Sun setting on an extraordinary weekend. But also a reminder to always keep our eyes open. Today I walked passed an ex-colleague who I would dearly have loved to have a natter with. Our weekend has been filled with meteorological sunshine. It’s pretty cool to walk from home to overlook the finish line of an International Sailing competition and your tea still be too hot to drink on arrival.
And then to watch the competitors sail back in to their temporary accommodation.
The sunshine also lit up our back yard.
And at night the back yard lit itself up.
All that lovely sunshine stored up in Solar panels to make the evening brighter. This weekend has also had some darker moments but life just like the weather can’t be constant sunshine, we just need to keep some reserves in hand to make these things more tolerable.
In other news, a very old bear was unpacked today. There was a serious problem with his stuffing which required immediate attention. The patient is seen here enjoying a post anaesthetic cup of tea. He will soon be back on his feet.
Early morning dog walk and time to confess that the flat packs are still flat packs and sit in our hallway like megaliths. They are too heavy for mortals to carry upstairs and Covid restrictions require Atlas-like deliverymen to drop them as close to the front door as possible. This adds a whole new level of flat pack angst to the process as they will have to be unpacked downstairs and then constructed upstairs.
Coincidentally other big things are causing problems in the bay. A Humpback whale has decided to have some fun times on the course for the Sailing Grand Prix so practicing was at a standstill.
The course was moved to accommodate the needs of the Humpback and close encounters occurred not in the race zone.
The end of the week coffee. Coffeeer than any other coffee, not as desperate as some and maybe not as chilled as a Sunday morning coffee. But still a landmark coffee. Today happens to be Friday but in my previous NHS life the end of the week could be any day.
Always celebrated at Black Sheep. Coffee to power me through the last 12 hours at Barts Heart Centre. Obviously the doughnuts are not part of an approved Cardiac Health Diet.
This late blog writing will not become a regular habit. The two things I thought I might write about are so far apart I can’t begin to sew them together but I will try. Coupled with no WiFi and no broadband and patchy signal there is an awful lot of hanging around waiting for deliveries that all the wonderful tracking apps are meant to stop. But currently tracking is not for me and neither, reliably, is a quick call from the driver to say he is close. So we hang around all day waiting for things to arrive. The bonus to this is that there is ample time for unpacking and reorganising, to this end we have sorted out the two large fireplaces that are monumental features in the new house. Not sorted out in a way that will ever see the use of fossil fuels but sorted out in an aesthetic and houseplant kind of way.
The pale gold sofa in the top picture was pulled out of a skip nearly 30 years ago. It lived for years in a conservatory and was the slightly uncomfortable chair of choice for teenagers desperate to think big thoughts away from their parents. Hardly the kindest treatment for a sofa, clearly designed for the finer things in life. A bit of reupholstery brought it back to life and it used to live in the upstairs part of @theoldmortuary. Even that, an undertakers home and workplace was possibly a bit beneath the dignity of such an elegant piece of furniture. Maybe this recent move has brought it more into the surroundings it was designed for.
The houseplants in the bottom picture are gathered together in an old fender found at the house. They need something to control them, it seems not a week goes past without a new one joining our commune. In between titivating and embellishing fireplaces while waiting for deliveries the dogs still need walking and that is how the heart on a lamppost almost inexplicably joins in with this blog.
I spend a lot of time looking at lampposts while Hugo and Lola sniff out the messages left by other dogs and then leave coded notes of their own. Most lamposts are dull for humans but this one kept me occupied for as long as it took my dogs to read the urine news further down. What is going on here? The texture in the heart is keeping me thinking long after our ten legs carried us back to home to more unpacking. Hope your Friday was worthy of the expectation.
P. S I did some digital tweaking on the heart for the header image of this blog. I suspect the heart covers a message that someone no longer wants to be legible…
We are broadband less, WiFi less and with a poor signal for 5 more days. 5 more days of constrained blogging. Gardening however is unaffected. The pot grown garden plants have perhaps done the best out of our recent move, they communicate in ancient ways, unaffected by the whimsy of telecom companies. A North and East facing corner plot swapped for South and West Facing yard suits them very well so far.
The move has not been without its casualties. One Acer struggled a bit with being potted then rallied but was beaten by bad weather and a trip in a van. The numbers of plants has not diminished as some new ones have arrived in the arms of precious friends.
Who needs broadband when you have views like this on the evening dog walk.
The sad truth is that in this techno age it is very difficult to navigate many things without a computer or smart phone or a decent signal. The challenge of going through the preliminary stages of a call centre 5 times or dropping out of an on-line ‘ chat’ is one that I am learning to accept with every day that passes. 5 more days will not be so bad.
In other news one of the Bobbers has escaped to London to visit the Hampton Court Flower Show. Seals and dolphins forgotten she is in Green Park with the Elephants.
Screaming man rock. Not on our usual beach this evening. The tide was high and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, so we moved to the more popular beach near the tidal pool for a safer swim.
We were a split pack this evening with some Bobbers swimming an hour after the larger group set off. Lucky that they did because they caught sight of the seal swimming just behind the earlier group. Not realising such a special swim was occuring would have made the evening a whole lot more dull. Although, as usual, time spent with the Bobbers is far from dull even in the worst conditions.
Hard on the heels of yesterday’s blog. Facebook memories gave me four images that I can use for the Monday Blog.
This first one is from the birthday some years ago of the friend who we always, apart from the last two years spend together. The rainbow cake rather nicely leads into a watercolour I did about three years ago. I was taking some watercolour classes. The subject of the week was human figures. I chose to paint a cruising site near Crystal Palace in London. It is called Beaulieu Heights and men go there day or night for casual sexual encounters. I suppose this is about a missed encounter. A man on his phone is oblivious to another man watching him from a park bench.
The word bench leads me rather fortuitously to a stool at Coffee Acadmics in Hong Kong.
Life is often a beautiful journey searching for something but this last picture is me just setting out on life’s journey.
This picture was almost certainly taken at the height of summer on the East Anglican coast. A brisk wind or sea mist often makes a cardigan essential beach wear even in July and August. Not such a problem on the Atlantic Coast which is my current location, although I could do without all the rain.
I have my fingers crossed for the successful instalation of a broadband service later today, that will make blogging and everything else a lot easier.
Bobbing with bubbles is not a regular piece of behaviour at all but this had not been a normal bobbing week. Even more unusually we managed to use a Winston Churchill quote in the after swim nattering session. Friday bobbing is the most regular session and happens at about 10:30 each Friday morning.
This was our first Friday swim since moving house. Apparently we need to hurry up because the water is lovely once you get in!
Our first Wednesday day swim after moving featured a pod of Dolphins. Friday featured Pol Roger Champagne!
Bobbers getting giddy before noon is definitely not normal. New house owners getting giddy before more unpacking is surprisingly effective. Although not in all corners of a room.
A tidy sofa is essential for a little post-bob, post Pol Roger siesta. It is almost certain that Winston Churchill would not have needed a siesta after drinking Pol Roger in the morning. It was his favourite champagne and he drank it with a traditional Full-English breakfast often. Thankfully we don’t have his responsibilities or the budget for such a lifestyle. But just once with the lovely Bobbers after a sparkling swim was just perfect. Our bobbing friend Helen provided the Champagne. She also gave us the chance to hear her sharing her voice in a graffiti- decorated disused grain store not far from our Bobbing Zone.
Follow the link below to hear her voice paired with great acoustics and gorgeous Street Art.
The sun setting on another day of unboxing and unbagging. When packing pre-move we tried to be as logical as possible, room by room, but the new house has very different aesthetic requirements and unpacking is not quite as simple as we had planned. A lovely bonus is that the new house lies on an East/West axis with the front of the house facing east. Hugo and Lola are taking huge pleasure in chasing pools of sunlight through the day.
Chasing is clearly not exactly the right word but languishing has no sense of action. They have brief periods of action and longer ones of languishing. I’m unsure exactly what the human project for today is but there will be no human languishing. More boxes, more bags for certain. Meanwhile there is always flowers!
This is an image from our evening walk, coming out from the tunnel was the nighttime sound of a Jazz Saxophonist. Rather lovely.
The day preceeding the evening walk was rather less lovely. Several trips to the tip and the house moving favourite, cleaning the oven! We’ve been in the physical part of this house move for 5 days now, cardboard boxes are the most prominent feature of our current lives.
Since we have no usable sofas currently, walking is the best way to stretch our hard-working backs. We stopped a while to watch the sun disappear.
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