My morning dog walk with a 3 year old took me past this available retail space, as we were hunting down a toilet.My giddy imagination immediately yearned for an over-stocked corner shop. The sort of corner shop that stands vividly with a warm welcome in residential areas all over Britain and provides mouse traps, condoms and loaves of bread with the musical soundtrack of the owners ethnic origins. Since returning to the West Country I have yet to find a corner shop that welcomes me in, from 6 in the morning until midnight with a cornucopia of random and yet essential goods, some of which I have never heard of before. The joy of getting the last train home and being able to buy a can of soup and some baclava for supper, in a shop that is warm, exotic smelling and welcoming is hard to quantify. But I didn’t realise how joyous it was until I no longer had it. I doubt this pretty space will ever fulfil my fantasies but there is no harm in dreaming.
Not much time to ponder today as it was set-up day for an exhibition I am involved with.
My last moments prep started at 6am with my own work and then there were the many last minute reshuffles of the stewarding rota. I have a watercolour I have always loved but the title always seemed just beyond my grasp.Until today, I cant imagine who inspired the title…
And another favourite watercolour was found, after some time being lost. All packed up and ready to be sold.
My Daffodils and Moonflowers found a fabulous wall on which to settle.
And just like them I am settling, right now. A sofa and mint tea, two dogs and a pair of throbbing feet . After a day of being arty farty on unforgiving stone floors, I may not move for some time.
I am so glad my evening dog walk has had a festive tweak because my pondering is a little dull. Earlier this week I went into one of our roof spaces to retrieve some stored Christmas stuff. I also took the opportunity to bring down stored stuff that needed sorting as it had not been looked at or needed for 3 years.
I recently discovered that our house is 35 years older than our fireplace suggests.
The first time it was sold was in 1854 or 57, the handwriting on the deeds is hard to read.
On my occasional visits to the roofspace I am always impressed by how well it was built. But clearing the boxes stowed in the roof since we moved in, revealed something that is really interesting. One of the main supporting timbers of the roof is an old, wooden ships mast. How fabulous is that?
I popped back into the roof yesterday and just had a few moments pondering the journeys that that piece of wood might have made before ending up in a shipyard in Stonehouse and then being used to support the roof of a house.
There is a good bit more pondering to be done on my recent discovery. This was a new home to the Borland family. Two generations of War Office Civil Engineers lived here until just after the Second World War. Their role in the 1860s would doubtless have been the construction of the Palmerston Forts, built to protect Britain from an invasion by France. The invasion never took place.
The Palmerston Forts, constructed to encircle Plymouth and to protect the Royal Dockyard against a landing by the French, were built during the 1860s and 1870s following a Royal Commission set up by the then Prime Minister Lord Palmerston (hence the name).
The Commission was prompted by public concern about the growing military and naval power of the French Empire, coupled with the alarm which had been engendered in Britain when Napoleon III (the nephew of the infamous Napoleon Bonaparte) became Emperor of France in 1852. A perception arose that Napoleon III might contemplate an invasion of Britain in order to avenge the defeat and exile of his uncle in 1815.
As a result, the Commission, of 1860, sanctioned the provision of enormous resources for the defence of the principal naval dockyards on the south coast, these being Portsmouth and Plymouth. Many of the Palmerston Forts survive well as Scheduled Monuments (designated as such by Historic England) and are therefore recognised as nationally important and worthy of preservation.
Funny/strange to think of the very significant conversations that would have been held in this house.
Even stranger is that one of the tatty old bits of rust we treasure in our backyard is a big bolt thing that may have come from Palmerston Fort fencing.
Royal William Yard.
And with that cliff hanger I move on to F for 26 Days to Boxing Day.
Fairy/Festive lights.
The two pictures of the Royal William Yard are how the normal evening dog walk looks.
A day of transforming a yard from off-white to white turned out to be both extraordinarily colourful and a self-limiting occupation. The colour change can be seen just by the O of off-white. The early morning dog walk set the colour bar high when I noticed that the luminous cows had moved.
To make way for a very fancy shoe, advertising a Theatre show.
Nature also created wild flower paths between cows and shoe
Dog-walk over it was time to flip off the paint pot lid. With just a moment to tweak Pure Brilliant White into something a little more lively, with fingers still clean enough to touch my phone.
Radio at the ready and I was off.
6 hours later, I had not reached the end of the job but the end of the pot of paint was a most welcome sight.
So much for providing myself with many different audio treats, mucky fingers meant I was stuck with Radio 4 for the day. My ears and mind were taken to places I might not necessarily have chosen. Other people pondering the concept of unconditional love. Very thought provoking. I had some thoughts to add, but radio isn’t like that unless the show offers a phone-in and I would not have had clean enough hands for that sort of shenanigans. Rolling news reports. And some poetry, who could possibly have predicted gentle tears while painting.
And so the December days get shorter and darker but the white cows have gotten a whole lot brighter. These cows are a nod to the original function of the area of the Royal William Yard where they can be found. Historically cows were delivered here to be slaughtered and then packed onto Royal Navy Ships. The dogs are thrilled that the cows are unbelievable colours, so much less scary. Before the curious cows cropped up, this blog was going to be about the comforting colours that can be found in an open fire. I could not have predicted cows in shades of pink and orange. I am ignoring the green one. I searched for old photos that made me feel warm, just by looking at them. I hope they make you feel snug. Apart from the green cow of course.
This pink and orange was at a festival in Hong Kong.
This shot was a pocket image when I was wearing orange linen.
These are feathers I found at Borough Market and the one below is an abstract painting of Plymouth Barbican in the festive season.
And the red monks below were walking in a park in Seoul.
The vivid wall below was at Tate Modern a few years ago.
The artist has left the building, temporarily. After three days of setting up, Private views and meeting the public. I have left my patch.
Drawn to the Valley at Ocean Studios in the Royal William Yard, Stonehouse Plymouth has a diverse mix of 12 artists showing their work and demonstrating or talking about their techniques with anyone who comes along.
We had a bit of a tidy up at close of business today. That is just me as an artist. Procrastination disguised as tidyness. Its not been all art and no life. There was a bob yesterday so I slipped out for an hour, great swimming, fabulous conversation and snacks. And maybe something to chuckle about.
Sometimes humans leave things in the way of the dogs usual walking route. Yesterday evening Summer got in the way of their usual sniff highlights. The open space where they like to track hedgehogs and foxes has been taken over by a huge screen for people to watch Wimbledon.
The area near the tunnel had been taken over by live music which in turn had pushed the paddle boards onto the walls where the best doggy news can be sniffed.
We didn’t help matters by stopping to buy a Pimms and talking to people.
The whole walk had slipped from canine planning to doggy dystopia, nothing was quite as it should be.
Our dogs are very urban creatures they didn’t cope well with the 4 years of rural living. The wildness and whimsy of daily walks on a nature reserve never filled them with the joy we imagined it would. Sometimes we would drive the 6 miles to where we currently live to replicate their urban walks in London. Plenty of stone and concrete, parkland and mowed grass open spaces.
They are absolutely city dogs. They like repetition and familiarity. In London their three favourite walks still excite them even though we moved away permanently a couple of years ago. Hugo will always choose to do a poo right in front of Shakespeares Globe Theatre.
Lola however knows exactly where the juiciest squirrels live. The trees that border Dulwich College cricket pitches.
Their choice of favourite places for certain things has always puzzled us. Doing a poo in front of the Globe is quite a performative thing. The photo above was taken in the early morning before tourists were about but normally this area is throbbing with humans. But I know Hugo, if I were to walk past there with him right now. His nose would go in the air and soon enough his geolocating spin would start. Several tourist smartphones would be whipped out and a white dog defecating on Bankside would be a holiday highlight. Similarly Lola and the squirrel spot. If we were ever to lose her on Gallery Road in Dulwich, I would know exactly where to find her. The curious thing is that she might know where the juiciest squirrels live. She has no idea what to do with one. Worryingly she will single-mindedly track them and watch wistfully for twenty minutes as they escape up other trees but face to face with a squirrel she has no idea what to do. One day a squirrel fell from these Dulwich trees. It was as dead as a dead thing, little front paws still clutching at an invisible acorn. It landed at her feet. She gave it a cursory sniff and walked on.
I’m not too sure why I digressed quite so much but I suppose it was to show that our dogs are very much creatures of habit. They were really not impressed with a Summer evening of happy human activity messing with their plans.
Unknown to them it messed with our plans too. We should be somewhere else right now and soon we will be. But summer evenings with lovely stuff on an evening dog walk including Pimms, Tennis, Live music and snatched conversations. All in glorious sunshine is what we will remember when there is no one about and the rain is hitting us sideways on the exact same walk in November. The dogs however apart from being wet will love that things are back as they should be and they can do what they need to do where they plan to.
The first day of Spring washed in on a wave of persistent, penetrative rain.
Drips were the tiny gems of the day hanging around waiting to catch the sunbeams that resolutely failed to arrive.
Raindrops when gathered together turn into puddles. So one puddle two ways is the endpoint of this blog. It is a puddle we have been to before, but the alternative, a variety of shots of room settings at Ikea is one step too far for a blog that has no problem celebrating the mundane. IKEA is almost a global experience, all around the world people were sat in IKEA cafes, at the exact same time as me, pondering on their various domestic needs. Ours were simple and we managed the, almost impossible, task of getting out with only one extra item. A tool to fish spaghetti out of bowls or saucepans.
The first day of Spring, raindrops, puddles and IKEA.
Two visits to Ocean Studios this week. The first on Thursday for a Drawn to the Valley artists meet up, and the second to catch up with the watercolours of a recently deceased artist David Muddyman. David was a composer, but returned to visual arts in 2016. This style of colour block water colour is not unique to him but his work is a reflection of the environment in which he lived. Both of my visits this week have been when the gallery was super busy. Saturday the gallery was hosting a children’s art club, so a third visit will be needed to enjoy his calm, meditative work but I was thrilled to find such an easy comparison to show his affinity with local colours. The picture below is a flagstone in one of the toilets. I know that is hardly the most kindly pairing to a piece of art but the flagstone is pretty impressive to someone who loves colour. These are the naturally occurring colours in the stone, not the result of a major toilet crime.
I just stuck the two images together to show how accurate the colour matches are.
When the gallery is less busy I can more accurately find out which area the painting was inspired by, it is very unlikely to actually be a toilet floor.
In another snatched glimpse, over the heads of crayon wielding children, I saw the perfect representation of greige. My least favourite weather manifestation of the Tamar Valley.
A perfect 2D facsimile of many days, including today when everything is a little bit meh!
Homework before I go back for a third time is to explore the music of David Muddyman. There is a link below for that too.
For those not able to visit the gallery at the Royal William Yard I have put a link below to a website where his work can be viewed. The collection is entitled Composed.
Advent +2022. Peace on Earth. An old industrial building on the morning dog walk. There was a lot of weather going on, on all four sides of this building. For just a moment the wind dropped, the rain stopped and the clouds parted to allow daylight through. Allowing just a moment of quiet reflection. Merry Christmas one and all.
theoldmortuary.design 