The sun rises on my light fitting. Our clocks have gone forward today. Sunrise was at 6:57 GMT, the day will be one of digital accuracy and analogue inaccuracy until we reset various clocks and timers. An hour either way is of no great consequence to us. For one day the dogs are a little discombobulated about meal times, but as they mostly take their cues from us they will soon be back in sync. So today we are all living our best life in 25 hours instead of 24 and sunrise and sunset have shifted by an hour.
Just 3 bobbers , braved a bouncy sea yesterday. 15 degrees in the water and 10 degrees out, made for an enjoyable swim but a very chilly chattering session afterwards. I was unintentionally glam having showered and washed my hair just before the bob.
Glam or not it is not every day that we get to swim with a submarine.
Some people travel thousands of miles to swim with dolphins. Swimming with submarines has less of a cache, but in 2025 we have had both experiences in our little bay.
NRP Tridente
The Portuguese submarine was much easier to catch on camera. No need for arrows to point out the dark shape in this photograph.
Yesterday was a day of planned procrastination. Storm Benjamin was forecast and I needed small jobs on my schedule that could be done anytime so that I could do dry dog walks when there was not a deluge falling from the sky. As a plan it worked two long dog walks with just a jumper and no coat. Summer trousers hemmed, and the sewing machine put away. Two procrastinations dealt with in one go.
Storm Benjamin had taken himself slightly off course and had arrived, at his worst, about 8 hours earlier than anticipated.
He seemed not to have ruffled up the sea too much but there was still enough rainfall to make the day unpleasant and enough sun to make a rainbow.
If the end of a rainbow ever truly existed then this one would have delivered his crock of gold more or less into the tidal pool.
Tidal pool being cleaned.
Excellent planning by our local council as they had cleaned the pool the day before. All that fictional gold delivered into a nice clean receptacle. Too bad I was on the other side of the peninsular I might have been able to pocket a mythical golden doubloon at the end of the rainbow. Except, of course, that had I been there the rainbow would have been somewhere else entirely.
A day of dull procrastinations ticked off. There were numerous others, far too dull to waste words on Excellent walks and mythical gold delivered into a clean concrete swimming pool. A low bar was both set and achieved for the day.
Patination on a copper cauldron from HMS Coronation.
Quirky specialist museums are a bit of a guilty pleasure. It is not always the artifacts that interest me but the obsession and dedication of the human curators, collectors and conservators that gather, protect and display random objects with a common theme.
Often specialist museums are run by volunteers who are doing their absolute best with a small budget and limited professional input.
H.M.S Coronation at Penlee Point
In a fancy pants museum a cauldron, made in about 1660 and retrieved, by divers from the wreck of HMS Coronation would be on a plinth in a glass case. I would look at it in wonder at the beautiful abstract patterns created by nearly 400 years of wear and tear many of those years 5 metres under the sea just off Penlee Point. Not too far from home.
But in the Devonport Dockyard Museum the cauldron calmly rests on the floor with almost no signage or fanfare. Enabling me to cause absolutely no harm and take these gorgeous, to me, abstract photos of patination created entirely by coppersmiths who lived 400 years ago and the sea.
I was so thrilled by the abstraction I completely forgot to take a photograph of the whole object!
Autumn confetti has no obvious connection to obsequious, but how could I possibly illustrate obsequious.
Obsequiousness makes my flesh creep. Yes, the act of being subjected to obsequious behaviour is uncomfortable but for me it is the physicality of the word. The minute it springs to mind something cold squeals down my spine like a bad chalk move on a blackboard or a dentist drill.
I had always thought the word was onomatopoeic because of the involuntary physical shoulder hunching I feel when I hear it or even think about it.
I am absolutely fine with obsolete.
Obs-o-leet , not a shudder in sight . But the last three syllables of Obs – ee-kwi-us have me wishing to climb 12 feet up a vertical glass wall.
How fabulous is it to be a person of no consequences and not suffer obsequience on a daily basis.
My small word rant is over. Back to Autumnal Confetti. No reason for either really.
It is not every day that the bobbers get to bob in a very bobby sea with a world renowned natural scientist. But yesterday Sir David Attenborough sailed right past our swim zone.
The buoy to the right in the foreground is the outer limit of our swim zone.
Heading to Antarctica with a full crew and more than 60 scientists.
Wordle is a morning activity, along with reading online newspapers and some Instagram scrolling. Tea followed by coffee. Blog writing. Being creative.
My definition of morning is actually any time after midnight and is entirely dependent on how well I am sleeping. Younger me would have done a fresh Wordle after a night out. But I rarely see midnight at the end of the day, unless my book at bedtime is very addictive. Fresh Wordles are released at midnight.
Screens are considered poor companions before sleep or indeed in between sleeps. But my sleep patterns were formed by years of 24 hour shifts that involved overnight working on screens between grabbed patches of sleep. Long before all other humans became so fixated on screens.
Contrary to all sensible advice regarding insomnia, screens help to put me back to sleep. I am very aware that I am an amateur insomniac, trained to be one, rather than a sufferer of the real condition.
Another foolproof method would be to have a quick swim in the sea or to walk in city streets, neither of those are particularly safe for a lone woman.
Night swimming in the sea would never be for me because I am a competent but not confident swimmer. I would not walk the streets of my current city, alone after dark.
Walking at night in a city became a habit when I lived in London. The first time,because I was young, and the night was a new and exciting world after growing up in rural Essex. The second time because I worked in two very safe parts of London. Marylebone and The City.
I think I am by nature a nocturnal person who has been reframed or indeed retrained as someone who goes to bed at 10.
So Wordle is my after-midnight* excitement these days. My younger self would be appalled.
Wordle at nearly 8 this morning. Sign of a good night’s sleep. Healthy but not creative or particularly interesting.
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