Summer is officially here and a job needed doing. We have a large parabolic sun parasol. Something was not quite right with the parasol last year but we put it away regardless. In my experience over-wintering a problem never improves the situation.
Me and the parasol resolved our differences after a few hours of relocating the base and replacing some nuts and bolts. All a question of balance and diligence. I think last year the parasol base was not level which caused a slight imbalance and nuts and bolts do need attention at some point.
On balance all is well that ends well.
Balance was certainly on the mind of this snail who really had no need to take himself along the yard-long stalk of an Agapanthus. Snails do not eat Agapanthus blooms.
On balance all was well that ended well for the snail too.
Yesterday it rained and a scrappy old rose that persists in the tropical bed in the yard put on quite the show against the water butt. I am not quite sure why we allow the rose to continue. A misplaced belief that it marks the spot where someone unknown, a previous owner of this house, had buried a beloved pet. It is a very old gnarly thing that has survived against the odds. It blooms throughout the summer, but not really in a meaningful way. The buds are neat and a fresh bloom can be beautiful, as this one is. But within a day the flower will open fully and fall apart. Just looking tatty and ugly.
The bush is mostly hidden beneath ferns. Out of sight and mind. Apart from yesterday when this perfectly pink bloom properly perked up a wet summer morning .
I would say spirituality is one of the great intangibles. It presents in so many ways. I have no idea where I sit on the spirituality spectrum. Nowhere near the elite end, but probably more spiritual than a broad bean.
Proof of how intangible spirituality is I looked up the broad bean only to discover that it is quite the Spiritual Legume.
Broad beans, also known as fava beans, have a complex symbolic history, particularly in relation to death and the afterlife. While not universally considered spiritual, they have been associated with funerary rituals and the belief that they contain the souls of the deceased in some cultures. However, other traditions view them as symbols of resurrection, good luck, or even royalty.
Here’s a more detailed look:
Symbolism related to death and the underworld:
Ancient Greeks and Romans:Believed broad beans were linked to the underworld due to their long roots and the black spots on their flowers, which were seen as a connection between the world of the living and the dead.
Funerary rituals:Broad beans were sometimes spread over tombs to provide peace to the deceased.
Fave dei morti:In some traditions, like those in Italy, small cakes shaped like broad beans (but not actually made of them) are eaten on All Souls’ Day, symbolizing “beans of the dead”.
Soul wind:Some believed that eating broad beans released the soul wind through the body.
Symbolism related to resurrection and reincarnation:
Growth:The bean’s upward growth from the earth can be seen as a symbol of resurrection and spiritual awakening.
Rebirth:Some traditions view beans as symbols of reincarnation, where the seed contains a dormant soul waiting to be reborn.
Other symbolic meanings:
Good luck:In some traditions, like 17th and 18th century Britain, broad beans were associated with good luck, sometimes found in cakes like the Twelfth Night cake.
Royalty:In traditions like the Portuguese king cake, a bean inside the cake signifies the person who gets to provide the next cake.
Magic:Broad beans are also mentioned in folklore as having magical properties, such as warding off ghosts or even being connected to witches.
*See below
Research is a fabulous thing. I have just learned that Fava beans are Broad Beans. I had no idea, but I also discovered that spirituality-wise I am exactly a broad bean.
Broad beans are not considered universally spiritual.
Sometimes I suffer from ‘Soul Wind’
Will I ever be able to say the Lord’s Prayer without thinking? ” Our Fava”.
I have been enlightened.
*See below
*The Buddha with the fractured skull lives in our yard and has lived in my last three gardens.
She was a regular,uninjured, deity until a freak mini tornado in South London picked her up and tossed her against a garage wall. Her left Temporal bone was caved in. An earthly rather than spiritual injury.
Instantly she was turned from a peaceful piece of garden adornment into a unique planter. Her scars and missing bits of skull are covered by plants as she lays serenely in our yard.
This is deliberately the last image of a weekend of Summer Solstice swims. It is an entirely composed and invented view of the Bobbers reality. Magic realism at its most local.
Magic realism is a literary and artistic genre that incorporates fantastical or mythical elements into a realistic setting. It blends the ordinary with the extraordinary, often blurring the lines between what is considered real and what is not. Originating in Latin America, particularly through the works of Gabriel García Márquez, magic realism explores the coexistence of the mundane and the magical, challenging conventional notions of reality.
Here’s a more detailed explanation:
Key characteristics of magic realism:
Realistic Setting:The stories are typically grounded in a recognizable, everyday world with ordinary characters and situations.
Fantastic Elements:Magical or supernatural events, creatures, or phenomena are introduced into this realistic setting, often without explanation or justification.
Matter-of-fact Tone:These fantastical elements are presented as normal occurrences within the narrative, without the characters or narrator questioning their presence or logic.
Symbolism and Metaphor:Magic realism often uses these elements as metaphors to explore social, political, or psychological themes, adding depth and complexity to the narrative.
Cultural Hybridity:It often draws upon folklore, myths, and indigenous beliefs, blending them with Western literary traditions.
Examples of Magic Realism:
Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude:Features characters who levitate, have premonitions, and experience impossible events, all within the context of a Colombian family’s history.
Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis:Gregor Samsa wakes up to find he has transformed into an insect, a fantastical event presented with a detached, realistic tone.
Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits:Blends magical events with historical and political events in Chile, exploring themes of family, love, and political upheaval.
Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber:Retells fairy tales with a feminist perspective, incorporating magical elements and exploring themes of sexuality and power.
How is it different from fantasy?
While both magic realism and fantasy include fantastical elements, they differ in their approach to reality. In fantasy, the fantastic elements are central to the world-building and often require extensive explanation or rules. In magic realism, the fantastic elements are integrated into a realistic world, often serving as metaphors or symbols rather than the core focus of the narrative.
The Bobbers started swimming at dawn and dusk on both the Summer and Winter Solstices during 2021.
In June 2021 we were still living under COVID Restrictions. A lot of Bobbers bobbed both morning and evening Bobs. We had not returned to real life.
4 years later and real life has returned. Bobbers are not as free to swim twice a day to mark the longest and the shortest day. But being there and not being there have some significance for all of us. Including the sun. In the real world the sun does not rise or set behind Drakes Island when viewed across Firestone Bay from Tranquility Bay beach.
In the real world only 2 Bobbers bobbed the morning shift and 5 bobbers, a dry bobber and a dog made the evening shift of 2025. Other swimmers raised the number to nearly a 100 in the morning and about half that in the evening.
But bobbers and ex-bobbers, even non-bobber swimmers everwhere know how it feels to swim in this specific place and can imagine themselves there for those moments. And in everyone’s imagination the sun for sunrise and sunset makes a perfect debut and finale just behind Drakes Island. Magic Realism is a powerful thing.
Summer Solstice started with a burst of colour over Firestone Bay as two bobbers and about 100 other swimmers took to the sea at dawn, the conditions were perfect.
Then the Solstice took a more practical turn as twenty volunteers, including two bobbers, took on the annual task of painting the Tennis Club Clubhouse with preservative.
Then it was back to the sea for more swimming at sunset.
So much exercise in one day and not a gym in sight.
A day painted perfectly.
Painting the Summer Solstice at Stonehouse Lawn Tennis Club.
In other news, the Solstice was celebrated in the local Tinside Lido.
For four years the bobbers have celebrated both Summer and Winter Solstices by dipping at sunrise and sunset. Summer takes more dedication with early and late starts. Winter takes more grit because the weather is disgusting and the water is very cold. Summer has not always been kind to us but in our collective memory the event is always magical. These two images of the early morning dip and the evening dip are entirely fake. Created by stitching three actual magical dips together. The location is accurate, as are the conditions and the swimmers. But they never actually occurred all at the same time in the same place so perfectly.
But in our recollections Solstice swims are magical. And I have the photographs to prove that.
Summer Solstice Double Dipping P.M
May Summer wrap her arms around you whilst the sun gently warms your soul.
Another lonesome bob and a few minutes of tinkering with a phone camera and some Polaroid sunglasses and wet rocks.
Like all rocks, the rocks in our swimming zone are infinitely more colourful when they are wet and Polarised lenses enhance that effect.
This image is constructed by digitally double exposing two separate images a second apart and with some inevitable movement both me and an incoming tide.
What it demonstrates is exactly why this area is called Firestone Bay.
Lonesome Bobbing is not my normal way of sea swimming, but it is not unheard of. Bobbing with the Bobbers is the normal way of things for safety and sociability. Is it even bobbing if you are alone?
I wasn’t even truly alone on my lonesome bob. Two neighbours and a dog, were there before me. And thank goodness they were because in an attempt to capture a pet portrait I dumped my keys in the sea.
I was so busy doing the constricted-undressing- in -public towel wrestle I didn’t even notice their loss. When Tim noticed the brightly coloured key cutters bands and rushed in to rescue them. The photo is a fake, post-processing tweakery. They dried out quickly on a warm step,retrieving them I noticed the vivid colours ,created by bright, morning- sun and my sunglasses at a really low angle, close to the incoming tide. I popped my sunglasses over the lens of my phone camera.
Using my sunglasses as a filter.
Blurry but interesting, this impromptu image needed a little tweakery, but I might make a little polaroid filter for my phone camera for these brightly sunshiny days.
Obviously I am an addicted ponderer. It is the beating heart of this blog and for me is both creative and endlessly fascinating.
Mulling on the other hand is a much less lightweight, pleasurable task. Mulling however is every bit as essential for me.
The two thinking techniques are closely related. I have always been a ponderer, I started young, in Reference Libraries. As I edged into adulthood, worries and problems could not always be pondered into a solution. Sometimes more serious and better targeted thinking is required. Mulling moved into my life.
Recently, away from this blog I have had to do a lot of mulling on the behalf of an organisation that I help to manage.
My Mulling team, confidentiality guaranteed.
All organisations, whatever their title are essentially about people. My recent mullings have taken me to places I never imagined I would need to explore. Despite the importance of mulling it uses much the same mental muscles as pondering. And for me the creative, familiar places where I choose to ponder have proved to be equally suitable for mulling.
1.Dull domestic tasks.
2.Dog walks
3. Yardening in the yard.
Staring at the laundry whilst thinking.
Just one stark difference between pondering and mulling.
Summer Breeze makes me feel fine, blowing through the Holly Hocks of my mind.
Early summer is a fragile thing, a million things need to come together, in June, to create fragrant blooms and buzzy bees, with legs and fluffy bottoms all dusted with pollen. I love a Hollyhock but growing them eludes me. A minor success this year in the yard was quashed by the voracious appetites of our slugs and snails. Not for us the gentle hum of bees going about their business, just the inexorable chomp of a chorus* of slimy mouths feasting on our tender and tasty single Hollyhock survivor.
These Hollyhocks survive proudly, on the edge of a busy roundabout. Cared for by volunteer urban gardeners, they survive where mine cannot. Despite slightly obsessive attention. And yet, crazy, wild self-seeded Hollyhocks look down on me from cracks in rock walls and cliffs by the sea. Seemingly immune to the chomp of slugs and snails and happily hosting buzzy bees with dusty bottoms.
You may wonder where this ponder is going. The * is the answer. A recording of a single slug having a chomp, imagine what a choir of them would sound like in a back yard.
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