I’ve spent the day immersed in Tranquility Bay. Not actually, of course, but it has filled my mind a lot. The next exhibition I am taking part in is called Resurgam.
The work we offer for selection should reflect new beginnings after the last year of Pandemic restrictions and lockdowns. I am planning a series of paintings to reflect the sense of calm that sea swimming has created while the world has been a little crazy.
4 mini pictures are on the go at the moment.
They feature the rocks at Tranquility Bay at High Tide. They are resting overnight to be finished later in the week. The best way to clean painty fingers is to take a dip in the actual Tranquility Bay. The sunset was bright and I was feeling bold so I took the phone into the water to catch some waves.
A touch of increased saturation in the camera settings makes the photography quite painterly. Really cold fingers meant that this camera moment couldn’t last long .
The one above has an abstract sparkly heart. The paintings are also waiting for some sparkle, I’m waiting for some gold leaf to put in Drakes Island.
May the 4th be with you. Except, of course this is the 5th. May the 4th always brings rich pickings of Star Wars quotes. I’m unsure if just loving the original 1977 film, correctly and simply known as Star Wars makes me a Star Wars luddite. The surrounding films and obsessive fandom makes me feel saddened that the one original film can’t be enjoyed as one unique moment of great creative, cinematic collaboration.
But without the hullabaloo, that irritates me so much, I would not have found a lovely quote from the actress Carrie Fisher who played Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise. She was open and honest about her, nearly life- long, struggles with drink, drugs and bi-polar disorder. She was also a wise and clever woman.
Discussing her difficult life patches she wrote.
” Going through challenging things can teach you quite a lot, and they also make you appreciate the times that aren’t so challenging”
A simple sentence that works under normal circumstances and especially as we emerge from beneath the pressures and sadnesses of the Pandemic.
Our second Mayday weekend of the Pandemic has passed. In many ways that seems more something to reflect on than Easter weekend. Mayday is associated with joyous events in our corner of the world. @theoldmortuary there is no particular pattern or traditional behaviours. Locally we have a May Fair, a rare event in our locality to wander the main street and bump into people that we know. In comparison to other May Day events it is no great shakes so we are not always faithful to it. The picture above is of a local gentleman who is always there and always dresses up in a meticulous costume to bring a smile to peoples faces.
One Mayday we hired Mr Blue Sky as a belated birthday gift, we all have birthday s around Christmas so belated gifts are not unusual. Mr Blue Sky took us to the Gower Peninsular, for happy, but chilly, camping.
Last May Day the world was reeling from the realised impact of the Pandemic and @theoldmortuary we were reeling from various life changing events that were landing on us to add to the burden of Pandemic angst. Life felt a bit like this safety sign for the quiet lanes nearby, where horse riding and cars share the space.
The sadness and difficulty of this time last year have given us all a push in new and unexpected directions. We have to see the world through the lens of our communal and personal losses and experiences of the last year.
In my experience all things tend to follow Newtons 3rd Law of Physics.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
The things that made last May Day and the surrounding period of life quite shitty have altered the world and each persons perception and lived experience of this May Day, and all days.
A year ago @theoldmortuary would not have considered sea swimming to be a natural part of life and yet this year it couldn’t be more natural than to take a dip in the sea and feel utterly captivated and joyous about it.
We’ve bonded with some lovely people over the last 6 months in chill sea and the socially distanced warm up after.
Also last year or any previous year a trip to Ikea would not have been on our acceptable activities list. But yesterday we made a small list and joined a Disney length queue to get into our local, Exeter, store.
Because of Covid restrictions the store was not packed with people but it was packed with texture and colours and smells. The stand out smell was the carpet department, just delicious!
Sadly no meatball lunch as indoor eating is still not permitted. But looking through our altered lens the trip to Ikea on a Bank Holiday weekend was an absolute pleasure not a chore.
It unexpectedly lit up our life.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Sometimes you just have to look for it.
Today starts with an early swim. Swimming in cold water feels slightly less daunting than the other event of the day, a trip to Ikea! Needs must though and domestic reorganisation started last year during lockdown is coming to a conclusion. I can’t say Ikea is the final piece of the jigsaw but close to it. This will be our first time in a furniture store for over two years and our first time so far from home for 6 months. What a strange patch of life we’ve lived through. I’m looking forward to the colours and textures of the fabric department. No meatballs today though!
Just to finish up a very brief and somewhat dull blog. One last picture from Totnes. Cherry Ice Cream with a wafer.
Today we took a trip to Totnes. The last time we took a trip deeper into Devon it was 6 months ago when we also went to Totnes to do Christmas shopping for the Christmas that never was.
By coincidence we recieved this traditional May Day gift of Lily of the valley from a friend who lives in France this morning, she and I have worked, danced and laughed together in Totnes and Brighton long before real life and children tamed us.
Totnes is an alternative type of place with a firm sense of the importance of traditional and Pagan festivals. Ordinarily a trip to Totnes on Beltane/Mayday would be a whirling, psychedelic , Maypole dancing festival of alternative experiences. Only partially out of Lockdown, today was never going to be as vibrant as normal but our visit today was still vivid in a low key way. Just to celebrate Beltane in its Phallic/ Fertility glory I captured an appropriate shadow.
Accidental because the reason for the photograph was this lost earring, preserved, for its owner to find on top of a bollard that has been many different colours in the past.
Other bollards dressed up for the occasion.
Totnes is a rich source of Street Art. Some featuring Tom of Finland . Quite appropriate for a festival kind of day.
And some just near some spiral stairs which is about as close to a Maypole as we got in 2021.
The smells from Street food and Coffee from the many independent cafes can’t be reproduced with words. Neither can the sounds of music in the streets, layered together , sometimes with a fusion no one would ever plan ( Prog Rock and Church bells) and other times with a mellifluence that was hard to walk away from ( Harp and Violin). Totnes made us smile today.
Beltane wouldn’t be Beltane without the leafy face of the Green Man.
May 1st and we have plans to travel a little more than 10 miles!
But first news of the last swim of April. “April is the cruelest month” a line from T.S Eliots’ poem, Wasteland,written after and about a pandemic.”We dared to hope” a line from the poem, exactly matches the optimism of the ‘ bobbers’ as we emerged out of our first winter season of cold water swimming.
April has bitten the bobbers on the bum swimming wise. The weather has improved and the sea water temperatures have started to stabilise, and even rise a little, but we seem to have had some of our most challenging swims recently, most of us succumbing to ‘After drop’ after a swim in April even though we have avoided it throughout the darkest, coldest months.
‘ After drop’ was unknown to Eliot when he published Wasteland in 1922. His poem written after A World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic, it could only have been more glum with a portion of ‘ afterdrop’ included in the narrative.
“Afterdrop” is common after swimming in cold water; you get out and feel fine, and then you start to get colder, sometimes growing faint, shivering violently and feeling unwell.
As you can see from the photographs in this blog, the last bob of April 2021 was a much more joyous affair. Using T.S Eliot as our theme it was more ‘Cats’ ( Old Possums Book of Practical Cats) than Wasteland.
As it happened the last day of April was also a bobbers birthday. Tranquility Bay pulled out all the stops to make our first after-swim, bobbing- birthday picnic a big event. The Bobbing Balcony was available for out door snacking. Street art made the location more vivid.
There was cake.
A Chinook fly past.
Exuberant waving to Sailors returning to port.
Happy quotes.
Low energy time keeping, to mark time passing.
And a puppy.
Thanks to Helen for having a birthday and serendipity for providing the entertainment.
A bit like this spider , I’ve been immersed in Wisteria today. I had an urge to paint Wisteria in a walled garden. In truth wisteria is not quite blooming yet in Cornwall so I had to work from photographs. Infinitely easier as apart from the spiders the pollen also doesn’t agree with me.
Here we are, another Friday and I have an action packed three hours before noon. 9:00 second vaccine dose. 10:00 first haircut with a stylist for five months and then a swim with the bobbers at noon.
Here is the wisteria painting, I did not include spiders in the composition but if this walled garden were real there would almost certainly be a few lurking in these blooms.
Yesterday we did our usual evening swim at high tide. When we were leaving we passed a small non-swimming bay . The rising tide had brought a bouquet of long stemmed flowers to the surface, someones ashes had obviously been scattered earlier in the day. Scattering ashes on the shores of rivers or the sea is significant in some religions and something that many people choose to do religious, or not.
7 years ago I was creating work for a group exhibition in London.
On the way home from work I had seen a group of bikers scattering ashes on the beach of the Thames,a rather muddy location and not too far from Tate modern. Alongside ashes and flowers they had laid old motor cycle sprockets to be gently lapped and then consumed by the incoming tide. In Memoriam worked very nicely with the theme of the upcoming exhibition and with the help of a friend, Pat Calnan, who sourced old sproketts, for me, I was able to recreate the act of remembrance and make a series of paintings.
Choosing to scatter ashes in non traditional places can give family and friends spectacular places to return to as an act of remembrance.
The Bikers resting place. Below Millenium Bridge, London.Unknown persons resting place yesterday. Firestone Bay, Plymouth
I realise in this smaller picture of sproketts in mud I’ve made them look a little like old headstones in a Victorian cemetery. Accidentally closing a circular creative thought process.
Yesterday I got the art cards printed that will be sold during art exhibitions this year. I realise I’ve chosen two smelly subjects as my images of choice. Scratch and sniff card seems to have gone out of favour but even if the print shop had offered such a service I doubt I would have chosen the option.
Mackerel smell wonderful when freshly caught and grilled, like all fish not so good after a while, and this chap was painted two years ago!
The second card is a digitally enhanced photograph of the back stairs of a disused Plymouth nightclub. For many years the club had been closed and was the desired location of a Super Church. While interminable and ultimately unsuccessful planning permission was sought the building was mothballed. Again not a great option for scratch and sniff.
Mothballs was not the fragrance that tickled my nose as I took this picture. Damp, mildew and the vestigia of human sweat, tobacco, beer and pleasure were the backnotes to the headier notes of urine and weed.
Maybe my art cards are not such a big ticket subject for Pandemic Pondering #400. But they are about recovery. Helping local business by spending money close to home.
Geddon- a word used in the Westcountry. It has multiple uses. Derived from two words get and on.
It is used to express surprise and disbelief, but in this context it is used as a word of encouragement. It can also be used as a greeting instead of hello or goodbye.
What a difference a degree in water temperature makes. Yesterdays evening bob had all the qualities of a holiday swim.
The sun was out, the water really was lovely, once we were in, and just as any normal holiday, there was a frantic rush by one person to go and collect something forgotten.
Bobbing as you all know has been a winter pastime. A group of us swim in Plymouth Sound about three times a week. Mad as it may seem it has kept us all sane during the most recent, long lockdown. Friendship and fitness have developed within a tenuously linked group of people. Casual conversations, about swimming, in parks during dog walks has created a group of bobbers/ friends that swim together and laugh a lot afterwards.
Yesterday the conditions made us remark how these swims have all the qualities of a beach holiday, somewhere exotic, without the stresses. And then out of nowhere came a holiday style stress. One bobber had to drive back home quickly to collect the essential hot drinks that had been left at home.
Forgetting seems to be a bit of a theme in Plymouth Sound on 26 April 2021.
80 years ago Plymouth suffered one of the worst civilian losses of life in Britain during the second world war. To commemorate that loss and as an act of remembrance Plymouth Sound and the Royal Naval Dockyard were supposed to be illuminated by ships searchlights between 9pm and 9:30 last night. The act of remembrance was supposed to be the subject of this blog.
Absolutely nothing happened anywhere. Not a single searchlight. Perhaps there is someone very important to this event, still at home looking for the hot drinks before the button for the searchlights is switched on!
This blog will have a PS later when we discover which organisation forgot to flick the switch.
P.s apparently the failure of the searchlights was due to a full moon and clear skies. Moments to appreciate nature are retrospectively a good way to appreciate a sky without unwelcome enemies arriving with weapons of mass destruction.
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