Bobbing and bobbers are a regular feature of this blog. Less than 10% of the blogs get a mention because they follow more or less the same structure every time. This is a blog that celebrates the everyday mundanity of life by finding nuggets to ponder. But even I know the detrimental effect of pondering the same nugget too often.
However last night’s bob was special we were all naked.
Sarah, in the middle of this group wanted to walk naked into the sea for her 60th Birthday. It would have been unbobber-like to let her do it alone. Tide and time were perfect yesterday evening.
What a fabulous experience, more laughs and a birthday wish completed.
Heatwaves certainly focus the mind. Chores, domestica and essential tasks are done as early in the mornings, as soon as they can be achieved.
Our little corner of the world had a reprieve yesterday . A sea mist shrouded us in greige for the first couple of hours.
Postcard from the Edge
The greige stayed with us until midday but the temperature gradually rose until we were fully in the hot zone. The Bobbers had a Friday date with a high tide. No more freezing our tits off (twice) as we did on the longest day only 5 days before.
4pm yesterday, after 3 days of an official heatwave, we hit peak pleasure at our watery home.
We do not swim in the tropical waters of Plymouth Hoe West. We swim west of there. There is a commercial port between us and the Tropic of West Hoe.
At the time we were not aware that we were being so short changed by the Sea Temperature Mermaid Goddess.
But really the Bobbers were not the big story of the day. Bobbers bob together for safety. The delightful and multi-faceted friendships are a perfect and wonderful side effect. Safety is enhanced by Coach Andy.
Wet legs for Coach on Solstice Sunday
Coach keeps an eye on our stuff and on us. He has had a really big week bobbingwise, not only did he join us in the water for the Solstice. Only to mid thigh, you have to keep special equipment dry, his phone. Thank goodness for phone probity, yesterday his phone was used for its first ever call to the coastguards.
A passing, off duty, coastguard saw some paddle boarders, perhaps in trouble, being taken beyond the island. But he was not prepared for sea based drama, he had forgotten his phone. Luckily Coach has his phone in pocket and for the first time it was used for dramatic and safety reasons. Completely unbobber related.
Another day another heatwave. Lola and I were up early, to achieve plenty of cooler weather walking and domestica. Freeing up the hotter hours for chatter and chilling. A meeting in the morning required not one but two iced coffees. Then there was an art attack. Not of the Coronary variety. ( I may be from Essex, but I do not drop my aitches, although curiously we do pronounce aitch as haitch)
An actual art attack, when a piece of original art fell off the wall and landed noisily between myself and my gentleman companion. Cool, even in a heatwave we did not skip a beat. Exchanging funny anecdotes is not the time for drama of the arty sort.
Swimming was the antidote to both the heat and art attacks.
Firestone Bay
Less people than the day before, so no need to create a postcard image to protect the identity of beach goers. No big boats to watch. Just a really fast lifeboat. So fast I missed it twice.
And a cute sailing boat, the sailing boat did, however, need the postcard effect because the photo was so bad.
To create the postcard I used the colours of the rocks of Firestone Bay to fill in all the detail lost by very bright sunlight.
The rock of Firestone Bay through Polaroid Sunglasses
Et Voilà
Sailing in Firestone Bay
Not all heatwave days are the same even in the exact same location. Unexpected things always add a different texture to a day.
The bonus of yesterday, was meeting so many people, unexpectedly, for random conversations whilst we were all dodging the effects of overheating.
Overnight we had huge electric storms. The heatwave may be over, we are back to greige, how very drear!
Not very much as it turns out. Keep doors closed and blinds down. Write the blog at 4 a.m in the yard, drinking tea.
Yesterday’s planned social dog walk turned into four women sat on a hillside trying to catch a breeze with our feet in a childrens paddling pool. There was a romantic view over recently cut hay fields towards a river estuary. Romantic until a farmer, working at the peak of the day, started to turn the hay to dry. Dirt, dust and a plague of horseflies sent us scattering, wet- foot to our respective homes. Grateful that we were not that poor farmer. My afternoon of sweaty domestica was rewarded by a swim in the sea. Hundreds of people had found their way to our usually quiet beaches.
Warships, Ferries, landing craft, commercial shipping and Police boats all passed the swimmers by. More people doing their normal jobs in the relentless heat.
Normally I like to photograph Firestone Bay looking interesting but largely uninhabited. Yesterday was not normal. The area was heaving with people. Normal photography wasn’t very pretty. Too much sunshine, too many people, just too busy.
A Postcard from the Edge
Simplifying an over busy photograph to the style of a 20th Century postcard makes the whole scene more calm. At a highish tide every possible sitting space on these cliffs was filled with people. Many with lap tops and headphones ‘ Working from home’
Today is going to be another record breaking day. More postcards from the edge , I think.
Three weeks of an artyfarty anxious wait. I received a commission to create a piece of art for a newly installed kitchen. Not a big ask you might think for someone whose job is creating images. But the commission was to recreate one of my own original images in Portrait format instead of Landscape and then to make the image suitable to be turned into a kitchen splashback. There always has to be trust and flexibility between an artist and their clients during the commissioning process. That was the easy bit. For framing and reproduction of my paintings I always use local independent companies. People I can go and talk too. But reproducing an image on very expensive safety glass was organised locally but created elsewhere. All information shared digitally as you would expect. This was the harder bit and I fretted like a mother duck who had lost a duckling. Just concerned really that I had done everything correctly for a new to me process.
I had made one particular pink my worry point, it needed to be slightly translucent, more like a blush than actual colour.I need not have worried. The company doing the glass printing was brilliant. Every colour was exactly as I wanted it.
First sight with Tim
The glass arrived two weeks ahead of schedule.
Yesterday I went to see it for the first time. I am so impressed with what the glass company has achieved.
But now I look at my own , rather dull splash back and think…
For a woman who spent her working life in the gloomy, daylight starved, environments of Medical Imaging Departments, it is quite the turn of events to turn my transferable skills to the management of a Tennis Club by the sea.
Yesterday we were entertaining Tree Surgeons doing remedial work on trees damaged by winter storms. The first of two such days in June.
All of our trees have Tree Protection Orders on them so licences and permissions have taken some time to be obtained.
But two young men with some very fancy equipment soon trimmed our ailing Ash tree into something that may or may not survive a disease process. But at least now he no longer has any big boughs to drop over our neighbours wall.
But he is not a thing of beauty anymore.
Taking a jump from one world to another in semi-retirement is a fascinating process. Every day is a school day. Transferable skills flex and expand. My treasure trove of knowledge has some truly eccentric and unexpected nuggets of new information and I have some different or enhanced skills. I also have a much bigger and prettier office!
Marking time. A 100 year old tennis club gets an address. The 21st Century has arrived.
1966 was a big year in Great Britain. The men’s football team won the football World Cup and Postcodes were introduced.
Between 1966 and 1974 every address in Britain gained a postcode.
For reasons, lost in the mist of time, our Tennis Club missed out. I imagine other places must have done too.
For 60 years the club has managed. Firmly occupying a corner of land where the road bends and meets the sea. But the world has moved on and increasingly the digital age just cannot see something that does not have an alphanumeric code.
In fact the very act of applying for an official address and postcode without a postcode proved to be a challenge. A challenge that was ultimately successful. Although to achieve filling in a digital form correctly but inaccurately the club was declared a ‘new’ build.
Increasing companies and organisations have systems that simply cannot interact with our club because we had no postcode.
So yesterday really was a red letter day. Although as yet no actual letter of any colour has been delivered. That would require a postbox!
Small steps.
Yesterday turned out to be the last day stuff had to be delivered to a members address and then walked or driven to the club for redelivery. Nothing inconsequential, like an Amazon parcel that could be tucked into a coat pocket or bag.
Four park benches for the watching of tennis or just taking in the view.
The lovely feeling of mirth bubbling up through absurdities
Another day of domestic and Tennis Club administration loomed yesterday. Embellished by a trip to two different beaches at either end of the day.
My first minor skirmish with authority was with an armed escort as I returned from the tidal pool to home on my morning dog walk. Following hard on the heels of Royal Marines returning from their morning walk.
My next walk of the day was with a friend to explore the historic but hidden walls of our maritime town.
We wandered with our dogs and looked at ancient walls hidden amongst small housing developments. Crenellated walls providing shelter to chickens and an urban orchard.
A much wilder area of bigger walls was inaccessible to us but appears to be being cleared to provide a place for lunch breaks and beehives for a local boatyard. Although local, intrigued historical sleuths were discouraged by the deliberate placing of fallen branches and brambles.
We had to make our way out via a shiny car dealership. Now the trouble with locating historical defensive walls is that they are effective. We couldn’t scramble down a possible rampart.
So we had to make our way through the car dealership. Not under the watchful eyes of keen eyed Archers with poison tipped arrows, aimed at us or our dogs. But CCTV cameras with Cyclops eyes following our every move in case we made off with a new car tucked in our pockets. We had been seen. We carried on our history ramble for maybe twenty minutes or so along the course of a reclaimed river bed.( Once the location of the actual Shit Creek where sailors were trapped without a paddle)
Soon enough we found ourselves back where we started near the car dealership. We may not have caught the flinty eyes of Archers on battlements but we had raised the hackles of Car Salesmen . Two men in bright white shirts, over tight trousers, and trendy, but cheap shoes were fixing hastily created laminated signs to their perimeter fence.
In the search for history we had transgressed. Historically things could have been so much worse!
So that is me done with close encounters with authority but history was not done with me for the day.
For about 8 weeks I have been trying to apply for a postal address and post code for the Tennis Club I help to run.
The on-line form just didn’t work for me. Two failed attempts had disheartened me and earlier this week I took the last chance advice of the website and wrote a snail mail, old school letter to the advice desk of our local council. I won’t bore you with all the complexities of the situation but there have been a lot of boxes to tick and I feel I may have ticked them all and still stumbled.
Less than 24 hours after the snail mail was posted I got a helpful email reply from the council. History has bitten me on the bum! The box I needed to tick for a 100 year old tennis club without an address or postcode was …
New Build.
It really was a day where my funny bone was tickled by the absurdity of modern life clashing with history.
Wembury
A day of admin, absurdity and beaches, with history as the entertainment.
The temperature and wind however were quite another matter.
An over large and over optimistic deck chairNormal sized deck chairs acting as windsocks.
Deck chairs had been put out but their only useful function was to act as windsocks.
On reflection and protection from a bitterly cold wind Lola dragged us into a warm cafe.
Lola staring into a cafe mirror.
Now the truth of this blog is that Lola is always a cafe dog. Even on our late night walks she is known for resting her brown nose on the door of any cafe that we have ever visited.
So a bit of very cold, very strong wind was absolutely in her favour. She doesn’t always get her own way. Today she did.
An early start yesterday for wildlife. Not this beautiful seal, she was definitely a bonus. But one of my regular meetings with a Pest Control contractor called Annie. The Tennis Club I help to run is very close to the sea and considered to be a Winter Palace for the rats who choose to live on the coastline. For two years we have been diligently discouraging the Winter Palace theory with bait boxes and regular surveys of the rat population. Diligence has paid off, living in a Tennis Club is no longer seen as the Winter Dream of the local rat population. They will never be eradicated anymore than our Seagulls , but their numbers are manageable.
Of course the rats, seagulls and resting seals were all living here long before humans arrived possibly during the Iron Age. And certainly before humans thought it would be a good idea to run about hitting small balls across nets.
Seeing the seal just calmly doing her thing with no care for what century she was in was just a lovely peaceful way to start the day.
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