I love fresh air moments. Early summer mornings in a park or by the sea before the day has fully got going.
Time to make tiny inconsequential pleasantries with fellow early morning souls.
What I would question is my passion for fresh air.
Passion seems such a hot, engulving sensation. I feel a little odd attaching the word passion to such a mundane activity as taking a walk in a park.
But walking in fresh air several times a day is something I really enjoy.
Why am I required to be passionate about doing something so simple ? I prefer to hover somewhere below passion and well above hatred for most of my daily activities. I suppose it could be said that I am passionate about moderation. No giddy excesses or plunging desperation involved with moderation.
The moment the last Christmas visitor leaves I am alert to the first signs of Spring. Snowdrops are the first sign but bunches of supermarket daffodils are more reliable and achievable, living as I do in a coastal area of a city.
Although my love for Spring is genuine, there is an element of it also being an escape from dull, wet, winters. This year there was no escaping dull and wet. Spring failed to lift my rain averse mood until quite recently. All will be well now until Christmas with just a minor mood dip in autumn when all the fabulous orange and russet colours are hijacked by the faustian pact made between retailers and fools for the Western Worlds Dance Macabre of Halloween, in all its tacky plastic nastiness. I survive, just about, with my obsessive love of pumpkins.
The anticipation and revelation of Spring is what encourages me through winter once the Christmas Spirit has slipped away.
Spring is the season that opens the door to summer, autumn and early winter. Seasons that encourage giddiness and frivolity.
I suppose I have never quite engaged with winter. I try to seek out the positives but they really are pretty elusive. I know that the arrival of Spring is like opening a dark chamber of dankness and illuminating it with fragile sunbeams. Just like a bear I could happily sleep through it and be woken with a nice cup of tea served on a tray with a biscuit and a small vase of daffodils.
My blog already has a tagline which works equally well for me as a human.
Pondering something nearly everyday.
Today’s pondering involves a pair of small Crocs.
A few years ago a small pair of Turquoise crocs were kept by our kitchen door. A daily reminder of a small person, a grandchild, who had moved thousands of miles away at 18 months old.
These orange crocs belong to another grandchild who lives 10 miles away. We only realised this week that we were stepping into unknown territory. A grandchild that we will interact with much more often, who is forming her own opinions.
The crocs are not just symbolic. We don’t let her into the yard without shoes on. Although I regularly pop out with bare feet. This did not impress her last week. So now we both have a pair of crocs by the back door and I am the one who needs to remember to put shoes on too.
To navigate this new small creature with her own mind I have a book that will, I hope, give me insight into 21st Century thinking.
I love that my own ideas on raising children are ‘ So last Century’
I am looking forward to reading and learning current thinking for the under fives, but I am very aware that a small person certainly thought I was being naughty or transgressive for going into the yard barefoot. I may need to get her her own book.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
I am a devourer of books, which is why I anonymised my book pile for this blog. My list of books that have had an impact would be bigger than 3. But in my reading life, 3 is the magic number. I tend to have 3 books on the go at any one time.Sometimes 4.
1. My current fiction book of choice.
2. A non-fiction book . History, Biography or some other subject.
3. A digital book or audio book stored on my smartphone.
(4) My Bookclub book if it doesn’t sit comfortably in 1,2 or 3.
Currently Book Club books are the books most likely to have an impact on me. 1,2 and 3 are self-selected and what I would choose to read, but a book club book often knocks me off my reading orbit. The most enriching thing about a book club book is my book club. Once a month I get to talk in depth or in a flippant way about the book we have all read.
There is something rather marvellous about being able to talk about a book that has been read by a group of people at the same time and then being able to talk about the book, regardless of whether I enjoyed it, with other people.
The book was written in 2011 and nicely sums up my point about reading a book at the same time with a group of people.
If we had read this in 2011 the conversations that swirled around our different interpretations of this book would have been significantly different to the conversations that were had this week in June 2024.
The impact that any book has is dependent on when and where it has been read. That makes the word ‘impact’ a much more fluid concept.
Aren’t books wonderful?
An audiobook has had me crying into my white paint pot this week while I have been labouring on my white walls.
The idea of colour blocking outside came from an Interior Design Book.
How could anyone expect me to choose just 3 books?
Huge thanks to my fellow bookworms for opening the doors and windows of books, that I would never have crossed the threshold of without your company and some hand holding
Most mornings before I write the blog I have a little canter through various on-line, news-gathering services, check out the 3rd party blog prompt, and consider the blog I was planning to write. One thing jumped out from news gathering that is quite pertinent to todays blog. Also the 3rd party prompt has only a one sentence answer. A gloriously simple answer that I could have used on any of my many days on earth.
What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today? My skin.
Yesterday I did two very small paintings. They are somewhere between abstract and representational, closer to abstract.
One of the articles I read this morning was about, Euphoric recall.
My life, in my old skin, is pretty much one long example of euphoric recall. My two paintings of yesterday are far more euphoric than real life. Maritime Sunburst Lichen is one of my favourite things to see on rocks.
Here it is in its active stage.
But as it ages it flattens out and leaves circular scars.
On sunny winter days it just makes me smile. My abstracts of yesterday were painted from memory with no reference images. I just threw in some dutch gold to brighten them up , they are exactly euphoric recall because some days even Sunburst Lichen can look pretty dull.
But in my head, the lichens are gaudy circles of natural joy.
Which is very much an example of euphoric recall at its finest.
In general my blogs are all about the joyous things in life even if sometimes the inspiration point starts off in a darker place.
Wednesday ‘ hump’ day and a chance to answer a 3rd Party prompt that has been circling my mind since I first read it and decided not to bother with it. But actually circles or going round in circles is appealing as an answer and doesnt knock the planned blog off the page.
Are you a leader or a follower?
As an absolute magpie for information, both necessary and unnecessary, I am an instinctive follower. All the better to learn new stuff from people ahead of me. I have vast pots of information stored in my head.
I call it information and not knowledge because to quote my exasperated Dad, ‘I am a mine of useless information’. Despite being an instinctive follower I am more than capable as a leader, even if that is sometimes accidental. To get back to the proposed blog. I have been pondering the recent death of someone that I had an awkward, or difficult relationship with. I am not alone in finding her difficult but my conundrum was that despite our differences I could see her many good qualities and her death has both surprised and saddened me. It has also galvanised me, as these things often do, to live my life as fully and as engagedly as possible. A sort of mental energy burst. It bothers me when I don’t completely like people and, as I have discovered that becomes harder when they have died.
Luckily for me, a very clever poem to mark the death of someone who had difficult relationships has slightly rescued my circling mind.
If I Had A Voice by Caroline Wilkes
If I had a voice now It would be loving And I would say thank you for all of your care. If I had a voice now I’d want to tell you I’m sorry for not always wanting to be there. My life, it confused you, it did so to me. But I am released now and my heart is free. The heart that was hidden beneath all the pain, It felt so much more than I could explain. And if I had a voice now, I’d say out loud I love you, I wish that I’d made that clear. And in my lifetime I need you to know That I was much more than I did appear. These are things that I’d say through choice… if I had a chance and if I had a voice
I think this nicely demonstrates how learning something from someone else. In this case the admirable Dr Google, can circle a follower into a leader.
You may never have met this poem before. But you almost certainly have had some difficult relationships with people who have since died. Maybe all of this poem works for the conundrum of difficult relationships. Or maybe, like me, just one or two lines do the trick. Maybe just for a moment I have led you to some useful words.
Fantail Fish
So to conclude I believe leading and following are often the same thing from different viewpoints.
The 3rd party prompt today needs this shot from my high-tide evening swim.
I think I am largely oblivious to what freedom means to me, because I have always had it, and I am lucky enough to have never got close to losing freedom because of my individual life choices or those of World Powers.
There were very differing opinions on Britain’s place as a Nuclear Power among the swimmers and bobbers at Tranquillity Bay last night.
Freedom to have differing opinions is a wonderful thing.
If I ever had a career plan, I almost certainly didn’t stick to it effectively. Now I am officially post-career I could retrospectively chart my career in a linear way that might, quite falsely suggest that I had followed a plan or pathway. This morning I had a blogging plan, which did not involve using a 3rd party prompt. But that blog proved to be a little unwieldy. Instead of blogging, I set out to do an early dog walk, ponder my pondering and hopefully return home with a blog in the bag, so to speak.
A chance encounter with a friend, who was talking on his phone inspired both this blog and my 3 hours of mindful painting that was planned for this morning. And I could use the 3rd party prompt which burnishes my algorithms. What woman would not want enhanced algorithms.
A five second conversation.
” Juliet, you’ve inspired me to start writing again”
8 words.
He inspired me with that lovely comment.
What was inspiring me in that moment.
I wanted to explore the 3 colours + white of the Wisteria I had walked a few miles to see yesterday.
Blue,pink,green +white.
Why mindful painting? Just 3 colours mixed any way filling predrawn spheres. Easy to do while my mind and nattering were certain to be running away with me.
One Thursday a month I meet up with a group of creative makers and artists. We create, chatter and drink coffee. I try to always take something to do that I can do, while fully participating in the swirling conversations that fill the airspace over our creative table.
The subjects of conversation today were-
1. An upcoming exhibition
2. A Tree Festival ( hot💥 topic in Plymouth, for all the wrong reasons.)
3. The history of the Merkin.
4. An alpha male in an art group that most of us belong to.
5. To have,or not to have, a second coffee.
6. Spanish rescued dogs.
7 Brixton SW9 ( London).
8. The pleasure of seeing foreign servicemen in uniform.
9. How much free parking do people have left.
10. When will we next meet.
Looks nothing like the Wisteria that inspired the colour choices.
But playing around with the colours will certainly help when I do the actual painting. Below, tweaking saturation and black point, making the whole thing a bit zingier.
Overlaying these 3 pictures.
Gives me this interesting piece.
My career plan was, pretty much, to not plan. Just like this colour exercise this morning. Lets just see where we end up, and if I inspired anyone along the way that was a bonus.
Careers like life should be a journey not a destination.
I think it is not what I do in my community but why that is important.
For the record, despite not playing competitive tennis for fifty years I do some admin and Social Media for my local tennis club and host, with others, a regular artists meet up.
I do it because both my mum and her mum were active in their communities. They did far more significant things than I will ever do. Where that sense of community kindness came from I will never know. They both worked to earn an income but also did unpaid work that benefitted their communities.
My grandmother ran a rural pub with her husband and a rural taxi service with her lover. The two businesses and relationships seemed to co-exist and compliment each other peacefully. Who better to drive the inebriated customers home than the landlords wife. Doubling their money.
Being both the publicans wife and the local taxi service gave her an insight into the gaps in her community. She filled those gaps where she could with kindness and help. Lonely or isolated people knew that on a Sunday if they nursed a single pint until closing time at 2 PM they would be invited to join the large family roast dinner that my grandad always cooked and served in their farmhouse kitchen. On Christmas Day so many people lingered that trestle tables were set up in the Public Bar.
My mum was a legal and medical secretary. In her spare time in the early sixties she set up clinics that provided women with contraception and sexual health care. Like her mum she saw the gaps in her community, domestic violence and child poverty and did what she could to help. Ultimately her voluntary role became her career but that was never the plan.
A little bit of kindness is always useful in any community. You just have to spot the gap that suits your abilities and your community.
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