Once a month a craft and food market sets up on the route of our morning dog walk. In good weather on a large grassy square and in bad weather in disused buildings. Either location gives the market a buzzy lively feel. Yesterday was market day and we set off on our usual dog walk with the added quest for Fig and Fennel Sourdough. Both were achieved alongside a bit of nattering to neighbours and fellow dog walkers. Our afternoon dog walk took in a quick visit to the JMW Turner exhibition that I am involved in.
Also quite a buzzy feel and plenty of people to chat to, just no hunt for an obscure flavour of sourdough.
A good Sunday,I think. Even if my mind is popping with all the images and nattering.
24 days to Boxing Day. 3 days into Meteorological Winter. The sun is shining. Some dates are more memorable than others.
The birth date of my children is always memorable. Today is one of those days. In 1988 my son was two, we had recently moved to Cornwall from Brighton. We had lived in Cornwall for almost a month, I knew nobody and I had spent most of that month waiting for the rain to stop. The rain stopped and on the 3rd of December we spent his birthday at Cotehele House, kicking leaves and eating tasty soup to keep warm. More for me than him we were at Cotehele to see the Festive Garland. But for a small boy, armour, swords, and candles were the best bit.
Cotehele is a small Manor House, little altered in 500 years. Lit only by candles or daylight.
I no longer spend time with my son on his birthday but by coincidence I took his two year old niece to Cotehele on the same day 36 years later. She is not a great leaf kicker but she is a pebble hunter . The armour didn’t thrill her but a box of unused flowers were very engaging.
So I have become a serial parent/ grandparent who plans a day trip in December not so much for childrens entertainment but my own. Knowing that their fascination with small details will keep them happy and interested. 500 years ago when Cotehele was a thriving home and country estate,children would have loved the small details of leaves and pebbles and the sensation of open fires and sunlight. 2 year olds have not changed so much. Neither have adults. Every sense gets a tweak on a visit like this.
In the gardens I found the perfect C for Day 3 of 26 Days to Boxing Day. Cornish Language Christmas words.
There were also some fabulous winter colours in the garden. C pretty well covered I think.
This blog is 3 years late and could have been another year in the Procrastination Pile. I had arranged to attend a Daffodil Festival with a friend in 2020. The festival was cancelled in the early weeks of Covid Restrictions and this is the first time it has been held since. The extra year of procrastination could easily have been added to, by my poor choice of clothes yesterday.
As you can see from the header picture things were a bit wet! I had had a perfectly tolerable dog walk without a coat and in Birkenstocks while at home in the morning. The further I drove into the Tamar Valley the wetter it got.
The lanes were running with brown rainwater pouring off the fields. I phoned my friend and suggested a different outing. A snug pub with warm food and no drips.
Her response was to bring me warm socks and wellies and feed me a scone and a cup of coffee.
And with that we were off! Some daffodil varieties were being shown indoors. Definitely an easier environment to appreciate them, were it not for steamed up glasses and rivulets of cold water tracking down my neck.
Daffodils and Pewter in the Great Hall.
I started recording the names of the Daffodils but honestly I think I am going to get into a pickle with that, so these beauties are enigmatically anonymous.
Outside nothing had improved despite making the absolute most of sitting with a scone and coffee. We hadn’t even managed to put the world right.
The outside locations were not overrun with visitors, the cafe on the other hand was heaving with wet humans. There is a point in every adventure when enough is enough, even for a woman in borrowed, vivid, socks and wellies. I love these socks!
Below is an experiment, I don’t know if this QR code will work,but if you can,give it a try.
Readers, it works! The audio clip Seagulls and Sunrise is lovely and tells the history of Daffodils and the Tamar Valley.
Autumn put in a very summery face, today, for my visit to Cotehele, despite being in the midst of Drawn to Cotehele, two more exhibitions are in the pipeline. We sat in the bright autumn sunshine planning a winter Portrait exhibition. It was our inaugural meeting, time for the curatorial team to get together and set a schedule. As if on cue, as we were discussing 3d art, we were visited by a chap called Alfie.
A very fine example of flesh and blood 3D.
Cotehele was looking gorgeous.
But you can see from peoples clothes that the seasons are on the turn. Spring and autumn sunshine is sharper than baking hot summer days. The clarity of light gave me one of my favourite ‘ it’s complicated’ shots.
The exhibition we are currently running at Cotehele was bustling with visitors and the red dots, signifying sold work, are stacking up. The art is constantly restocked so the exhibition looks fresh every time I visit.
This one by Jane Athron sold really early on but has been replaced by another vivid picture from Jane’s studio. Another Jayne, Jayne Ashenbury is also selling well.
It is such a pleasure to have Cotehele as a base for Drawn to the Valley for a month, I am not sure when I last looked forward to meetings quite so much. Maybe I wouldn’t feel the same if it was raining but I am really excited to see their pumpkin harvest display towards the end of our time with them.
Yesterday was just so lush, bright sunshine and glorious pools of shadow to give contrast and relaxation after the stimulation of early autumn colour.
My early morning walk had gusts of biting wind and brilliant sunshine. This whole blog could have been about the early signs of autumn getting a firmer grip on our daily lives, but between then and now I have attended a committee meeting and one word that I heard there knocked fading summer out of the blog for today.
Salmagundi in the context of our committee meeting was used as a word for a potluck supper. A meal or feast,for many, created by everyone attending bringing a plate of food to share.
Google suggests that the primary meaning of Salmagundi is of a mixed salad. But the words use to suggest a mixture in many different scenarios is also well established.
This, in a funny way also describes the weather between Summer and Autumn arrivng from all directions and a huge variety of textures; and the process of holding committee meetings, the opinions and experiences of a variety of people. In both cases different things come together to create a group experience.
A new word, for me, is a huge excitement, one that I am happy to share.
Yesterday was a surprise. Dawn was mighty fine and then I went to work at a gallery/exhibition that had been running for nearly a week with no publicity. I definitely anticipated a slow start but was pleased to see that there had been a few sales.
Red dots at a gallery signify that a piece of art is sold. The work is either taken away at the time or left in the gallery until the exhibition ends. A mix of both greeted me when I arrived and soon after we had a steady stream of visitors through our, quite remarkable, door.
There must have been something in the air because both myself and the other steward each sold a piece of our own work within an hour of being there.
Obviously, we couldn’t do the traditional artist happy dance of backflips and somersaults because we were in such an old and precious building. But the sentiment was the same without risk to life or limbs. I have a feeling this is going to be a memorable exhibition.
My plan for when the exhibition was quiet was to take loads of photographs to share our beautiful location on this blog. Now that has to be a job for another day. If you live anywhere near the Tamar Valley a trip to Cotehele in the autumn is always a colourful experience. Our art group has just added a little bit of extra interest.
There is an irony to this blog. For the last ten days I have had loads of time to do Social Media for an art exhibition at Cotehele, a National Trust Property on the Cornish side of the Tamar Valley. The National Trust asked us not to do any Social Media during the mourning period for HRH Queen Elizabeth II. Today I am actually at Cotehele and free to do Social Media and I have two problems. Firstly we are really busy and secondly there is hardly any signal. This blog will be published by me visiting the bowling green, hopefully, or perhaps by waving my arms at the Dovecote. Another touch of British eccentricity if the last ten days have not seen enough of it.
Working at a National Trust property is always a treat, I am sitting in a room that was a bed chamber in 1485 or possibly earlier as that date is the first of the recorded redevelopments.
For now my lovely readers I am off to wave my phone on the bowling green. Failing that, who could begin to guess, this is a medieval house there could be somewhere even more delightful to get a signal.
Sharp December sun was a gift that just kept giving. Even Miss Spearmint was not going to miss a moment of it.
I took a trip up the Tamar to Cotehele, a Tudor Mansion on the Cornish Bank of the river. Cotehele is a regular pre Christmas trip. Rarely in such gorgeous sunlight though. The Christmas Garland in the Tudor Hall is a longstanding Advent tradition. COVID has had its destructive way with the Garland and things are not as colourful or vibrant as in a normal year. The home grown flower heads could not be grown in such enormous quantities, with lock downs and lower numbers of available gardeners on the estate.
The Garland is still pretty impressive, but because it was less grand and attention seeking than normal it was easier to notice the smaller decoration details of the Great Hall. Simple Honesty bunches captured in the last, bright, shards of the afternoon sun.
A great picture to give a little digital tweak to.
And just like that it was time for the sun take its leave.
This is the last photograph I took in March 2020 before the first Covid-19 lockdown in Britain. It was mid afternoon at Cotehele and I was recovering from a nasty virus. My last virus as it happens, a welcome benefit of adhering to Covid restrictions is that @theoldmortuary we’ve been virus free for a year now despite doing public facing/touching jobs.
In colour this picture is nothing much. Reeds on a managed flood plain on a typically greige day in the Tamar Valley. What the colour picture would never have shown was the amazing sound that was produced as the wind blew through the reeds. I took the picture just to remind me of that sound. True Whispering Grasses.
Really the original picture was nothing much, just a diary note to remind me of a lovely serendipitous sound on a walk that was being done more out of a sense of necessity and desperation than for pleasure.
I tinkered about with the image altering the contrast and then converted it into black and white.
Ta Da!!
A dull photo has turned into a sound. Not perhaps the gentle sound of whispering grasses, although I can hear them when I look at this with an imagined low volume. If I switch it up to medium volume I hear the interference on a television in the eighties or nineties when the signal was lost. Up a notch again and it is the feedback on a performers mic ( when ever have I felt nostalgic about that piercing scream ) it could also be, currently, two people having different Zoom meetings with their laptops too close together. My final auditory assault from one picture is this.
Imagine sketching it in chalk on an old school blackboard.
I’m fairly certain that last suggestion was not kind. The link below is a gentle salve to give you a good earworm for Friday. The mellifluous Sandy Denny.
I chose to take my one hour exercise on the Cotehele Estate in the late afternoon. I had slightly misjudged things and the sun had already left the valley. Everything was already in shadow and a little bit chilly. But once my walk was done driving out over the rim of the valley I caught the end of a beautiful sunset.
It seems really important to make my one outing of the day count.
In other news Ive started to knit a scarf on really small needles , I anticipate I might just finish it with this latest lockdown set to run and run. It will be a very dull scarf and will only feature in blogs when my mind is an empty echo chamber with dust in the corners and fragments of ponderings caught between thought and keyboard.
theoldmortuary.design 