Morning para surfers at St Michael’s Mount. Not a bad way to start a week, I was wrapped up warm with hot chocolate in hand.Penzance is being very good to me today. Sunshine and warm enough to go without a coat once the sun was properly up.
More walking in Morrab Tropical Gardens.
Monday morning with more murmuration. Really couldn’t help myself there. Although of course that was actually Sunday night. Here is a bright morning photo from Sunday too.
Bright dawn sunshine lights up a rust stained wall at our swimming zone.
We chose an area very similar to our home zone, with ladders and handrails to ease our way in and out.
Looks can be deceiving. This was not an easy location to get in, but it is the choice of local dippers.
Yesterday was a day of wrapping up warm and enjoying the smug sensation of a sea swim achieved early and a whole day left to warm up in the sunshine.
A pub roast dinner and a day of basking and walking in winter sunshine completed Sunday.
Let’s see how Monday shapes up.
Sometimes it feels as if this is true. William Shakespeare wrote the quote which is the title of this painting and the nearly true statement in Twelth Night. One of my favourite W.S plays.
A rainy day in Penzance. What to do?
A lot of enjoyable faffing about and dog walking in damp conditions and an afternoon trip to Penlee Gallery and Museum. Which was a wonderful welcoming place.
And here is the serendipity of live blogging.
The sun is out this morning, the Bobbers are up and the sea is exceptionally chilly.
No more arty faff. Just me and sunrise and my post swim plunge pool.
In my dreams the pool was a hot Jacuzzi.
Here we are in an Airbnb in one of our favourite towns. Penzance in Cornwall. Part pleasure, part work, this trip is a brightener for January. As I washed up this morning I realised the universality of the Airbnb experience.
We have Airbnb’d around the world and the international common denominator is often furnishings and homewares from IKEA interspersed by local crafted items.
I realise for many people, this is a terrible travesty of consumerism, but I realised this morning that I find it to be comforting. Holding a hot drink in a familiar-looking mug makes me feel at home wherever I am. Just as I felt at home immediately in Soule and Marrakech with an IKEA mug in hand after a long journey into the heart of significantly different cities.
We have made tracks for the far Southwest. To the warmest place in England on this particular weekend. Part pleasure and part work commitment. A journey to Penzance and West Cornwall is always a pleasure in January. Even more of a pleasure because we caught a Starling murmeration.
No more words needed really.
Grumpy greige was banished by bright sunshine and a -1 degree temperature. The local ferry was caught in a sunbeam. Sunbeams bounced off windows as I walked to meet fellow artists at our regular monthly meetings.
The prevailing natter was predominantly about exhibitions in 2025. One of which I am fairly well prepared for and another that I am not at all prepared for.
I started a doodle as I talked which is the first time brush and paper have met one another in 2025.
Honestly sunshine and talking to other artists is the best way to spend a morning.
Three of my October pumpkins mingle with apples, grapes persimmon and tangerines from the festive season. This bowl was so pretty that I prioritised eating the fruit from other bowls, but now there is a gap, and the red surface of the plate is visible. Surely a sign that my mid-winter snacking is coming to an end. Persimmons were new to me, and I can’t say I will rush to buy them again.
The last packet of mince pies has been opened and the Christmas cake is down to a third of its original size. Christmas Day and New Years Day are 1/2 weeks in the past but festive themed snacking will almost certainly last until the end of January. This is exactly how I like things to be. Midwinter is a time of snacking and reading Christmas books while real-life floods in to fill the gaps where festive used to be.
Meetings have crept back into my diary with plans to be made and decisions taken to shape the character of 2025.
Soon enough this red plate will go back into the cupboard of festive homewares. But in the shorter days of January, I still need a little bit of comfort and joy on the table.
This is my real world dog walk after dropping the Christmas Tree off at the recycling centre. This photo makes the day look O.K but really it was dreary and muddy. There were rumours of snow but the reality, at sea level, was just more rain. The top image would be my perfect snowy walk but I know it is a fantasy in so many ways. Oh how I wish I could learn to love rain. But the truth is I can only truly embrace the puddle aftermath of a rainy day.
Maybe I should adjust my attitude to being afflicted by rain. But I think that is unlikely to ever be a genuinely altered character improvement.
Clean snow and puddles are as close as I can get to loving the wet stuff. But for now the sun is out and I am off to bask for a bit.
Pyjama Day/ Gotcha Day
The need to de-rig Christmas was derigueur yesterday.
Not because I always adhere to the custom of the 12th night. But because I had done half a job on Saturday, and half a job is worse than no job at all.
To motivate myself, I started early and decided to do the job in my pyjamas, promising myself that I could not shower or dress until the job was done. Not a popular decision with two dogs who love an early walk. By 11:30, everything was done, and some Christmas lights had been converted into winter lights to pull my summer-loving soul through a gloomy mid-winter towards Spring.
Pyjamas Day explained and on to Gotcha Day.
12 years of Hugo, the original urbane city gent who moved to the Cornish countryside and then relocated to the coast and currently lives the life of an old seadog. His current good looks are still a little lopsided, but nothing a few more weeks of hair growth can’t cure.
Bring on the Winter lights.
Life is what happens whilst we are making plans.
Life rather joyfully overtook the plans for a De-Christmas of our house.
Significantly I remembered that I had also Christmassed up the Tennis Club Clubhouse. She who puts it up inevitably has to take it down, so my morning was spent removing twinkle and baubles from a community space. This led to many lovely conversations with people, both familiar and unfamiliar, around the club.
What I did not achieve was any sort of real Christmas progress at home.
But I did remove one set of lights from a live tree and reposition them in old turquoise coloured glasses to give our whale some greenish winter lights for his shelf unit.
The live tree needed to be settled into the yard . Which required more footling about, which took time .
Then planned friends came round ,and still the actual Christmas Tree stands resplendent in baubles and red lights until 4pm arrived and we had to go out.
Definitely a day when procrastination and circumstance won. I have decided that De-Christmasing is actually a whole weekend project.
Less footling more action.
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