It is a grey old day today and yesterday was not much better but there was a gorgeous rainbow yesterday and I think there is very little chance of anything quite so charming today. Going with the grey theme gifted to me by today’s weather I thought I would share a five year old photo.
There was not a chance of good photos this morning. A dense blanket of fog and mist grappled with the landscape and won. Greige is the order of the day. So yesterday’s rainbow and last week’s pumpkins have to enliven todays blog with colour.
And then just like that the sun came out and gave me a vivid fungus to ponder.
Google lens tells me this is the gregarious Redlead Roundhead Mushroom who likes to live on woodchips.
Gregarious is not a word I have ever associated with mushrooms. I’ve always considered gregarious to be a choice. Are lone mushrooms considered anti-social? What a world I have stepped into just because the sun came out.
As the dark mornings stealthily shorten daylight hours I am more and more thrilled by the cloud of crumpled paper that has replaced the ghastly chandelier in the bedroom. The wonder that is IKEA’s imaginative design for a mass produced item.
We are in the midst of our own Octoberfest. No beers or cutesy German themed servers wearing lederhosen and low cut shirts. Our Octoberfest is all about ‘Spring’ cleaning the house and some redecorating.
The studio has also had its chandelier replaced by a paper cloud. So much more conducive to creativity. The parchment-coloured wall is new; the blue one will change to dark teal. We want to reflect the colour of our local sea. Oktoberfesting the studio is a mammoth task. There are still materials left over from my Fine Arts degree 16 years ago. I have moved them around the country in case random things were ever needed. I have promised myself a proper sort out and rationalisation of art materials. My fabric stache took the hit yesterday. I need a full day of recovery before I tackle paints.
What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?
I am absolutely a risk-averse, risk taker. I would never plan a big risk but am happy to allow risk to happen. I believe that creativity absolutely grows in an environment of risk and that firmly held planning is the antithesis of a creative mind. My science, child rearing ,or health and safety head is a much less risk taking beast but even those worlds benefit sometimes from happy accidents.
To answer the question, I have no idea how big a risk I would like to take, maybe I already did it or maybe that choice is in the future.
On an illustrative note the photos accompanying this blog were taken in a friend/ bobbers/ neighbours garden. I have learned to my cost that taking a risk with planting in our yard does not work. What is needed is acute observation of what survives in close-by gardens as our locality is very much a micro climate. I spotted this rose while doing a tour of my friend’s garden.
Her yard is east-facing and mine is west but for a rose this beautiful in October I feel the risk is worth it.
One last little risk, throw the rose picture into a photo editing app that has a random algorithm and see what happens.
I think pride is a very hard thing to define and also quite transitory. Sometimes a cup of tea is so perfect that there is a moment of self-congratulation. Is that pride?
If I had clambered onto these rocks yesterday as these men did I would have been very proud. These rocks are covered in razor-sharp barnacles, climbing up is likely to have been very perilous for them and yet it looks almost effortless.
Pride in myself is not really in my skillset. Like most parents I am proud of my children, of course, they are wonderful people. But I can be proud of the most random of things, an observed kindness, wonderful acting, a beautiful garden.
I like my version of pride, it is easy to manage. The simple things that make life more gorgeous are worthy of gentle, transitory pride and I have loads of it to spare.
We accidentally went to a farmshop yesterday. Mid to late October is peak pumpkin spotting season. Pumpkins are at the top of my list of vegetable photography but I was encouraged not to linger as we were on a mission to buy paint for the house.
So I have had a digital linger, admiring and changing my one shot of the day.
I am fairly certain a watercolour will emerge from these colour observations.
This morning October pulled out a fabulous combination of sunshine, good sea temperature and excellent biscuits. 8 bobbers, 3 dogs and a non-bobbing bobber caught an early high tide and filled the bay with chatter and some swimming, before we all departed for almost a whole day of doing stuff elsewhere. There was a bit of bounce to add to the experience, not as much as I created in the picture below but we never look this cheery when the sea is actually this rough. Grim determination is the facial expression on those days , this morning the smiles were genuinely generated. It really sets you up for the day.
It is Plymouth Art Weekender this weekend. Always a fascinating festival of all things art. Missing on our cultural horizons for 4 years.
More of that later in the week but an early installation in one of my local shopping areas had me on the back foot a couple of weeks ago.
A moment when travel broadening the mind has done too good a job.
I have travelled in remote parts of the U.S where a rural supermarket is the social hub for thousands of square miles . Wedding invitations posted by the checkout, open to all who bring a plate of food. Obituaries of regulars stuck on notice boards and with shades of the old Wild West, mugshots of shoplifters or other undesirables.
So it was with some surprise I saw a couple of pictures of people inside the window of my local Co-op.
That’s unusual for here, I thought, while also thinking that the photo of one of the miscreants was quite arty, handsome and maybe familiar. It was very early in the morning.
The gymnastics my mind did in those moments thinking a friend’s Dad had been a bad man. The thought was unimaginable. Then I hoped nothing bad had happened to him. More travel awareness. Obituaries on lampposts and telegraph poles in Greece.
Art was not on my mind at 7 am, not much was. But it woke me up and made me think. Always a sign of good art in my opinion.
Is it a significant day when the first appointment that needs to be written into my paper diary of 2025 occurs?
I am a reluctant accepter of the last quarter of 2024. I think the constant rain of 2024 is to blame. Today is wet and foggy. If I met a person who was wet and foggy I would give them a wide berth. Fog horns and low visibility are not my thing. But in this strange year of weather the yard continues to create growth and produce. My climbing plants are still climbing and the tomatoes still fruiting.
I have had my last haircut of 2024. Mid-October seems extraordinarily early for such a thing and it is the reason to unwrap the diary as my next appointment is January 2025. If this curious weather keeps up I might just about be eating my last outdoor grown tomato at the same time.
I wish I were a better diarist of the mundane things in life, like haircuts and tomatoes. Sometimes it is the little things that are the glue that hold memories together.
2022 home grown tomatoes at Christmas.
2023 no home grown tomatoes at Christmas.
If I kept better written records of the mundane I could predict the likelyhood of tomatoes in 2024.
In my dreams as a ten year old I was going to keep a diary as encyclopaedic as the very best. My parents bought me a five year diary, with a lock.
The lock stayed firmly locked, nothing occured for five years or indeed 50 or so years that I felt the urge to record in a diary. Then daily blogging occured which is as close as I have ever got to keeping a diary of the mundane.
I am ashamed of my paper diaries, they are a curious cross of notebook and reminder.Scrappy notes with underlinings and arrows fill the pages. Every year I look at a new one and vow to do better. What if I suddenly become famous how will I ever write my biography. The diaries will say I had a lot of haircuts and that a lot of different events had some random notes written but there is nothing significant in them. All that stuff is stored in my head. What will happen when my head starts to fail?
October 14th 2024 a pledge to myself to keep a better written diary. Not starting as you might expect on the January 1st 2025 but starting today in the old diary.
October 15th. Haircut.
October 16th. Ate outdoor grown tomatoes. It was foggy.
Riveting stuff, lets hope I don’t get famous any time soon.
I wonder if this ponder on diary keeping has been caused by my misunderstanding of the word ‘Nostalgia’ I had always thought it simply meant remembering the past or indeed retrieving the past by discussing it with other people. I realise now that nostalgia has an element of thinking the past was better or more comfortable, longing is a word often used. I think I see the past more as a foundation for the now. A resource for learning and often a reason to be grateful and a pathway for the future.
Am I allowed to look back without ‘longing’ but just interested.
I realised this weekend that a lifetime of a recurring dream was based on an actual place rather than my imagination.
My early childhood holidays were shared with my older and physically disabled cousin. All our destinations had to be accessible by car and a child in a wheelchair.
On a previous adult visit to Ansteys Cove in Torbay I had wondered if this was the source of my dream but discounted it as some of the geography felt wrong. But this weekend we stayed in a flat opposite a lane leading to the cove. I realised that viewing somewhere as a child when there is magic and the unexpected around every corner is very different from being ‘the grown-up’
The magic of ancient woodland, steps and handrails leading suddenly to a beach with a cafe was probably created by my parents walking on the coastal path to the cove in order to burn off my under 10 year old energy. My cousins family would have driven to a car park on the lane opposite my airbnb, and used a steeply sloped private road to push her to and from the beach.
Another thing that didn’t quite sit well in my head was that, as supposedly my parents favourite beach in the West Country, they never once suggested visiting it when I moved to Plymouth which is only an hour away.
Just giving the whole scenario a bit of a ponder I realised that life had changed so dramatically for them that they were probably just preserving happy memories and not making themselves sad.
My cousin had died young as a result of her disabilities and my Aunt and Uncle had fled to Australia never to be seen again. By the time I moved to Plymouth my mum was in a wheelchair and my dad would have known that the slope to the beach would have been an impossible task for him or any of us.
I am very glad to have revisited and given the whole family dynamics a good old ponder. Sad that we never discussed a visit, because I’m sure we could have driven closer and gained access but maybe they really needed to preserve it as a happy memory without revisiting what must have been immense and multilayered grief.
With just an hour’s drive I think it is time for me to visit more often. Had I realised all this two days ago I would have taken more photos but pondering can be a slow burn to realisation.
Is the last line of a poem that has shaped my thinking ever since I first read it.
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost.
I have always known that any decision taken, sets me on a certain path. There is always an alternative.
Poetry resides in Autumn for me, possibly because of this poem. A Yellow Wood speaks to me of Autumnal colour changes.
This poem suggests that free will and decision making go hand in hand. That is not always my experience. Pragmatism is often the path of choice. No matter how verdant the alternative seems. Regardless , right now I have chosen the path of more poetry. Two books, quickly reserved on my Library App.
A poem or two before bed will be my new Autumnal habit.
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