This could be me dozing in a quiet leafy glade. Hair wild and a sleepy head resting on moss. The care of three fabulous granddaughters makes me yearn for just a tiny daytime snooze with dappled sun dancing on my face . But they, the granddaughters are busy little people and snoozing is not on their game plan.
Time with them all is a gift that should not be wasted by snoozing for either Nana or Nona or indeed the dogs. We all need to take some time to sniff the flowers together.
If you won two free plane tickets, where would you go?
Everywhere thank you very much. Unlimited flights in and out of Bristol for the rest of my life with any connecting flights that I might need to get to wherever I might fancy. Whenever I fancy.
Life can be full of surprises but not always the ones that you have been warned about. 8 years ago I was walking on the High-Line in New York and the signs were that I might encounter more floppy areas and flaccid bits, than usual in my encounters with other humans.
There were no signs that said you may encounter a really low trip hazard and wreck your right knee half way through your holiday.
The knee injury was way more significant than seeing naturists at large, but it is the sign that I remember. Is it a warning or an advertisment.
Comfort and reliable. Two answers in one. Neither are Fine Dining or by any stretch of anyone’s imagination interesting.
Comfort food=Marmite toast or any spread on top of toast with butter on it. My top 3
Marmite
Marmalade
Ground Black Pepper
In all iterations the butter must be real and salty.
Reliable food has evolved in my life. Good quality shop-bought lasagne if I am feeling reliably fancy. 35 years with a home in the far west of England has taught me that the humble Cornish Pasty made well is a lifesaver.
The Pasty Gold Standard.
Not all pasties are made equal and at their worst they are a pappy meat and potato pie with a faint aroma of human body odour. At their best they are a peppery blend of beef and onions combined with swede/turnip and potato wrapped in perfect golden pasty.
Yesterday was a spreadsheet kind of day. If everything went well there was a twenty minute gap in which to eat a pasty before an art exhibition, Private View and a trip to the Theatre to see Hamilton. The spreadsheet day and the pasty.
As a tick box exercise the spreadsheet day went well. With. 95% success rate. We dropped 5% because the Artist at the Private View made a speech at the beginning. So fine words were heard but not a single brushstroke of paint passed before our eyes.
Hamilton was fabulous and the pasty fed us both before our evening started (warm) and at 11pm (cold) . That is a reliable, even comforting comestible.
Another chores day with a calming picture. The chores were just a list of things that needed to be done. Brightened by the promise of a bowl of cherries for lunch.
Not just any cherries. King Cherries.
But as it happened the day was brightened by meeting a bobber, Helen, during my Farm Shop phase and by not missing the parcel delivery which was only scheduled half an hour after I had left home. I figured I could be super efficient and be at home for 50% of the time slot. Time that I also scheduled for this blog.
But back to the bowl of cherries.
I helped with an end of term tennis club for children last night. The weather was perfect, the children were happy and the snacks were healthy. Which is where I met King Cherries from Lidl.
As luck would have it my early morning chores were very close to Lidl. The cherries called me, I answered and two boxes came home with me.
Cherries posing.
Serendipitous friends and cherries very much lightened my load this morning. No sign of the parcel, but powered by a bowl of cherries the afternoon chores will fly by.
Unlike yesterday my great swim did not propel me instantly into a great confrontation.
Instead a chilled glide around a supermarket. I am not sure a supermarket is the best place to glide in a chilled way but it was essential to our overall household wellbeing. Some practical domestic admin is now needed for household wellbeing.
Stuff needs to go into the attic.
Neither supermarket shopping nor attic hopping is particularly visually appealing. So another swim spot image it will have to be. Full disclosure I did not have the swim spot to myself today. 5 people and a dog were launching there at the same time as me.
One puzzling pile of lost property. A single left shoe and a left knee brace. Makes you think of possible scenarios…
Some days the tide and time come together to create the perfect swim. What I had not expected was for the perfect swim to set me up for the perfect uncomfortable encounter.
Some time ago myself and one of my dogs were attacked by a large local dog who had been allowed off its lead. We were both injured and traumatised, the owner of the dog left the scene of the attack without apology or any obvious concern. The incident was reported to the Police bur despite being initially supportive their interest dwindled to nothing. It has been in my mind for some time to confront this man if the chance arose. Which it did today after my perfect swim. I was somewhat surprised by my calm conversation with the individual. Since his behaviour and that of his dog on the night in question was indefensible, he had little to say and none of it of any value to me. But it feels good to know that I am no longer his silent unknown victim. He is now in no doubt of the harm he caused. A small victory but one that I am glad to have delivered eloquently.
Somewhat shaky when I got home though. Thank goodness for the perfect swim earlier.
It is almost 7 years since I last had a formal interview of any sort. I am completely out of practice of describing myself to others.
Does anyone really listen to, or remember a self-description?
How would you describe yourself to someone?
People are so busy making their own judgements and assessments of the person they see before them.
I care less and less what people make of me as I get older. First and chance encounters are just that. Repeated encounters build a more accurate, nuanced portfolio of my character traits.
I can think of people who have quite the wrong idea of me. But their narrative suits their purpose. Others perhaps know me a little better than I know myself.
I always think people, myself included are a lot like Avocados. Their core values and attributes exist within the enormous seed, but the pulp changes and develops over a lifetime, while the skin just slowly ages but shows evidence of the good times and the harms that shape the whole fruit. The skin of course, is all that is ever seen until a sharp knife is applied. Time to halt the avocado analogy I think.
My Life as an Avocado- the autobiography I will never write.
Just a bit of a blue sky ponder while we get on with chores in an industrial estate. Significantly the campervan needed its roof properly cleaned to remove the sap from being parked under trees. Coxside a 21st century industrial estate does not have the glamour or flawed history of the past.
But it does have an excellent Bikers Cafe where we can while away the hour it takes to remove sap. Serendipity gave me this absolute gift of an image. A biker taking a long drag on his very long pipe.
Men and women would have been smoking pipes like this in this area since the 16th century while taking a break from whatever trade they worked hard at. A bit of digital tweakery and the 21st Century Bikers’ gear becomes a little bit of history.
And he can conjure even more history from the smoke of his pipe.
Hard on the heels of yesterday’s blog comes todays’. I failed to push the publish button yesterday. Too busy getting out of the house to join the bobbers.
The tides and the weather are being kind this week. This is not our usual location for a bigger bobbing group but the perfection of tide and weather had made our usual jumping off spot very congested.
This location with slopes and steps is perfect for solo or two person swimming, but as no one else was there it accommodated 9 bobbers and a dog very well. But it was the previous day swim for two that prompted this illustration that prompted this blog
Rocks as a Snicker Chocolate Cake
A friend and I had planned a late afternoon swim the previous day. Beyond the swim she arrived very much as a woman on a mission. She needed chocolate and she needed it now. So as no swimmer should ever do we headed off to the pub first.
The pub in question the V.O.T serves very good cake.
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