Our Autumn Equinox performed pretty well yesterday. Our 12 hours of daylight were sun-filled with just a hint of chill.
And if natural sun were not enough we popped along to Devonport Market Hall to see Helios an installation by Luke Jerram.Featuring a giant orb, representing the sun and an ambient soundtrack that represents many of the cultural, social and science impacts that the sun has on humanity around the world.
Bean bags and chairs are provided for static appreciation and the architecture of the Market Hall encourages 360 degree viewpoints.
I managed to get one of my complicated images. Which has half of my body balanced on a table and plugged into the mains via a socket extension. A dangerous position to be in, if it wasn’t just a trick of many lights.
12 hours filled with sunlight of different sorts. My final moment of sun worship was a little on the chilly side but worth the cold to spend time swimming towards the setting sun.
Helios is free to visit at the Market Hall, Devonport. Open daily until Sunday 28th September.
Mabon is a modern Pagan name for the autumn equinox which occurs in England at 7:19 tomorrow the 22nd of September.
In this image Mabon turns her head slightly to face the colder/crisper days of autumn. Mornings at this time of year can be glorious so I have surrounded her with warm colours, with just the chill of what is to come on her face.
Harvest Festival used to mark this time of year when I was a child. But as a working adult, who worked in a daylight free environment, the passing seasons and their boundaries of solstices and equinoxes passed me by. Life as an artist and dog walker makes me far more tuned in to the seasons moods.
This boundary is the one I dislike the most. Anticipating shorter, colder, darker days. However Autumn itself is a lovely time of year. Mists and mellow fruitfulness and Pumpkins.
Always Pumpkins
My harvesting this year has been almost entirely supermarket based. I love big, fat, juicy figs. Fresh ones, straight from Mediterranean trees are my favourite. After that I have to settle for ones that are labelled ‘large’ in supermarkets or market stalls. Mediterranean figs would laugh in the face of that description of large. Here is my diminutive haul from yesterday.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have the kind of mind that wanders. Last night I should have been concentrating on the words and music for an upcoming performance.
I don’t read music so concentration is vital. But where was my head? Off on a completely pointless ponder.
Goodness me, doesn’t the vein in that marbletombstone look like an artery?
Odd anatomy, but it could just be a right coronary, circumflex artery.
Needs a stent though.
Real Coronary artery that needs a stent.Does this Marble need a stent?
Now a sensible head that needed to concentrate would have stopped there. But no.
This could be a bespoke, graphic headstone for someone who died of Right Coronary Heart Disease.
What animal would have a right coronary artery like this. Or any other artery for that matter.
Is there disease further down?
Then in a moment of bonkers serendipity we started singing about Postman’s Park.
A little bit of London obscurity to read in the link below.
And here’s to the memory of Thomas Simpson, Whose life was sacrificed, Rescuing skaters from High Gate Pond When they fell through the treacherous ice.
These are the heroes of everyday life, Their stories may not reach us all, But in Postman’s Park are the tales of their strife, Displayed on the plaques on the wall ‘neath the awning.
Now young Sarah Smith was just seventeen, When her inflammable dress caught fire, Rushing to help her friend in distress, She created her own funeral pyre.
At Battersea Sugar Refinery, Thomas Griffin met his fate, A boiler exploded and scalded him raw, When he went back to look for his mate.
Now William Drake was passing Hyde Park, When ladies he saw in distress, Their horses were bolting, he leapt to their aid, And that was the cause of his death.
Now William Donald, a railway clerk, Was drowned in the River Lee, He was trying to save his friend from the weeds, But created his own tragedy.
And last but not least is Percy Edwards, An officer of the law, He lost his life in a gaseous pit, Rescuing those who’d gone in before.
…
Postman’s Park is where I sat as a teenager, anxiously waiting to see if I had been accepted to train at Barts Hospital in London.
It is also the place I escaped to on occasion when a busy day in the Cath Labs at Barts allowed me five minutes in the sun with a sandwich. Cath ( Catheter) Labs treat and diagnose heart disease.
And where I sat as a woman on the cusp/precipice/adventure of retirement from Barts, wondering how on earth life had taken me on an unplanned full circle.
Fantasy Bobbing is the slightly unrealistic thought process that goes through most bobbers minds. This is one of our bobbing areas with just a touch of Disney. September is the cusp month of sea temperatures, they start to drop around now.
Another fantasy is tide times. There are a core of bobbers who like to swim between ten and eleven on aFriday morning.
We swim as near as possible to high tide. Over excitement from the Friday bobbers declared high tide at ten today ( the opposite was true). So bobbing was replaced by breakfasting and great quality nattering.
High tide was at 4pm only two of us bobbed. It was somewhat chilly.
We bobbed between the first paragraph and the one you have just read. Today is not the cusp, that moment has officially passed. The sea temperature has actually dropped .
Last week I bobbed about in a beautiful balmy sea not really wishing to get out. Today we bobbed about but knew that it would be sensible to get out.
The difference? Maybe 2 degrees. The temperature is 15.4 degrees today. An early start for our winter hardening. The irony is that in May, when the water hits 15.4, we bob about, joyously frolicking in what, after a long cold winter and Spring feels like swimming somewhere tropical.
This photograph popped up on my TimeHop. The image was a harvested, still-life set up, from a Watercolour class I belonged to a while ago.
It reflects a fruitful and dry autumn harvest. Not something I am experiencing this year.
Yesterday was, as usual, a two x two dog walk day also one non-dog walk. The simple maths of that situation was 3 walks=3 outfits. No gentle meandering, gathering fruits and nuts. Just head down and hope for the best. The best in this instance is only having to change one or two garments per walk depending where the rain has penetrated. Harvesting this week will be firmly supermarket based.
As an aside the watercolour, which never sold, is by our front door.
I realise I have never shared this beautiful passion flower making its way up an external staircase.
No particular reason to share it today. It has been a very rainy day and it is exactly a month since I took this photograph. In that month our weather has downgraded considerably. Passion flower plants are clinging on for dear life in the wind and the rain. A month ago this passion flower was at risk of being scorched on a hot metal staircase.
My own passion flower who was an early bloomer avoided the really hot weather of our summer by appearing and fading in June. Yesterday I unfurled its tiny, curling, climbing tendrils and put it on a path of my choosing rather than the harum scarum route it had decided to take on my washing line.
Actually all the climbing plants were redirected to my aesthetic desires rather than their own urges yesterday. Roses were pruned. Growth and direction for 2026 was the name of my yardening passion in a couple of rare dry hours this week.
Gardening however has taken a real back seat this week. Gardening is done at a tennis club not far from home . But Weeding Wednesday was redesignated No Weed Wednesday to allow the gardeners to celebrate a significant birthday, 60 times around the sun of our gardening guru. 20 people gathered for crisps, cake and conversation. The weeds can grow for another week or maybe longer if this wet weather persists. No Weed Wednesday could become an Autumn/ Winter passion
Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.
My epic fail occurred one Christmas when I was batch cooking sausage rolls. Enough to feed a substantial quantity of festive guests. I had a large range style cooker and every shelf was filled with unctuous sausage meat enrobed with the best flaky pastry that supermarkets could sell. 30 mins cooking time was the perfect timing to pop to a neighbour for a tiny Seasonal drink. Unfortunately, the neighbours didn’t do tiny and I didn’t do portion control or observe my 30-minute time slot. An hour passed in a twinkling and I was full of festive spirit ( gin). Once home I was in no rush to rescue my baked goods. They were already past anyone’s judgment of edible. When the oven cooled down I swept them into a carrier bag to feed the birds in a local park after Christmas Day. Off to the park I went with a gaggle of over sugared children. I handed over the bag of sausage rolls and paid little attention to the bird feeding, just taking some mental breathing space. Somewhat irresponsibly I had weaponised children and was not paying attention. Each tiny bite-sized sausage roll was a rock in the hands of small children. Birds scattered, fearful of their feathered lives. Other parents and park visitors judged me as I realised that for the second time in 48 hours I had failed to adequately assess the sausage roll situation.
Nobody remembers that I did clear up the mess, no birds were actually harmed and that everyone had a fabulous hour or so in the park.
Every Christmas when a sausage roll passes the lips of any child or adult who has knowledge of that day. Somebody pipes up with the legend of me killing birds in a local park at Christmas time with over cooked sausage rolls because I had drunk too much gin.
All other years my sausage rolls have been fabulous. Nobody ever mentions that.
My poor sense of taste and smell, post-COVID, means that my lifetime favourite foods have changed. Seasoning, unusual flavour pairings, and texture are the things that bring mealtime pleasure on the days when I cant really taste very much and the food world resembles soggy cardboard. This question was timely today as I popped into Marks and Spencer to buy a new madcap product.
Who knows what gustatory delight Caramel Sauce with Marmite will bring? The Original Salt and Pepper Seasoning would certainly have been beneficial to the chips in the top picture. They were the epitome of cardboard
We did a regular dog walk around Sutton Harbour and The Barbican yesterday. A one hour dog walk, with time for sniffs etc
Both are hugely busy harbours with a constantly changing cast of seafarers and tourists on any day of the year. This weekend is a massive Sea Festival and everywhere is heaving with people having a good day out.
Live music fills every corner and spills across the harbours at high tide. Merging and blending. Drunken choruses of Robbie Williams tracks, merging with the rhythms of sea shanties and Church bells.. Hen parties with high heels on cobbles and men observing, holding pints and opinions that are not worth repeating.
These harbours have been bustling hubs for centuries and I would say these photos , taken in the midst of the happy hubbub could have been taken any time in the last 700 years. Dogs would have pee’d on the lobster pots as Hugo did. People would have been reflected in puddles. People would have made tracks.
Birds would have swooped over water.
So these calm pictures do lie, because they were tiny calm and unlikely moments, taken in the midst of happy people, crowded together intent on having a good time.But by excluding nearly all human detail, they are timeless.
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