I woke up cold this morning. The first time for many months. I also have a planned dip in the sea. Now I accept that I am fully in the Autumn Zone.
When my bed feels snug and the thought of a cold swim feels like madness.
Sunrise has yet to occur, although not a deal breaker, some sunshine would be most welcome.
Yesterday the sun made a most welcome visit to my morning dip.
Which was all very energising for the day ahead. Which is the point where reality steps in. Yesterday’s dip was timed to fit in perfectly with the day’s chores. The first of which was a Vermin survey at a tennis club that I help to run.
The club overlooks all my swimming zones. Proximity to the sea means this could be perfect Real Estate for rats. However we have a very diligent and effective Rat detective who ensures we have no long tailed members using the club on a regular basis.
A stormy day yesterday provided the perfect illustration of a safe harbour. 100 yards and less than five minutes walk divided these two photographs yesterday. The difference is almost unbelievable.
The storm and some commitments kept me out of the water yesterday. But my short walk along Admiralty Road on a stormy day gave me some lovely hugs as I met fellow Stonehouse friends also making the journey from storm to safe harbour.
I’ve been a lone bobber more often this year than any other. A good summer and warm water calls me when the tide is high.
Lone bobbing and group bobbing are two completely different experiences. Group Bobbing is a life-affirming experience that jiggles my soul and gives me plenty to reflect on.
My Private stairway to watery heaven.
Lone bobbing is all about quiet reflection . Just bobbing about in the water pleasurably reflecting on life.
Group bobbing is the most restorative of the two submersions. The weight of the world can float off my shoulders when I am bobbing with the bobbers. My grumpies/worries really do get reframed by social bobbing. I don’t believe I would go for a lone bob if I was cross with life or people. Maybe I should try it sometime.
Then to finish off, live music from the Barracks. Who wouldn’t want to listen to a tribute band playing The Killers and Kings of Leon and any other band of that genre and era until 1:30 am. It was too hot to sleep, so roll with it in a comfy chair with a cup of tea. I have had worse experiences at actual festivals.
All punctuated with swimming in the sea. Very cool.
My mother, who was in most ways a very pragmatic person, had a guilty secret. She loved a romantic novel.
I have inherited her pragmatism but not her taste in books. Romance books are not my thing unless the romance is just one facet of an engaging narrative. Romancing, romantic gestures etc, just feel a little icky and coersive in specifically romantic novels. There is nearly always a power imbalance or jeopardy involved in the interactions between the people involved, there would be no story without such things.
However, as a woman whose glass is habitually half-full there must be a huge dose of my mothers love of romance residing in my soul, because life is sometimes shitty and yet I always try to find something positive in whatever situation.
Noon
The tidal pool was my destination for the morning dog walk and later I swam from the beach beside it.
For both visits it was rather a seaweedy experience.
8 a.m and noon.
But my glass-half-full, romantic head will only ever remember a beautiful morning walk and a delicious lunchtime swim, not the weed that made the pool unusable and stuck on my skin. Romance is seeing beyond irritation, embracing the moment and finding the golden nuggets in every experience. However mad that seems.
Not paying too much attention to the seaweed of life.
Reality of a good day.Romance of a good day.
Harold S Kushner* emphasized the importance of finding good in every situation, stating, “If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul,”.
*
Soul nurturing, that is pretty romantic in my opinion.
This blog could go one of two ways or it could just celebrate the first Passion Flower of the season. Passion flower plants were a gift from our builder last May. He gave us three leggy plants to trail over the trellis he had just installed on the top of our wall. They put on a bit of growth last summer and were repotted this Spring. A flower and later in the season edible Passion Fruits is on our wish list.
Not on our wish list was a domestic fatburg. When you buy an old house things like drains are a bit of a dark art. With no warning our kitchen drain failed spectacularly this week. The first sign was when the dishwasher suffered from reflux and bleated pathetically. We did not recognise this as an early symptom of an apocolypse. Dynarod were booked but not for several days. In a very busy week I had planned myself a day of domestica yesterday.
The blocked drain was a bit of a head scratcher. We do not have the modern luxury of an inspection cover or any means of identifying the direction of flow or indeed stasis in our case.
This being an Edwardian house I attempted an Edwardian solution. Boiling water/ Bicarbonate of Soda/ white vinegar. A lava like eruption of gunge bubbled away at the access point of the drain. Probing with a stick revealed standing water to a depth of almost 3 feet, a metre even.
Armed only with a pair of surgical gloves for human examination* and a plunger more serious intervention was required.
What I needed was veterinary gauntlets for Cow Gynaecology.
Laying on my belly I plunged my arm and plunger into the depths and achieved a very good attatchment to something. My plunger resolutely hung on to whatever unseen object I had chanced upon. One hand in the supersoft and slippy water was not enough so another hand had to go in. This is taking moments to write but it was easily two hours of time as I pondered and considered each next move.
After several awkward pulls on my plunger there was a sudden movement and a giant domestic fatburg was delivered at face level. Not a pleasant experience. Dirty water gurgled and then settled, only at a slightly lower water level. I waited a bit, hoping for a miracle but none was forthcoming. So I repeated the plunger experiment. This time things were a little easier. One more two handed pull and a second fatburg was delivered and with that the grungy water disappeared with hollow glugs and the sound of a minor victory.
Dynarod cancelled.
And so back to the Passion Flower, and there is a connection. Firstly the passion flower cheered me up on my many trips back into the house, once to receive a parcel, for a neighbour, that required photo evidence. Not a bit of me was a photo opportunity yesterday.
The colours of the fatburg were very similar to the Passion Flower. Mostly creamy with evidence of culinary adventures with turmeric, chilli, tomato, beetroot and inexplicably a blueberry colour.
Twin fatburgs and a plunger and a Passion Flower. Quite the Day.
Except in this village in a city, the pavements are littered with quotes from the Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle. This one is entirely appropriate.
P.s On one of the sites where my blog appears Meta offer an analysis. A case of Metapondering perhaps?
Since I transitioned from a career in Medical Imaging that could never have been a balanced work/life experience to the life of a work from home artist, a state of equilibrium exists most of the time. Our move to a seaside suburb of a city was a deliberate attempt at making life more balanced.To throw a little spice into the mix I also do admin for a tennis club. Prior to that I did admin for a large group of Artists. That involved far too much driving and artists can be very slippery fish to manage. The tennis club is just a short walk away and the view of the office is enchanting.
As it happens some slippery fish also play tennis but not in quite the same proportions as the art group. Beyond the unpredictable admin of a tennis club my work/ life balance pivots on a fulcrum of domestic admin v creativity. The balance changes on a daily basis.
When I moved to the Plymouth area for the first time from Brighton, in the late eighties, I was not so sure it had been a wise move. The cultural and societal differences between a liberal and multicultural seaside city and a post industrial port were vast and uncomfortable for a long while. I quickly found my tribe by joining an art class.
Plymouth artists liked to drink in out of the way places. One such place was the Victualing Office Tavern, a grubby pub in one of the roughest parts of Plymouth. We went there to enjoy live jazz , rock and folk. Just as the quote says, we were a very broad gathering of people from all works of life. People creating art in council flats and some in homes that were mentioned in the Doomsday Book. There is a theory that artists are the first sign of gentrification….
Now I live in the exact same area as my 1980’s art excursions, after a ten year return to London. The VOT has gone up in the world, as has the area. Queen Victoria should have swapped the word dangerous for interesting.
Visionary rather than vituperative is a better way forward even for a Queen
Just a blog to use one of my favourite words that rarely gets an outing.
Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?
For the last two days, a busy bee. Yesterday with fun stuff and creativity. Time spent with a two year old is never dull.
Drakes Island from Stonehouse Lawn Tennis ClubDrakes Island, in the rain from West Hoe.
This morning’s busy bee stuff is far less interesting. Trips to two industrial estates and the dullest of shopping lists done in my least favourite supermarket. The afternoon will not have to work too hard to liven things up. I will let you know how it goes.
And then nust like that the day perked up. My wallet, missing for a week turned up. Misplaced and overlooked not, as secretly feared, lost forever.
We said farewell to some neighbours yesterday. The weather was kind for their last day of having a home near Firestone Bay. They are headed for Yorkshire. A place with a very different sort of beauty.
Meanwhile we have discovered that we have some foxy neighbours who have taken to visiting our yard at nighttime. Leaving a pungent calling card of foxy odour.
Foxy neighbours and their fragrances are not unknown to us. The picture below was a regular occurrence in our London garden .
theoldmortuary.design 