Storm Amy, contemplating how much power she will unleash.
This has been a funny week blogwise. With a forgotten one. A hugely over-viewed one( 384!) and one that I wrote and forgot to publish. In between those three, dog walking, normal life, and many sea swims there has not been a lot of down time. Until yesterday when a squeeze- in late lunch date at the local market was cancelled. I read a book about Sport Psychology instead. Storm Amy is on the way. She is the love child of Hurricanes Humbert and Imelda who were jiggy over the Atlantic. Amy made my swim a little like being a lone sock in a washing machine yesterday. Even though she was in her calm phase.
Once again I plan to paint or create an image of each storm that batters our little peninsula. I would rather Amy was spelled Aimee. For some reason it seems easier to visualise a storm with more letters and a double ee. More screechy perhaps. Sea swimming may be off the diary for a few days.
My phone has become a little judgmental recently. The exercise App takes a dim view of anything less than 10,000 steps a day. Never considering my swims as exercise. I also sense a little judgement about my use of a tide and weather App.
Maybe I should forget to write a blog more often. Yesterday’s slightly apologetic blog got more views than usual as you can see from my stats bar.
Somebody must have dropped off to sleep with their finger on the view button!
By way of celebration I have featured a golden horse, just because really, and because horses were the subject of an evening ponder, which was always going to be todays pondering.
We are watching a drama based around the time our house was built and set in a similar location.
A house identical to ours was a very brief twist in the plot. A man rode his horse up to the front door when he needed to visit.*
Obviously horses were the key method of transport. But I had never really visualised one being used in my urban street just as a motorbike would be used to transport a single traveller. My lack of imagination of course but the thought slightly blows my mind.
This would have been an entirely normal view out of our front window. In many ways unimaginable.
A bit like my stats of yesterday.
*
I realise that visitors may not have ridden to the front of the property and that riding to the front was a kind of dramatic moment. But honestly riding to the back or the front, who cares! Mindblowing.
In a different observation, mine was the sort of house where powerful men kept their illicit lovers, male or female. We have a massive fireplace in one of the bedrooms here. Oh the things it may have seen…
Somehow I dropped a blog yesterday. But I did get a weekend’s worth of newspapers read and we did some of our favourite walks in gorgeous sunshine. I spent some time in a second-hand book shop and kept my hand firmly in my pocket.
Second-hand book shops fill me with nostalgia. Had my parents lived until now they would be in their early nineties. An age when people naturally downsize or naturally move to another realm. The books on their shelves finding their way to second hand book shops the world over.
In consequence, preloved bookshop shelves look very similar to my parents beloved home library. As do the piles of discarded C.D’s.
I woke up cold this morning. The first time for many months. I also have a planned dip in the sea. Now I accept that I am fully in the Autumn Zone.
When my bed feels snug and the thought of a cold swim feels like madness.
Sunrise has yet to occur, although not a deal breaker, some sunshine would be most welcome.
Yesterday the sun made a most welcome visit to my morning dip.
Which was all very energising for the day ahead. Which is the point where reality steps in. Yesterday’s dip was timed to fit in perfectly with the day’s chores. The first of which was a Vermin survey at a tennis club that I help to run.
The club overlooks all my swimming zones. Proximity to the sea means this could be perfect Real Estate for rats. However we have a very diligent and effective Rat detective who ensures we have no long tailed members using the club on a regular basis.
Mabon is a modern Pagan name for the autumn equinox which occurs in England at 7:19 tomorrow the 22nd of September.
In this image Mabon turns her head slightly to face the colder/crisper days of autumn. Mornings at this time of year can be glorious so I have surrounded her with warm colours, with just the chill of what is to come on her face.
Harvest Festival used to mark this time of year when I was a child. But as a working adult, who worked in a daylight free environment, the passing seasons and their boundaries of solstices and equinoxes passed me by. Life as an artist and dog walker makes me far more tuned in to the seasons moods.
This boundary is the one I dislike the most. Anticipating shorter, colder, darker days. However Autumn itself is a lovely time of year. Mists and mellow fruitfulness and Pumpkins.
Always Pumpkins
My harvesting this year has been almost entirely supermarket based. I love big, fat, juicy figs. Fresh ones, straight from Mediterranean trees are my favourite. After that I have to settle for ones that are labelled ‘large’ in supermarkets or market stalls. Mediterranean figs would laugh in the face of that description of large. Here is my diminutive haul from yesterday.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have the kind of mind that wanders. Last night I should have been concentrating on the words and music for an upcoming performance.
I don’t read music so concentration is vital. But where was my head? Off on a completely pointless ponder.
Goodness me, doesn’t the vein in that marbletombstone look like an artery?
Odd anatomy, but it could just be a right coronary, circumflex artery.
Needs a stent though.
Real Coronary artery that needs a stent.Does this Marble need a stent?
Now a sensible head that needed to concentrate would have stopped there. But no.
This could be a bespoke, graphic headstone for someone who died of Right Coronary Heart Disease.
What animal would have a right coronary artery like this. Or any other artery for that matter.
Is there disease further down?
Then in a moment of bonkers serendipity we started singing about Postman’s Park.
A little bit of London obscurity to read in the link below.
And here’s to the memory of Thomas Simpson, Whose life was sacrificed, Rescuing skaters from High Gate Pond When they fell through the treacherous ice.
These are the heroes of everyday life, Their stories may not reach us all, But in Postman’s Park are the tales of their strife, Displayed on the plaques on the wall ‘neath the awning.
Now young Sarah Smith was just seventeen, When her inflammable dress caught fire, Rushing to help her friend in distress, She created her own funeral pyre.
At Battersea Sugar Refinery, Thomas Griffin met his fate, A boiler exploded and scalded him raw, When he went back to look for his mate.
Now William Drake was passing Hyde Park, When ladies he saw in distress, Their horses were bolting, he leapt to their aid, And that was the cause of his death.
Now William Donald, a railway clerk, Was drowned in the River Lee, He was trying to save his friend from the weeds, But created his own tragedy.
And last but not least is Percy Edwards, An officer of the law, He lost his life in a gaseous pit, Rescuing those who’d gone in before.
…
Postman’s Park is where I sat as a teenager, anxiously waiting to see if I had been accepted to train at Barts Hospital in London.
It is also the place I escaped to on occasion when a busy day in the Cath Labs at Barts allowed me five minutes in the sun with a sandwich. Cath ( Catheter) Labs treat and diagnose heart disease.
And where I sat as a woman on the cusp/precipice/adventure of retirement from Barts, wondering how on earth life had taken me on an unplanned full circle.
Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.
My epic fail occurred one Christmas when I was batch cooking sausage rolls. Enough to feed a substantial quantity of festive guests. I had a large range style cooker and every shelf was filled with unctuous sausage meat enrobed with the best flaky pastry that supermarkets could sell. 30 mins cooking time was the perfect timing to pop to a neighbour for a tiny Seasonal drink. Unfortunately, the neighbours didn’t do tiny and I didn’t do portion control or observe my 30-minute time slot. An hour passed in a twinkling and I was full of festive spirit ( gin). Once home I was in no rush to rescue my baked goods. They were already past anyone’s judgment of edible. When the oven cooled down I swept them into a carrier bag to feed the birds in a local park after Christmas Day. Off to the park I went with a gaggle of over sugared children. I handed over the bag of sausage rolls and paid little attention to the bird feeding, just taking some mental breathing space. Somewhat irresponsibly I had weaponised children and was not paying attention. Each tiny bite-sized sausage roll was a rock in the hands of small children. Birds scattered, fearful of their feathered lives. Other parents and park visitors judged me as I realised that for the second time in 48 hours I had failed to adequately assess the sausage roll situation.
Nobody remembers that I did clear up the mess, no birds were actually harmed and that everyone had a fabulous hour or so in the park.
Every Christmas when a sausage roll passes the lips of any child or adult who has knowledge of that day. Somebody pipes up with the legend of me killing birds in a local park at Christmas time with over cooked sausage rolls because I had drunk too much gin.
All other years my sausage rolls have been fabulous. Nobody ever mentions that.
My poor sense of taste and smell, post-COVID, means that my lifetime favourite foods have changed. Seasoning, unusual flavour pairings, and texture are the things that bring mealtime pleasure on the days when I cant really taste very much and the food world resembles soggy cardboard. This question was timely today as I popped into Marks and Spencer to buy a new madcap product.
Who knows what gustatory delight Caramel Sauce with Marmite will bring? The Original Salt and Pepper Seasoning would certainly have been beneficial to the chips in the top picture. They were the epitome of cardboard
We did a regular dog walk around Sutton Harbour and The Barbican yesterday. A one hour dog walk, with time for sniffs etc
Both are hugely busy harbours with a constantly changing cast of seafarers and tourists on any day of the year. This weekend is a massive Sea Festival and everywhere is heaving with people having a good day out.
Live music fills every corner and spills across the harbours at high tide. Merging and blending. Drunken choruses of Robbie Williams tracks, merging with the rhythms of sea shanties and Church bells.. Hen parties with high heels on cobbles and men observing, holding pints and opinions that are not worth repeating.
These harbours have been bustling hubs for centuries and I would say these photos , taken in the midst of the happy hubbub could have been taken any time in the last 700 years. Dogs would have pee’d on the lobster pots as Hugo did. People would have been reflected in puddles. People would have made tracks.
Birds would have swooped over water.
So these calm pictures do lie, because they were tiny calm and unlikely moments, taken in the midst of happy people, crowded together intent on having a good time.But by excluding nearly all human detail, they are timeless.
Time for hands on creativity has been a bit short recently for good reasons and some tedious ones. I keep my creative head ticking over by doing digital art and reading about arty stuff that interests me. Visiting exhibitions too. Always a sure-fire way to get me back on the creative mojo. September also, always feels far more like a fresh start than the turgid dampness of January. I’ve been thinking about how to recycle or repurpose unsold artwork. Collage is a big thought. Not just from my own work but from some of the high quality tourist/ lifestyle magazines that can be picked up in arty places.
The picture above was not a conscious effort of creativity. I just packed up a scalpel and some old colour sketches of my local streets and went to meet fellow artists at a coffee/ cake/ and create session. I didn’t know what I planned to do but I had given the matter some thought.
Then 24 hours later I read this fascinating article. If you have the time please read it. It is not the article that made me ponder but the image that prefaced it.
Is it just me or does it seem hugely insulting to illustrate an article about creativity with an illustration that just shows men?
When I should have been reading and inwardly digesting something that really interests me. I just want to punch the smug white male and his white, white coated cranium sub – conscious allies. Maybe punching is too gentle. After all, I have a scalpel and I know how to use it. I note however that when the white coats did the craniotomy all they found was an empty void.
Whoever thought this picture was a good illustration for a great article should have given the matter more thought. Maybe slept on it or gone for a refreshing walk…
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