How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
I failed to write an early blog today, hopefully this apparent failure will set me up for later success, now, as I gather my words. Blogging at a snails pace I believe. There are many reasons I should have got my printing on the go more than a month before the exhibition opens. Today is a case in point. Real life still goes on, cars and vans need servicing and M.O.T’s. Life admin needs attending to and dogs need walking. Then the sun popped up in the studio and printing embellishment needed to be embellished.
Some embellishment is just a bit of type writing and a little bit of twinkle.
My mother would be ashamed, she was a very accomplished typist. Speed and accuracy. I am slow and inaccurate. Good enough in the digital world of a laptop but truly I have sausage fingers on my old typewriter. Sometimes I forget the gap between words. Either a whole mistress piece goes in the bin or I have to hope that people are charmed by my typos.
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
The sun was shining.
Just about everything in life feels more tolerable if the sun is shining. I was born in mid-November in the north of the Northern Hemisphere, so my first three months were spent being sun-deprived. Since that dreary start in life, I have been a gatherer or snatcher of sunshine moments. Two days ago sunshine at 5 pm was such a huge treat, I celebrated with an ice cream despite an outdoor temperature of 5 degrees. My dad was an enthusiastic gatherer of good weather. On mixed weather days, he was jubilant if he had achieved something in the sunny bits.
” Well” he would say, in a happy way. ” I think we have had the best of the day”
Subconsciously I must have adopted his way of thinking. Using sunshine moments wisely is a bit of an imperative, especially in the Winter months when they are in short supply. My early morning dog walk yesterday featured sunshine and a lifeboat.
March is here. My fate or destiny for the day is set. The first sea swim of the new month awaits. I have spent the week mistressing* a new printing technique. Gelli printing. My shoulders are tight from concentration and need the morning swim. I wouldn’t be in this tight time constraint with tight shoulders if I had used the last 18 months wisely. I hadn’t printed since Art School when I planned and curated a print exhibition in a local gallery. In the summer of 2022. The printers I worked with were inspirational and I vowed to take up printing, to be well prepared when the next exhibition happened. I am rubbish at long deadlines. A sensible woman would have done printing courses. Not me! I did a watercolour course and fell back in love with the serendipity and subtlety of pigment in water. I do have a print course booked in two weeks, exactly one week before the exhibition. Meanwhile I am trying to invent a method that involves printing and watercolour. Madness.
This morning a swimming friend sent me the video at the end of the blog. Oh dear!!! My tight shoulders got an early work out as I chuckled and was appalled. I have used those smug phrases.
” I swim all year actually “
Even worse for me, in a distant life I moved from London to Brighton
” Well, Hove, actually” **
In other printing news, next year’s Christmas cards are with the printers. Last use of the C word until the other side of Autumn.
Happy St Davids Day, enjoy the vid.
* I like to rehabilitate the word ‘Mistress’ from its philandering connotations. I don’t need to master anything I am a woman trying to create a mistresspiece.
** ‘Hove actually’ is another, possibly smug, statement known to all who live or have lived on the South Coast.
I’ve always enjoyed my jobs. The art one of the last few years does not bring with it a reliable income but that is the only downside. The job that brought a reliable income had a few more downsides. But both have been enriching experiences. Before my ‘proper’ job I worked from the age of 14-20 in a series of low paid, part-time jobs that could be fitted around education. Nostalgia and the elixir of youth make those jobs and time with minimal responsibility seem like the twinkly moments of employment. I fitted so much variety into those six years. Always at the bottom of the pile of employees, the ‘Saturday’ girls or boys got all the dreadful jobs on any day of the week.
Menial jobs were good for me. I find it easy to spot people who have never done minimum-wage jobs. Just as privileged people who have never been in that position can probably ‘spot’ me. Finding pleasure, and enjoyment, even in the tough, and at times gritty, low-paid jobs was a great lesson to learn.
This time next week we will all be waking up in March. If January was all about recharging and recovering from the pleasures of the Festive Season it also brought some unexpectedly lovely sunny days. Bright shafts of sunlight kick-started early Spring Cleaning and redecorating during February.
No bad thing as February has been relentlessly wet and drear. Global warming in the far south-west of Britain reveals itself damply. Growing up in the Cold War years (1947-1985) nobody talked much about the climate until they did.
As a lover of words it seems interesting that almost with a flick of a switch the media swapped one temperature based threat with another.
I first heard the term ‘ Global Warming’ in about 1984 just as the ‘Cold war’ was limping to a conclusion of sorts. My ponder today is a really naive one. Does the world not take Global Warming seriously because the word warming is one that suggests comfort and cosiness.
Which leads me to today’s random question/prompt.
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
I took far too much advice as a teenager, so overburdening my younger self with more unsolicited advice might be unwelcome. But here I go.
Nobody gets it all right, all of the time. But getting things wrong is often the more interesting path but not the most comfortable.
Study Global Warming.
Plum Beautiful lipstick, Levi’s and Doc Martin boots will still be with you when you are sixty.
I have no idea what bores me. I seem to have made it my life ambition to avoid boredom. I wonder if that is just the way some people are. The painting above is hot off the press and depicts clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Black jeans, blue jumper and an off white silk shirt. It is possible that a woman who could spend 3 hours doing such a painting maybe has no grip on boredom and really should not be commenting.
The technical challenges of painting such a dull subject were fascinating and kept me busy planning how to go about it.
The first stage was to paint the shadows that would fall on the tiles, then print the tiles but masking off the area that would be the clothes.
Have I bored you yet?
Clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Who would ever choose to paint such a thing?
On a less boring note my greetings cards for an upcoming exhibition have just been printed. I am pleased with the way they look.
Life changed and took me along with it. My favourite drinks are time specific. The first caffeinated cup of tea of the day followed swiftly by the first black coffee. Since Covid stole or altered almost all of my sense of taste and smell, my favourite drinks are the ones with many layers of flavour. I am at my flavoursome best in the morning.
After midday I only drink modified water really. This is not a hardship. A whole new world of fruit tea is out there for me to explore. Sadly they are mostly just a few moments of flavour before they just become hot water. Mostly I just drink hot water.
Barszcz, clear Polish Borscht, served in a cup on Christmas Eve was a revelation. Exactly the mix of flavours I need to kick my tastebuds into afternoon action.
By the evening there is no point trying to kick the tastebuds, they are tucked up in bed long before I am. Alcohol has more or less abandoned me.
And this is the point when a prompted blog finds the true path to a ponder. Humans, or at least the ones I mix with are gorgeous hospitable people. They want me and my taste buds to have a good time. Only asking for a cup of hot water or a non-alcoholic drink upsets the balance of hospitality and generosity for most people. I realise now the struggle that it must be to be a non-drinker, by choice or need.
The best gifts to receive are the ones that take you on a journey. To single out one gift as the best I have ever received would be madness. Gifts are such diverse items. A kind word is a gift, as is a small portion of chocolate or a shoulder squeeze or a cup of tea. To stimulate today’s blog I have chosen a recent gift. A book from one friend’s pile to mine. The joy of a random book.
Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.
As all things have for the last few weeks, Saturday started with DIY. The flip side of a recently gifted book showed this image of a woman doing DIY.
Not just any woman dabbling her paintbrush. The world’s best selling author of all time, Agatha Christie. Her old home is less than an hour from us. We have the book so why not go and inspect her brushwork?
The longer I live in Devon the more I realise that the world moves in strange circuits. Particularly for the rich and famous.
Our journey started ordinarily enough at a cafe/coffee shop.
The Almond Thief
The Almond Thief in a building that was once the home of Sir Francis Drake.
Greenway, the home of Agatha Christie. The Greenway Estate was formerly the home of the Gilbert family. Sir Walter Raleigh,the first importer of Tobacco to Europe,was a Gilbert and when this land needed landscaping his chum, Sir Francis Drake,from the Almond Thief Cafe, just happened to have captured a Spanish ship with 166 crew who became prisoners of war who were then gifted to Sir Walter Raleigh’s uncle as ground workers. And that, it seems, is exactly how 16th Century Devon worked. Which completes the coffee shop circle. Back to the book.
Exploring anywhere in February rain is a challenge but we did appreciate all the Spaniards hard work. The grounds were fabulous and the artificially created viewpoints gave hints of gorgeousness but for us just monochrome hints.
10,000 steps in the rain did not give us much time for the house and we had to do it in split shifts for outdoor dog care. But it was amazing, so many stories to tell. But this is a blog about a gift which took me on a journey, as all good gifts should. Plenty of time to natter about Agatha and her lovely house next week.
I loved her lobster plate.
EBay tells me I could have one for £420. Another journey. One I am unlikely to complete.
What’s afoot? Not what we had hoped. Our DIY phase has entered a ‘get someone in phase’ This footprint should be on a floor that looks like a Victorian bathroom. But, when the flooring was delivered, there was a flaw and now we await a new delivery. Once again our minor renovation of the house is slowed down. Which turns out to be a thing! Unknown to us we are part of a new trend in home decorating.
Slow Decorating is a ‘thing’
Our slowness is circumstantial, financial and serendipitous. Some of it is unplanned, like the bathroom floor. Other times we are waiting to find the right thing for the right place. Wherever possible we find second hand or recycled items. Very much as this article suggests.
Magazine article homes are all very well but when the photographer and journalist leave, these homes have to be lived in. Stuff needs to move in and find a home.
Part of our bathroom refurbishment is required because nearly all of the houseplants have decided they want to live in the west facing bathroom . The previous owners had wanted an all grey pleasure dome. We just need to be clean human beings. Juggling these three different design needs has taken us some time to puzzle out. Ripping out all of the new fixtures and fittings would have been the easiest but least ethical or affordable solution. The party bath is currently hosting the plants while they wait for the new floor. It will all work out in the end. Which brings me nicely to today’s blogging prompt, daft question.
If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?
theoldmortuary.design 