There was a planned blog for today, but then gorgeous sunshine, on our early morning dog walk, and this descriptive sign, knocked the other blog off the page. The sign is actually a pub sign but describes exactly the route of our walk.
Today was a chore day, random jobs etc. But we knew the weather was going to be fab, so an early morning dog walk was planned for the start of the day.
Plymouth Sound has recently been designated the first British Marine Park.
After a year or so of no obvious changes we are beginning to see things happening. A fair bit of building work, scaffolding and construction paraphernalia obstructs some views.
No perfect view of the 1930’s Lido currently.
But the sunshine gave us lots of visual treats.
And so after lovely views we achieved the away from home chores. Then some Olympic excitements. Mountain Biking and Hockey. Soon to be followed by yardening in full sun. Sunny day Sunday
It’s been a week of damp,grey days and yesterday was the dampest greyest. I found a two year old photograph of a watercolour depicting mussels to illustrate a greyish post.
The problem of the week has been the admin of a club I belong to. The problems are not matters of life or death but goodness they do take up some time. Much of the admin of clubs is constructive leading to a useful outcome.
Quite a lot is ‘ Niffnaff’ and some is people management, not always in a good way.
Real mussels hiding on a painting of mussels.
Sometimes problems are hiding in plain sight. This week the big problem of the week was caused by Testosterone and Ego. A clever script writer could write a drama or comedy set in committees in Britain, maybe elsewhere too. Where the best efforts of many are thwarted by an abrasive and/or disruptive individual, sometimes individuals. Although this week’s problem was male derived, women can also be egostic and disruptive in the same setting.
But with enough effort resolutions can be found and using the same mussel analogy. People working well together can move clubs, organisations and indeed whole countries forward.
For someone who celebrates serendipty and embraces the unexpected, I also love predictive Apps on my phone. Mostly weather related and yet predictions cannot always mitigate outcomes.
Despite this gloomy image from my new favourite weather app. Each morning I wake up and go to the Norwegian Meteorological Institutes Weather App just to see how my day might go. Even on gloomy days their predictions are more visually pleasing than other weather apps.
I have had to leave the house and walk, in rain, 3 times before 10:30 in the morning. So predictions can only inform but not always alter how the day will go.
Weather is one thing but actual life is quite another. If only there was an accurate Crystal Ball App. Yesterday’s predictions would have suggested an intimate tête-à-tête with a horse. See top image. But as no such App exists this was a complete surprise to me.
Me and horses are not a thing and yet somehow, even without a Crystal Ball App, I suspect horse encounters are going to be more frequent events.
I was reacquainted with this painting that I sold 5 years ago. It was called ‘Return of the Native’ because it is a close-up of Cookworthy Knapp. A hilltop cluster of trees, close to the border of Devon and Cornwall, on the A30 travelling West. The trees are known as ‘Nearly Home Trees’
I say reacquainted because I never really knew it well. It was delivered to the gallery as soon as it was dry. It is about a metre square. It was unsold half an hour before the exhibition closed, but at the very last minute a woman rushed in to buy it. I always forget about this painting because I knew it for such a short time, and I have another one of the same subject that resolutely fails to sell whenever I put it out in the public domain.
I know that paintings can take their own sweet time to find their forever homes but I was a bit shocked at how easy it is to forget one that sells immediately.
The strange thing is that cards of this design sell really well. Art is a funny world. The link below is about the trees.
We’ve just had the most amazing weekend filled with gatherings and joy. Four of our beloved family members arrived safely from the airport, despite the chaos of an I.T. outage. It is the beginning of a golden phase for our family, with everyone finally in the same time zone. We were hoping to spend some quality social time in our yard, but the weather had other plans – nonstop rain filled the weekend. Nevertheless, we made the most of it and created fun and laughter together.
But cousins who normally spend their time half a word apart are united waiting for the rain to stop.
Or share their lunch offerings.
Friends gathered at our house this weekend too and I was madly British and insisted on cooking in the yard because that has been the plan. The outdoor grill perched on a table in the yard, but near a kitchen window. The food, both grilling and steaming in the rain.
There were also moments when we weren’t in gathering mode and I could read a weekend newspaper, when I discovered that my obsession with weather forecasts and weather Apps is widely shared. A quick look at my home screen on my phone shows that I have 3 apps and I follow two local weather forecasting Facebook pages not so much for the actual weather as neither cover where I live but for their knowledgeable chit chat.
KernowKent
One day I might get a weather station of my own to chit-chat about. I could call it ‘Pondering Precipitation’
We also had a hybrid friends/family gathering. Four grandparents gathered in the same space and not a single small person in sight.
Not the sun-baked July weekend we anticipated but joyous in many different ways.
The trouble with bowls of cherries is currently my pondering mind. If I could content myself with just eating the things rather than pondering them. Why is searching for the best ‘Cherry Picking’, or losing virginity to lose your cherry.
Why cherries?
After a fruitful google search I would say that sometimes metaphors and symbolism can all get a bit twisted and inexplicable. Far far easier on Sunday to say…
Blog 982 might have suggested that I am not completely a cat lover. Historically I was very much a cat-lover but I feel that it is perhaps not in my community’s best interest to have pets that defaecate and pee in other people’s gardens. My cats have also been far better at catching birds than mice which is also not good for the environment.
My first ever cat was a Siamese an intense learning experience in cat owning. Were I ever to own a cat again, my first choice would be a Siamese and it would have to be a house/flat cat.
The cat above is Harry, my second choice of cat style, a ginger moggy. He looks exactly like Henry who was his forerunner and nothing like Muppet who is an extremely long haired ginger cat who at 20 still lives with my ex-husband on a cliff in Cornwall.
Then of course there is my pun cat from Brixton who crops up in blogs.
There have been many other much-loved, non-ginger and non-Siamese cats in my life. So why after just two concurrent dogs in my life I am team dog these days.
Love is the thing, I am a needy human. The love I share out is generously given but I need it reliably returned and cats just don’t have that capacity. Their love is entirely self centered. No cat has ever looked at me as if I am the centre of their universe.
Another day of painting white walls white or waiting for white paint to dry. I was painting a stairwell in the yard that drops from yard level down to a rear service lane and our garage. Not in the original painting schedule for June. But part of the extended, aspirational plans now the yard looks so fabulous in bright white. If a two graves were dug end to end that would describe my working space. Hugo helpfully rested on the top level, inspecting and encouraging.
The biggest challenge was not brushing any part of me against the freshly painted walls in such a confined space. Hugo had no such qualms and is now a white dog tipped with bright white enhancements.
Our lunchtime walk took us past very similar walls with a much more naturalistic appeal.
All of the stone used in this area would have been quarried extremely locally. The original Quarry boundary is 20 yards from our front door. I have qualms of guilt about painting such an ancient natural building material but previous owners made that decision a long time ago. The grubby white I am painting over covers a very strange colour choice. A sort of pinky orange. Texas Adobe walls is my closest colour reference. One external yard wall remains in this dubious shade. Another addition to the extended, aspirational wall painting schedule.
Adobe is a fabulous colour choice in Texas and other places with extremely harsh sunlight and where the colour is naturally occurring. Not so great in South-West England.
Sharp Shadows in Stonehouse.
Whilst not exactly a ponder, here is an unrelated fact.
Adobe Walls is the site of a historic battle in Texas!
My relationship with the colour of Adobe walls is much less blood-soaked. Two of my favourite women artists had studios in Mexico and New Mexico and used the colour often in their later works. I always rather fancied being an artist in that environment. Not that I will be rushing out any time soon to replace my newly pristine white walls with Farrow and Ball, Red Earth.
That particular fantasy cannot be lived comfortably in Devon.
Meanwhile a quick romp through my colour theory books gives me a whole family for Adobe walls to live with.
So much blooming nonsense to fill my mind whilst painting walls white.
For 55 years I was a cat or nothing sort of person. Many of those years with house/flat only cats. And all cat-owning years with a dirt box in my home. Then I got dogs+cats and now I am in an exclusive relationship with dogs. Yardening changed everything. We work really hard to have a child safe , beautiful space to relax, in our urban, coastal yard.
What we have never wanted is a cat latrine. We have neighbours in the extended locality who have any number of pet cats that are free to roam, shit and piss in other peoples outside space. Honestly I am so over cats! Apart from this one who was posing so beautifully for a visual pun in Brixton Market.
These spoons have had quite the life. Not the life intended for them in 1955, when they were gifted to my parents as a wedding gift but a life never the less. When my parents died nearly 30 years ago I had the difficult job of clearing and selling their home. Everyone who has done that task knows the heartache that such a job brings. These spoons were unused. Still in their wrapping paper, and with a heartwarming and loving letter from my dad’s cousin. I imagine they were never used and preserved, just as they had been gifted, because that cousin killed himself soon after my parents marriage.
Unused spoons are of no use to anyone so I kept the letter and put the spoons to use in my busy family environment.
30 years of daily life without being cleaned. Obviously they have been in and out of the dishwasher, almost daily. A thing not even invented when they were made.
Grubby perhaps, until this week when we made a new-to-us salad dressing. It had eye watering amounts of mustard in it. The salad dressing was a step too far for our stoic spoons. Something dreadful occured. Discolouration and a tang or odd taste came off the spoon.
Dr Google saved the spoons. I did things with boiling water, tin foil, salt and Bicarbonate of Soda and then buffed them with a soft cloth. They have never looked better. The spoons were old looking when I found them. Today they are positively youthful.
theoldmortuary.design 