on a rock surface just as I would have done 3.3 million years ago. My tech gadget, though is letting me down on this one.
This is what happened just after I pondered yesterday. A real life ponder, not a blog ponder, although now it is a blog ponder.
After a fairly normal morning routine. Tea, Coffee,blog,Shower, I hit a conundrum, 45 minutes between shower and a morning dip in the sea. What to wear in that 45 minutes?
While I sorted out my after-swim attire Hugo took himself into the folds of the unmade bed. My indecision gave him those moments that he needed to catch up on sleep. Normally we would be out walking but the plan was for his walk to combine with my walk to the beach.
He effortlessly goes from pyjamas to daywear without pondering.
I opted for half putting on my wetsuit, legs and bum only. Letting the arms and body hang down. A dressing gown completed the ensemble. Of course, someone knocked on the door and of course, as I accepted a parcel my two dangling wetsuit arms pushed themselves out from beneath the dressing gown. Nobody deserves that image etched into their morning routines. Which is why I am just sharing pictures of Hugo. The swim was also completely non-photogenic, wild and wet, rough and bouncy. We congratulated ourselves on how brave we are on these wilder days . Not, I might add, dangerously brave, just cautiously brave. Freshwater rain and seasalty fingers do not combine to take good seascapes.
A cheeky dog in the unmade bed is much more appealing.
Yesterday bought me face to face with a very old ponder. When I was 16, in rural Essex, I discovered the joy of gathering in a pub on a Friday night with my friends. For a natter and a catch-up, before we headed off to the giddy excitement of rural or semi-rural nightclubs or live music events at the local college. Alcohol was not involved because public transport didn’t exist much beyond 8pm. We gathered at a pub called the Green Man. Sometimes we discussed men,mostly the real-world sort but occasionally and without Google or a vast library of reference books we pondered where all the Green Women were.
Yesterday I started singing, with a community choir, a contemporary collection of songs called The Green Man. Composed not five minutes from my current home and inspired by the same landscape that inspired my Green Androdgyny
I have spent an extremely small percentage of my life pondering the folklore of the Green Man. Puzzled that the human face of the arrival of spring is male. Last year I created an androdgynous Green person for a Spring exhibition. I have been down a green- man -google- rabbit- hole researching the whole Green Man tradition and am both older and wiser and yet not wiser. If there is a female version of the green man she is less well known, has a more awkward name and not surprisingly has a more active role in creating Spring. Sheela Na Gig is represented as a woman with disproportionately large genitals. Almost essential given that in other portrayals she is actually giving birth to trees and bushes that already have a full compliment of leaves and fruit. Splayed branches out first. Deeply uncomfortable with a high risk of tears, either meaning of the words and probably both at the same time.
This time next week we will all be waking up in March. If January was all about recharging and recovering from the pleasures of the Festive Season it also brought some unexpectedly lovely sunny days. Bright shafts of sunlight kick-started early Spring Cleaning and redecorating during February.
No bad thing as February has been relentlessly wet and drear. Global warming in the far south-west of Britain reveals itself damply. Growing up in the Cold War years (1947-1985) nobody talked much about the climate until they did.
As a lover of words it seems interesting that almost with a flick of a switch the media swapped one temperature based threat with another.
I first heard the term ‘ Global Warming’ in about 1984 just as the ‘Cold war’ was limping to a conclusion of sorts. My ponder today is a really naive one. Does the world not take Global Warming seriously because the word warming is one that suggests comfort and cosiness.
Which leads me to today’s random question/prompt.
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
I took far too much advice as a teenager, so overburdening my younger self with more unsolicited advice might be unwelcome. But here I go.
Nobody gets it all right, all of the time. But getting things wrong is often the more interesting path but not the most comfortable.
Study Global Warming.
Plum Beautiful lipstick, Levi’s and Doc Martin boots will still be with you when you are sixty.
Life changed and took me along with it. My favourite drinks are time specific. The first caffeinated cup of tea of the day followed swiftly by the first black coffee. Since Covid stole or altered almost all of my sense of taste and smell, my favourite drinks are the ones with many layers of flavour. I am at my flavoursome best in the morning.
After midday I only drink modified water really. This is not a hardship. A whole new world of fruit tea is out there for me to explore. Sadly they are mostly just a few moments of flavour before they just become hot water. Mostly I just drink hot water.
Barszcz, clear Polish Borscht, served in a cup on Christmas Eve was a revelation. Exactly the mix of flavours I need to kick my tastebuds into afternoon action.
By the evening there is no point trying to kick the tastebuds, they are tucked up in bed long before I am. Alcohol has more or less abandoned me.
And this is the point when a prompted blog finds the true path to a ponder. Humans, or at least the ones I mix with are gorgeous hospitable people. They want me and my taste buds to have a good time. Only asking for a cup of hot water or a non-alcoholic drink upsets the balance of hospitality and generosity for most people. I realise now the struggle that it must be to be a non-drinker, by choice or need.
I’m not entirely sure where this blog is going today. After a morning of rather dull admin I gave myself a little break and did some test printing and gave some new watercolours a bit of a run out as a reward for tasks achieved. A little digital tweaking and I created this header post. Big thanks to everyone who responded so positively to yesterday’s blog, I love feedback, you all make my pondering a positive experience.
I suppose yesterday’s blog was loosely about books and today’s mild ponder is also about a book, one that I have not read.
A quote from this book was shared with my book group and I felt that I disagreed with the writer to some degree.
It didn’t exactly keep me up all night but now I am going to have to read the book and see why the author felt the need to take such a cavalier attitude to her past. It is my safe past experiences that give me the confidence to press on into the cloud, as she puts it, of the future. Like many people not everything in my past was fabulous, but all past experience is useful. I suppose what shocks me is that she considers past experience to be ‘ dead’. It is unalterable, but surely it is as alive and vivid as I allow it to be.
And this is exactly why I have a book pile problem. This quote will piss me off until I have read the whole book. Pondering. Is it ever possible to turn it off?
I am not the only family member that ponders. Hugo finds pondering easiest on a comfy bed. He is pondering the quality of the biscuits he was given in a pub in Penzance. I was at the same pub but not given a biscuit, a tickle or photographed by a stranger, looking cute near a ship’s wheel or staring masterfully at a sextant. For me the pub itself became a massive ponder.
The Admiral Benbow is one of the oldest pubs in Penzance. It has elevated itself from an illegal drinking den in the sixteenth century to a regular pub with an irregular clientele in later centuries. All safely in the past. Famed for being the meeting place of pirates, smugglers, wreckers and all other forms of seafaring miscreants. The pub would also have been a great place for all varieties of prostitution to thrive. My ponder on the subject of the Admiral Benbow is really about the whitewashing of crime and criminals, illegal activity in all its many forms by the passing of time and the ‘ romance of the sea’
I cannot imagine choosing to spend an evening in a pub or club associated with 21st Century criminals. Drug dealers, handlers of stolen goods, people traffickers, or perpetrators of modern slavery.
But centuries passing and a whiff of the sea makes sharing a time-hop space with the imagining of rogues acceptable, fascinating and enjoyable.
Romance and fantasy stick themselves to the sea and seafarers in a way that seems disproportionate and mystifying. The whites of tropical uniforms are a ‘thing’ in both heterosexual and queer culture. Sailors have a word for a temporary madness that hits them in the tropics.
Calenture a sort of giddiness that brings a heightened state of excitement in hot weather. Throwing themselves into the sea for fun and feeling sexually aroused.
Seafarers really do get some of the best words.
As I sat in the Admiral Benbow enjoying a rum,while Hugo enjoyed a good sea dog biscuit it was easy to imagine the bar boasts of olden times. I really hope Calenture cropped up.
Prof.Google helped me out on this one.
Are Sailors romantic because they were the first profession to really see the world and bring us unimaginable things from foreign destinations.
Which brings me, rather circuitously, to today’s random question
What’s your favorite candy?
Chocolate. Just chocolate. Not chocolate cake or puddings. Nothing too fancy.
Ponderings, in the Admiral Benbow on Monday night. Plenty of space for historical visitors from all centuries. Some nibs of chocolate in a leather pouch and tales of Calenture. Just fascinating.
Lola, meanwhile, thinks such pondering is overated. She could be right.
I love cooking anything with British summer fruits. Not a thing I do much of in the depth of winter. But where cooking fails, art steps up. I had ordered some romantically named water colours in the depth of winter, they arrived on the cusp of February and the little test piece I painted when they arrived, had all the piquancy of my favourite summer puddings.
The names themselves are delicious.
School Disco
Byzantium
Caravan Green
Gooseberry
Rowan berry
I doodled away giving everything except Byzantium a run out on paper. To be honest I was being sidetracked.
I was actually supposed to be creating a pillowcase from an old pyjama jacket.
But the temptation to try the new paints suddenly became urgent. Probably because sewing the slippery fabric was as difficult as it had been to sleep in the pyjamas.
I didn’t give Byzantium a moment on the brush. I’m not sure why. But it gives me a fine excuse to have another doodle this weekend.These paints are all hand made by Tansy Horgan.
I have a project in mind that will need Byzantium. I am slightly concerned that Byzantium may be a bit of a bully. Caravan Green turned out to be exactly that. Hugely versatile on his own, but a little bit of a bully when mixing with others. Gooseberry was a dream,fading out to something imperceptibly beautiful the more dilute I made it.
School Disco was a dream. As pink and pushy as Barbie. I was always a rather conflicted Disco goer, particularly the termly torture of a School Disco. I loved to dance, but in that dreadful hierarchy of teenage years my acne and bookishness cast me as a wallflower. Not that I needed to be picked to be danced with. I have always had enough chutzpah to dance as if no-one is watching, but the judgement of the school ‘beautiful people’ is a harsh spotlight to step into.
And lastly Rowanberry.
Does anybody apart from birds eat a Rowanberry? The paint was fab. A super bright red/orange with a bitter edge. I can’t wait to pair it with Byzantium on a doodle.
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
I am fairly risk averse so there are probably many things that I am scared to do. I just don’t confront them on daily, weekly or even annual basis. I am very far from a control freak but as an individual I very much like to be in control of my situations and destiny. Surrendering that control is a decision I like to make for myself. Trust, respect, experience, knowledge and love help me to surrender my desire to be in control. Anything that would make me take truly risky harmful decisions scares me and nothing is likely to change my thinking.
If that makes me sound timid or fearful. That is not the case at all.
‘ What’s the worst that could happen” is a fairly regular thought.
Creativity and knowledge grows in the spaces created by taking a calculated risk . It’s the uncalculated risks I avoid.
Rather a subjective question this morning Bloganuary.
Good leaders are often those whose leadership is the result of organic growth rather than ambition. I prefer people who lead with considered opinions rather than certainty. I like a leader with a sense of their own self worth without an over inflated ego. I prefer appropriate action over ” talking the talk” I prefer time limited leadership. 3 years is about right. If things are all going wonderfully another 3 years can be granted if things are not quite so tickety-boo or the leader feels they have done enough then a change can be made with no loss of face.
My magpie mind has done me no good with regard to Leadership. I was about 12 when the quote below floated into my head like a dandelion seed and has stayed there ever since.
Goodness knows why this lodged in my adolescent mind. It has stuck with me and I have judged myself and others by this one sentence. Sadly this sentence is painfully true in many people who are put into or find themselves in leadership positions.
Beauty, sexual availability and physical strength, wealth and self-esteem, as well as suitability can all forge a path towards leadership. But whatever path gets you there the risk of being corrupted by the power is very real. Power is intoxicating to many. It really doesn’t matter if a leader is running a team of two other burger flippers or a country with nuclear weapons or anything in between the risk of corruption is always there.
So to answer the question. “What makes a good leader?”
In my somewhat skewed opinion. Knowledge, skill, humanity and collaboration. The ability to listen more than talk and to make appropriate decisions at the right time. To flex and pivot as circumstances change. A sense of personal style with a good moral compass in the same pocket as a smartphone. The moral compass should be used more often than the phone.
Why the cows?
Which of these cows would you choose as the leader?
They are a nod to the history of the buildings they are near.
The eager pink one is heading off in the direction of the abattoir. Not for me.
The green one needs lunch immediately. Not for me.
The orange one is ruminating, pondering the situation. Orange Cow you are my kind of woman.
Freedom in the shape of a tunnel is just a few steps away.
The path will be rocky.
But if she leads them in the right direction there will be wild flowers and lush grass to nibble at. I just hope her power is not corrupted along the way.
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