This is our almost daily reality on the morning dog walk . Royal Marines out for a training run. Yesterday the bobbers experienced this, perfectly, in time run as they walked from the car park. In our street marines were practicing running with 60kg weights on stretchers. Other days they run in full combat gear and carry guns. Hugo and Lola are never reactive which is a good thing. The bobbers, though, were a little more vocal. Obviously in a good and positive way. Without exception we have all worked in public facing jobs. Doing jobs that are made a good deal more pleasant by the public being, at the very least, clean. Royal Marines on these training runs may be a little warm but there is always a, just washed, fragrance about them which we can appreciate.
Marine Green seems to be a bit of a theme for this blog. The saltwater pool that the marines were jogging past was also, like the marines, dressed in shades of green.
Fragrant , in a good way, and so perfectly in time that they can be turned into a kaleidoscopic image. Welcome to the Weekend.
What to do on a damp Bank Holiday Monday when the dogs are at the groomers? Take ourselves off to Delamore Arts, a, not dog friendly Art Exhibition set in beautiful surroundings. This year is the 20th Anniversary of the event and I am ashamed to say that we were newbies, never having been before. In our defence we were not living in the South West for much of those twenty years but that seems a poor excuse to miss something so gorgeous and quintessentialy British in the very early summer. Regular visitors probably have a better chance of concentrating on the art,we were all over the place. Wowed by the parkland and the formal gardens before we even thought of looking at 3d or 2d artwork. Open for the whole of May this is an experience not to be missed. Full disclosure, there are lots of Drawn to the Valley Artists and Makers involved. I will only mention one DttV artist in this blog. Tessa Jane, who has been heavily involved in the organisation of this years exhibition as a local ambassador for Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis, the charity that is the beneficiary of Delamore Arts 22.
He Says Live With the World Inside You. Tessa Jane
The image below is the view looking out of the OMS Carriage Shed Gallery. Curated by Tessa Jane. So much to learn about OMS, the organisation, and Tessa Jane’s perspective as well as the valuable work being done by the University of Plymouth, all contained in a welcoming small space.
OMS seems to me, as an outsider, an organisation that supports people with MS to look outside and beyond their diagnosis. Hence my outside and beyond image.
I suppose in writing this blog without too much actual art I am encouraging local people to go and see this event for themselves. I am also supporting my own decision to go again and be able to write another blog that does talk just about art. Some hope!
Looking at plants like this was both diverting and the perfect preparation for looking at 2d art like this.
Wet Apples by John Hurford catches the eye at the Stables Gallery further away from the main house. Still authentically a stables, horses were being exercised as we exercised our minds. The Stables Gallery was the first one we visited after following the pencil trail.
A trail that took us, two cold water swimmers, past a swimming pond.
You can understand the pull and the fascination we felt towards just a quick sneaky dip in this tranquil water. But like the dedicated art lovers that we are we pulled our attention back to the job in hand and found life imitating art.
Gravel at DelamoreAzalea Leaves by Louis Victory
Then nature beguiled us into observing the search for pollen, by a very busy bumble bee. Who was up to his many armpits in the flowers of an Ichium.
Time to head off into the woods…
Portrait of Feathers Dawn Brooks-EnsorShattered Steve HedleyPlease Sit Isabel Coulton
Time to finish this particular Delamore Blog with my favourite sort of pictures. Its complicated…
Purbeck Form Four Andrew ThomasDuet Dianne GriffinWalnut Leaf Richard Cresswell
Goodness we have wanted to find the Hidden Hut for ages! When we lived and worked in London it was the aspirational destination of food writers in all sorts of magazines.
Our weekend visits to South East Cornwall never seemed to have the time for a trip down to the Roseland Peninsular. Being busy and Covid restrictions have run away with our time since our return to the South West. Yesterday we were up early to do another tiny chunk of the South West Coastal Path and more importantly to be at The Hidden Hut in time for lunch.
As you can see we were well on time and enjoyed an aperitif of coffee and ice cream while we waited for our lunch
As is obvious from these blogs I am a very confident consumer of wonderful food but live in awe of actual food writers. So I will share two reviews from my favourite eating gurus. Grace Dent and Jay Rayner.
Jay and I often commuted into central London on the same early morning tube from Brixton perhaps we we both dreaming of seafood by the sea.
No London food critics obvious yesterday at The Hut, no longer hidden from us! But plenty of Londoners and food savvy visitors flocked, some of them in box fresh country gear, to this small corner of Cornwall.
A new flat cap reflected in the window.
Nature and beach detritus are carefully arranged to catch the eye.
It really makes a point to see such soft beauty and plastic waste both arranged with effortless charm.
Nature wins over in the battle to catch our eye but it made us think, again about plastic waste, and that is no bad thing!
Was the Hidden Hut worth finding?
Absolutely, great fish stew and mackerel pate. Served with plump flatbreads, if that is not an oxymoron. The rain held off until we were safely back in the van. Promises to return were made, we loved it.
Saturday was always about two decent length walks, one very urban and the other deeply rural. They are so different that in normal circumstances they would be two different blogs but a common theme has linked them. There is a lot of subject matter from this weekend so I have plenty of photos and natterings for a few blogs. The common theme for this one turns out to be Spring Green. Amazingly both walks had plenty of it although the first walk produced it rather unconventionally. Walk #1 was a circular tour of Devonport and Mount Wise very early in the morning. Friends of ours who normally live in France like to explore new coffee shops and the walk we did has two, and as we discovered later a new coffee van. Our meeting place was the first coffee shop. Where quite by chance me the decor and my drink were matching in shades of green, some of it Spring Green.
Much of the Devonport and Mount Wise walk is urban and uninspiring. There are some lovely buildings but for the most part they are unloved and somewhat rough around the edges, the view though once these streets have been passed is beautiful. The Tamar, Hamoaze and Plymouth Sound all stretched out in front of you.
A little bit of Spring Green in the grass but our next stop provided the unconventional part of this blog. Our friend is an ex-military man and has a strange addiction. The curiously named Bogey Knights Military Surplus Stores. He was like a dog with several bones. The rest of us soon began to see the attraction.
Unbelievably this lurid green leather jacket and its marching leather biker trousers are a uniform somewhere in the world.
Bogey Knights also sells Spring Green ropes.
And number badges to attach to buttons.
Sadly the item that took most of our attention was not Spring Green, but a rather clinical steel. The workings of a drugs toilet kept us entertained for many minutes and it was a bargain at £120!
Walk #2 was some two hours away.
Although these instructions do not mention it. This walk is an old coffin path between one village and the nearest church with a burial ground. There are thousands of these paths criss crossing the countryside. Kissing Gates are the give away, not at all for romance. Kisten Gate is derived from Kist an old word for box. It enabled two or more people to pass through a gate while carrying a coffin without having to put the coffin on the ground. Since we love a country churchyard, walking footpaths that were formally coffin paths takes us to some interesting places. This one is our best so far and arriving at the churchyard by any other route would not have been so beautiful.
Plenty of Spring Greens.
The walk and destination deserve a blog of their own but one more Spring Green to complete this one.
@theoldmortuary posing as a green woman in a leaded glass window.
To the May Day blog, a little late, but full of Spring Green which is no bad thing.
Nearly one year on from the house move and the work room is ready for business. Business for Hugo and Lola means an empty sofa each. For me it means clear desk space.
At 10:00 we were all ready for the first Zoom of the day. The dogs were already asleep on their chosen sofas and I had the lap top set in such a position that my head and shoulders could be at the meeting but my hands could be doing ‘other stuff’
Disaster struck, nothing I could do on any platform could get me into the meeting. This is the first time in over two years that Zoom has failed me. I have often wished it to fail but I’m sure I am not alone in that. With my vote handed over to some one who was actually in the room. I set about using the free two hours doing actual work for the organisation. This meant that the ‘other’ stuff had to wait until the evening.
And the dogs could take themselves off mute, or asleep as they call it.
For full disclosure, having shown you a tidy workroom. I have to admit that there is still a load of stuff that needs sorting in the garage, still. When working on the new shelves for the work room I needed to store some old shelves in the garage. I didnt have enough woman moments to make a space in the garage. I decided to deploy a South London trick and put the shelves outside the front of the house with a ‘free, help yourself’ sign and a message on our local residents Facebook page. Recycling at its finest, they were gone within two hours. To return to the failed Zoom meeting, the slight discombobulation of the fixed event of the morning becoming unfixed seemed to expand time for the whole day. I had already saved my self an hour and a half of travel by not attending in person and I worked solidly through the meeting time and stayed in touch with Whatsapp. Loads of extra jobs got done. The only casualty of the day was the ‘other stuff’ that my hands would have been doing while I was in the meeting. That remains unfinished even though I was still at it until the last dog walk of the day.
Just a little blog today about a moment, just a moment. My screaming stone is a good enough illustration.
Genes are a lottery and all of my life I have looked a lot like my mum. Obviously there are other peoples features packed into my face and my temperament comes from my dad, but on the whole it is her who looks back at me in a mirror. Until yesterday. I am now older than my mother ever was. The face that looked back at me yesterday was my grandmothers! That was quite a shock!
A lifetime ago in the early days of lockdowns a Hix Fix cocktail was brightening up the end of the first month of the pandemic. Facebook Time Hop flashed up this gem of a picture from April 2020. Cherry liqueur and Champagne seems an odd thing to drink in our own garden for no particular reason but I think it demonstrates an optimistic approach to Lockdown Life, we were probably celebrating a day of gardening.
Free of Lockdowns labouring is no longer rewarded with champagne. Building three shelf units and moving everything in the studio/ work room yesterday was rewarded far more appropriately with tea.
Moving art ‘stuff’ is a dirty job, the dirt is just more colourful. Tea alone was not enough of a reward and the sun was out so a swim was also scheduled.
This massive boat sailed past with three tugs making the water extra choppy. The sense of scale in this photograph does not reflect how wierd this really feels when we are in the water. It is like a twenty storey office block is floating past extremely close to us.
The informal sundial was very nearly accurate.
Enlivened by the swim, work continued on the storage/ shelf units and room reorganisation. There is every chance the job will be finished today.
Although not worthy of a blog of its own something happened for the last time this week. I’m not sure if technology or the Pandemic is the cause. One of my earliest memories is of going to banks with my parents or grandparents while they organised their financial affairs. My nose pressed against wood or leather panelling as a grown up did business way above my head in both the physical and literal sense.
Cheque books,Standing Orders, Direct Debits, Cash machines and posted bank statements meant I never really needed to take my own children to a bank and I will never take my grandchildren. The savings account I have had since I was a small person transitioned this week from a passbook to an App. I popped in to have the book updated, the last of my, not on-line banking. With a few taps on a computer my passbook was turned from the physical evidence of savings to a relic. The old passbook will be sent to me in the post. No longer something to be proud of, or grateful for, just a piece of history. Physically the same but in every way a shrivelled husk of what it used to be.
Yesterday the blog drove life, rather than lagged behind it. Some friends were reading the blog on their way to shop at Ikea. Realising that we would all be there at the same time they Whatsapped us and we all had breakfast together. Then we parted, them to browse and buy things they didn’t need and us to click and collect with no chance of temptation. With our van loaded with multiple Kallax units we drove off to the South West Coastal Path to walk a little chunk of it. We really did pack a lot into one Ikea trip. Despite the sunshine the sea mist was not kind to us at all so there are no glorious seascapes to share.
Wildflowers had their moment in the spotlight. As did small portions of Atlantic Rainforest.
We had a really comfortable few hours in the sun, walking in a new area. We stopped for lunch at the intersection of three footpaths and took some time reading about the walk we were doing.
If you can read the text you can see that beautiful, white, Park Cattle were predicted.
We met Brown Cattle with horns. Brown cattle who had been absolutely pissed off by teenage boys running at them and screeching on the very very steep rough pasture where we met them. Brown cattle who took one look at us and decided that they would graze and wetly defaecate on the only narrow track that was available to us. Just because they could and because as representatives of the human race we had to pay the price of too much testosterone in teenage boys.
The cattle had safety in numbers so we sat down again to enjoy the non view and give them the chance to wander back off. We also had our own slight testosterone problem. At the sight of the cattle blocking our path Hugo was pumping himself up to be the Alpha male of our pack and started practicing his latent herding manoeuvres, while firmly on the lead. Despite a wait of nearly twenty minutes the cattle were going nowhere and even if they did leave, the footpath had become a stinky puddle of post lunch poo. Our choices were limited; retrace our steps, possibly the simplest, but 3 miles distance, solution to get to a point 500 yards away. Take an unknown footpath for a similar distance in a different direction or scramble up an almost 90 degree, gorse covered slope. Obviously we chose the gorse covered slope!
The details of the scramble will remain hazy. All was well that ended well. There was a huge fallen tree at the top of the slope, the perfect place to stop, take a sip of water, gather our thoughts and allow our pumping hearts to return to a normal rhythm. We could also observe, 500 yards beneath us the brown cattle still quietly grazing and pooping on the footpath. They had an air of solidarity and victory about them.
This is what procrastination looks like. I’ve been trying to buy some popular shelving from Ikea, I dithered about yesterday and didn’t check the website until later in the afternoon. All the units I wanted were available in the colour I wanted but I had missed the deadline for click and collect. Suddenly a trip to Ikea had turned into a spontaneous overnight camping trip as we ‘made the most’ out of a trip to Exeter and wild- camped overnight on the seafront at Exmouth. Close enough to Ikea to get there when it opens on Sunday morning.
In all my Ikea life such a plan would never have been hatched before. Our most regular Ikea was always Croydon and before that Bristol and Thurrock, none of these destinations scream wild camping wonderfulness. But Exmouth really is rather fabulous for an overnight spot of Van life.
In an effort to put International in our life while I still have no passport we are eating our way around the world while remaining in Plymouth. Before we even thought about Ikea or camping trips we went to Canada for lunch. Kickin Caribou on Mutley Plain serves Poutine and other Canadian treats.
We had the window seat and had an unusually vivid street scene to enjoy while we tucked into chips, curd cheese and gravy. Yesterday was St Georges Day and one of the biggest charity events that Plymouth hosts. The St Luke’s Mens Day Out, passed by our window seat. The link below explains the great ethos behind the event. The route of the walk takes in some amazing scenery and passes plenty of pubs. It is a thoroughly wonderful event. There are some unplanned additional events related to these pubs. My following comments are tongue in cheek and not representational of the organisers plans.
The clue is in the statement ‘ there are plenty of pubs on the route’
Many of the men choose to walk in fancy dress, some of them drink far too much. Some of them fight. Lets just say that history does not suggest that Crusaders or the Flintstones ever got involved in street fighting or T Shirt pulling but there were pockets of such behaviour along the route. The walk started at 10am, when we decided to leave for our unplanned Ikea adventure at 5 pm there were still the walking wounded shuffling their way along the route. There may be a few sore heads this morning alongside the many more sore feet. Most importantly a lot of money was raised.
I have a little store of pre-prepared pages that I can take out with me when I know I am going out for a natter and some creativity. Sometimes, like this, one just an outline of some shapes. The destination of these watercolour doodles is never certain. I had a vague theme in mind but doodles like daily blogs tend to have a mind of their own. I suppose in art I am the opposite of a perfectionist, this may also be my my life planning style too. I like to allow enough space in life and in my creations for serendipity, for happy accidents, for the joy of whimsy. In common with perfectionists and every other living thing I also suffer from the bad things life can throw at an individual. I have found, however, serendipity, happy accidents , whimsy, and the love and friendship of some wonderful people and animals pulls me out of the mire of life in the most beautiful ways. Enjoy your long weekend wherever you are.
