It is only when the both popped up in the same photo file that I thought about putting them together.
Neither photograph was taken with overlaying in mind but this rough little experiment has given me inspiration. I have spent a whole year doing these little colour doodles and wondering how to incorporate them into my work. With the right photographs the doodles will have a new way of being used.
Imaginary backgroundsImaginary sketching
I just need to remember where I put the mussel shells a year ago. That may take some time!
This was the early morning dog walk. Cold, crisp and with a wind blowing in from the east. I had a lot of warm clothes on and a hot black coffee in my hands.
My coffee of choice was the India Kirshnagiri and I was fully enjoying the Dark Berry, Cherry Liquor and Pomegranate flavours which were taking my mind off the fact that just one short hour later, the Bobbers and I would be plunging into those very same waters for pleasure. There really is no accounting for the ways some people get their kicks. The rewards are hot drinks, biscuits and for some of us a hottie.
But back to the coffee, Cherry Liquor is one of the flavours I can still identify after Covid has wrecked my sense of taste and smell. The coffee had all the pleasures of an actual Cherry Liquor without any of the calories. It kept my mind off the water temperature.
This morning was a bobbing morning and a small grandchild morning but not a blogging morning. The swim was sharp and crisp in a bright winter sunshine. Everything felt clean and fresh. We were not at an equilibrium, the outside air was 2 degrees cooler than the water temperature. I am still swimming in skin rather than a wetsuit so there is no faffing about really. Just in, then out to get colder and then in and the water feels warmer, not tropical exactly but just a little less cold.
In other news Drawn to the Valley had a Creative Table event at Ocean Studios yesterday.
Extra excitement was caused by the delivery of two old print machines. One was not quite unpacked but here is the badge of the one already installed.
Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach- W. Stanhope-Fores 1885. The Box, Plymouth
The Museum where I work has had a spring refresh, lovely new exhibitions for people to enjoy in early 2023. I have loved this painting since I was a young and not because I lived anywhere near the West Country. I must have seen it when a Newlyn School Exhibition came to London in the seventies. This painting is part of the Plymouth Permanent Collection. Obviously it goes off on its travels around the world, but for now it is hanging on the wall of its home gallery. Home is the link to the other picture in this blog. Unlike Fish Sale this one is completely unknown to me and the artist who painted it is not credited. The painting is of the Sir John Hawkins Boatyard in about 1830 The boatyard was demolished in 1962 and I walk on the same location most days. The boats are much smaller and somewhere in the background is the plot of land our house would be built on later in the same century.
The church in the picture was damaged and later demolished in the second world war but the grey building on the horizon still exists. I don’t think I have ever lived in the background of an oil painting before. I buy coffee and bread from behind the boat with the flags. The boats I look out while enjoying my coffee are not quite so fancy. The built environment is hugely changed, but the winter sunsets for all who worked in those dockyards would have been a lot like this.
Today’s late blog is late because the planned blog did not go to plan. I had an early start this morning and a lazy evening last night so there was no back up plan. The 3rd of February is an insignificant date @theoldmortuary but a trawl through past photos taken on the 3rd of February have a strange coincidence. In recent years the footpaths and fields of our Cornish lives had become quite difficult to navigate as winter rains make the ground underfoot muddy and slippery. By February I was pretty intolerant of me and the dogs being grubby after every walk. Sometimes I would seek a more urban environment with tarmac paths in parkland. Devils Point in Plymouth was often my choice because there was also good coffee at Hutong.
Hutong 2018
And fabulous views.
Devils Point 2021
Of course between these two photos Covid struck and that changed everyone’s lives. By February 2021 we had evolved into the sort of people who loved to swim, year round in the sea. Not something we could achieve safely near to our home in Cornwall. By late 2021 we were living in Stonehouse, a quick walk to the coffee shop, the swimming area and the beautiful views. The beautiful flowers, Cafe Au Lait dahlias, were left in Cornwall.
Good morning February, two pretty pictures from the last day of January a couple of years ago at Watergate Bay in North Cornwall.
I’m improvising with illustration because the actual ponder is brief and not a pretty sight.
I use a grater fairly often, almost always without injury. But twice now when creating a Vegetarian meal I have grated off a tiny sliver of index finger skin. Honestly you couldn’t make this up, the last meal of Veganuary and I add some inadvertent flesh. Is it cheating if I eat my own flesh?
I was struggling a little bit to ponder on this Monday morning. Caused, in part by failing to drink the first cup of tea of the morning in a timely manner. The chill in the air had caused it to cool quickly and I had missed the perfection point. The first cup of the day is important and today I have missed that moment. Thankfully the first coffee has no such temperature requirements.
I missed the moment because I was trying to get my head round the privelidged shenanigans of our current government.For those not in this particular loop a minister who was once responsible for the countries tax affairs has been found to have been avoiding tax paying himself.
I would have been better off concentrating on my tea. After my early morning disappointment I took a little look at 30th of January photos of the past and found to my delight one of my favourite pictures. Sunflowers simply wrapped in newspaper, placed as a memorial in a church in Havana..
This is very fortutuitous as my only photo of yesterday was very loosely also a newspaper story. On my Sunday wanderings, the dogs took a pee on a copper noticeboard. The sort of place that must be sniffed and investigated before being anointed with another small squirt of Hugo pee. Lola prefers to leave her news at the base.
The angle of sunlight perfectly illuminated dog news. Rarely visible to humans this is a chance encounter with canine communication. I had no idea how to weave this image into a blog, but as is often the case, serendipity did my work very conveniently.
I feel I have been a little harsh with January. I am not alone, an early morning conversation drifted over to me from above the dogs heads.
” When exactly does January finish, it does seem to have dragged on and on this year, bloody hell not until Wednesday”
Are we all all still affected by the lag of Covid years when January’s have been uncertain. This January has definitely felt more like a liminal space than an actual flesh and blood, lived in Calendar month.
Like all months January has its own distinctive personality. If it was a person I would not be drawn to it, we would not be going out for coffee or hooking up for a dog walk.
There are, though some lovely, unique positives about my most unloved month.
1. Left over Christmas Cake- ours left the building last Thursday. Small squares of it have accompanied our evenings of binge watching T. V.
2. The pile of Christmas books. Always a satisfyingly reassuring interior design feature. Enough reading matter should we ever get snowed in with power cuts. With enough candle power boredom can be banished.
3. Christmas toiletries. Morning ablutions become foamy fantasies of far away places with coconut and jojoba. Personally I avoid mintiness. It does not remind me of Alpine meadows. It could just be me, but mintiness on one’s soft parts is torture. Nothing Swiss about it. Pure Spanish inquisition of the red hot poker sort.
I think 3 January positives is enough. I need to discuss the header image. One of three pure white tulips that were in a Christmas bouquet. Strangely they were supplied still attached to their bulbs.
One month after their arrival they are languishing floppily in the kitchen. Their stems are weak but the flower is still willing. Willing for what, I have to ask. Their flower friends have long ago joined the compost gang. My hope is that the bulbs will dry out from nearly a months immersion in water. I just couldn’t bare to keep them in a vase any longer, being all droopy and gloomy. They were a plant reflection of my own pathetic seasonal ennui. Wednesday is a deadline for both bulbs and humans in this house
8:15 am on a January morning in Firestone Bay. I know I share this sort of image often but yesterday I did a little research on the area as it was in 1895. Because the tide is high the tidal pool is invisible apart from the three swimmers walking out on the slipway that forms one of the pool walls. In 1895 the pool did not exist. Next week’s research will be to find out the pools history.
I was able to spend a few minutes looking at old planning maps while I was working at The Box yesterday.
The orange arrow points out the place the Bobbers nearly always swim. We know our bay as Tranquility Bay but on this map it is marked as Ladies Bathing Place.
Here it is this morning. 5 minutes with an old map makes more questions than answers. When were the steps and walkways built that make this such a gorgeous and practical swimming location. Sadly the map also shows the more than thirty houses and a school that were lost in my own area during German bombing raids during World War II. Just looking out on my street I can roughly outline how many homes were lost. How many people and their beloved pets lost their lives?
5 minutes with an old map, so thought provoking, where will this Pondering end? Sunshine+ An old map= gratitude and the need to know more.
Some blogs are slow burning, ripening slowly over many days, weeks or months. Others present themselves in a moment. This one is a hybrid, the Pondering has been bubbling away for a couple of months, the moment today, was perhaps 60 seconds of decision making. That moment is the top picture. After a small amount of walking, the coastal path at St Ives, we came upon this idyllic beach. After a moments paddling the decision was made to throw caution to the wind and strip off completely for a swim. Confident that my weekly sea swims, or bobs, as they are known, have equipped me with the ability to quickly submerge in any chilly sea temperature.
It would not do to fanny about, frightening fellow walkers, with my nakedness. The long, slow, ponderous part of this blog has its inspiration from a comment made by a fellow course member at a blogging course.
” Your blog would be better with more of you in it”
Since November I have tried putting a little more of me into the blog. In truth I have always been there, peeping from behind words or hiding in pictures. Trying to find my voice, or style, while nattering on about not very much. I wonder, sometimes, if anyone has noticed the slight changes since November.
Ten or so minutes of swimming in a cold sea, off the North Cornwall coast was just fabulous this morning. I could be evangelical about the benefits of cold water immersion, likewise the buzz of not giving a moments thought to just taking my clothes off in a public space. Put the two together and the skills of fully clothed camera- wielding friends and the blog gets all of me for one time only.
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I got a life boosting, energy creating, moment. Fizzy as a firework, giddy as the giddiest goat, happy as a human hippo. Naked, cold and loving life. All time stood still, the sun was out and I was feeling elemental.
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