Saturday after a week of texture.
The bittersweet emotions of two grandchildren and their parents returning to Hong Kong.
Fireworks.
And sunsets.
Some out of town swimming.
And a gift of Jam.
All gathered together with the texture of painting another wall white.
If yesterdays blog was all about my relaxed attitude to planning. Today is all about a plan coming together.
Yesterdays blog below
#1014 theoldmortuary ponders
But today is all about a plan coming together. 3 months after the new trellis went up on our wall our climbers are getting acquainted.
The evergreen Honeysuckle is in touching distance of the Wisteria and on the other side the evergreen Honeysuckle is already mingling with Rosa Banksia Lutea.
And the wisteria is finding her way along the chain rescued from the sea.
Today I love that a plan has come together.
It’s all going on here.
And the Berry Jam arrived from my neighbour.
How do you plan your goals?
I am not a hugely goal orientated person. Fixed deliberate outcomes are a little too precise. That is not to say that I have no dreams or aspirations but I have learned that often hitting the goal post or losing the ball into the crowd turns out to be the better outcome. But if a goal must be hit with precision I Plan/Prepare/execute while wearing Personal Protective Equipment. PPE in PPE. I jest a bit of course because life does require quite a lot of goals to be hit, but personally I find the near misses more interesting.
Heavy traffic delivered me to this leafy lane earlier this week. My goal or desire was to get to a local park before the rain arrived but there was a traffic jam in my way and dark clouds were gathering. I took an unknown side street and found an uphill footpath in the top picture. The path went between some military land and a college and was completely quiet with no one else about. So quiet that a rustling in the bushes caught my attention. A pair of snails having sexy time on a flower.
Copulating Gastropods not at all the goal of the day but fascinating in their own way.
My accidental detour also gifted me an important message etched onto stone. The significance of the message lost in time.
But useful if your goal is getting to number 1.
Create an emergency preparedness plan.
In early June I got heat stroke while swimming in Greece. I learnt that I can no longer cope with really hot temperatures. So my emergency preparedness plan is not to be so daft again.
Today there was a gorgeous cool wind blowing directly up our street. I decided to banish a rather ghastly adobe orange wall in our back lane and turn it white.
The back lane runs parallel to the street, but inexplicably there was no wind. Despite the wind maps arrows.
My emergency preparedness plan, or my newfound common sense made me stop the job not even half done. The back lane was stupidly hot.
A few glasses of water and a cool shower were all I needed to avert a dizzy disaster. But then came the oversharing. Parcels arrived for our neighbours. I felt the need to explain my cold, showered towel-wrapped appearance at 5 pm to the delivery man. Does he care? Of course not he just wants parcels to be received and to no longer to be his responsibility. The irony is that while painting the wall white I missed my own parcel delivery.
Memo to self . No painting of white walls on hot afternoons when everyone in the street including me is expecting parcels.
No need to explain why I needed a shower.
No over sharing of information.
P.s. I only opened the door because a neighbour had promised me a delivery of some Saskatchewan Berry Jam later this afternoon. Offers like this are rare in Devon. I think he forgot.
Earlier this week we had the hottest day of the summer. One giddy day of wall to wall sunshine and no clouds. Over-excited media broadcasters called it a mini heatwave. It was just one day!
Not that we didn’t get a bit giddy and go for an evening adventure in the camper van and a swim at a different beach to our regular one.
A beach that is only dog friendly after 6pm in the summer. I suppose we imagined that we might be one of the few on the sand at 6. Not so at all, it was packed and it was only the long shadows of later on that chased people away.
Cawsand Bay was buzzing with happy people. Yachts and motor boats moored, some playing music as they prepared supper in their galleys. Even the wasp- like jet ski’s were silently bobbing on the waves just taking in the last heat of a lovely day.
However beautiful this spot is in summer we are far more regular visitors in the winter,when the dogs are welcome all day and we can be comforted by warm clothes and hot drinks. We should do this trip more often on summer evenings.
What is a word you feel that too many people use?
Where is the fun in an overused word when a rarely used word has been tapping at my brain for more than 37 years.
The term matrescence was created in the 1970s by an anthropologist, Dana Rafael who suggested the name for the period from conception to the child’s early years. She also suggested that matrescence was possibly a life long series of changes for women.
By the late eighties and early nineties there had been enough research for there to be a degree of knowledge around the changes that affected me, but the negatives, post partum depression, forced insomnia and exhaustion were quite rightly the headline issues.
Back to the odd question of the day and why I chose to subvert it .
Yesterday I went for an evening walk in a coastal graveyard, the under research or understanding of matrescence, a word that few people use, became a little clearer to me.
This is the backside of the grave of a woman called Jane who died in a small coastal community 200 years ago. Also listed on her grave were 3 of her dead infants, none of whom survived beyond 1 year old. The most recent infant death occurred 1 month before her own death. Her husband was also buried in the same grave but had lived a more normal lifespan. Just surviving childbirth was enough 200 years ago.
Even 100 years later things were not much improved in poor communities. But 50 years later in the 1970s, motherhood and infancy were not such a risky business and Matrescence got a name and some academic study.
Women and their babies stood a good chance of surviving and thriving, so the less critical to life changes, were being observed, considered and written about. Absolutely a good thing, but in 1970 Dana Rafael suggested that the changes were likely to be lifelong and that at key points puberty, menopause and later life women are likely to have more changes if they also have ongoing matrescence.
These 3 intersections of womanhood have barely been researched.
Around 50 years after Matrescence got a name, Dr Will Courtenay put Patrescence on the academic table. The effect of parenthood on men.
Now men have some skin in the game I wonder where the available research funding will go?
What does history suggest?
Pondering in a coastal graveyard, it makes me think. See link below.
We have empty bed syndrome. Our Grandchild quota has been cut by 2/3 over night. No longer a family all in the same post code and soon enough not in the same time zone.
Peace in our duvet as the sun rises. Somewhat artificially we have arrived in late summer by mid-August. The summer we prepared for is done, over for another year. Ahead is the bonus summer, the scrag end of summer admittedly, but one where anything might happen.
Because we have had our imaginations reset by a five year old and our joy in the mundane enhanced by the wonder of two under-twos.
A quiet duvet is just the start to new adventures.
Xhosa woman with a pipe and baby.
I love the serenity of this image that I painted a couple of times about ten years ago. I rarely find peace with one of my paintings but wherever the two paintings are I hope their owners find serenity in this woman’s peace.
Serenity on a Sunday.
Below is my instagram reel featuring the Grandmothers Click Song
Wild camping with a five year old. Our plan was to park in a quiet corner of Mountbatten to give our 5 year old grandchild the chance to be immersed in Nature for 24 hours. What had slipped our minds was that a World Championship Sailing event was being held at our chosen destination.
Regardless we found a perfect quiet corner to camp and arrived just as the last races were being held. Tiny sailing boats competing in the early evening sun. The winners heralded with a klaxon call just beyond our bushes.
Our evening dog walk enlivened by the happy chatter of many different languages eager to party and then be on their way. Small boats packed away on trailers.
This morning we awoke to the graceful dance of maritime traffic going about its business in Plymouth Sound. After being lulled to sleep with the gentle thud of Drum and Bass at celebratory parties and International teams slipping away at midnight.
Wild camping, not as planned but wild and memorable in its own way.
What colourful nonsense is this Friday Blog? The end of a week when play has been at the heart of everything and soft play has been the giddiest of all the play events.
Soft play areas are vast creations of indoor multi-storey, multi-sensory ,padded, wipe clean climbing frames for the under tens. Our visit yesterday was to a Cornish Copper Mine themed one. Earlier in the week we were in soft-play Steam Train world.
Nothing about these places is subtle. They are loud, brash, palaces of pleasure and excitement. Adults use the crazy plastic construction in order to supervise their small people, but clambering and climbing over brightly coloured, soft shapes, with very little chance of physical harm is such a fun thing to do, it surprises me no-one has ever built one of these things to adult proportions.
Over-enthusiasm on my part has led to minor injuries in the past. Grown-up backs and knees complain mightily the next day. I kid myself that it is because everything is a little too small and awkward for me, but the truth is, I have circled the sun many more times than the under tens for which a soft-play zone is designed and I am not as pliable as I once was.
https://www.morwellham-quay.co.uk/miners-adventure-play
A well stocked cafe with good quality coffee and snackage soothed my aches and dried me off after a quite different sensory experience. Working Wi-Fi would have been advantageous, just for five minutes, for a brief phone call. Miners Play is in an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and no phone signal. Staff were very helpful in pointing out the exact spot where a signal could sometimes be found in the middle of an outdoor field. Twenty minutes in the rain found me a signal,and with calls done I returned to coffee, a bacon sandwich and somewhat ironically working Wi-Fi.
Admin done I returned damply to my family. Still adventuring wildly,there was still an hour to go in our session. Small sweaty hands pulled me to enjoy their moments of triumphant clambering. Small sweaty hands. Nothing better
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