Late evening swimming has become an add on to the very last dog walk of the day. Last night the tide and sunset concurred to facilitate some skinny dipping. I have been a life- long, intermittent skinny dipper. In my youth I used to sneak into posh hotels and swim in their closed for- the -night swimming pools. In London the icy charms of the Hampstead Ladies Pond was a post on-call treat on a few occasions. Any deserted beach is an opportunity not to be missed and abroad I am much freer to just get on and do it as I always believe that I will never see any accidental observers again.
Now I live in a close knit community, a village in a city. I will, almost certainly, meet any casual observer again and yet even that didn’t matter when the chance to swim between rocks with only bats for company presented itself last night.
I was not alone, as the dimpsy light darkens, others cast off their bathing suits for a brief sensation of complete freedom, the moment marked with squeals of joy as celebration.
I must walk past these lovely handles most days but have never noticed them before. Today turned out to be a day for first experiences in every day places. These doors can act as a portal for the day. A little bit of Plymouth as a Mediterranean location. A Tuna was seen this morning in Sutton Harbour .
And a neighbour gifted me a home grown fig.
The fig was eaten soon after this posed image but may feature posthumously in a sketch. Possibly one of my watercolours with typing.
After a day of delicious figs and fabulously diverse natterings the evening dog walk had a little surprise.
This walkway into the sea was empty and we were hot, an impromptu swim was decided upon, just a quick dip in our knickers. It was glorious.
Yesterday was a day of Drawn to the Valley , stewarding at the print exhibition during the day and then a quick trip to Tavistock for the Summer Exhibition Private View. It was refreshing to visit an exhibition that I had no responsibility for and no work submitted. Anne and Michael have curated a stunning exhibition at Butchers Hall.
Councillor Caroline Mott, Mayor of West Devon with Anne and Michael.
Visitors to the Private View were treated to a fabulous Mid-Century Modern buffet of vol au vents and intricate delicacies mounted on Ritz biscuits, served to accompany locally produced apple juice. The wines may have come from beyond the valley…
Vol au vents are an exploding confection of Coronation Chicken and flaky pastry. My terrifically arty outfit, a concoction of various blacks was a terrific background for the crumbs that my greed created. Undeterred by my flaky appearance I set about talking, a lot, to artists and friends and enjoying the art. The picture at the top of the blog is by a member Glenis Blakiston, she was a long term member of Drawn to the Valley until her recent death. Her husband, very kindly, submitted some of her pictures to this years Summer Exhibition. Her Encaustic wax image is one of the first things visitors to the exhibition will see this year. The terrific texture in her work gave me the theme for a few pictures from the exhibition. Texture.
I love that the two creations above share the same colour palate but have a significantly different visual heft. Similarly the next two share similar colour and line but could not be more different.
Facebook reminds me that it is five years since I was in North America. That is a timely reminder as yesterday we had planned a North American experience.
Lets be honest a coffee in an independent Coffee Shop, Hot Black Coffee, in Toronto is a very different experience from a Tim Horton coffee, but needs must and we are in Plymouth not Canada. Tim Horton opened in Plymouth yesterday.
Now that was the plan. But domestic life got in the way and inadvertantly solved a year old problem.
When we moved house a year ago we had made a grab bag of important documents and items that must not be lost. The plan was that one of us would grab the, highly visible, leopard print clutch bag, and move it safely from one house to the other. That didn’t happen and neither of us know how. The bag has been missing for over a year. The contents were so important that every room in the new house has been turned upside down and inside out several times. The loss of some of these items has been crucial and the 6 month wait for new passports is probably the most painful result of our loss.
We were up early yesterday to visit Tim Horton’s for breakfast. In the quiet of the morning there was the sound of a drip in our utility room.
Our utility room is know as the ‘Futility Room’ as it is too small for its true purpose and yet somehow is a perfect store room, and loo!
We had to move a lot of stuff to get at the drip. Having located and fixed the fault we decided to reconfigure some of the shelving installed by our diligent removal men. Unbelievably behind the shelving the Leopard print clutch bag was resting, safely holding all of our important things. One of the removal men must have picked it up, tucked it under his arm and moved it with the shelving and then just put it to one side at the new house. That is the end of a year of puzzlement. It was also the end of breakfast at Tim Horton’s. We did drive over at 2pm having mentally swapped breakfast for doughnuts but the rest of Plymouth had got there before us. Huge queues for drive-thru and eat in. Maybe we will go back, maybe not. In less than a month we are Toronto bound, the queues will be shorter there and we can also go independent. After 5 years we may well do both.
Yesterday I put a #meettheartist post on Instagram. I warned potential new readers that many times the same thing happens day after day on the blog. Unintentionally this is exactly the case today.
Saturday and Sunday were shaped by the Sail GP event taking place on our doorstep.
Day 1
Day 2
The days of the weekend are differentiated by other things that happened. Saturday was mostly art and Sunday was mostly sport. Quite by chance there was a curious connection to the sporty bits of yesterday.
A special race was put on at the Sail GP event. The team GB boat had a temporary crew member, Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.
Did we see her? Yes,we must have done from our vantage point near the race HQ and village, but everyone really does look exactly the same in a wetsuit and helmet.
She is on the GB boat as it crossed the finish line in front of us.
Then our evening plans created the curious link. Like many we watched the Womens England Football team bring credibility back to our national sport. When they won we watched Kate’s husband greet the winning footballers with the most glorious of joyful hugs.
And by the most delightful of coincidences I have a piece of art for sale at the Exhibition I am managing, that sums this image up.
As grandstand views go we got the best table this morning for breakfast with Sail GP. Four women, three dogs and a lot of water action.
We especially got to see the start and finish of the races.
One of our bobber friends, Helen, has hair to encourage team GB to do their best.
The dogs were more interested in bacon butties and chocolate brioche than super elegant sailing boats, which missed the point a bit.
This wonderful viewpoint is a long term favourite spot of ours. It is a complex landscape of rocks and WW2 defensive concrete just below The Long Room, Plymouths civilian and military maritime Port Control.
We call it the area ‘Greek Beach’ because on a good day it feels like a million miles from Plymouth. Greek beach is moments away from our usual swimming beach . You can see how close everything is in the picture below. The yellow buoy is the one that we swim to when we bob.
Today we discovered our Greek Beach has new graffiti to embellish the whole experience.
Another day stewarding at the Drawn to Print Exhibition. The two artists who were the primary curators and managers of this exhibition are not printers. I managed to dig out some old work from my long ago Fine Art Degree and,by complete luck, the act of applying typewritten text to watercolour pulls the work loosely into the Print family.
What a family we have joined! The Printers of Drawn to the Valley have been an amazing bunch of people to work with. Trusting us with their beautiful prints with our invented hanging system.
But they have also nurtured us. Debs my fellow non-prntmaking curator, managed this fabulous trio of prints. Her first in this medium. Printmakers talked her through the process on the phone.
Debs has been commissioned to create several runs of ‘ Smeatons Thief’
This morning I was excited to dive into the world of Tetrapak printing.
Not my finest artistic hour because I had more excitement than talent, but I did create a half decent Tetrapak image and while printing it effectively eluded me, another lovely printer shared her wisdom for future success.
For now I have just applied some digital magic to make me feel better.
This is how a good morning starts and then the day progresses. Today has not progressed as planned. Covid has struck at the heart of our Printers group and we cannot open our exhibition today. So straight after the cup of tea came some reorganisation of our exhibition space. The cafe staff will reserve any sold artworks today and we will contact the buyers tomorrow.
After a swift reorganisation I was off to meet the bobbers for a swim. Overlooked by the majestic Sail GP boats moored on the Camber moorings.
On my way I was charmed by the sound of amplified ukulele playing and singing from a small yellow car.
What a gloriously unusual and unplanned way to start our day.
The link above takes you to the Sail GP website. I am so very very far from being a boat person, anything I write about this would just be gobbledygook, but when these thing move close to our swimming zone they are awe inspiring.
My almost daily commute for three weeks is a ten minute walk from home. It covers the same paths that my normal daily dog walks take. Without the dogs, who are disinterested, for the most part, in a print exhibition, the familiar walk can be enhanced by taking a slightly different route. These stairs are just off my normally beaten path, but of no interest to the noses of my dogs.
Today was bin day and the big communal bins live in an old military building that has not yet been ‘improved’. The dogs would have loved to be with me as refuse bins and a hot summer day is a heady mix of flavours but I just nipped in to take this lovely old window in a grubby and unbuffed state.
Another love of mine is to see scarring on paintwork from regular use. Although that regular use stopped nearly 30 years ago.
And then there is the redundant heavy duty equipment with warnings , of limitations to men of my grandfathers generation.
Men for whom these numbers on doors had some significance.
I just love them as reminders of slightly archaic fonts.
I will leave you with two of my favourite doors.
One is an old storeroom and the other leads to a suite of artists studios. They are both at the end of the, currently empty, gallery space.
The exhibition today is in safe paws. Ralph is Stewarding this morning. Flushed with my experimentation on Yupo paper yesterday I whipped off a quick play on words this morning before I did the morning dog walk.
The morning dog walk was quite the sartorial revelation this morning. How many people really dress in the morning to match their local pavements/sidewalks!
Further on we sniffed out a fairy tale moment. A swimming Cinderella had dropped her golden slipper.
