The bright sunlight of Sunday turned this blog into a riot of blue and green. Starting at 8 am with vivid seaweed.
From the exact same location I could turn around to show you the sillouettes of the trees that were trimmed last week.
Its not only the trees that got a trim this week. Hannah also got a haircut this week so we are 25% tidy @theoldmortuary as Hugo and Lola can look pretty shaggy after only 4 weeks away from their salon visits.
The post swim dash to breakfast took us past this Ceanothus and this gorgeous door.
After a morning spent on human pursuits the dogos waited patiently for their turn, with a bit of a blue background.
A dog walk on a slightly different part of the coast found one more blue and green image.
Normal blogging service will resume later this morning. Its a swim lesson day and I haven’t even made the sandwiches!
So a late start for the blog but with the added bonus of some dog pictures. The stand out feature of this weekend has been the wind. A very brisk Easterly blowing into Plymouth Sound affecting everything weve done. Al Fresco Dining, Bobbing, and dog walking. Nothing I’ve produced photographically has shown the severity of the wind. Anecdotally Miss Lola was blown off her legs yesterday. A situation only remedied by a very tight cuddle. The swimming lesson outing required the van to keep Miss Lola on board and in a good mood.
Hugo was also not averse to a bit of van comfort while swimming lessons were affecting the quality of his Sunday morning.
Some outdoor activity was permitted in the morning schedule. Lola agreed to a pose that demonstrated the wind direction.
Hugo also attempted a similar pose but just ended up looking messy.
The most important part of the day was guarding the beach awaiting the return of the swimmers.
Friday night brought us closer to the weekend with a swim from our normal beach and a chance to check on the trees post lockdown hair cut. The trees had a haircut earlier this week,not us, we are still wild haired. I’m not sure we could see a huge difference with the trees. I hope a trip to the hairdressers will be more noticable!
This week has seen us step back a little bit into a more normal life. The high point was probably a trip to a charity shop where the staff were as pleased to see us and the dogs as we were to be there. We’ve also eaten out, out out, a couple of times and realised that in April eating Al Fresco carries with it the risk of stiff limbs and cold food but the pleasure of sitting with and talking to people is something we’ve missed a lot.
There was also a lovely episode of serendipity. When I took the dogs for their late evening walk, one evening, I was forced to cross the road to avoid a small hedgehog, who was going about his business snuffling in fallen leaves. The dogs believe all hedgehogs are their friends as the ones who live in our garden don’t object too much too their intrusive behaviour. On crossing the road, after a few steps,I saw a small dark object on the path. Someone had lost a wallet. There was a driving licence inside so I could find where the owner lived. No one was home when I drove over but on my return drive I found someone out walking with a torch. Owner and wallet were reunited.
There is a strange coincidence of kindness in that location.
The wallet was found very close to a house where @theoldmortuary saved someones life, almost exactly a year ago. Anybody would have done the same in those same circumstances. No one ever thanked us. Doing the right thing is never done for thanks but a well placed thank you really does put a smile on anyone’s face.
Finding a wallet and returning it, a small thing in comparison obviously made a whole family happy and they sent some really lovely thankyou messages the next morning. I may smile all weekend.
Some blogs write themselves. This one started life 80 years ago when 6 volunteer firefighters left the small Cornish town of Saltash to support fire crews, from all over the southwest, working in Plymouth during the Plymouth Blitz. Unfortunately they drove over an unexploded bomb in King Street and were all killed. This morning a service was held in the local church to mark 80 years since their deaths, later a wreath was laid at their graves, which are all in the same place in the church graveyard.
A vintage fire engine and crew attended the ceremony.
For a time the area in front of @theoldmortuary was busy with people attending the service and posing with the fire engine. A World War 2 Air Raid siren and the fire engine bell were strange sounds to hear on a sunny spring morning.
It is probably at least 80 years since a fire engine like this drove past @theoldmortuary. Strange to think that hundreds of mourners would have filled this little village and used the local pub to show respect to 6 local men who set off for Plymouth one night. Taking their fire engine across the Tamar on the ferry and never returning alive.
We are going to hear a lot of the word languishing in the next few months. It is a descriptive word for a sort of midpoint of mental health and is apparently where many of us have ended up after over a year of Pandemic anxiety. It is precisely described as failure to make progress or be succesful.
The sketch in the image above is one that I did for a project that never came to fruition. It might even be described as a project that languished.
I’ve always been quite attracted to a bit of languishing. The leather deck chair in the picture would be an ideal place to do some languishing.
A fine location for mass languishing.
Obviously I’m being a bit flippant, the consequences of a whole world where many people are caught in a mental fog where progress and success feel unachievable is dreadful. But many of us will return to our old habits of chasing success, over-commiting and celebrating progress soon enough.
Languishing lives at the mid point between depression and flourishing. It will certainly be used with negative connotations in its association with our post pandemic recovery.
But I would argue that sometimes languishing is a positive choice. It is precisely why benches like the one above are positioned near a beautiful view. To allow passers by to just languish, to do nothing, to just be.
Languishing in our house is a full time occupation for some.
I’m sure Hugo does not see Languishing as a negative thing. He quite properly knows it is what he does between achieving and sleep and probably the thing that gives his fluffy life equilibrium and purpose.
Tuesday was a proper out day. Not just out, but out out. Out with other artists talking, painting and sketching in the grounds of Pentillie Castle. Such a beautiful place and so many options, so little time to opt.
As usual I was a complete sucker for an empty bench.
Meanwhile at the Bathing Hut I had a huge amount of help with my sketching.
I had taken my Christmas and Birthday ,art material, presents with me to experiment. But the biggest discovery of all was how these materials worked when mixed with an enormous amount of dog slobber.
Dog slobber as it turns out works very well with water colour and acrylic pens. Apparently I can also paint while nattering- on like a person who has only recently been released from a Pandemic Lock down.
Luckily my lovely dog companion was very intent on ball throwing and retrievals as well as adding slobber to the painting. This little fellow landed about a metre behind Stephanie, my fellow painter.
Painting and bat watching ended when I needed to find a loo, nearby I found these two circular things. I have no idea what they are but they make a great photo.
They look like the most amazing biscuits.
Thanks to Anne Crozier for organising our Drawing Days and thanks to to Pentillie Castle for making us so welcome. The link below takes you to their website .
Budgie smugglers and body oil is not exactly what you would expect on a beach in Devon in April but that is what we got on our unfamiliar beach this morning. We also got a good swim and warm sun to heat us up after. We struggled into our usual post swim layers and drank hot drinks, deciding that a drizzle of oil and scanty whisps of Lycra were not appropriate beach wear for bobbers, we will leave that level of hardiness to others. There was something quite eccentric about our swim this morning, the change of location gave me a little inspiration for some micro land art. Making a little tree while the bay echoed with chain saws doing unspeakable things to our familiar trees on the raised path.
And there was a naturally occuring heart.
Other Bobbers were not too far from water either. Although not a budgie smuggler in sight in Oxfordshire.
Oh! The drama of a Monday morning. The footpath to our usual swimming beach is closed for three days for ‘ Tree Work’. Seems it is not just humans who need a bit of a trim after another long lockdown. This is going to discombobulate the ‘ bobbers’. We have become creatures or indeed Merthings of habit. The pesky and ever changing currents of Firestone Bay are best observed from the high level footpath that runs 12 feet or so above the beach. We ponder them from above, then decide on the route for the day and then return to the footpath afterwards to change and cogitate over the swim and life events while warming up. The raised footpath gives the perfect vantage point to view the whole of Firestone Bay and Plymouth Sound beyond. It can also provide interesting images.
Today we will be swimming and chattering from the beach next to the tidal pool.
As the sun sets on a sad old week we are struck today by a coincidence. In Britain Prince Phillips coffin and his funeral will fill hours of television broadcasts and give the Sunday Newspapers plenty to report and speculate on. Exactly 4 years ago we were sharing a ferry journey with an unknown Hong Konger who was being returned to their home island for burial.
Just as at Windsor Castle there was only a small amount of family accompanying this person on their final journey.
5 days late we were up early to ease ourselves into the slightly relaxed Covid-19 restrictions. An outdoor breakfast on Plymouth Barbican. Lola was not really ready for such gallivanting and had to rest her chin on the table.
Oh the secret joy of being able to overhear someone elses conversations on the next table. Nothing is more delicious than tuning in to a cracker of a tale that is not really any of your business. Less delightful is being held hostage by a group of new parents and their aspirational baby buggies all parked like a fortress. People you dont know are strangely fascinating after 15 months of not being able to mingle. People watching and innocent voyeurism is one of those things we’ve missed without realising. A trip to the loo provided me with an image that could easily be part of an Edward Hopper painting and a world of interior dining that is still denied to us.
Another benefit of the early start was a bakery visit with no queue and a wide range of baked goods to choose from. There were massive queues outside charity shops though so that was a pleasure we denied ourselves, this was after all our first foray into a new more liberal world and too much mingling was not on our to-do list and we headed home.
A day of domestica and dog walks was finished with a very lumpy swim in bright sunshine. The sea temperature remains icy!
On a lovely note a ‘ bobbers’ grandchild was born yesterday. Something lovely for us to natter about, not that we are ever a silent bunch post swim.
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