It is not every day that a tree presents itself as a pair of handstanding buttocks.
Last weekend I was singing a song cycle celebrating The Green Man.
Yesterday I found him, butt naked, cavorting in a local park. A briefly sharp sunbeam alerted me to his performative bottom. I’ve just digitally tweaked his butt to make him a little more obvious. ( Not a sentence I would normally share on the blog!)
Happy Sunday.
Then I flipped him over.
It took more than the usual one morning coffee to power me through a day after a night of staying up all night to watch democracy unfold. But at 9 in the morning I had not expected to fuel my day with a sugar rush provided by a free sample of soft scoop Ice Cream.
Pure white Ice Cream to calm a mind that had been watching the differing colours of political parties skid across the T.V screen all night. I found all the AV special effects fairly baffling as the night wore on. But the, normally serious political journalists seemed to enjoy playing with computer generated building blocks. I’ve recreated my Ice Cream in the style of my overnight T.V politics experience. Baffling , I think you will agree.
In a last mention of the election some surprising news. Overnight Hugo and I had to swap sides.
Sofa slouching and varifocal glasses do not, a comfortable overnighter make. To avoid a nasty crick in my neck we swapped sides on the sofa every hour or so.
He was not always happy to swap.
How do you express your gratitude?
Positivity and learning are a fabulous way to express gratitude. Even when something seems all bad there must be a tiny nugget that can be a point for learning and some sense of positivity can be found. A deliberately delayed blog as I knew this morning would feature dog walking, doing the laundry and white painting the grubby white outdoor cooking area.
My reward for doing the laundry and the painting was a delayed sit down to write the blog. The dog walk was, as always mostly positive. Laundry is kind of meh. Although the top picture of white washing, white walls and white Agapanthus was my nugget of positivity.
I am very much over, painting white walls white. My own fault for extending the original project but this little rest is the nugget I can be positively grateful for.
I’ve been nattering on about Syneshesia with a new friend. We met, but in the way of the current world, we have not actually met, in the most negative of spaces. The death of someone we had in common and a Zoom Funeral. In nattering on-line we have discovered that we are both synesthesic and have followed very similar career paths. Finding someone to natter about synesthesia is definitely something to be grateful for even if it came from a sad space. Quite how to formulate a natter about synesthesia as an interesting blog subject is something to ponder while I return to white painting. Who knows if I will get there. Pondering positively is my daily gratitude for being here.
Although here is currently a white corner.
A late blog today. No specific reason. I was pondering on talking about Synesthesia today as it affects me. But goodness that is a big topic, one for another day as it turns out. We’ve had a fab weekend of listening to and watching the Glastonbury festival from the comfort of our house and garden.
The BBC studio at Pilton Farm, where the Glastonbury Festival is held, have exactly the same cow models but they are painted a very traditional black and white. After we watched the fabulous Coldplay set we went out for the evening dog walk and our vivid cows were looking magnificent against the dusk sky.
Our fluorescent cows have only experienced one music festival in the Royal William Yard. I was writing for a local arts magazine so we had some press passes and had the most wonderful time buzzing about. Such a shame it only happened once. A casualty of the hiatus of the Covid years. I suspect having only happened once there just hasn’t been the impetus to get it going again. I do rather like the freedoms that a press pass allows. Imagine having one for Glastonbury. That would be a giddy few days of blogging, apart from the cows of course , which are stultifyingly normal.
Saturday turned out to be quite the day of textures. Breakfast in a boatyard and Lola took me on a wild Hedgehog tracking adventure. We never found the hedgehog but her tracking led me to an old boat and I love the accidental colours that old wooden boats reveal.
I also had a curious moment with the new photo editor function on my phone. It uses a couple of algorithms to generate different versions of a photograph. Firstly using the information in the picture and secondly using information gathered from previous edits that I have saved. As a regular tool to use I would say it is a little unreliable. But as a lover of the serendipitous the function is proving to be very interesting. I download RAW data images from my actual digital camera to give the algorithm more to munch on. What it drags up from my past edits is beyond my control but yesterdays trip to the carwash made a fascinating Greek Seascape.
My last textures of the day were aural. My local community choir sung a Contemporary Pagan Song Cycle on the theme of the Green Man Myths in an old Church of England building. Unusual but then not when you consider that many great churches are built on the sites of Pagan Temples. I love a bit of a sing but am hampered and helped by my synesthesia. I am quite incapable of learning to read music, and I don’t really learn by ear, but by the serendipity of the neurodivergance of Synesthesia, music goes in and I can sing it out. All the right notes, mostly in the right order but not always.
To say I keep a low profile when singing is an understatement. Kind people jab pencils at me and flutter the music sheet at me . Honestly it could be a Cornflake packet but I nod and smile. I am hugely bored by music pedants who bang on about notes. C’s and D’s are just bra cup sizes to me. As for the mystery/ worry of the missing Triangle dinger. I have no idea of the jeopardy involved in that WhatsApp thread. But the percussionists were energised by that predicament.
Fortunately our Community Choir has a composer /conductor who has no time for the niff naff of music pedantary so I can keep my head down and not feel like the musical Village Idiot that I am. Our performance was gorgeous,full of crunchy textured soaring notes and unusual harmonies. The Green Man and mid-summer were glorious in the churchyard.
Textures of all sorts throughout the day
What are your daily habits?
Anyone who reads my blogs know that blogging is one of my reliable daily habits. Along with dog walking and tea and coffee drinking.
A weekly or often more frequent habit is swimming in cool or cold water. Even at its peak the sea water nearby rarely reaches 16 degrees and International wisdom would suggest that swimming in those temperatures is not advised. Our coldest ever swim was 6 degrees one winter day.
After a week of balmy swimming in Greece, I had my first cooler dip this morning. Initially it was a bit of a shock,but I quickly acclimatised and enjoyed the fizz and tingle of a colder swim. I love how it resets me. The cold swimming and the company of my bobbing friends sets the day up with positivity.
In Britain we are approaching a General Election. I don’t feel this blog is my place to bang on about politics but this morning a fabulous apolitical quote jumped at me, so here it is . Typed across Firestone Bay. A place where it is my habit to regain positive vibes on a daily basis.
Serendipity struck yesterday in a moment of parking misery. The peninsular we live on was very busy yesterday. The sun was up the ferries were busy and it was school sports day. I had left my home parking spot early in the morning and struggled to find one to return to at 9:30 in the morning.
The night before I had discovered this old chain dumped by a high tide on a small beach. It was much to heavy to carry home.
In all the parking shenanigans and with some anxiety, for others trying to park to catch a ferry, I decided just to reverse a little way down a slipway at the same beach to just remove myself from the melee. A lightbulb moment. I couldn’t carry the chain but I could gently load it into the car. A few links at a time.
This morning I have repurposed it to train my Wisteria along so that ultimately the plant will wend its way around the outdoor cooking area and onto the garage roof.
One teeny tiny Wisteria shoot has been introduced to the old chain.
I hope they like each other .
The main plant is flourishing after a few weeks of yardening turmoil. Some things did not survive a weeks neglect. Anythng that will provide cool green shade is on my wish list. One of the beach bars in Greece really raised our yardening goals last week.
Carefully planted trees in a courtyard, their trained branches minimally supported by a pergola and grape vines growing along the edges.
Yardening perfection.
We are a long way off but a work in progress is progress.
Meanwhile the middle aisle of Aldi has provided us with Solar festoon lights. Nature is at long last providing enough sun to light up the yard at night. Small victories suggesting that summer has arrived.
Traditional end of the holiday shot. The real life one, is of course, the washing machine churning her way through piles of sandy but barely worn clothes.
Our beach had two ends Bougie and Boho.
We were primarily Boho in our choices . Towels not sunbeds, happy Greek families not Golf Club types.
But the people watching and the coffee were fabulous in Bougie land. Bougie land had pool bars and women with inflated lips and men with inflated egos. Book covers on the bookshelves in Bougie land were as pneumatic as breasts and lips.
Both ends of the beach were rather fabulous. The snippets of conversation were infinitely more interesting in the bougie end, significantly because we could understand 50 % of them. Although listening to Greek families nattering is what Greek holidays are about. A simple conversation always sounds like a drama.
And then the flight home, Bougies and BoHo’s all sat on the same coach and the same aircraft. All happy that they had achieved their holiday goals. All fairly similar in the cold light of an airport arrivals lounge. Everyone has dirty washing.
It turns out that even my fancy pants camera is struggling to cope with the bright sunlight. This swan was fabulous though. Our little bay is idyllic but only my abstract photos really work. The plan is now to get up very early for some photography and of course the Summer Solstice swim at dawn. The failure of photography forced out the painting kit today.
My outdoor studios were very warm.
I used sea water, fresh water and Sprite to create these two little snapshots.
Let’s see what photography can do at dawn tomorrow. Meanwhile two books down, and rape has featured in both. Both books written by women give the assaulted woman the upper hand as they are both equipped with professional cookery knives. An interesting co-incidence and not one I can really learn from, as my good knives live in my kitchen drawer. But the one time something approaching rape occured was when I was in a restaurant. Quick thinking rather than knife skills made me safe. But there is a similarity in that the two women and myself were in a quasi-work related location. In common with the fictional women, I reported the event to my boss and in common with the fictional women excuses were made for the perpetrator.
Just approaching book 3 of the holiday also written by a woman. I wonder if women are any better listened to in this one.
On a much lighter note the digital tweakment facility on my smartphone is doing some nice abstracts.
And I can play around too.
Bistro chair with glass bricks.
The repetition of a Greek Holiday has established itself after a gap of five years. Breakfast , beach, lunch, rest, beach, supper on repeat with swimming and book reading added into the mix in all phases.
Book 2 is nearly done.
The next book phase is likely to be reached by lunchtime. The crossover when we start reading each other’s books. That is the stage just before the Hotel bookshelf phase. Why not Kindle I hear you ask. There is also a Kindle as a holiday reading side- hustle, but a beach without paperbacks is not a beach at all. Suncream, sea and sand give paperbacks a rich patina of gentle decline. Their spines crack quicker and the pages ripple with dampness from freshly salty hands and wet swimming costumes.
Food wise we are also creatures of habit.
Oregano Crisps, Spanakopita and bitter Cherry Juice augmented by Papadopolis biscuits are our daily diet.
Looking forward to the Hotel Book Shelf I note that my current favourite book series Babylon Berlin by Volker Kutscher is very popular, but only in the original German. It would have to be a very long holiday before I could tackle those and an on-line linguistics course would have to be force fed to me via my headphones.
And so a relaxing holiday continues.
The End.
