October the first has blown in on the coattails of Hurricane Ian. We have had our first winter style swim. A really rough swim in rainy conditions. The sea was warmer than the outside temperature and it was wonderful. After the swim we felt so full of good vibes, a healthy dose of free radicals and positive ions set us up for a busy day of doing things. We powered through a list of jobs and then at around 5pm the energy left us, almost as swiftly as we had gathered it. There was nothing left in the tank.
Winter swims are just the best thing, even in the autumn!
The sun sets on the second Elizabethan era. Hyperlocal, of course, this is a view of Cummulonimbus over the Hamoaze as the sun sets on the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.
Flags are at half mast over Stonehouse.
I took myself off media for 24 hours once the announcement of her serious health situation was announced. Waiting for the inevitable, for any family, should be an entirely private occasion.
Bobbers had their first bob of the new Carolean Age. We would not be bobbers if we had not had a good old chatter afterwards, we hunted in our heads but not our phones for the title of the new age. Not one of us came up with Carolean. To be honest we favoured the new King using one of his middle names and entering a new Arthurian Age. It was not to be. Surely it is a tough enough act to follow Queen Elizabeth 11 but rehabilitating the title of King Charles is also a historical challenge. On an absolute positive the name Charles may become more popular.
Other subjects touched on, in a wide ranging, Bobbing conversation were the theory of Mother Trees and mushroom music. Appropriate subjects,for the day, I feel.
And the experience of making music with mushrooms.
One thing really does lead to another when bobbing.
Hyperlocal again, as I write this on the Stonehouse Peninsular I can hear muffled bells from the City of Plymouth and soon there will be a gun salute from Devonport Dockyard. A historical moment being marked.
As grandstand views go we got the best table this morning for breakfast with Sail GP. Four women, three dogs and a lot of water action.
We especially got to see the start and finish of the races.
One of our bobber friends, Helen, has hair to encourage team GB to do their best.
The dogs were more interested in bacon butties and chocolate brioche than super elegant sailing boats, which missed the point a bit.
This wonderful viewpoint is a long term favourite spot of ours. It is a complex landscape of rocks and WW2 defensive concrete just below The Long Room, Plymouths civilian and military maritime Port Control.
We call it the area ‘Greek Beach’ because on a good day it feels like a million miles from Plymouth. Greek beach is moments away from our usual swimming beach . You can see how close everything is in the picture below. The yellow buoy is the one that we swim to when we bob.
Today we discovered our Greek Beach has new graffiti to embellish the whole experience.
And just like that, life returns to normal. Maybe in the three months leading up to July I would have thought that there would be a bit of a pinch point, late in July, when I would have a full commitment to family plans and a full commitment to running an exhibition, that had been in the pipe line for a long while. What I had not factored in was catching Covid. Two and a half years of avoiding the dreaded virus had given me a false sense of security. Exactly at my identified, life plan, pinch point, Mr Covid came calling, taking out three family members on the same day and one family member a week earlier. The two episodes cannot have been linked. But they reshaped our summer plans and added to the pinch point.
A Venn Diagram of my life.
The trouble with pinch points in life is that they look more dramatic when they are just abstract plans. Sometimes they look like a near impossible juggle. Juggling two balls certainly seems doable but throwing in the third ball seems foolhardy. As it happened life just flowed past the hurdle of Covid, our family replanned its plans. The Print Exhibition went beautifully to plan.
And here we are on the other side, bobbing in the sea and wondering what all the overthinking was about.
What have I learned about being Covid + during a heatwave. Caffeine in an iced coffee at 3pm is the most magical thing. Sapped of energy by both internal and external forces, caffeine is the wonder drug I have discovered. Normally caffeine does not pass my lips after midday. If it did that old charmer,insomnia, would be snapping at my muscles and picking around in my head to cause upset. However Mr Covid has made my head thicker than porridge and the tentacles of doom that caffeine energises cannot penetrate in any way at all.
Fresh air this evening, our little coven of covid positives took ourselves off to an enchanted wood where we knew we were no risk to anyone. Two hours of paddling and fresh breezes rustling through trees perked up our viral load, with no human contact, the end.
Rather an appropriate quotation for a day with a late blog. A busy day in beautiful weather but very much a day for making the most of the moment and having our family around us.
Plymouth was beautiful but we turned our back on Plymouth and headed to Cornwall on the ferry. Not exactly the gateway to Cornwall but certainly an interesting portal to a different world.
Castles and canons were the perfect props for a small girl obsessed by Pirates.
This lovely shaded orange was a pocket shot after our evening bob/swim. It really was a rough one and nobody stayed in long. The strange thing is that waves can be lovely to swim in, but near to high tide it can all be a little bit too much of a good thing. Yesterday morning the perfect wave machine made its way close to our swimming zone. A very expensive wave machine to be sure, and very unusual.
The waves created were beautiful. Just big regular ripples really, I was sad to be on dry land, as this powerful submarine slipped by, it might have been rather interesting to feel all that power reverberating through the water. Our poppies are also presenting as rather powerful beasts this week. Just like the submarine, all the action is happening under the surface.
These two have not yet opened but someone else did overnight.
Is it just me or does the centre of this poppy look just like the most delicious cake?
Nuclear submarines to Fondant Fancies all in the space of about 500 yards and fewer words. Happy Monday.
This was a day with an unexpected ending. Today was a yardening day. Almost a year since we exchanged an exposed but fertile country garden for a coastal, white painted, stone yard. Yardening has been a huge surprise. Today the plan was to weed and tame the jungle that the yard has become, unexpectedly fertile too.
All went to plan, but with the temperature at 23 degrees it was quite the labour of love. A sea swim was suggested but the tide was not our friend. Then we planned a swim in a local outdoor pool. The website was decidedly wonky and ultimately we couldn’t book a session. The alternative, an ice cream and some sunbathing was a good enough plan. Until we got too hot. Retreat into the house was timely in two ways. We really were too hot, but the curious twist was an email from the cranky website that said we had managed to book a swimming session.
We were very certain we hadn’t , but a cooling swim was exactly what we needed. Arrival at the pool confirmed the crankiness of the website. Apparently everyone who visited the webpage had been given swim sessions without payment. The pool was far from full so we did that old fashioned thing of buying two tickets and prepared for a dip.
Tinside Lido
This pool is probably very familiar to anyone in Britain who watches the BBC. This image is one of the regular infills between TV programmes. As you can see it was not very busy at all and we had a wonderful swim in the historic pool.
There was another lovely bonus, bright sunshine and recently cleaned 1930’s glass bricks in the shower area gave the most wonderful distorted, abstracted views of the pool.
The search for squares of abstract colour and shape in my local neighborhood has become all consuming. My current group of images are all early morning shots in bright sunlight. This shot is of my own front door. Evening walks bring different crazy combinations of colours and shapes and I make a mental note to return to a particular area in the morning to see if it is as interesting in morning light.
My evening walk took me past the location of this combination.
It is not so mouth wateringly sharp, at dusk, especially on a damp grey evening. But in the evening other senses take over as the lime green is the exterior wall colour of a local restaurant. Still mouth watering though, for entirely different reasons.
We are having an out and about kind of weekend. Trying to get somewhere with 50% of local knowledge, some vague and bad instructions and those two elements over riding the practicality of using a SatNav. Thank goodness for going on a wrong road, we found an old Wharfside area, the road runs along the backside of very old waterside buildings, scarred and patched up as their uses have changed. The perfect location to find more abstract areas to photograph.
Nature, as is often the case, adding another layer of interest once I got up close.
Sunburst Lichen for a Sunday morning. Have a good Sunday, pondering .
I am still trying to capture squares of colour in Stonehouse as first mentioned in blog #239. The early morning light gives me completely different colour combinations to sunset and I’ve decided to limit myself to early morning squares of colour for this first painting.
The dogs are complicit in these morning sojourns to gather watercolour inspiration. Yesterday I rewarded myself with a coffee and croissant down by one of the harbours. The dogs need for croissant was apparently just as important as mine. Their faces trap more crumbs than mine which is saying something, croissant crumbs have the tenacity of Super Glue sometimes.
On our little colour square hunt we found the door to the Edes Vinegar/Pickled Onion workshop open and got a fabulous stolen interior shot of the vinegar barrels.
I think local people would, quite likely, want to bop me on the nose if I tried to do a series of images of just inside their front doors. But this one is a gem.
Normal life got in the way of too much painting yesterday. So just the one square completed.
We do have quite an abstract little square going on at our own front door.
Hugo and Lola were not the only dogs, yesterday, to participate in proper human activities. The bobbers were out in force to support Helen Bobber, who was knocking peoples socks off at the Who’d Have Thought It , Open Mic session. Here are Stan and Ralph, Bobberdogs, eager to get to the pub and listen to soulful sounds.
Hugo and Lola stayed at home, four dogs at an Open Mic is at least two too many to be comfortable. Especially as Helen is now fully recovered from Covid and after some months can easily hit her high notes.
theoldmortuary.design 