Our evening walk is never without a boat or two to look at . I have never had the opportunity to be a boaty person but there is something in me that loves to see boats all moored up and safe in their safe harbour.
Just for a moment, last night, the clouds, heavy with imminent rainfall, parted and let a shaft of setting sunshine illuminate these boats. A golden moment at the end of a day that has been filled with small and large golden moments. Chores achieved, chatter and cake. We went to a garden party, birthday celebration. The sort of party where guests contribute food to supplement the host’s main contribution. A glorious home-made version of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Conversations at this type of event are also as random and delightful as the food. Some are somewhat deep and others are fleeting and joyful, mirth making. Leaving you/me wanting more and chuckling randomly later. An all-you-can-talk-about conversational buffet.
Both the food buffet and the conversation buffet within a comfortable community, felt like a human safe harbour, a good place to be.
I have been feeling a bit nostalgic this week. I can pinpoint the exact moment it started on Monday. I was shopping in a local supermarket and saw a dress that looked like the curtains in the kitchen of my home when I was 3 or 4.
I didn’t need a new dress, and out of choice I try to only buy a tiny amount of new items of clothing. Adopting a recycle, repurpose and reuse policy as a small act of saving the planet.
This dress was certainly fast fashion, everything I choose not to engage with. I bargained with myself that I would not buy it because I only wear dresses with pockets and this one, being cheap, would not have pockets.
It had pockets and it came home with me. Nostalgia won.
That started the undercurrent of my week. A slight longing for the past. This very bland set up in my bathroom is nostalgic too. My dad was a man of the seventies and loved his electric razor but he too had nostalgia in his bones and used this shaving mug on rare occasions to have a wet shave as the fancy took him. I use his shaving mug as a regular soap dish, a small act of daily remembrance. And beyond that I don’t really pay it much attention. But because the dress triggered kitchen nostalgia the shaving mug joined in and I pondered how very different my bathroom is from the one the mug lived in during the seventies. My parents bathroom fittings were bright blue, their towels, and facecloths were in bold bright colours and in the iconic designs of the era. Unbelievably, soap was a curious shade of red. Lifebuoy Red.
Lifebuoy red shaped my early life, every part of us was washed with it. I hated it, my face was as dry and tight as the worst sort of sunburn after every face wash, noses and other orifices burned and stung if the lather or suds of the soap got anywhere near them. I soon adopted an independent washing and bathing routine that actually avoided the use of any soap. The only time the soap met water was at the end of my ablutions when I tossed it in the water after I had finished so that I could, in truth, say that I had used soap when my parents questioned my cleaning regime.
During my bathroom nostalgia I pondered that red soap, and wondered if I had just been a bit dramatic about the stuff. Being over-dramatic is always possible, I was an only child with a vivid imagination.
Dr Google has an opinion on Lifebuoy Red ‘ Health’ soap and that opinion is that Lifebuoy Red contained Carbolic Acid.
Which exactly explains why trying to rinse off the soap seemed to make things so much worse. Nobody mentioned rinsing off with alcohol
I may be being overdramatic, but just thinking about that soap gives me the shivers when I recall the lather of that soap going up my nose or south of my belly button. And the effect on my four-year-old face was certainly a mild chemical burn.
Kitchen curtains are one thing, but I can’t imagine a seventies bathroom ever making me feel all warm and nostalgic.
A cheap dress with pockets is so much more appealing.
Yesterday I tidied away my JMW Turner project of the last 4 months. Delivered 4 prints to an art lover and have just one more to deliver. Thank you Linda and Andy. I also did my exhibition accounts and give thanks and a mental back-flip to the art lovers, unknown,who bought some of my work at Cotehele. Even if it was ‘just a card’. Every little counts. Especially when I have the urge to buy some new brushes and I have declared 2025 the year when art sustains itself. Who am I kidding!
Onwards to the next project. A commission for a flower portrait in the style of something I did for the Spring Exhibition a few months back.
The flowers will be mostly fantasy with just one or two real ones thrown in. Hence my morning flower grid taken from my photo archive. I may even throw in some bees!
Hump Day* is better with flowers and as I am thanking people both known and unknown who buy my art, I would also like to thank anyone, known or unknown who read this blog.
I hit 500 subscribers on WordPress this week. Added to followers on Facebook, Instagram and now my return to Pinterest. That gives me 500+
Thanks for giving me 2 minutes of your time to share a ponder or ponders.
Hump Day because it is Wednesday and Hump Day because it is the day JMW Turner is tidied away into a corner of the studio and fantasy flowers begin.
I would like to squeeze a little more out of every day. The candle is burned at either end, and most days have a little more content than capacity.
Life swirls and dips like murmurating starlings at dawn and dusk. But my murmurations are not confined to either end of the day. Any unfilled gap in a day can be easily filled with some mental, domestic or creative murmuration.
Murmurating is not always the most economic use of time. For the economy of time there are lists and routines. Dull but essential.
The missed meeting.
I’ve had a busy extended week and in an attempt to squeeze more out of a day I started on some routine tasks at 11:30 pm. I worked through my lists and hopped off to bed. Smug that I had achieved.
A quick note to a friend to plan a meeting ‘ tomorrow’ was my last point on the to-do list. But I had failed to realise that when I wrote it tomorrow had already become today and thus my meeting ended up as a coffee and a hot chocolate for 1!
I spent an hour happily waiting, murmurating creatively.
All sorts of odd jobs were done on my phone. But the planned meeting did not take place and has been bounced into an as yet unspecified gap in both our schedules.
Would the luxury of more time helped? Maybe not.
I fear I will always fill all of my moments rather too full for comfort. Until I don’t.
I don’t believe there are many days when I don’t walk on the Salt Path. I went to see the film yesterday.
Two actors whose work I admire and a beloved landscape. Versus a book, that I was never quite comfortable with.
People who love the book often question why I don’t love it.
For me, many of the scenarios are implausible. The book seems to straddle between fact and fictionalised ‘fact’
I didn’t love the film either despite the landscape and the actors. Although I thought both the acting and cinematography were subtle and beautiful. The straddle of fact and fiction discombobulated me.
So one book done, one film done and I still need to be persuaded.
This photograph straddles fact and fiction on the Salt Path.
Two evening photographs taken about 5 seconds apart and with a shift to the west of about 2 degrees. Digitally stuck together as a double exposure and then tidied up.
Photography straddling fact and fictionalised fact on the Salt Path.
P.s What is to be done? Apparently I need to read the second and possibly the third book to gain enlightenment. Let’s see how that goes…
While stewarding last week I talked with Iain, another DttV artist. We talked about both having an initial reticence to get going on the Turner project. But after several months at it, we both wondered if we would ever fully give up some of the things we have learnt by using the techniques of JMW Turner. As mentioned in another blog, conversations like this are invaluable.
I didn’t expect to be back with Mr Turner quite so quickly but yesterday evening nature created a Turneresque sun in the early evening at Mountbatten.
Three quick and ‘bad’ photographs later and I have the beginning of one of my ‘ Turner ‘ images. Just some pencil sketching and a watercolour layer to add.
Sunday 8th of June, the last day of a fantastic exhibition.
The joys of stewarding with a group of artists from Drawn to the Valley. ( Other art groups are equally rewarding)
I am a big fan of Stewarding. I learned to love it in some truly iconic galleries in London, Tate Modern, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Slade School of Fine Art (UCL) , Brixton East and some of the many galleries in Spitalfields and Brick Lane. All with South London Women Artists.
Returning to the West Country finds me exhibiting with Drawn to the Valley. Stewarding with either group has been rewarding and so informative. Artists are solitary creatures. We tinker away in our studios. Doing our thing,sometimes with a flow of creativity and other times a little stuck. Maybe lost in our own thoughts. Stewarding gives us all the chance to talk to one another and talk to the public who attend our exhibitions. Really some of the most rewarding conversations that can be had between relative strangers. At Cotehele we exhibited in a gallery space that was built in 1485. Yes the floorboards creaked a bit and the shadows and shafts of light were tricksy for viewing works of art behind glass, but 1485! Henry VII was King. We the chance to show our art and natter in a room that has been used for 540 years. The art is fabulous, the location equally so and then in just one day the whole thing will be dismantled. Catch it while you can.
It seems that I am not the only person/ thing to have a vivid imagination in this house. Last night Hugo got me up for a wee and something spooked him in the top corner of our yard. It didn’t move when he gave it a good telling off. I took a picture in the gloom of midnight using the night settings and there was nothing remotely frightening to be seen.
Of course I was wide awake at this point and decided to write a newsletter and get some admin done, which thankfully had me off to sleep again in less than an hour.
For no particular reason, when I reviewed the photograph this morning,. I asked the randomised AI feature on my phone to reproduce the image. The randomised AI image trawls through my recent photographs and looks at the post-production tools I have used to edit them. It comes up with four suggestions. The hit rate of success is delightfully low for use as a stand alone editing tool but interesting results can happen and be useful in a much larger creative project.
Yesterday I was at an art exhibition, struggling to take good photos in a beautiful but awkwardly lit gallery. A subject for the next blog. All those photos of paintings gave my yard aspirations!
With the sea five minutes away I never have a fantasy of a plunge pool in my yard but clearly the yard has its own dreams and aspirations.
This blog could go one of two ways or it could just celebrate the first Passion Flower of the season. Passion flower plants were a gift from our builder last May. He gave us three leggy plants to trail over the trellis he had just installed on the top of our wall. They put on a bit of growth last summer and were repotted this Spring. A flower and later in the season edible Passion Fruits is on our wish list.
Not on our wish list was a domestic fatburg. When you buy an old house things like drains are a bit of a dark art. With no warning our kitchen drain failed spectacularly this week. The first sign was when the dishwasher suffered from reflux and bleated pathetically. We did not recognise this as an early symptom of an apocolypse. Dynarod were booked but not for several days. In a very busy week I had planned myself a day of domestica yesterday.
The blocked drain was a bit of a head scratcher. We do not have the modern luxury of an inspection cover or any means of identifying the direction of flow or indeed stasis in our case.
This being an Edwardian house I attempted an Edwardian solution. Boiling water/ Bicarbonate of Soda/ white vinegar. A lava like eruption of gunge bubbled away at the access point of the drain. Probing with a stick revealed standing water to a depth of almost 3 feet, a metre even.
Armed only with a pair of surgical gloves for human examination* and a plunger more serious intervention was required.
What I needed was veterinary gauntlets for Cow Gynaecology.
Laying on my belly I plunged my arm and plunger into the depths and achieved a very good attatchment to something. My plunger resolutely hung on to whatever unseen object I had chanced upon. One hand in the supersoft and slippy water was not enough so another hand had to go in. This is taking moments to write but it was easily two hours of time as I pondered and considered each next move.
After several awkward pulls on my plunger there was a sudden movement and a giant domestic fatburg was delivered at face level. Not a pleasant experience. Dirty water gurgled and then settled, only at a slightly lower water level. I waited a bit, hoping for a miracle but none was forthcoming. So I repeated the plunger experiment. This time things were a little easier. One more two handed pull and a second fatburg was delivered and with that the grungy water disappeared with hollow glugs and the sound of a minor victory.
Dynarod cancelled.
And so back to the Passion Flower, and there is a connection. Firstly the passion flower cheered me up on my many trips back into the house, once to receive a parcel, for a neighbour, that required photo evidence. Not a bit of me was a photo opportunity yesterday.
The colours of the fatburg were very similar to the Passion Flower. Mostly creamy with evidence of culinary adventures with turmeric, chilli, tomato, beetroot and inexplicably a blueberry colour.
Twin fatburgs and a plunger and a Passion Flower. Quite the Day.
Except in this village in a city, the pavements are littered with quotes from the Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle. This one is entirely appropriate.
P.s On one of the sites where my blog appears Meta offer an analysis. A case of Metapondering perhaps?
theoldmortuary.design 