During my morning dog walk I popped into an exhibition at Royal William Yard (RWY). It is Shark Month at Ocean Studios. There are loads of lovely Sharky images, but on a bright morning this one was the only one not glazed and not suffering from loads of reflections. The website of the artist is below.
In the cafe there was also a really cute collection of bits and pieces left at low tide near to RWY.
I particularly liked these little bits with text on.
As I regularly poke about at low tide I was quite jealous, I never find anything with words on.
But then on my walk home I had a moment!
The tide had delivered me a cracked and grubby plectrum. With words on it.
A freebie advertising gears for Mountain bikes.
Here’s the moral dilemma of the day. Do I donate to the communal exhibition of tidal finds? Or does a grubby plectrum start my own collection of mudlarking treasures with text on.?
Funny things happen at our bobbing sessions. Yesterday we took part in some smelling research. Luckily for me and my ailing/failing sense of smell it was an early morning swim when my sense of taste and smell are at their patchy best. I wasn’t able to identify any of the smells but they did still evoke memories of place and time which is exactly what the research was about.
My very early swims in Greece last week, 5:30 am, gave us the absolute best of Basil, Oregano, Geranium and Rose from the gardens of our temporary home. There wasn’t really a sea smell but the Flisvos ( sound of lapping waves) added to the early morning pleasures. If I were ever to run a sanctuary for burnt out humans it would be by the sea on a Greek Island and early morning swimming and walking through herb gardens would be essential therapy.
Early morning twinkle, I was almost tempted to go home and get my swimmers on. Skinny dipping is only for dusk not broad daylight.
A full day of sun followed on from my early morning dog walk. Coffee and a bite sized Portuguese Custard Tart. Beer traps that had actually protected my precious herbs and vegetable plants from slugs. All before 11 am made for a very satisfying morning. A bit of work through to 4pm and then a walk on the Hoe and an ice-cream with a small person completed my Tuesday in a most satisfactory way.
Sunshine really is a most marvelous thing. I’m slightly lost for words. I’m all out of pondering except of course that I am not. Sunshine makes everything feel in a better place. Especially the not particularly hot sunshine of May. Unless you happen to be working hard in a white painted yard at midday when churlish as it seems even the May Sunshine can be a little over-warm. Some people are just never happy!
Yesterday we attempted a big Hollywood style welcome for our granddaughter who was arriving home from France.
Everything was set up, we knew which window to wave at. We had tracked the ferry.
Everything was set.
And then we missed the moment by a moment.
You might think that a docked ferry suggests more than a moment, but from regular ferry watching I can assure you that sometimes it takes me longer to reverse my car into a parking space than for these ferries to nip backwards into the port. I am confident that we will be easily forgiven by an 18-month-old. But next year we really do have to get our ‘A’ game on. It is always the people who live closest that are late.
March the Ist rewarded the Bobbers with a great swim yesterday morning. The sun came up. The water was at 10 degrees and the air temperature was 5 degrees. Nothing significantly different from January and February. But swimming on the first day of meteorological Spring felt buzzy. We were buzzy. As a group we have completed our third winter of regular sea swimming. When we started a photo like this was unthinkable. Each separate household kept themselves about two meters apart and our swim was our half hour of permissible outdoor exercise during a Covid lockdown. Our group of 12 to 14 swimmers stretched out on the promenade for almost 20 metres depending on who lived with whom. Even sticking to the rules there was always a small element of anxiety about our early bobbing sessions. That anxiety was heightened when we were approached by the police. We shouldn’t have worried, the police were concerned for our safety. There was a voyeur on the loose. Hidden in clear sight, or in his case enhanced clear sight. A man was taking his half hour exercise by cycling along the promenade in fluorescent clothing. Fitness was not his goal however. He sought stimulation of an entirely different sort. His gimlet eyes searched for the hidden curves of damp bottoms or boobs as swimmers struggled in or out of their clothes.
Another winter was marked by an Atlantic Seal called Spearmint who joined the swimmers of Firestone Bay rather too enthusiastically for her own good.
She swam with us so often she almost needed her own Bobbers sweatshirt.
Maybe that’s the reason this year’s winter swimming has felt, at times, like a chore. The only memorable thinge is how much storms have negatively affected our Bobbing plans.
Winter 21/22 Year of the Perv
Winter 22/23 Year of the Seal
Winter 23/24 Year of the Storms
I painted Storm Agnes, the first one of the season. She really whipped into Firestone Bay with a malign fury. The others didn’t inspire me quite so much. No paintings.
After days of rain we discovered this furry blockade in the hallway. The sun was up and no one would be leaving the house without the dogs. We needed bread and the dogs needed daylight without getting wet.
Lola had a route planned, appropriate provisions were bought.
And some comfy rocks were found for some winter basking.
A good start to the day and so far very minimal pondering. Just dogs, coffee and a view.
I am a mucky watercolour painter. I am also a procrastinator, so sometimes I see disaster as a lovely excuse for a tidy-up. Yesterday afternoon I discovered something messy had occurred in my watercolour storage box. Despite needing to get on with a painting I set about resolving my disaster. Meanwhile, outside, my home city of Plymouth was dealing with a much more serious potential disaster.
BBC News – Plymouth WW2 bomb found in a garden, detonated at sea. Read link below.
The outdoor potential disaster had given me a few daylight hours to start a new painting. All waterfront areas were closed to the public, and many local roads. No trains, busses or ferries. The perfect excuse.
Paints all tidied up. My models were arranged.
And I began the painstaking task of painting and printing a cup of mint tea resting on a bistro table, standing on a tiled floor.
I think there is a delicious irony in painting a cup of calming mint tea; while not 500 yards from my home a bomb weighing over 1,000 pounds or 500kg is being towed out to sea.
Daylight failed me, eventually and I have not managed to finish. Just the dregs of the tea have been painted into the cup. Two disasters resolved successfully.
The extra blog. Unusually for me I woke up this morning with my cup less than half empty. 3 days early for Blue Monday my mood was definitely on the blue side of the mental health spectrum. No particular reason, some very small clouds on my horizons but nothing of consequence. The grumpies had arrived overnight. I am never too saddened by feeling glum as the artist in me knows that life and art is a combination of darks and lights. Feast and famine. Good days and less good days.
Blogging absolutely helps me pick out the high spots of daily life. But I am a free spirit and conforming, as I am, to the prompts of Bloganuary is not really my thing. I slightly dread the revelation of the prompt of the day.
But how to perk myself up?
1 Agree to go for a bob with the life affirming bobbers.
2 Write a random blog.
3 Put on my new, warm, fluffy socks.
4 Eat chocolate biscuits after the bob. Notice my cup is already more than half full.
5. Take steps in the sunshine to banish the grumpies.
Swimming in water at 10 degrees with an outside temperature of 6 degrees, blogging, fluffy socks or eating a chocolate digestive might not work for everyone but it is working for me.
Storm #3 of the storm season has had quite an impact.
Not perhaps in the way I may have thought though. Ciarán reminded a friend that I had painted Storm Agnes and wondered if she was for sale. She is as it happens and now she is off to a new home.
Storm Agnes
Storm Babet didn’t really impact us too much although she did take out the road to one of my regular beaches.
In the eye of the storm at 2am
I know how I would paint Babet, a voluptuous storm, who caused chaos in an unexpected place with less energy than you would think. A storm directed from a chaise long perhaps.
Ciarán though, no clues in the name . Until I looked him up known as ‘ the little dark one’ Keir-on is how the weather forecasters pronounce the name. Ciarán is doing dramatic, theatrical stuff on our coast. Attention grabbing and flamboyant splashing and crashing on the outdoor lido, the sort of thing that gets you noticed. Hyperlocally Ciarán has been less wildly beautiful. More of a truculent bully, pushing over the bins and scattering domestic rubbish on the streets. Here he is just bashing the steps down to the tidal pool.
I have a little idea how he will be painted now. The little dark storm
This has been a week of catching up with friends, old, new and concurrent. And cementing a shared life with our middle granddaughter. I have also, thank goodness finally got some paint effectively on canvas. Which is important. As Sunday approaches I feel like this was a week of effective planning and delightful serendipity.
Dryads Saddle
We found this fungus in an urban street tonight. When we left a friends house. Google lens suggests that it is a Dryads Saddle.
Which begs the question what is a Dryad and why might they need a saddle?
In Greek mythology, dryads, or hamadryads, are a tree-dwelling variety of nymphs believed to inhabit the forests, groves, and countryside of the ancient Greeks. Nymphs is a general term for lesser goddesses in the Greek pantheon, usually associated with the natural world and tied to places like streams, rivers, forests, and fields. As lesser goddesses, they did not wield the power of major goddesses like Artemis or Aphrodite. However, they were often described as influencing human emotions, evoking awe, wonderment, and fear as they looked at the natural world. Physically, they were believed to appear as beautiful young women.
No mention of needing a saddle, but maybe these urban Dryads simply catch a bus.
Mythology seems the way to go with this fungus because further investigation suggests that we could eat it and it would taste of watermelon peel. Which actually just sends me deeper down the rabbit hole. Whoever eats both fungus occurring on trees and watermelon and is able to compare and contrast their taste sensations.
As luck would have it we had eaten very well at our friends house and felt no urge to snack on a random fungus.
A late evening swim was required though. The moon was up and the sun was dipping below the horizon.
There was live music happening not too far away. A swim with the sounds of a Rod Stewart concert drifting in the breeze was an entirely good way to end the day.
Below, woman posing as a Dryad on a Dryads Saddle.
theoldmortuary.design 