Bobbers Bob away sometimes. In our dreams our away bobbing bay looks like this but the weather had other ideas.
Which in truth was a mixed blessing. This camping field remained empty. We chilled as the rain came down. We hunkered down and talked rubbish in the biggest camper van and in the morning the sun came out and we were the first on the beach. But the sea was very, very cold. But we will remember it like this because for a wet weekend it was perfect.
Describe your most memorable vacation.
All vacations are windows into a different world and are almost all completely memorable for a wide variety of reasons. To choose one over all the others at this precise moment would be bonkers. Maybe when I have had my actual last holiday and I have time on my hands and feet, in some other realm, I could make a spreadsheet and engage with a futile holiday comparison. Every holiday, mini break, weekend away is a privilege. Each is a unique experience. Describe my most memorable vacation? Not a chance. I may not have had it yet and in all honesty my bandwidth for things being memorable, both good and bad is huge. But every vacation really is a window into someone else’s world. A moment to be treasured not graded.
Written from my window into other worlds.
A late ponder, #1350 was started at 13:50 BST. Late because domestica started early today and involved car domestica and a visit to the vets. All routine stuff but we added peripheral domestica to the core tasks. At 13:50 we are officially in a lull. I could be packing for our weekend camping trip but instead I thought I might celebrate my climbing rose who is just poised at the top of a small wall. Almost ready to begin her career as a Defensive Planting Rose. Once she nips over the wall she will be free to cover our garage roof and hopefully her nasty little thorns will discourage the neighbourhood cats from taking trips to our yard to take a dump in our pots. She has 14 rosebuds ready to bloom. She clearly has a different objective, putting beauty before Warrior Queen. The only creature she has stabbed so far is me as I gently train her towards my own specific needs , quietly tying her growing shoots towards the top of the wall. Maybe I should have discussed the plan with her. But her blooms are lovely.
What’s your definition of romantic?
My mother, who was in most ways a very pragmatic person, had a guilty secret. She loved a romantic novel.
I have inherited her pragmatism but not her taste in books. Romance books are not my thing unless the romance is just one facet of an engaging narrative. Romancing, romantic gestures etc, just feel a little icky and coersive in specifically romantic novels. There is nearly always a power imbalance or jeopardy involved in the interactions between the people involved, there would be no story without such things.
However, as a woman whose glass is habitually half-full there must be a huge dose of my mothers love of romance residing in my soul, because life is sometimes shitty and yet I always try to find something positive in whatever situation.
The tidal pool was my destination for the morning dog walk and later I swam from the beach beside it.
For both visits it was rather a seaweedy experience.
But my glass-half-full, romantic head will only ever remember a beautiful morning walk and a delicious lunchtime swim, not the weed that made the pool unusable and stuck on my skin. Romance is seeing beyond irritation, embracing the moment and finding the golden nuggets in every experience. However mad that seems.
Not paying too much attention to the seaweed of life.
Harold S Kushner* emphasized the importance of finding good in every situation, stating, “If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul,”.
*
Soul nurturing, that is pretty romantic in my opinion.
For tide-time reasons we have moved to another bay for our evening swims this week. The peaceful arrival of a Tall Ship was in marked contrast to the business- like Naval vessels or Ferries that keep us fascinated at Firestone Bay.
Mount Batten was a prehistoric trading port, dating back to the Iron Age. It has been a key location for the defence of Plymouth and was an Air Force Base where Lawrence of Arabia was stationed. It has, over time, developed into a water sports hub since the Air Force moved out. All a bit hotch potch with no clear development plan. The area is currently in the process of being upgraded and made more attractive to tourists and visitors of all sorts. I suspect I have never mentioned it in a blog but it is a regular spot for us to dog walk and sometimes camp overnight. Free parking by a beach is always a good thing.
The sea temperature this week is a balmy 16 degrees C. Last year the waters of Plymouth Sound never reached such heights, even during August or September so to do so by July 1st is quite lovely.
Another lovely thing is to swim , drink a cup of tea and then go straight to sleep after a gorgeous sunset. No shower, just lovely salty skin and slightly damp hair. The damp dogs are less appealing.
Farewell June, you were a funny month. One moment too hot to handle and the next, raining so hard that unusual places flooded. And then in the middle of another heatwave a sea mist rolled in and we could barely see which way to swim.
Welcome to July 1st,🌞lets see what interesting weather you have in store for us.
We popped to a coffee shop and bakery during the weekend drizzle. Slightly damp, the outdoor, rustic table showed signs of many a coffee spill. A hard working piece of wood, but nothing like as hard working as this similar looking piece of wood which I photographed supporting the jetty for the Statten Island Ferry in New York.
Decades old wood still working hard, long after its life as a living thing is over.
And now just bystanders to coffee and commuters.
Interesting though that if I digially abstract the cafe table the image can look exactly like a forest clearing.
Nature is a wonderful thing.
In other news I am continuing with my Glastonbury supported summer clear out. Doing the non day to day Domestic Admin that builds up behind the scenes.
To be frank, on day 3, I am at the point with my domestic admin that I am beginning to feel lethagy.Not unlike attending an actual music festival, I don’t much care who is on the stage I just want to lie in my tent and commune with nature,I am done with the whole thing. The summer clear out is over for now. Who knew domestic admin could fill a festival weekend quite so pleasurably? Until the moment when you know.
“I am so over this.”
What does a woman who loves music festivals do when she does not get a ticket for Glastonbury. This one plans a weekend of ‘jobs’ that are vastly improved by the background sound of the BBC livestreaming the music aspect of the festival.
And just like that the futility (utility) room was stripped out tidied and put back together. Our store of Covid restriction ‘essential’ baking and cooking ingredients have gone in the bin.
Farewell inert dried yeast and sumac + many others well past their best.
Hello tidied camper van too.
And as a reward, a little live night music. Shanty singing in a Cornish Village Hall.
A fabulous evening out with some of our bobbing friends and friends of friends.
And now on to Sunday, what satisfying jobs will we get on with to interesting music?
I pinched this poster from a Glastonbury Festival web page. Something about it caught my eye, but for the life of me I can’t quite identify what it is.
My best guess is the stylised butterfly and the designs similarity to a Brasso tin.
Brasso was my paternal grandparents idea of a good time for their only grandchild.
“What shall we do with her while she is here?”
“Lets get the Brasso out and then after that we can play Scrabble”
Hours passed, spoons were shined. Scrabble was played with no consideration given to the differences in our ages or vocabularies. Beyond that I read books that I had brought with me or lost myself in the concise encyclopaedias on their bookshelves. They had a television, I never experienced it being turned on. At the end of their period of caring I was either collected by my dad or sent home to walk home via the roads or via the fields of two conjoined farms that were between their home and mine.
I was taught to achieve this journey, safely by my grandfather who would accompany me to start with and then gradually once he was confident that I knew where I was going he did less and less of the journey with me. Ultimately just waving me off either at the front gate or the style at the top of their property which led to the meadows and pastures of the countryside that circled the small market town where we all lived.
Their ‘no frills’ grandparenting style taught me the power of one.
I can’t say that beyond that I have achieved the promise of the poster. I have only ever made little things happen and any movements I have started have not changed the world significantly. But also I don’t think I have done too much harm. Which is a good thing, but hardly the sort of statement that sits well on a poster.
Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?
I try wherever possible to buy second-hand things. Clothes, books and items for our home in particular. More so in the last 20 years, to a lesser extent for the last 50. I also buy canvasses for my large paintings from charity shops. The large box canvasses that retailers sell in their thousands for people to adorn their walls with instant pre-curated art which are then abandoned for the next easy home switcharound.
I have been doing it long enough to be confident in my purchases. I would say that my success rate is slightly higher than it was when I used to buy more new items.
The world has caught up with me and passed me by. Second-hand, thrift, vintage, pre-loved are the current trending trends. There are a huge variety of new ways of doing what I have been doing for decades and yet I stick to the methods that work for me.
1.Charity Shops. Giving wisely and receiving all in one transaction.
2. Ebay- used with caution and learned wisdom.
3. Gifts or swaps with friends. One woman’s error is another woman’s gem.
Fast Fashion teases and traps me on occasion, and I feel no shame because however fast it is at inception I know that the garment will be with me for the long haul and will be styled with something from the last century. On a woman from the last century who sometimes puts pockets in things that didn’t start life with pockets.
Today I commented that two of my friends looked fabulous. Both whispered the word ‘Primark’ and then the word ‘Pockets’.
Will I be able to keep away..
I will try.
Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?
Sometimes I can be very trying.
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