Mine and Lola’s first time in a department store for 3 years, if you don’t count M and S, which I don’t.
The target items were kitchen items but here we are relaxing in the shoe department. Lola having the best time chewing a disposable sock.
In other news paintings are flying off the wall and this afternoon was spent framing two more to go to the exhibition.
Green Man
Low Cloud over Calstock
Saturday’s are fabulous things but as I write this late blog we are almost in Sunday!
Yesterday was a surprise. Dawn was mighty fine and then I went to work at a gallery/exhibition that had been running for nearly a week with no publicity. I definitely anticipated a slow start but was pleased to see that there had been a few sales.
Red dots at a gallery signify that a piece of art is sold. The work is either taken away at the time or left in the gallery until the exhibition ends. A mix of both greeted me when I arrived and soon after we had a steady stream of visitors through our, quite remarkable, door.
There must have been something in the air because both myself and the other steward each sold a piece of our own work within an hour of being there.
Obviously, we couldn’t do the traditional artist happy dance of backflips and somersaults because we were in such an old and precious building. But the sentiment was the same without risk to life or limbs. I have a feeling this is going to be a memorable exhibition.
My plan for when the exhibition was quiet was to take loads of photographs to share our beautiful location on this blog. Now that has to be a job for another day. If you live anywhere near the Tamar Valley a trip to Cotehele in the autumn is always a colourful experience. Our art group has just added a little bit of extra interest.
There is an irony to this blog. For the last ten days I have had loads of time to do Social Media for an art exhibition at Cotehele, a National Trust Property on the Cornish side of the Tamar Valley. The National Trust asked us not to do any Social Media during the mourning period for HRH Queen Elizabeth II. Today I am actually at Cotehele and free to do Social Media and I have two problems. Firstly we are really busy and secondly there is hardly any signal. This blog will be published by me visiting the bowling green, hopefully, or perhaps by waving my arms at the Dovecote. Another touch of British eccentricity if the last ten days have not seen enough of it.
Working at a National Trust property is always a treat, I am sitting in a room that was a bed chamber in 1485 or possibly earlier as that date is the first of the recorded redevelopments.
All of the work here is inspired by either Cotehele House or the Tamar Valley. The website of Cotehele is below.
For now my lovely readers I am off to wave my phone on the bowling green. Failing that, who could begin to guess, this is a medieval house there could be somewhere even more delightful to get a signal.
And so after 10 days of Royalty, but not Royalist-tinged blogs I bring the blog gently back to randomness and repetition. This morning Tranquility Bay was exactly that, tranquil. Hugo set about clearing the bay of floating seaweed, Lola ingratiated herself with a very impressed toddler and I talked about local cockerel activity with friendly neighbours, one of whom I have never met before. It was as if the last ten days had never happened. September days with gorgeous sunshine are just so blissful. Nothing more needs to be said.
It’s complicated. As Britain packs away the Cosplay outfits for a few months, what happens next? When I took the photo of the purple, illuminated, entrance of The Royal William Yard in Plymouth I hadn’t planned to include the contemporary A-frame table but when superimposed on a shot of the dawn of a new day it looks pleasingly optimistic. The future of Britain will be resolved around tables like this one. People will sit at benches like this, cardboard coffee cups in hand and informally exchange ideas. The big decisions may well be made in grander or more formal surroundings, but tables like this are where the magic happens.
If the architecture looks familiar after 10 days of news bulletins from London, there is a reason. The same architect John Rennie, who built the Royal William Yard, was part of a partnership, with his brother J and G Rennie. They also built Waterloo Bridge, Southwark Bridge and London Bridge.
How affronted would J and G Rennie be if they had known that the, imagined, structural failure of one of their bridges was the code name for the Queen’s death?
“London Bridge has fallen down”
The bridge did not, actually, fall down and the sun rose so all is well.
Here we are, a £1:75 pineapple, my tenuously linked story, that brings a royal flavour to this blog.
We spent the weekend camping at Heligan. Loads of history and stories. The fruity one that stuck was the not-so-humble story of the Pineapple.
Between 1770 and 1850 growing Pineapples became the horticultural aspiration of the upper classes. An imported pineapple at the time would cost the equivalent of £5000. If you were rich enough to own one you could hire it out until it was virtually inedible, people so craved them as a centrepiece of their fruit bowls and as a sign of their wealth. However if a guest attempted to touch the pineapple security guards, provided by the actual owner, would step out from the dark recesses provided by candlelight and the host would be embarrassed that they had been caught out as hirers, not owners, of the precious fruit.
Wealthy landowners like the Tremayne’s of Heligan built pineapple pits in their kitchen gardens to grow their pineapples. Absolute mountains of horse manure were required to heat each pineapple pit and Heligan had 15 of them. When the restoration of the kitchen garden was complete it took 7 years to perfect the art of growing pineapples in Cornwall using centuries-old techniques. If you take into account all the research, labour and failure that Heligan has endured growing Pineapples each one still has a price tag of about £1,000. They are never sold, each one that makes it to the eating stage is divided among all the staff, who get to eat it.
Except for the 2nd pineapple ever grown in modern times at Heligan. It was given to the Queen and Prince Phillip for their 50th Wedding anniversary in 1997. Which just about squeaks me into my 10 days of Royal topics for the 10 days of Official Mourning. I wonder how long it will be before people start trying to touch my £1:75 pineapple?
This blog also explains why pineapples are so often seen as a motif in architecture, bling in the form of fruit.
This is the first actual wreath we have seen to mark the death of Queen Elizabeth the Second,and possibly one in one of the most unusual locations. It is hung outside a ‘Thunder Box’ . It is important to read the link below to understand the context of this site. It is considered to be a living War Memorial and is where tributes are always placed in Heligan, the place we visited today.
Heligan – The Thunderbox Room
Heligan is a fabulous place to hang out for the weekend. Sunshine and cooler weather are definitely heralding autumn.
It is always an early autumn pleasure to spend time with pumpkins before they are incorporated into the dreadful, trashy, import of Halloween, a festival with no merits,in my opinion, that ruins everything about pumpkins and the gorgeous season of Autumn.
Autumn may well be rattling, respectfully, under the circumstances, on the door but bees are still busy with summer business.
Although these bees live in ancient homes called Bee Boles.
We’ve walked many miles today and listened to some lovely history lectures, which were a fine excuse to sit down for an hour or so. The coffee and comestibles have been perfect. Welcoming Autumn with bright sunlight and gorgeous flowers is very satisfying.
The Thames and its river banks are the focus of news in London for the next two days. The Queue is taking the media strain off the Royal Family. The banks of the Thames are some of the easiest and historically significant walks that can be done in Britain. 22 hours in the dark and cold would be pushing my tolerance but every inch of the queues locations are familiar to me and some hold especially fond memories. College green where the infamous ‘snake’ part of the queue compresses is a green park like space where TV crews often broadcast from. It was also one was of my dads shortcuts when he was working locally. He could occasionally be seen scuttling past in the background, when the TV news was being filmed. Today College Green was the place when many people realised they were queueing with David Beckham, former England football captain and generally considered, lovely chap.
He had arrived at the start of the queue at 2am and had managed many hours largely unnoticed. When he was spotted he bought doughnuts for large numbers of people on the green. Not pulling any strings to take a short cut and buying doughnuts certainly suggests he is a really nice chap.
And yes ,there really is a ‘Live’ feed for a dead person.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-62921700
Link above to video of whole queue.
Trust me there was nothing like the complexity when I saw Churchill.
I did not anticipate some observations on class today. The Queens coffin is resting on a purple catafalque- a decorated wooden structure supporting the coffin of a distinguished person.
When we took over the mortuary, prior to renovating the space, we had a very similar catafalque, same colour everything. But of course the good people of St Stephens in Cornwall were not distinguished so their coffins rested on a bier!
Some sources say the two words are synonyms with no mention of any distinguished differences.
The bier or catafalque of St Stephens held a secret. Beneath its purple drapes there was an old chest of drawers with a door nailed on top.
What lies beneath the purple drapes of the catafalque in Westminster Hall is likely to remain a mystery to those of us not involved in distinguished funerals. It is unlikely to be an old door and a chest of drawers, but you never know.
Todays blog has , once again, written itself. The plan was to have a bit of a natter about the architecture and history of The Great Hall, Westminster. But something more organic has grabbed my attention.
#QueueForTheQueen
Overnight the British love for an orderly queue has reached its zenith. Could there be anything more gloriously, gorgeously, British than a queue with a life of its own.
The Queue has its own website, live tracker and constant streamed wencam.
I woke up for a wee at a moment of unfortunate activity.
A guard took a tumble during his duty.
Twitter, as can be the case, is the place for witty comments. Visual jokes that will only improve over the five days of The Queue’s life.
I am not an innocent in this queueing malarky, only two weeks ago I chose a restaurant in Chicago “Because it had a queue” I don’t know why those words came out of my mouth or even where the thought came from. I was not wrong though, our lunch was excellent.
It is not an exaggeration to say that people have travelled from the four corners of the earth to join #QueueForTheQueen. Just like Glastonbury there are wrist bands, portable toilets, and no sleep.
But here, perched on the edge of my bed there is definitely sleep. Five more days of the greatest queue on earth, An unexpected pleasure!
