The sun got to me yesterday. The shadows on the moss made me think of a lateral skull X-ray. Overnight my silly head kept thinking about it. I even dug out my old Grays Anatomy. The book, not the TV series. Just to satisfy my poor insomniac head that wanted to sleep.
” What keeps you up at night”
“Just random nonsense”
Some of the proportions are a bit wrong and the stick to the back of the neck is rather a lethal look. But a bit of superimposition shows why it was a hard thought to shift.
And so as the first page of a 2025 diary turns. I must return my twinkle garments to the wardrobe. No more sequins or clever play on words.
2 t shirts like this one blue one black.
I have promised my green sequin skirt a possible summer outing but for now they are off for a well earned rest.
I talked to a friend about our shared love for twinkle garments for the festive season. She said the only problem is that all our festive photos look similar no matter what the year.
A point well made but of no consequence to my simplistic thinking.
Talking of observing time passing, I have had an awful shock. A 10 X magnification, illuminated mirror arrived with Santa. We have a 5x travel mirror, which I last looked at in September. Let’s just say the shock of 10X v 5X was not a gift. The wrinkles are im-pres-ive in the new mirror. 5X has been telling lies on my holidays or the last four months have been particularly harsh. My face looks like a geography contours project. Waterless fjords have appeared on my face. Smiling makes things worse. I may spend 2025 being enigmatic.
We were out early for New Years Day on the Barbican. Earlier than the street cleaners.The Barbican is the hub of nightlife and revelry in Plymouth and has been for centuries. New Years Eves are vivid, giddy, lustful and excessive. This morning saw plastic glasses and fast food wrappers skittering round in the wind, small brightly coloured pools of sick were easily avoided on the historic cobbles.
Detail Night Out on the Barbican
Maybe not to everyone’s taste but I captured the sensation of a Barbican Night Out on a painting a few years ago. It doesn’t reproduce well as it is a glossy resin piece,but to me it represents the hedonism and joy of a great night out. Uniquely, in Plymouth, it is done with high heels and cobbles. What could possibly go wrong.
Is this peak twixtmas? Christmas has started to ebb away and the usual Sunday feelings of a new week ahead has the added frisson of a New Year to consider. My Saturday newspaper looked back. The Sunday newspaper, should I choose to buy one may well look forward. Meanwhile the mist/low cloud/ greige continues to cover our days. Which are also enhanced by the cold viruses we picked up from Merry Mingling over the festive season.
Happiness is knowing where the dry tissues are and making sure the soggy ones are not left in the pockets of garments destined for the washing machine.
Twixtmas comes but once a year, I love the informality and shape shifting of days that never quite know who or what they are. Punctuated at any moment by a snack or drink, sometimes normal year round fodder other times a giddy combination of festive left overs.
Twixtmas, a magical week of slight discombobulation when no day is quite as it should be and the question on most peoples tongues is.
“What day is it actually today”
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
With that in mind my perfect space for reading and writing is any space I find myself in. I just allow myself to dwell there a little longer during Twixtmas. I like Twixtmas with the extra ‘T’ after the X it gives the word a little more gravitas.
A vital time to recharge our winter batteries before 2025 gallops into view. Not that Christmas 2024 has left me depleted in any way. But Twixtmas is definitely a time to indulge whims and ponders.
The digital age has altered everything about reading and writing at home.
This box bureau in a 1960’s Ladderax unit holds everything I need for actually writing and my laptop for the digital stuff.
Rather trendily I perch on the sofa arm to replicate a standing desk.
But this blog, almost exclusively goes out from my smartphone. That makes my reading and writing space anywhere I choose it to be or where I find myself. Perfect in my opinion. I rarely have exclusive use, wherever I am and that suits me just fine.
Boxing Day. Stillness after the flurries of festive activity and the incremental excitement of the build up to Christmas Day.
I took this picture at 9pm at the end of a lovely Christmas Day with our family. These road and rail bridges carry people into and out of Cornwall. I love it when a great picture of them presents itself. Looking west to east always makes my heart sing, the thought of journeys from the county of Cornwall, across to Devon and on to the rest of the world always fills me with optimism. Big thoughts.
By contrast some of my seasonal small thoughts, ponders if you prefer, can be shared on this last ponder of the festive season.
The big, small one for me this year is the Sellotape question. How many human hours are lost around the world trying to find the end of the sellotape?
How do presents get mislocated by people like myself, who think they have a foolproof system. Obviously my system is not foolproof, but it is a matter of some bafflement that gifts simply disappear or end up with the wrong recipient.
Alcohol before breakfast, how is that ever acceptable? But yet an early morning Mojito was just the thing for Christmas morning. Surprisingly it was a crisp, bright reminder of high Summer . Zings of mint and lime dancing across my tongue on a day that always brings more weighty unctuous osensations.
Last day of 26 Days to Boxing Day. Z is for Christmas Books.
Thanks to author C Pam Zang neatly filling the Z space with her surname.
Reading is the best thing about Boxing Day… and the chocolates of course. Happy Christmas one and all
We filled the shortest day of 2024 with colour and bright lights. The day started and ended in Devizes, a town very close to Sronehenge where Solstices are always celebrated. But actual daybreak and sunset were experienced at Battersea Power Station in London.
The shortest day unexpectedly took on the colour of Orange. My raincoat is Orange and it became the theme colour of my day.
We even drove to London in an orange car but more of that at the end of the day.
Breakfast at Borough Market with all the fun and pleasure of meeting up with people we haven’t seen for a while. And all the excitement of Christmas in an authentic everyday market.
Borough Market.
Lunchtime was spent at Fortnum and Mason. A place famed for a particular shade of blue, but even they had used Orange as their accent colour for Christmas.
At Fortnum and Mason, we found some fabulous orange hued paintings that reflected the slightly rainy but warm hued feeling of our day.
These paintings by Francis Hamel exactly reflected our late afternoon return to Battersea.
A sprinkling of rain and fairground rides.
As dusk arrived we hit the road west to home and one last orange encounter.
Our vehicle of choice for the day.
Here is the last orange tale of the day. We were parked up in a rural market town, Devizes, on the last Saturday night before Christmas. The local lads were merry. We were sat in the car outside Marks and Spencer. Bright lights and christmas lights outside made us invisible. A group of lads streamed around the car.
” ‘ere will ya look at that car “
“Boys lets get a photo”
” Mate, mate if my cock was a car it would be this one”
Let’s just think about that.
Conclusion reached later.
Stubby and orange and runs on electric.
And so we get to 26 days to Boxing Day. V for the Victoria Line and Victoria Station.
Victoria Station and the Victoria Line were part of my commuting journey for many years and Battersea Power Station was a twice daily feature of my commute. Which is why I painted it before it was redeveloped.
P.s even the guest towel at our friends house was orange.
6 Days to Boxing Day. Always carry Christmas Lights in your heart.
When are you most happy?
6 Days to Boxing Day. Winter Solstice. The shortest Day. From here,in the Northern Hemisphere the days will start to stretch out. I couldn’t be happier.
And so to U in 26 Days to Boxing Day. As I sit here this morning I am a little flummoxed about which U I should use to natter about. A cheating woman would use Ule but then I would be stuck for Y.
Umbrella. Not exactly a festive word but from the photo above. You can see we needed one last night.
But what is the point if the umbrella obscures the Christmas lights. Better to be damp and enlightened. Or always carry Christmas lights in your heart. Or at the very least, under your umbrella.
A brighter shade of greige.An unexpected hour of Sunshine presented itself in the middle of a very greige day. The dogs and I just walked and walked. Half of the above picture was our slightly wooded walk which I played with to suggest two options with a magical feel. I also warmed up the sun a little in my pictures of the Hamoaze.
No reason to do this at all really, so clearly done for fun.
And so to T for 26 Days to Boxing Day. T is for time travel.
This new Blue Plaque is about 500 yards from my house. If I could time travel and meet him in a cafe. We could talk about his old School. Dulwich College in London which I am very familiar with. I could also of course warn him to be extra cautious on his last fateful expedition to Antarctica.But that could change the world in so many ways. Which is why Time Travel is not advised. Another observation is that Devon and Cornwall have a Polar Society! How niche is that.
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