Our Morning Glory reusable coffee cups from Morning Glory Cafe on Coogee Beach.
Holidays and Christmas firmly behind us, the first Monday in January finds us with a list of chores and jobs all made a lot more tolerable by beautiful sunshine.
The sun even penetrated the car cleaning chore.
Our reusable coffee cups are useful and a great reminder of our first breakfast in Australia.
I will take a cold West Country winter with bright sunlight any day but a warm early summer in Sydney in December certainly has made it much more tolerable. I feel like I have had a power pack inserted, I really hope it lasts until at least the end of March.
The first early darkness of GMT in the studio/work room. We have installed winter lights. 4 years in, living in this house, and the yard is where we want it to be. Even last year the yard did not spark joy when illuminated in winter but the curious weather of 2025 gave us an enormous growth spurt of our container and climbing plants from September until now. We picked a fresh strawberry yesterday and there are still tomatoes ripening.
The loss of natural light in the afternoon is sad but an urban jungle illuminated by festoon lights is going to be something to look forward to as my afternoons get darker.
The upstairs room above the studio has a deep window seat, a fabulous place for reading books. Largely ignored in the winter it will become the favourite place it often is in Summer.
The window seat also has really heavy curtains so it becomes like a glass walled hide-out.
Of course seeing our winter yard in the dark, gives a different perspective and already I have spotted a corner where another container tree might find a home. A Mimosa perhaps?
All this and I didn’t even turn on the old mortuary neon light!
The last public holiday in England before Christmas Day. A day that often disappoints with slightly grumpy weather. Today though, was gorgeous and this panoramic view is like a great turquoise smile expressing exactly how a holiday Monday should be.
I had a swim and didn’t want it ever to end, but superb swims, like all good things must come to an end. The balmy waters of Firestone Bay were just perfect today. There is a suggestion that the weather will turn tomorrow…
And just like that the rain arrived overnight.
Very disappointing weather behaviour. Of course exactly the sort of thing that underlines that the scrag end of summer has established itself as a transitional season and that layers and waterproofs may be needed for all future adventures.
Summer Breeze makes me feel fine, blowing through the Holly Hocks of my mind.
Early summer is a fragile thing, a million things need to come together, in June, to create fragrant blooms and buzzy bees, with legs and fluffy bottoms all dusted with pollen. I love a Hollyhock but growing them eludes me. A minor success this year in the yard was quashed by the voracious appetites of our slugs and snails. Not for us the gentle hum of bees going about their business, just the inexorable chomp of a chorus* of slimy mouths feasting on our tender and tasty single Hollyhock survivor.
These Hollyhocks survive proudly, on the edge of a busy roundabout. Cared for by volunteer urban gardeners, they survive where mine cannot. Despite slightly obsessive attention. And yet, crazy, wild self-seeded Hollyhocks look down on me from cracks in rock walls and cliffs by the sea. Seemingly immune to the chomp of slugs and snails and happily hosting buzzy bees with dusty bottoms.
You may wonder where this ponder is going. The * is the answer. A recording of a single slug having a chomp, imagine what a choir of them would sound like in a back yard.
Four early cucumbers from the yard. But these are not the big-ticket items of the day. When I tipped them out of the bowl there was a tiny bead, in my favourite colour of verdigris. As I rolled it in the bowl it grew legs.
Once a month a craft and food market sets up on the route of our morning dog walk. In good weather on a large grassy square and in bad weather in disused buildings. Either location gives the market a buzzy lively feel. Yesterday was market day and we set off on our usual dog walk with the added quest for Fig and Fennel Sourdough. Both were achieved alongside a bit of nattering to neighbours and fellow dog walkers. Our afternoon dog walk took in a quick visit to the JMW Turner exhibition that I am involved in.
Also quite a buzzy feel and plenty of people to chat to, just no hunt for an obscure flavour of sourdough.
A good Sunday,I think. Even if my mind is popping with all the images and nattering.
Creatively, I am embedded in a pre-1820s Plymouth. Trying to imagine life in my local neighbourhood as JMW Turner would have seen it, but also wanting to include contemporary aspects that would have been unimaginable and crazily futuristic to him. My normal life goes on around my creative thinking. When working in the studio radio and the dogs are my constant companions. The Work in Progress above is a concatenation of yesterday’s studio time. Apparently, mid-May is when semi-sea swimmers return to the cool waters around the British coast. Yesterday was named by the BBC as Dippers Day.This information was a news infill on the radio station I was listening to. A semi-sea swimmer only partakes May to September.
As a year-round swimmer I suppose I have noticed an increased number of swimmers in the last couple of weeks.
Lunchtime Thursday
Yesterday was glorious, my lunchtime dog walk was fabulous and there were many joyful Dippers Day Dippers. The whole concept set me off on a great procrastination when I returned to the studio. Sea swimmers in the 1820s in the style of Turner. Not on my schedule at all.
But it will be today, after I have joined the Bobbers for a post-dippers day bob.
All over the place, from my old on-call bedroom that overlooked Turner’s Harley Street backyard, in London, to a grubby underpass 1/2 a mile from home. Via a rubbish tip in Plymouth, which nestles into a quarry that Turner sketched while he was staying at Saltram.
Grotty underpass embellished with colourful graffiti.
It has had me reading a lot.
Coming towards the end of the painting bit of prep I had left the most local location until last.
Confident that some research on my morning dog walks would give me the prize of a replicated location. Imagine my horror, the old bridge, when viewed from the former military hospitals, had vanished. Lost to view by a modern busy road. The creek that Turner viewed was blocked off, dried out, and turned into sports pitches.
Finding the actual bridge from the south side took tenacity. Taking me to the underbelly of urban Plymouth. Dirty footpaths in industrial estates smelling of weed and piss. Littered with broken glass, gas canisters and abandoned knickers. But last minute luck was with me. Plymouth is the home port of Princess Yachts.
Their Stonehouse boatyard has the only view of the old bridge. A quick email to the company, to ask if I could have access, was required,because the perfect tide and perfect light only coincided yesterday and today. Thankfully unlike Turner I could turn up with just my phone and a small camera. Turner would have arrived with a horse and cart, painting boards, paper and an easel, paints and brushes in a box, sandwiches and some bottles of beer.
I was in luck, Christine from the sales team was quick to respond to my email and I was welcomed into their elegant reception area. Then taken to a room with a view. And what fabulous views, high tide, gentle morning light and boats. So many photos to work from.
Below are a couple of work in progress images.
I think the bottom image has more of a Turner vibe, lets see what happens over the next couple of weeks.
In a lovely twist of serendipity a couple handed me a book later yesterday, showing the old bridge from the direction of the industrial estate.
The arrow is roughly where I took my photographs from.
It is such a shame this piece of history is so hidden from public view and not celebrated as one of the world’s most influential artists chosen subjects. My thanks to Princess Yachts for giving me access.
We have been growing climbers in our yard for about ten months.
Last year we missed the most dynamic part of the growing season so none of the climbers bloomed with anything more than the short lived flowers they arrived with. This year, the first where they have had almost a full year in our care they are all slow to get going. But first a climbing rose and now the Wisteria are putting out flowers. Just as the first rose bloomed its stalk became too weak and it was rescued to live a brief life in a shot glass. Yesterday the first wisteria bloom snapped off the plant and has been rescued into the kitchen, this time in a milk bottle.
A good excuse for some still life photography but hardly the Yarden of Eden we had imagined. The pollinators are not queuing up to buzz and pollen-up their bottoms any time soon in our yard. In contrast to our blooms the wooden bug hotel is terrifically successful brown, scurrying non-photographic things live a busy metropolitan life under and around our water butts. Worms live a happy terracotta life in our improvised composters, enjoying coffee grounds from around the world, tea bags and the occasional dog poo. If yardening were a sporting event our Mid-May results would look something like this.
Brown Things 6- 2 Pretty Things
The pretty things scoring a two because the roses have learned how to both bloom and hold their heads up.
Claire Austin rose and the sharp shadows of night in a city yard.
When I moved to the Plymouth area for the first time from Brighton, in the late eighties, I was not so sure it had been a wise move. The cultural and societal differences between a liberal and multicultural seaside city and a post industrial port were vast and uncomfortable for a long while. I quickly found my tribe by joining an art class.
Plymouth artists liked to drink in out of the way places. One such place was the Victualing Office Tavern, a grubby pub in one of the roughest parts of Plymouth. We went there to enjoy live jazz , rock and folk. Just as the quote says, we were a very broad gathering of people from all works of life. People creating art in council flats and some in homes that were mentioned in the Doomsday Book. There is a theory that artists are the first sign of gentrification….
Now I live in the exact same area as my 1980’s art excursions, after a ten year return to London. The VOT has gone up in the world, as has the area. Queen Victoria should have swapped the word dangerous for interesting.
Visionary rather than vituperative is a better way forward even for a Queen
Just a blog to use one of my favourite words that rarely gets an outing.
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