#celebratingserendipity. Some time ago I was given a topic to weave into a blog. I just had to wait for my moment. Here we are in mid-Twixmas and this prompt just landed in my lap
If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?
If I started a sports team I would adopt the colours of Dulwich Hamlet Football Club, my local team in London.
The beautiful heart of this club changes many of the awkward things that occur around football.
Nobody needs a sausage as a mascot, especially near armistice day. Sports mascots showing a mark of respect with a minute’s silence have become an Instagram and X regular feature around the 11th of November.
So my sports club would have the colours and heart of Dulwich Hamlet.
And my mascot would be the beautiful Bourkes Parakeet.
So much more able to show respect than a giant sausage. And no awkward photographs.
Only a week until the Winter Solstice and the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere. I am not a fan of the shorter days of winter. Dark by 6pm is just about tolerable with daybreak at about 8am and is about as long a night as I need in winter.The extra shortness of days in December and January are, to me, unacceptable.The hours not in darkness should be cold, crisp and bright with sunshine. Is that too much to ask for?
Despite disliking the short day aspect of December and January I have never actively sought out winter sun to break the mood. I am drawn to the folklore around a Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice. I find it fabulously creative and intriguing, but the further north you go the shorter the days are. Not for me. My perfect trip at this time of year would need to be further South but hold something of the darker aspects of the Winter Solstice. Greece turns out to be perfect for my needs. At this time of year. They have the Kallikantzaros, mythical bad lads, not dissimilar to trolls or gnomes. Slightly longer days and sea water at a temperature that I would happily swim in certainly sweetens the deal.
Which takes me to the answer for today’s prompt.
What cities do you want to visit?
Nafplion is already a favourite city for three seasons of visits, now I have discovered that winter can provide me with angry, hairy creatures at Winter Solstice, there really is no reason not to visit in December.
No reason not to park overlooking the sea.
No reason not to enjoy a coffee in a back street.
And no reason not to enjoy a Greek sunset in December.
With the possibility of meeting some mythical angry, hairy creatures. Winter solstice goals all in the one small, Greek city.
Although this image uses a black and white filter the one below is untouched.
I thought my morning photos would be more pleasing. In addition to all the grey there were red buoys in the water and a red-hulled tanker. It took an awful lot of digital tweaking to reveal the red photographically.
Fortunately my day was not monchrome but the colour did come from an unexpected source.
This was the November book for the bookclub I belong to. It was not my cup of tea.
My bookclub meetings are a monthly highlight. The chance to talk about a particular book, as chosen, and all the other books the group have read is wonderful. November’s book was devisive. I think it would be fair to say no-one enjoyed it in a pleasure sense. But that sometimes reading a book that is a hard and at times uncomfortable read is an experience to be treasured for different reasons. I have included a review of the book if anyone is interested.
A book that the book club struggles with creates the most fascinating conversations. A roomful of women with vivid and different life experiences makes for the most wide ranging and thought provoking discussions. We trust one another and share intimate and personal reminiscences that inform and influence how we feel about the books we read. Despite the book being a bit of a hard graft and not particularly my thing the benefits of reading it with a group were huge and our two hour meeting bought colour and texture to my day that the weather was clearly not going to do. I was a little over-caffeinated but I think I kept a lid on my gabbling. Others may disagree.
The caffeine continued to rule my day, and half of the night. I arrived 24 hours and four minutes early for a performance with a choir I have joined. So in answer to todays prompt for bloggers…
Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
Yes , of course, but not last night. In other news the target object of yesterdays blog is up in the bathroom.
What is something others do that sparks your admiration?
I spend my entire life in admiration for the skills of others. Even skills that I would never wish to have. This picture is a case in point. How do people become App designers and what skills does it require. My life is enriched massively by Apps and yet I know nothing about that career choice.
App design could not be further from my skillset and yet with the use of Apps on my phone I have managed to create a ponder out of this one picture. Just by googling and exploring my google picture file more fully than I usually do.
We came upon this ornate back gate, in Venice on one of our meanderings. I wasn’t sure how to weave it into a blog or if I would ever use it. But it enchants me so I googled the name over the gate and a blog emerged. This blog is all delicious serendipity.
In a gorgeous twist of serendipity Claude Monet had been here before us, in 1908.
The front entrance of Ramo De Ca Dario
Like me Claude was a little reluctant to visit Venice.
I don’t know what Claude’s reluctance was, mine was caused by a particularly smelly visit many years ago. The visit had shattered my illusions but I am so glad I returned and just like Claude I am already planning another visit. Which takes me back to App appreciation. My phone can tell me exactly where and when I took this photo.
It can also show me all the photos that I took nearby.
This just blows me away, I can be incredibly lazy. My phone tells me there is an App update. I usually diligently do a download and think no more about it but App uploads are not just about better functionality. Sometimes really useful new features appear. The little black dots mark out the photos I took on one particular day and the route of my 20,000 steps. This is such a useful tool for planning future visits. So much more to see…
Braintree Library was a short walk from my mothers workplace. From a very young age the building became my childcare facility. My mum’s best friend was a Librarian here so that sentence is not as neglectful as it may seem. How I wish I had followed her career path or something similar and had a working life amongst books and words.
Starfield Library, Gangnam, Seoul.
Somewhere there must be a couple of theses that I wrote. Gathering dust, written and bound, skulking in a university library. Created before the digital age, they contain my thoughts on medical imaging . There is also a more recent one called Finding the Erotic in Nature, but on the whole my words are unpublished. My anonymous boobs appeared in a medical textbook and a published Fine Art Photography book. Normal boobs, not the glamorous variety. The only book in a library that has me as a named contributor is this one.
And in a way it links back to my early days in Braintree Library. My mothers workplace, close to the library was, a radical at the time, sexual health clinic. When the call out for pillows to commemorate and celebrate women whose work made a difference to society I submitted a design that was accepted for a travelling exhibition and book.
The exhibition went to some fabulous places. Maybe 10 prestigious institutions.
So in one way or another, in a very minor way I will forever be in a library. But in the real world way, whenever my path takes me close to a library and time permits, I am likely to pop in.
Serendipity comes in all shapes and forms. This question landed just as I had done the morning dog walk.
A beautiful creamy morning in December. Such a fab illustration for a blog with this question at its heart.
I am neither a night or a morning person. Greedily I love both. Once I passed the age of 30 it was obvious that I could no longer have both with the ease of youth but I can still happily enjoy the night until it bleeds into the morning. 2 or 3 am can be vivid in a way rarely found in their pm counterparts. The jolting, head nods of the early afternoon are one of my worst pieces of behaviour. They have plagued me all my life. How dreadful is that?
Finding ourselves in the corner of an Art gallery.
After Coffee and Architecture the hunt for Art Galleries and tiny gardens was our motivation and route maker in Venice. The Peggy Guggenhein Collection was a fabulous destination because,not only did it have all three targeted pleasure points, but the building itself it was also the subject of a book I had chosen as my holiday read.
A faacinating book because so many of the artists who were previously unknown to us, and many who are well known put in frequent appearances in the book. Palazzo Venier was the home to three unusual art and artist-loving women. Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim.
The corners of this Palazzo hold so many secrets. I am not sure about defining interesting women by the amount or variety of sexual partners they have. But while living in this very peaceful and calm building these women lived quite the life. And goodness me this book tells the reader that this house has seen some action. Not just artistic types either. Churchill visited for R and R and happy endings when, given that he was a World Leader his mind should quite properly have been elsewhere.
The last owner before this home became a gallery is buried in the beautiful garden courtyard with her beloved dogs. Which answers, for her, the question below.
What are your favorite animals?
After an international life of great wealth and the friendship of some of the world’s most famous artists. Peggy Guggenheim chose to be buried beneath Venetian skies with her pet dogs.
It is easy to imagine how that decision was made. There is an astonishing sense of peace and calm under the blue skies of a November day in her last resting place.
My favourite painting from this particular collection of hers is also superbly peaceful. Which proves, I suppose that peace can be found anywhere if you look hard enough.
I do trust my instincts to hunt for interesting images, but for accurate travelling I trust the App Citymapper far more. Our last few days in Rome and the daily 20,000 step count has got us to exactly where we have needed to be, thanks to Citymapper. Once we have delivered ourselves to the right location it is time to trust instinct to fine tune the hunt for the unusual. Rome was extraordinarily full of texture, history and Faith.
There is an awful lot of bling involved in Catholicism, not my thing at all. But I found a simple iron cross, some Sgraffito and some votive candles in a tiny back street. I layered the three together to get a much more humble image of the textures of Christianity than is normal for Rome.
Texture was definitely the defining experience of walking around Rome. Everything is beautiful and fascinating but the small unplanned details stopped us in our tracks.
Every excursion challenged our feet and minds. Pavements were poorly maintained but older cobbled areas maintained their integrity.
Gorgeous buildings were connected by slightly tatty walls but with so much more interest than a perfectly plastered finish
But history also found its way through perfect plastering.
In my city or any other I always like to regularly inhabit coffee shops. Particularly independent or very very small chain coffee shops. As I write this I am heading towards Italy, some would argue that I am heading to the worlds leading coffee nation. I am sure that soon enough I will have some good coffee stories to share.
A little extra ponder for the weekend. I am currently reading Mothers Boy by Patrick Gale.
Normally I might not answer this prompt but this particular book, author and subject are almost the foundation of my love of reading . The Mother’s Boy at the centre of this novel is the poet Charles Causley who wrote a poem called Timothy Winters.
At the heart of the poem is a disadvantaged boy living in post-war Britain. Someone whose opportunities the Welfare State was designed to improve. It was probably the first working class poem I had ever been exposed to.
I have stuck with Causley ever since. Then I moved near to Launceston where he lived and became familiar with the geography of his home town. This beautiful portrait of him was done by an artist I know.
I have read many factual books about Charles Causley but this fictional version, based on facts, of his life is so enjoyable. By an author who never puts a foot wrong, in my opinion. I am having a good weekend in my bookish moments
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