What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?
Optimism is the most important thing to keep in my pocket, along with my smartphone.I don’t quite understand the point of pessimism. I am not rude enough to cancel pessimists,they have some valid views and can be interesting to talk to, but draining at the same time. I am pathetically optimistic although completely accepting of the serendipity of life including the, sometimes unpalatable, negative aspects.
Describe your life in an alternate universe.
I have no idea when I last updated my Facebook Avatar. More than six years ago for certain. I have paid her very little attention. Today I was surprised when she popped up next to a comment I was about to send to a friend.
I have morphed into my Avatar without even trying. I own those glasses, white t shirts and a Chartreuse Cardigan.
Twenty years ago this was her.
Nothing more to be pondered. I am a woman who ditched a Basque for a cardi !
Describe one habit that brings you joy.
We have a family habit that has brought joy for more than 30 years.sAnd We are lucky enough to live within easy reach of all of the great tourist attractions of Devon and Cornwall. The place we visit most often is The Lost Gardens of Heligan near Mevagissey. We go so often we almost certainly don’t take the iconic pictures the location deserves but we do get some quirky shots most times we visit.
Today the mud maiden looked very relaxed.
And the Head Gardeners office never fails to charm me.
There are places to find peace, like this simple white greenhouse.
But for the most part today we did what a small person wanted to do and that meant hide and seek in all of the varied garden areas and dog walking on the beautiful lawns.
Somewhat amazingly we were there, almost when the doors opened until closing time.We would actually have been there at opening time but we had a traffic hold up on the way.
Action shot of us overtaking a steam engine on a narrow Cornish lane. It all added to the joy of the day. Link below to the Website of the Lost Gardens of Heligan.
What are you curious about?
This is the very best sort of reading to start the day with, curiosity in book form. Since leaving the committee of Drawn to the Valley last year, I have had very little to do with the nuts and bolts of organizing the current programme of events. For local readers there are two more days to visit the Summer Exhibition in Tavistock.
This book is a joy to read and shows exactly how far Drawn to the Valley has come from those dark years of the Covid and post-Covid complexities of running a fairly large arts organisation in a geographically widespread location.
After 5 years as a member of the organisation these pages are now filled with the work of artists that I have met and shared creative journeys with. Many of them are my friends and teachers.
The page below shows how successful one of my projects has become.
Creative Tables has spread over the length and breadth of the Tamar Valley. Started to bring artists back together after the isolation of the Covid Lock-down in Plymouth. Creative Tables now operates monthly meetings in several different locations.
This book also shows how one life feeds into another as some of the people in the exhibition photographs are also bobbers and one artist has painted gig rowing the only team sport I have ever loved.
I was never quite so glam in my rowing days. Another curiosity for me is which piece of art will tempt me at Open studios. There are many walls in my house with work by Drawn to the Valley artists.
Curiosity is a superpower, it can take you to the most fabulous places even when sat in bed with a cup of tea and a fabulous brochure.
Write about a random act of kindness you’ve done for someone.
I find this to be rather a curious prompt for Jetpack to set. A random act of kindness, in my opinion, is an anonymous and unheralded event. I absolutely believe that kindness is a super power and that a little bit can go a long way. People who are inherently kind,are my kind of people, the other, opposite sort of people are best avoided or treated with caution. I also believe in kindness to myself, and that perhaps is the only random act of kindness I am prepared to go public about.
Toxic people with their own agendas are a sad fact of life. No amount of kindness can dent their self-belief or carapace of malevolence. Often they wear a cloak of charm or even generosity. The older I get the more I give myself the permission to mitigate their behaviour by simply disengaging. This is one of the absolute bonuses of being a self-employed artist rather than a salaried person in a big organization.
As a kindness to myself avoidance becomes a positive.
What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?
My parents were young people with a small child in the sixties. Traditions were thrown out of their lives with the same enthusiasm as many of their generation. Christmas was perhaps their most ‘traditional’ time
One tradition was my dads desire to gift both business and personal diaries to family members on Boxing Day. In the United Kingdom that is the day after Christmas day. Whatever would people think in 2023 if I kept that tradition going. Diary and calendar use has truly fallen off a cliff with most people keeping an electronic diary. The Filofax was the first death blow to traditional diaries and that was quickly passed over for electronic memory jogging.
For some years I managed with an electronic diary but once I returned to doing complex shifts and on-calls I really needed a paper record, the chance of running out of a phone battery at the point someone wanted to swap a complex set of shifts was more common than you might think. At that point I returned to the flexibility of a filofax and have stuck with it. No risk of battery failure but a big risk of being not to hand at the exact moment I need it.
There is a poignancy to diaries and my dad. He died unexpectedly and suddenly from bowel cancer in the middle of treatment. His treatment plan carefully plotted two months beyond his life. I still have that diary. I now know that it was his decision to stop treatment when the odds of it giving him a good quality of life were slipping away.
On a lighter note, as you see from the only photo my filofax is not a thing of tidyness or order.
Was today typical?
If today was yesterday, it was not completely typical. The long distance swimmers,who are also bobbers, took off from our usual bobbing location, but for a longer distance swim with very little chatting. What was not so typical was that a bright red Royal Navy ship sailed past the bobbing zone making the whole thing more colourful.
Normally bobbers are tiny orange dots swimming in the sea with military grey ships sailing past. Not so yesterday. HMS Protector sailed past as they were swimming out. Link below for information.
news/navy/onboard-hms-protector-royal-navys-ice-patrol-ship
If we think our waters can be chilly at times, this ship spends most of its working life in the Antarctic. It has just been in Plymouth for a bit of a spruce up and training. The bobbers were not the only bright things in the sea yesterday.
Which activities make you lose track of time?
Pretty much anything can make me lose track of time. My most popular time to lose track of time is between 10 am and 3pm.
There is a standard list of things that are usually completed by 10 am, including writing this daily blog. Then I can lose myself in a task for a solid 5 hours until the need for a cup of tea and a snack pulls me out of concentrating, sometime between 2pm and 3:30pm. After the snack I clear up whatever the task was and begin my regular late afternoon plans. A dog walk tends to book-end my productive phase. What puzzles me about the productive period of the day is how variable my output is. There are days when I am shocked at the level of my achievement and others where I wonder what an earth I achieved in those 5 hours. One of life’s mysteries I suppose.
Another place to lose track is cold water swimming, or bobbing as our group of friends call it. There was nothing glam about last night’s bob but three of us bobbed about in this grey and misty environment for more than half an hour last night. The clocks of mind and body were stopped, recalibrated and refreshed by effortless chatter and some swimming. Dressing was particularly challenging as it was raining. Skin that is coated with seawater just gets really sticky when touched by rainwater. Before I realised I had been out of the house more than a hour and a half. The beach is only a five minute walk away.
In conclusion losing track of time seems to be something I am very good at.
If you were forced to wear one outfit over and over again, what would it be?
I have an outfit that goes everywhere with me. Under any unusual or unplanned circumstances I can appear perfectly prepared. My failsafe garment is a long, black, linen dress. At more than ten years old it is a little grey with wear but it still fits the category of little black dress. It can easily be dyed, again, to be a Bible-black dress worthy of her original beauty . Most importantly the dress has two side pockets. I will never again buy a dress without side pockets. Whenever I travel it travels with me. Even on the most minuscule of trips.
Last week it went to Wales with me. On its own it could have been a beach dress but blinged up with some massive beads it could easily have taken me to a posh restaurant or an evening of live music.
The beads come from an old broken necklace and some beaded curtain tie backs from the eighties. The beads travel with the dress. They are the basic kit, but if packing space allows two other items squeeze in next to the little black dress.
A pair of Moccasin mules from Canada and a long length silk coat in the style of a Gentlemans Smoking Jacket from Hong Kong.
While we were in Abersoch I admired the hat our host Tricia was wearing. Then randomly in my favourite Charity shop I found one with a very similar vibe.
With just this one additional item my go anywhere kit could go anywhere. The hat is by an internationally renowned Milliner Sandra Phillips. Posh Wedding, The Royal Enclosure or a Buckingham Palace Garden Party. I have the full kit and caboodle.
The beauty of this capsule, get me looking fab outfit is the cost.
Dress £100 Flax from Dulwich Trader 10 years ago.
Beads approx £5 made from a broken necklace and curtain tiebacks from a Charity shop. Recreated 5 years ago.
Moccasin mules, £20 Zara Sale, Toronto. Last year
Silk Smoking Jacket, £20, Zara Ultra reduced Sale, Hong Kong Airport. 7 years ago.
Silk and straw hat. £10. Sandra Phillips at the local Hospice Charity Shop today.
£135 spent over the past 10 years on this capsule wardrobe. The dress may well have been worn 500 times, could easily be more.
Nothing phases this ensemble. I have even slept in the dress and babies love the beads, they are indestructible.
What do you think gets better with age?
Before deciding to use this prompt I read a few other blogs that had also chosen to go with this particular flow. Wisdom, Sex, God(s) and Acceptance all get a good going over by bloggers with mixed results, in my opinion.
I have no such certainty, in the few hours I have pondered this thought I have been going round in so many ponderous mental circles that I feel even more uncertain as to my definitive answer.
Right now at 08:13 I have settled on being both less conscious and more conscious of being my genuine self. Society moulds us in many ways. Always an introvert I have moved through life being self-effacing* hiding behind so many self-created masks.
* Someone who’s self-effacing is shy and likes to stay out of the spotlight, shunning attention and praise. To efface something is to erase it, so to be self-effacing is to try to remove yourself from various situations, especially ones that draw attention.
David Bowie with his multiple stage personnas or Drag Queens seem to me to have the perfect way of being.
A lovely, big, public personality that can take praise and adoration easily and humbly. A personality that can be slipped off at the end of the show, leaving the real person to slip out of the stage door anonymously without the need for dark glasses and an upturned collar.
Much as I would have liked to go through life in the style of Ziggy Stardust or Lily Savage that was never appropriate. So my characters looked exactly like me but with more Chutzpah*
*The positive aspect of chutzpah, which is more likely to lead to positive outcomes, revolves primarily around being confident, daring, and brazen.
I realise now, with age that self-effacing is a fairly daft way to go about life. But even as I write this I realise that being a brash ‘ out-there’ person was an impossible lifestyle choice for me. I so dislike the aura around Alpha Humans.
What has got better with age is knowing my own worth and finding somewhere in the middle ground. Not so self-effacing, more sequins and twinkle.
Less Dandelion; more Firework, occasionally!
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