Is the last line of a poem that has shaped my thinking ever since I first read it.
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost.
I have always known that any decision taken, sets me on a certain path. There is always an alternative.
Poetry resides in Autumn for me, possibly because of this poem. A Yellow Wood speaks to me of Autumnal colour changes.
This poem suggests that free will and decision making go hand in hand. That is not always my experience. Pragmatism is often the path of choice. No matter how verdant the alternative seems. Regardless , right now I have chosen the path of more poetry. Two books, quickly reserved on my Library App.
A poem or two before bed will be my new Autumnal habit.
We are on a little weekend break to Torbay. Only one hour from home it was one of the holiday destinations of my childhood when it was a seven or eight hour drive.
The weather has been very kind to us and we have walked and basked in autumn sun.
We visited favourite holiday spots from my family holidays of 60 years ago and for the most part they remain almost unchanged. Fairly unchanged too from the Victorian boom years of holiday travel.
Torbay became a holiday destination during the Napoleonic Wars , 1803-15 when European wars forced wealthy British people to stop travelling in Europe. Tourism at that time made the Torbay area one of the wealthiest locations in Britain. Agatha Christie was born in Torquay. Other authors who have lived there include Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Wilfred Owen, Mary Shelley, Charles Darwin, James Joyce, Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Tennyson, James Joyce, Beatrix Potter, T.S Elliot.
My parents visited in the post World War I I era when Torbay was still a hugely popular destination before mass tourism moved on to mainland Europe.
Great physical beauty and slightly faded glamour are good reasons to visit in the 21st Century.
For us the motivation was just to spend some time together as a three +2 dogs who are allowed to run wild on beaches open to them after the summer dog bans.
Lola is not in a photograph as she prefers to dig deep holes in the soft red sand. Not photogenic, and when she involves herself in dead crabs she is not too fragrant either.
Nostalgia also played a part in our little jaunt. We paid a visit to a pub/restaurant I first visited at age 5 with my parents. Built in the 17th century as a fish cellar and net store, the building remains very much as I remember it. The internal decor changed but the physical space not at all. I gave myself free reign to choose from the menu. 5 year old me was only permitted a couple of choices.
Harbour Light, Paignton.
20,000 steps well used and ultimately well rewarded with good food.
I am a great procrastinator and very easily sidetracked. Over my many years I have developed strategies and excuses for this behaviour and believe I have turned them to be positive attributes. Others may disagree. Doing things at the right time is a much better use of energy than doing them too early when things may change and the task needs to be modified or even abandoned. Being sidetracked is just a different phrase, from the more accurate one of doing research on future projects. Today I fully plan on both procrastination and being sidetracked. We are on a jaunt with no firm plans. Since adopting the habit of daily blogging I have learned to fully embrace the serendipity of procrastination and sidetracking. Allowing Ispace in my life for unexpected things to happen enriches daily life and in turn the blog. Sometimes I procrastinate on writing the blog and it changes direction completely if I am gainfully sidetracked.
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
Grown-up-edness arrived at a cricket match when I was in my mid-twenties.
My father-in-law had been diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer. The cricket team we were with, was formed of young medical people. The talk was about how hopeless his case was. It dawned on me that this was us being propelled into true adulthood. His diagnosis was the end of youthful free will. We were both only children, and the buck, at that moment, very clearly stopped with my husband. 16 years later 3 parents had endured terminal illness and death. But we had two gorgeous young children whose arrival had kept us sane in rather difficult times. Sometimes in life, you just have to play the ball that is bowled to you, not the one you imagined.
This is not, as you may at first think a fire, but a glorious autumn, stormy sunset. At the very bottom of the street are the wharf steps where we either walk down to a beach or, at high tide, enjoy the sound of flisvos on old stone steps.
As Florida waits for Hurricane Milton to touch land, calm views like this seem such a privilege. We will all know how bad it has been by the time our sun rises again.
My favourite artists are my friends who happen to be artists. And artists who I meet and like, whose work interests me.
I realise this may be a poorly written question trying to probe which are my favourite works of art, but just as I would in an exam I will answer the question, not what I think the question is.
Obviously this only works for contemporary artists or artists who I feel I know through reading biographies, autobiographies or watching documentaries.
I am far too much of a diplomat to write about artists and their art that I dislike, but I can say that I love the work of Rothko but I rather doubt if I would have liked him one bit.
Marks and Spencer are using the words Big Autumn Energy as their current call to purchase. September rushes in with a frenzy of activity after the languid, sun soaked days of High Summer, but beyond that moment, I never feel Autumn to be a season of high energy. So Big Autumn Energy is not my vibe. I feel it is the consolidation season after the energy of Spring and Summer. But the word consolidation is never going to sell anything in Marks and Spencer or any other retailer. But it gives me the chance to use my watercolour of harvested apples to good effect.
A slightly darker energy was created when I overlaid a Red Admiral Butterfly who was basking in the sun yesterday.
She was soaking up sunshine and stored heat, on a stone wall while I gently stalked her, quietly consolidating her autumn.
A classic ponder for a Friday. Covid has darkened our doors this week with 50% of the human household out of action sequentially. 100% in total. So not a huge amount of out and aboutage for us. I have chosen not to walk the dogs locally as it is impossible not to meet someone to talk to. I have not been alone, an autobiography of Adrian Edmondson and a biography of Alexander McQueen have kept me occupied. Both creative. interesting and somewhat troubled men at times. On a brighter note the David Austin Rose catalogue popped into my email, this is the inspiration for todays blog.
I chose a climbing rose for the yard and have ordered a bare root to be delivered in November. I chose it on sight and smell. The name in my opinion is rather ugly.
Unknown to me Crepuscule means sunset in French. Living in the west of England I have learned to love a good sunset. Where I grew up in the flat East of England sunsets were something that happened elsewhere.
Sunset over Plymouth Sound.
Just a little googling found an even uglier word for something quite so lovely.
Sunnansetlgong was the term for sunset in Old English while the word sunset meant West.
Both perfectly understandable. In looking this up I got the usual targeted online advert. My answer would be
This is an interesting question. I often feel out of place even in the most comfortable of situations. I often feel like I am on the periphery of a group. So much so that I feel that that is my place and I am quite comfortable with that sensation
Like being a white pumpkin in October , I lnow that I am in the group but perhaps not quite of the group. When Orange and ornate pumpkins are the season favourites.
This feeling has never bothered me
Although I understand to most people it could seem quite odd.
I am always an observer of new situations at the beginning , I dont jump in head first hoping to survive.
I always consider before committing. Apparently this is quite normal for ‘only’ children who are not brought up in a large extended family. We are just not exposed to the normal rough and tumble of life that growing up with siblings brings. We lack an innate competitive attitude to all things no matter how small.
For me being ‘out of place’ is exactly the place I am used to. Sometimes being the white pumpkin is no bad thing.
Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
My life without a computer. No blogging, more reference books. An analog life, which I have lived before. A different way of being in every way.
Today had been a non computer day, a bit of domestic sorting out and the joy of finding an old book.
2nd of October, just two entries. An exploding barge in 1874, loaded with gunpowder, must have made a massive bang on the Regents Canal. None of the crew survived and were blown up to such a point that there was no evidence they had ever existed.
On 1915 there was a blackout in London, I didn’t know such a thing had happened in the first world war.
Without a computer that would be the end of my knowledge. That would sadden me but I would still have a fulfilled life. But if I had some time on my hands I would be off to the library for a rifle through their reference library. But I have a computer, here is a link to the exploding barge.
And Google tells me that London started Blackouts in 1915 to deter Zeppelin raids. The first of which occured in September 1915 so it was probably a good idea.
In my analogue world, a tidy book corner plus wrapping paper.
