Months are not like weeks. Months do not have a gap of a couple of days for recovery between one ending and another beginning. Hard on the heels of yesterday’s farewell to August, I am obliged to write a welcome to September. With no Monthend days in between.
For me there is a stark difference, entirely of my own making. In August I forgive myself for laziness because it is August. In September the drum beats a different and more urgent tune. Procrasta the Saint, Good Witch or Goddess of putting things off, lolls about in August encouraging and rewarding languorous behaviour. I believe she lives off warm figs in August.
Procrasta
In September she causes more positive trouble,by finding things of greater interest,but less importance that take up time before the real job can get done.
So with no gap between August and September I must respond to her change in character and get on with one or two things. Because sometimes even writing a blog is actually a procrastination. She is a deviously interesting character and although I only named her today, I fear I have been in her thrall for some time.
So much better to blame a mythical creature than accepting an innate character flaw
Rain is a bit of a tradition for the August (Summer) Bank Holiday. This nearly always galvanises us to get outdoor jobs done beforehand, which is why the yard got a lot of attention on Friday before the giddiness of the Full Moony swim.
Saturday did not disappoint, weatherwise. The morning dog walk was a complete wash out, even my brilliant orange raincoat failed to save the day and a complete change of clothes was required. The day was not a washout however. Many of the full Moony Bobbers put their clothes on and swapped shore for moor. Driving to Princetown, home of the infamous Dartmoor Prison. Crossing the bleakly beautiful moorland. The location of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. No howling last night just lovely tunes at the Dartmoor Outdoor Festival.
Curiously for an outdoor festival we were inside the solidly granite bar of the Plume of Feathers at Princetown, to hear our fellow bobber Helen sing with her friend Steve. Two hours of great music, great chat, always a given when bobbers gather and an unexpected life lesson.
A local Residential Home had brought 5 very senior residents to enjoy the music. One in particular was like a lightbulb all evening. Lit up by music and the atmosphere. It was obvious that in her mind she was twirling on the dancefloor, maybe even that actual dancefloor at the end of the second world war. When Princetown was a much more lively place
During World War II, Princetown served as a remote staging area for Allied troops preparing for the D-Day landings and briefly used its railway line to transport prisoners to Dartmoor Prison. American and Allied forces used the high, isolated Dartmoor landscape around Princetown and Rundlestone Corner for tactical training away from enemy observation. The historic prison facility accommodated troops and preparations leading up to the Normandy invasions.The Princetown Railway saw a temporary resurgence in transporting prisoners to the local prison as road and alternate rail links handled heavy wartime traffic.
Imagine those heady post war months in a remote village swollen with British and American Service personnel, dismantling and disengaging a huge and temporary Military establishment.
Her absolutely obvious pleasure made for a lovely vicarious moment.
Share a hobby you’ve picked up recently — what got you into it?
Not just me and not just the Bobbers. A little moment of skinny dipping in Firestone Bay under a full moon.
Although with full disclosure I had to paint the Sturgeon moon and add it to the image afterwards, because the sky was densely greige with clouds.
The three swimming bays were alive last night with the happy chatter of swimmers who had discarded swimwear, and their allies who swam alongside wearing textiles.
A Full Moonie is all about swimming at night under the full moon even if the moon fails to turn up.
What got us into it?
Just one bobbers 60th Birthday Bucket List, earlier in the year.
Who knows if we will keep it up through the winter. Nothing is impossible with the Bobbers but I suspect nudity might be very brief in the winter months ,no matter how hardy we believe we are.
The swim was silkily warm and thoroughly enjoyable. As ever the after-bob chatter was free flowing and wildly multi-faceted.
@theoldmortuary had spent the day working in the yard. Just a small amount of painting left to do before winter. But having painted the moon for the bobbers it would be a waste not to see it over a nearly finished yard.
If only our still green tomatoes could be so easily faked.
Five heatwaves and not a single red tomato yet.
But with a multi-purpose Sturgeon Moon even a ripe tomato is possible.
The outside fireplace/barbque in our yard has only ever been used with an electric grill plate. I have often thought about using a fire log in it, but until this weekend have not put that thought into action.
The fireplace is an impressive erection , smoke should rise up a reasonable sized gap at the back and exit via the chimney. The fireplace may be a case of style over substance. Form and function are not quite aligned.
The reality did not quite match my imagination, my five year old flame log was quite impressive.
But the flames were lively and the smoke did not get drawn up the chimney, there were some concerns from our yard visitors regarding the use of railway sleepers in the construction.
All was well, but today I took the precaution of lowering the shelving and moving things around to make the whole experience more relaxing.
The whole yard had a bit of a reorganisation at the same time. Definitely a sign that we are well and truly back in a normal British August. I dodged rain showers which was easier than dodging the blistering heat of our heatwaves. But now I really want to see how my changes look in sunshine. A normal British August will keep me guessing on when that will next happen.
Does bright yellow signify the beginning of the ‘Scrag end of Summer’.
We have had a most unusual summer, 5 heatwaves have rendered our back yard almost unusable because of excessive heat. Evenings being the only time we could comfortably sit out, or tinker with our plants.
Nearly a week since the last heatwave left the area, the later part of sitting in the yard last evening required rugs.
So heatwaves apart, we are now in an entirely normal late summer pattern. Mentally we extend summer into the whole of September. Optimistic that Autumn will only descend on the 1st of October with a crescendo of pumpkins.
A very interesting question in light of the 5 heatwaves + 1 more scheduled for September, is what will the 2026 Pumpkin season look like? 1st World Problems.
Painting pumpkins is one of my favourite fruit and Vegetable art moments.
Which leads me somewhat circuitously to the the art drama of my past week. Two hybrid prints featuring the moon were sent off for a test print. One came back looking good the other did not. So back to the drawing board in the literal and actual sense.
For my image I wanted the moon to look soft and mythical, exactly like cream cheese.
The Moon is made of green cheese” is a statement referring to a fanciful belief that the Moon is composed of cheese. In its original formulation as a proverb and metaphor for credulity with roots in fable, this refers to the perception of a simpleton who sees a reflection of the Moon in water and mistakes it for a round cheese wheel. It is widespread as a folkloric motif among many of the world’s cultures, and the notion has also found its way into children’s folklore and modern popular culture.
Queso fresco (“fresh cheese”), a green cheese, with typical white, round appearance resembling a full moon. The phrase “green cheese” in the common version of this proverb (sometimes “cream cheese” is used),[1] may refer to a young, unripe cheese[2][3][4][5] or to cheese with a greenish tint.[6]
My first attempt , which I was entirely happy with until the test print, did in fact look very much like a green and slightly misshapen cheese. I wanted gentle swirls of Philadelphia.
Cream Cheese Moon 🎬2
Cream Cheese moon, created by swirling wet Posca pens with my finger has successfully been inserted into my original image and the nasty green moon banished. Another first world problem to ponder on a Sunday evening in a yard which is, for the first time this summer pleasantly warm rather than roasting.
It is just over a week since I bobbed during the partial eclipse with 9 other bobbers. At the time the experience was both peculiar and beautiful. Peculiar because we swam for virtually the whole of the eclipse experience. Quite often with special Eclipse glasses which gave us a completely safe experience to view the eclipse in real time, but our vision was limited to black and red vision of the black moon obscuring most of an orange sun . While our bodies were experiencing the sensations of the sea and our ears were hearing the happiness and exclamations of a bay, full of happy swimmers.
When we didn’t have the glasses on we were experiencing ever changing highly saturated colours that slowly darkened and changed as the moon crossed the sun. One of my Eclipse glasses visions was of sparks of light like golden diamond twinkles firing off the perimeter of the sun. I think caused by drops of sea water on my eyelashes or on the plastic lens of the eclipse glasses.
I knew I wanted to create an image of the experience, but which one?
Until I decided to throw caution to the wind and put all my recollections into one image. Not as mad as you might think for someone who worked in medical imaging. For example a CT scan image is made of many amalgamated pictures taken from lots of different angles at slightly different times.
My hybrid printmaking technique with photography and painted or mono printed images uses exactly that technique, modified a little.
Yesterday I had to get a bit of a wiggle on to get this image off to a printer for a test run Giclee print. It is still not the finished article but I will need to see how a print looks.
So that’s where the image is currently but what about my personal recollection?
Really one of the loveliest things I have done in a really familiar home environment. I still haven’t quite found the words to describe the experience. But I have found the many layers of a half decent picture.
26 years ago I started my journey towards taking a degree in Fine Art. Something I actually wanted to do at 18. Suddenly art began to create a bigger need for stuff. Evening classes and short courses prior to this moment tended to provide materials so art stuff had not left a big footprint in my storage. The next 26 years have been significantly different. Two homes have had actual art studio spaces. Two have not, and currently I have a hybrid space that requires me to be more sensible about what I keep and what I don’t. However the garage at our current home housed 26 years of my creative left overs. Like a snail I moved arty stuff around the country physically and in my mind. As an art gear archive the garage was pretty poor, it had been packed by our removers and there was no logic to it.I also never imposed logic on it, choosing to pick bags at random when I needed something For some inexplicable reason on the last day of the fifth heatwave the time had come to sort and clear 26 years of stuff that might come in useful in a creative way. Sorting and going through it all showed my artistic journey. I can see the same decisions made on something created 8 years ago and in the work in progress illustrating this blog. But the truth is I can make those decisions without filling a space with the odds and ends of 26 years of creating. Time for stuff to be gone.
After the clear out
The garage is clear now, two trips in the camper van did the job. A small amount of materials went into my current workspace.
I had thought a clear garage was just a long overdue project, but it turns out it is not just the garage that is clear. My head is significantly lighter. A good few hours of going through and getting rid of old paintings and the associated materials I gathered on the way has been astonishingly cathartic.
Breakfast of figs, fresh from the tree. Strawberries were from a supermarket.
We seem to be on the backside of the fifth heatwave of 2026. We woke up to an entirely different feel this morning. More normal for an English summer, some overnight rain and cooler. Dull.
Since May my days have been planned around heat avoidance. Today there is no need to take Lola out for an early morning walk to avoid her getting over hot and her paws getting sore from baking pavements. Today all thoughts of sun drenched and over-saturated colours have faded to greige.
I walk past this sign almost every day of my Stonehouse life. It protects a car park of 11 spaces overlooking one of the most interesting sea views in England.
Joy Sucking Car Park Sign
Every day I look at this sign and think. Surely this could be achieved in less dispiriting language and still deliver respectful and appropriate parking.
You can hear and feel the joy and colour being sucked out of peoples souls as they are confronted with this message in such a beautiful spot.
The Cafe itself does not suck joy. Drinks are served in ceramic mugs, the cheesy chips go down very well. Especially with fresh figs during a heatwave.
Their bacon butties ignite warmth in winter swimmers.
But that sign! Every day my heart slumps a little bit as I feel joy being extracted excruciatingly by words, harshly used, in a beautiful place.
The news article below is really interesting. I had weekends until I was 14 or 15 then a Saturday job ate up half of my weekend and school holidays. This continued through school and college until I stepped into a career that required 24/7 staffing. Weekends were an occasional treat until I retired from a ‘proper’ job and weekends and some days off in the week became normal.
It was my normal. On -call rotas do not respect weekends off. Reflecting back I realise why I have virtually no hobbies. Art could easily be squeezed into gaps in my schedule but I couldn’t commit to anything remotely team related. I dabbled in hobbies but nothing stuck. I wonder at people who are experts at a hobby or interest but realise I simply didn’t have the time or reliability.
Post retirement from a proper job, have I learnt to sail or joined a band as a sultry bass player. I have not. I do a lot more art, help to run a club and swim in the sea alone or with the Bobbers.On reflection would I give up weekends at 14, never to see them regularly again for 46 years? I would not, but it seems I may never have been a hobby or team kind of woman regardless of availability. Just two, water based, activities have featured regularly in my life but only after the age of 45 for gig rowing and 60 for sea swimming.
Sea swimmers and gig racing in the same frame.
Despite starting this blog early the day ran away with me. For some inexplicable reason we decided to clear the garage of stuff that we stored 5 years ago, when we moved in. Most of it was completely untouched in those 5 years. Most of it has suffered a bit from five years of storage, most of it will be going to the tip.
50% of a weekend well used.
Not all on a grubby job which is a virtuous thing in this heat.
Quite a lot of time was spent bobbing about in the sea.
What keeps me up at night? All sorts of nonsense dressed up as Insomnia. Nothing like the insomnia of an Insomniac. I manifest stress and sadness as insomnia but also creativity and problem solving. Random, stupid inconsequential thoughts also keep me awake. 30 years of on-call for radiographic and cardiac emergencies has even given me the tools to put myself back to sleep , but only ever after 2 hours, at least, of awakeness. A cup of caffeinated tea and a plainish biscuit do the trick.
Last night’s awakeness was caused in part by some sadness, a friend had died on Thursday evening. But also by the inability of photography to show the recent partial eclipse as myself and the bobbers experienced it on Wednesday night.
The third completely random thoughts involved Tea bags. Of all the technological, cultural, scientific or personal developments in my life the one my silly, busy head concentrated on was living through the dawn of the tea bag era.
Oh the swirling thoughts of 2 am.
Sadness is normal.
The T-Bag era will never become a true historical era.
I puzzled out a way to create the flavour and colours of our hour long Eclipse bob, distilled into one image that fulfills all of the sensations and is accurate but not entirely truthful.
Swimming out and about in our usual swimming areas with several pairs of eclipse glasses stored under my hat , to be used at sea, for nearly an hour was really quite the memorable experience. So it absolutely deserves an image for posterity.
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