Things for which I am thankful – Travelogue 2 – unlimited by numbers, gratitudes…
Home to Hull – Ferry to Rotterdam, A – Mothern near Strasbourg, B – Lyon, C – Champagne region and back to Rotterdam and the ferry back to Hull! Some 1,400 miles…
Grateful to still be able to make such a road trip at the advanced age of 71! Getting to Rotterdam was easy – 1.5 hours drive to Hull ferry port and an ovenight ferry which left us most of the day to get to Mothern near Strasbourg. This is in the North-eastern corner of France just over the border from Germany and was a good 7 hour journey with stops – the longest leg of the holiday so glad it was first…
Mothern is a fairly small village on the banks of the Rhine which divides France form Germany and much of the centre of the village is half-timbered buildings like this…
The Rhine at Mothern is already impressive in size but actually, not very interesting to look at…
Mothern was about 40 kms from Strasbourg and we spent our first day of three, visiting the city that houses the European Parliament.
Here there were also many half-timbered buildings although I never found anyone to ask about the age of the buildings – I have a feeling the technique was used far longer than in England – perhaps due to the abundance of timber in the area…
The building below was once a barracks but what really intrigued me, once we got close to it, was that all the details around the windows are Trompe l’Oueil – something I once did a bit of in one of my past careers…
For our second day in Mothern, we crossed the Rhine back into Germany (we travelled down through Germany – see last week’s account of German drivers) and headed for the mountains of the Black Forest.
The Black forest is the home of the eponymous gateau which gained Europe-wide popularity in the ’70’s (they grow a lot of cherries here) so naturally we had to go in search of some! Upon arriving in the town of Freundstadt, we discovered that they take Sunday closing much more seriously than in England so the only eateries open were ice cream parlours and so we had to settle for a Black Forest ice cream dessert ( liberally soused with Kirsch) and so eager were we to tuck in, that we forgot to photograph the desserts first and had to resort to photographing the menu – still it proves we are not of that generation that feel the need to photograph and share everything they eat – lol…
Freundstadt lived up to its name (literally Friend-town) as a Turkish couple who have lived in Germany for thirty years, invited us to share their table as the place was packed, and then paid for our desserts too – many thanks…
On our third day, we decided to head north into a national park (more forestry) and since you have to put a destination into the satnav, I chose a castle that was marked there, although I didn’t zoom in to examine the destination…. Eventually we turned onto a small road which became a track in the woods and wound up through the woods – increasingly rough – the centre vegetation giving the underside of the car a good brushing…
We were in the middle of nowhere – the fabled destination to which a satnav will famously take you given half a chance… Discretion being the better part of valour, I eventually zoomed out to see that the track continued to spiral up a hill to the alleged castle -(goodness knows what sort of ruin it was) and we decided to turn round and go back. We stopped to photograph animals in some kind of sanctuary/farm near the start of the track.
No idea what sort of porkers these are but perhaps some kind of rare breed…
These are miniature goats, the kids are about the size of a small dog. Both they and the pigs were munching on windfall apples from nearby trees…
Lastly some endearing donkeys…
And that is where I am going to leave this travelogue till next week- after all, you can only absorb so much of other people’s holiday pictures…
I wasn’t sure if I would write this week as we are now on holiday in France, Misky suggested taking notes for later posts and Clark also said this is a tradition in the TToT but I have a lot of thoughts about the journey and decided to write them as a travel piece without numbering the grats (or hypograts)…
I conceived and planned this holiday quite quickly – it had to fit in before a reunion weekend with my school friends of 50+ years ago in October plus an important inspection at work, and even though the time of anticipation was small, there was still that countdown which seems to slow time, but eventually the last day of work came and went, my boss’s parting call “Take care – I still need you in my life!” Take that as you will…
We decided to take the overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam again, as we had earlier in the year when we holidayed in the Netherlands. I am always reminded, when finally catching sight of theRiver Humber, of Hull’s great Metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvell, who famously wrote the attempted seduction poem, “To his Coy Mistress” which enchanted my imagination when studying it at school but which I now take, at the age of 71, as a wider reflection on the shortness of life generally, and the need to make the most of it – very metaphysical… In the poem, Marvel says to his would-be lover, “Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain.” and a muddy tide it is, the waters never other than murky… You can read the full poem here, and a poem in which I introduced the lady’s somewhat indignant riposte, here! Indeed, when we arrived at the ship and looked over the side of the dock, she appeared to be resting on the mud with the tide still ebbing and as the hours neared the departure time, a strange small ship was loitering on the seaward side of the ship – a ship that I looked up (Oh, the joys of the internet!) and discovered she was the UKD Marlin – a trailing suction hopper dredger! UKD presumably stands for United Kingdom Dredger – who knew? And the UKD Marlin was just itching for us to set sail so she could go about her vital business of hoovering the RORO berth clear of Humber mud!
The good ship UKD Marlin getting about her business as we head out down the Humber…
The Captain of The Pride of Rotterdam had welcomed us aboard with the news that the wind would be rising from the South-west to be gale force seven in the latter part of the crossing, and so we could expect some rolling during the night. Visiting the toilet in our cabin in the wee small hours of the night, I was momentarily spooked by the unexpected movement of the red emergency bell pull. (the check-in lady had kindly upgraded us to a disabled cabin so that Barbara could use her boot-scooter on board and have room to park it in the cabin) Then I realised the movement of the bell-pull was a result of the said rocking and rolling of the ship and returned to my bunk to be rocked in the cradle of the deep until we passed the sheltered waters beyond the Hook of Holland. You may find this video of the spooky bell-pull’s movements oddly relaxing…
The ferry docks at eight in the morning and on that occasion, we had only an hour-and-a-half drive to our destination – a reflection of how compact the Netherlands are, but yesterday, we had a drive of six-and-a-half as measured by the satnav. Of course, that doesn’t allow for holdups or breaks, and the reality was nearer eight-and-a-half hours! First off, it took nearly two-and-a-half hours to leave the port – due to our shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot exercise (Brexit), we are now obliged to use biometric data to pass into Europe which means getting out of your car, entering a booth and loking into a camera as well as placing your fingers on a fingerprint scanner and so we crawled along in a queue of cars, eager to be on our way with a long drive ahead of us. Curses be on Nigel Farage who led the campaign to take us out of Europe and who still gets paid a pension from his stint as a Member of the European Parliament – oh the irony…
Eventually we were on our way and had a choice of three routes, courtesy of Google, with six hours minimum on the table. We decided to take the middle route, figuring that an extra half-hour was neither here nor there – this would have taken us through five countries – imagine that! Netherlands, Belgium, tiny Luxembourg, Germany and finally France. A half hour in, the implacable lady that is the voice of my satnav, stated that delays on our chosen route would result in additional driving and we could save twenty-two minutes by switching to an alternative route – I decided to accept, though without time to stop and inspect the new route since we were on a motorway – it turns out that Google simply took us back to the “mainly through Germany” route so we missed out on our five country marathon – c’est la vie…
Freedom of movement between European nations in the Schengen zone means that crossing into Germany is marked merely by a roadside sign – blink and you could miss it! What I could not miss, was a change in the culture of driving. all the way through the Netherlands, the speed limit had been no more than 100kms per hour (62 miles per hour) but once in Germany, on their famously named “autobahns”, the speed limit sometimes rose to 130kph (80.77mph), which drivers took not as a limit but as a challenge to achieve or exceed. In England, the national speed limit on motorways is 70 mph, although, in practice, the speed where traffic is free-flowing is often nearer 8omph. Not only do drivers in Germany achieve the speed limit but they aggressively tailgate anyone who gets in their way of reaching their goal! The result is, (and we were travelling on a lot of two lane motorways), that you end up with a big difference between the fast outer lane and the nearside lane where lorries and those who want to travel at a more modest speed are, and this makes moving out into the fast lane quite hazardous, calling for bouts of sudden acceleration to match the speed there. This different culture kicked in the moment we crossed into Germany…
To begin with, we were driving under grey skies with even the odd drop of drizzle, but as the day wore on and we progressed South, the skies cleared and the temperatures soared until even driving with the windows open did not relieve the feeling of driving in an oven… The landscapes at the journey’s outset were also rather beige, if not grey, lots of featureless factories arrayed in Dutch neatness, and when finally we hit the countryside, it was flat and uninspiring, but by the afternoon, we reached the Mosel wine-growing area where small vineyards were arrayed on the slopes of volcanic rock. Speaking of rocks, we stopped to stretch our legs at a “Rastplatz” (Rest place) called “Blau Stein” which conjured up an image of beer steins overflowing with foamy lager – something which, considering the heat, would have been most welcome at that moment (if I wasn’t driving) but sadly the most this rest pace had to offer, was somewhere to stop, and toilets. There was, however, a large boulder painted blue and I realised the error of my fevered imagination, not a beer stein, but a Blue Stone lol…
From that point on, the landscapes became more exciting, extensive woods, almost mountains and masses of windmills! There had, of course, been lots of wind-power in evidence in the Netherlands where windmills have been in vital use for centuries, but Germany too, has embraced the wind farm as a way to cut down on CO2 emissions as well as to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas in the age of global warming and political heat. In England, there are still many objections to on-land wind farms, which I find extraordinary given a year which has seen five heatwaves one after another. I think that all these NIMBYS (Not in My BackYard) should be forcibly relocated to live right next to one of the remaining coal-fired power statioins to see how they feel about windmills then. I feel that when the generation that grew up with the Teletubbies comes to power, they will embrace windmills and feel inexplicably comforted by the sight of them…
Evetually, still with an hour-and-a-half to go, we crested a rise and saw before us the broad sweep of The Rhine valley which moment, put me in mind of Keats’ poem describing Cortez first seeing the Pacific Ocean from “a peak in Darien” and so I felt the need to record the moment with a video…
Finally, at 7.10pm, we arrived at our AirBnB – a maisonette in the garden of out hosts who were most welcoming. The garden is at once familiar, a bramble trained along a fence, rhubarb and blackcurrant bushes and novel – peach and fig trees and a grapevine over a trellis. We disgraced ourselves by locking ourselves out whilst having a last cup of tea (alright, it was me – my fault) but it was only 10pm and we had no choice but to rouse our hosts ( Nous sommes desolais…) and get them to let us in – and so to bed…
So that’s it folks – Day One of our French road trip…
1.-Preparations for the holiday in France are on schedule! The car is hoovered out and unnecessary things taken indoors. I got the A/C unit tested but it is leaking and will involve a garage so we will rely on opening the windows if it is hot lol. Clothes selected and packed. Just two more work days then off on Thursday…
2.- Could these be olives developing? In previous years the olive tree has dmade only one or two fruit and those were hidden away underneath so I didn’t notice how they developed. This year I gave a good pruning and the tree flowered well and now there are these…
3.- I was picking up a prescription and stood next to a lady with a tiny baby in a carrier. 3 weeks old and the lady is fostering – first time with a baby but she hopes it might be a permanent foster in which case she will have her till 18! I can’t remember the last time I was this close to a baby – I asked if I could photograph her very long fingered hand. Would have loved to have held her but that would have been too much to ask…
4.- After dropping off the monthly samples to the microbiology lab, I couldn’t go the usual way home across the moors due to roadworks and so had to take a different route. I used to go this way many years ago when returning from work and a colleague told me that these slabs of stone are the remains of a Roman road – I am a little skeptical but – who knows…
5.- Time for another texture/repetition shot…
Cake boxes ready to be filled at my factory – the worker had taken great pride in arranging the stack meticulously…
6.- A hypograt -very sorry to hear of the death of Dolly Parton this week – I was moved to write a poem, immediately which you can read here… A hypograt because of all the great music she gave us and the wonderful work she did with her money!
7.- The Poetry Postcard Festival is over – all the cards on my list were sent last week though I have 9 bonus cards to send and I may do a cento poem taking lines from all the poems I have been sent. There are many cards still to arrive and the post delivery has been atrocious – one delivery a week so up to fifteen cards arriving together – I will let you work out if that is a grat or a hypo-grat…
8.- Saw two good films this week – Tony – at the cinema, about Anthony Bourdain’s introduction to the world of kitchens, and last night on Netflix, The Goldfinch – based on Donna Tart’s third book – starts dark but…
9.- Not sleeping too well due to excitement at forthcoming trip – hypograt?
10.- Grateful not to have missed a week of TToT though I’m not sure about the next two weeks when we are away – maybe – I’ll see how things pan out…
1.- Grateful to live here and have this view out of the kitchen window each morning (also a reminder of mortality and to make the most of each day…)
2.- This bougainvillea was in a sorry state at the garden centre but it seems to be doing just fine now…
3.- Our roadtrip holiday to france is all booked now – overnight ferry to Rotterdam, 3 days in Strasbourg, 4 days in Lyon and 2 days in Rheims on the way back to Rotterdam 2 weeks away, in all – 1,378+ miles in all…
4.- Weed of the Week!
Himalayan Balsam is having its moment – another immigrant which no doubt escaped some horticultural garden…
5.- Grateful that after the 5th heatwave, those plants that suffered like this willow, have the nowse to put out fresh shoots at the tips to keep going…
6.- Going through the big shopping mall in Bradford – encountered some free entertainment that was unexpected. Malls often employ people such as fae-painters (my late sister used to do it) and baloon animal makers but sand- sculpture artists are a new one it seems…
7.- I have sent all the Poetry Postcards on my two lists though I have 12 Bonus cards sent by Americans to the list of non-Americans (rather shorter this year) and though there is no obligation to reply to these, if they include an address (about half do not) then they are obviously hoping and I don’t like to disappoint…
8.- The weather has cooled down a little and is now very pleasant…
1.- Much a si don’t want to perpetuate the myth that british people talk about the weather dfirst and fore most – ITS RAINING – at last, after our fifthe heat wave!!!!!
Mist on the hilltop out back as seen through the Christmas tree which is growing past our kitchen window (see last week!)
2.- The tree at the supermarket which i reported as burnt by the heat a few weeks ago, is only half burnt (Half a hypograt?) The other side from my photo has survived…
3.- Grateful for municipal plantings – these are in nearby Skipton
4.- Having found it hard to coat paper evenly for my cyanotype prints, I ordered some ready-coated paper – made in China but transported via the Amazon if you can make sense of that. Of course, the change in the weather made accurate exposure timings dificult but I managed enough prints for this weeks poetry postcards and sent off eight – only seven more to go plus bonus cards to those who included thier addresses…
From our holiday in the Netherlands earlier this year…
The Owl which is the symbol of Leeds…
5.- Along the top of this page are various buttons which filter the type of posts and I realised I hadn’t updated the Poems Page/button for over a year and so I completed that today… Or press here!
6.- We watched Paddington – the film at the recommendation of our Doctor grandson (not boasting there) and really enjoyed it – highly recommend – especially if you have children around…
7.- Am tentatively planning a roadtrip for next month Ferry to Rotterdam to Geneva with two AirbnB stops along the way via Luxembourg and Strasbourg and the Rhine Valley. We have a recently widdowed niece and her sons in Geneva. Then back via Paris and Calais… Barbara is nor wholly on board yet but I am working on it…
8.- still two weeks of school holodays which means 35minutes to work instead of one hour!
9.- Have stuck to all my “Deadlines” short story prompts and am building a small following of commenters there – sadly it is a closed site but I might repost some of the short stories on the blog if anyone is interested…
1.- We managed to get out yesterday, the first time Barbara has been out for some weeks – an invitation to visit our grandson, Jake, in Sheffield. His brother, Dillon was also theer and we brought him back home to the next village.
2.- Walking down to have lunch in the nearby park, I snapped this umbelliferous weed and was taken with the large size of the flowers (they are often quite small) – no idea what it is…
3.- but “weed” of the week – once prized for “carding” wool prior to spinning, is the teazel…
Also attractive as a mass planting…
4.- A less happy plant event (a hypograt) is this Silver Birch whose leaves are 95% burnt by the recent spells of hot weather. I hope it survives because I always park in its shade at the supermarket…
5.- Grateful for Yoirkshire Tea, which comes in a beautiful box decorated with scenes from Wensleydale (where the Cheese comes from). Yorkshire Tea is made stronger, for “hard” water areas such as is much of Yorkshire…
6. – The Poetry Postcard Festival is in full swing, I have sent just over half mine, so I am on schedule, and these are the ones i have received from groups 3 & ^ amd also from the International List – since there are so few non-Americans, we are listed additionaly, separately, for anyone who wisheds for the thrill of sending a postcard poem winging its way to foreign parts…
7.- I am not allowed to show you the poems themselves that I received, however, I can show you one of mine since I figure it will have arrived by now… This is near Kettlewell in the next Dale south of Wensleydale!
8.- It has not been too hot…
9.- Most of the pot plants in our garden have survived the heat and the wind -I am keeping an eye on the Wisteria though…
Ten Things of Thankful and all you good folks who sail in it…
1.- We have had some rain after days of strong sun or strong wind – which equally dry out the garden – even more critical when everything is in containers…
2.- The Stargazers are all open bar one and it is an annual marvel – especially for a flower that we more often see as a cut flower…
3.- I continue to be fascinated by this last Allium – by its slow development and by its morphology – it has now developed more pronounced florets on the underside whilst the to looks much the same as two weeks ago…
Two weeks ago
4.- I have, today, completed 32 out of 62 Poetry Postcards – the rest to be completed by the end of August…
I cannot show you the poem that was on the back of this card yet, but it was about the fact that all the posters on the many student walls, of Che Guevara, show him looking very serious as befits a revolutionary – so this smiling picture would not, I think, make the grade…
5. I am in the middle of another Speculative Poetry Mini-book and it is taking some work for such a tiny thing – watch this space…
6.- I talked to my Writing Critique partner yesterday – he and his wife have arrived in Eureka California for a few months before moving to L.A. for a few years from their home in Minnesota. Their cabin in the woods, runs in the Redwoods, sound divine, with deer at the window and other wildlife. The other evening, whilst watching a police drama on TV, the characters were smoking marijuana and suddenly they could distinctly smell skunk. At first they thought someone was smoking whilst passing nearby, but on opening the front door, they found three skunks gambolling outside lol…
7.- Barbara is no better but no worse…
8.- When I speak to my sister in Nova Scotia, every other week, she likes to hear me read one of my poems, so I typed up this one, and since it won’t appear anywhere else on the blog in the foreseeable future, i thought you might enjoy it… It was written in my Writing Group (on holiday break at present) and the prompt was to include a line from a favourite song…
Cause the Trees Don’t Need To Know
Trees, it turns out are no slouches when it comes to communicating co-opting networks of fungi intertwined with their subterranean roots to talk to their fellows “Salmon season is nearly upon us Gaia bless those little bears for dragging their food deep into the woods.” “Yes, bless them indeed they don’t even know what they do for us trees!” “I’m being attacked by those damned Leafcutter ants—anybody got anything bitter to make my leaves unpalatable to the little blighters – most obliged, dear neighbours.” “There’s a sapling here who’s struggling – let’s feed him up a little so he can make it till one of us old guys pegs it, and he gets his shot at the light…” Slow, thoughtful communications as befits elder statesman of the forest—unknowable, ineffable but now the threats come too thick, too fast drought, unseasonal snow, floods and forest fires there is little we can do now too late to intervene so let us whisper these perils quietly when we walk in the woods ‘Cause the trees don’t need to know…
1.- The lilies are flowering – this group 0f Stargazers now top six feet high and are scenting this corner outside the front door…
2.- Grats and Hypograts… On Thursday, I set out for work and at the roundabout where I turn onto the dual carriageway, I gunned the engine rather too suddenly and rounding the corner, I heard something snap.
Luckily, I was able to roll far enough from the roundabout to be reasonably safe but I nevertheless got out an stood well away from the car.
After a reasonably quick recovery, my local garage said they couldn’t look at it until halfway through this week due to staff shortages, they did look underneath and confirmed, as I suspected, that the drive shaft had snapped.
My daughter, Beverley, was off on holiday for two weeks to Ireland with her newly (early) retired husband Don who has just left a very stressful job. She agreed to lend me her car and put me on her insurance (£41.00)
On my way to catch the train to see the dental student in Leeds, I filled the car up with £50 of petrol only to find that the student was ill and hadn’t booked in the appointment and then, on getting home, had a call to say that they had fixed the car already, although it was going to cost twice what they had initially suggested since drive shafts are usually sent off to be refurbished but in this case, as it was actually broken, that couldn’t be done (£380.00)
I was glad to collect my car the next day since I hadn’t really liked driving Beverley’s car – the clutch seemed slack compared to mine, and Beverley will refund the petrol since I didn’t use more than a thimble full… All’s well that ends well and I am resolved to be gentler when accelerating – diesel engines have a lot of torque power…
3.- Whilst at the station, I noticed this nicely framed view of our lovely surrounding countryside and include it for you delectation…
4.- Also at the station, I paused to photograph this bank of self-seeded “weeds” – simply amazed at how many different species there were…
5.- Whilst at the garage, I was intrigued by this unusual vehicle. I am not really a petrol head, in fact quite the opposite, but having briefly owned a VW T4 campervan, I do have a soft spot for the breed. It turns out, this one was built in the ’70s by a company called the Jurgens Caravan Company. VW made a specially strengthened chassis’ with a cab only and Jurgens built a caravan onto it. This particularly rare model with the “Luton” box over the cab, was released in 1977. Pretty good shape for a vehicle made when I had just left university 49 years ago…/
6.- Barbara has not left the house for two weeks despite my best efforts – I am going to have one last go after finishing this, to get her to go out even if it is only to the supermarket to do the week’s shopping – she could then choose her own meals…
7.- The Poetry Postcard Festival is going well – due to being on two lists and therefore having 62 postcards to send, I need to complete 8 each week and have now sent 24! This week, still on the cyanotype kick, I have designed some cards to illustrate poems about famous people (Photoshop, get a picture, fiddle with contrast, posterise, turn black and white, turn negative, make cyanotype) and although I can’t show you the poem as it hasn’t reached the recipient yet, I will eventually be posting them on the PoPoFest Facebook page and I will show you this particular one in a month or so…
8.- This practice of gratitude (not forgetting hypograts) and the support and encouragement that all your lovely comments give me…
9.- Although we have plenty of sun, there is cloud too and a breeze so its not too hot and so far we don’t have a hosepipe ban yet…
10.- found ten grats and am now allowed to go visiting others…
1.- The slow-growing Allium flower has now reached it’s final size and fully coloured up…
2.- Talking of slow-growing plants that require patience – we have had this Yucca? for at least 15 years and this is the first time it has flowered – clearly worth waiting for…
When is a weed not a weed?
3.- We live on a backstreet and a bloke from the council comes around with a weed killer spray at least once a year, but this is not really enough to keep the weeds at bay and perhaps also, with this year’s weather, the weeds have flourished but some of them are too pretty to be considered weeds and so the answer to the riddle is “When they are garden escapes!”
This one I think is Lavateria
No idea what this one is but I award it “Weed of the Week!”
This one is surely a garden escape – some kind of Campanula?
4.- This weed may have struck terror into the hearts of those of you who garden, even in a photograph, or brought on apoplexy, and you may feel that it is inappropriate to allow it anywhere near a gratitude, but i have a sneaking admiration for Equisetum, or Mare’s Tail since in the Carboniferous period, it grew to the size and form of rainforest trees and composes much of the coal that formed then…
5.- This plant is growing in a garden, indeed has been deliberately planted by a neighbour, but it grows wild – hence a weed and so is the opposite of a garden escape lol…
I think it is a Mullein if not a Great Mullein?
6.- Grateful for Municipal plantings…
Who doesn’t like Lavender…
7.- This butterfly was, I’m sure, grateful for this (weed) Thistle, of some kind…
Not bad for a phone camera…
8.- I awoke to the rising sun reflecting in a tiny beam from the neighbouring houses and striking the net curtains in my bedroom, which have a rather nice pattern of birds, leaves and bird-cages and the sunlight has melded the curtains with the garden plants seen beyond…
9.- My grandson and his girlfriend have just moved into their own flat in London, he is a Doctor and she is P.A. to Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) so they have been able to afford somewhere in London which is quite a feat in this day and age. They have long desired a large painting of mine of a box of fish in a shop doorway in Naxos and so I have given it to them as a house-warming present. it leaves a large hole in the painting array in my bedroom but I’m sure I will fill it… I used to paint so infrequently (still do really) that I hung onto paintings as if to remind me that I still could, but I am learning to let go now…
10.- The Poetry Postcard Festival has begun and somehow, I hav been put on TWO lists and I can hardly withdraw from one so I now have 62 cards and poems to send before the end of August. Good job I have picked a simpler theme of printed cards this year…
Another Cyanotype print – this one near Kettlewell nearby in the Yorkshire Dales. The effect is rather as if the photograph is taken in moonlight…
A random music like which popped up on my Spotify playlist and which I am grateful to a friend for introducing me to…
Have a great week y’all – hope it is neither too hot, too wet or too windy where you are…
1.- Back on the subject of weeds – below is a battle royal between Bindweed – its flowers evenly spread as it climbs the factory fence and is like a poor man’s Morning Glory, and Japanese Knotweed the dastardly invasive weed – I would say that at present, the Bindweed is winning, but Knotweed can grow through concrete…
2.- Back in our own garden – I told you last week, how slowly this Allium grows and here you can see it starting to colour up…
3.- Meanwhile, the bulb season long over, various bits of colour dot the garden…
4.- On Friday I had to go to Leeds for my Dental Students – as always , the second week with new students is deep cleaning which i grin and bear, but I enjoy the walk across Leeds for the sights on the way…
Just opposite the station is a plaza encircled by these comely maidens alternating Morn and Even – this is Morn…
These statues were erected at the very end of Queen Victoria’s reign and I wonder if she would have disapproved of such nakedness – the back of the plaza has a much more serious line of VIP’s associated with Leeds who stare across the plaza at the backsides of Morn and Even…
FYI, Morn and Even are about 2/3 size…
5.- Further on, in front of Leeds Library, giant chess is in progress…
…and for lovers of a different kind of sculptural birds – here are some cute owls…
6.- The likes of Elon Musk have been spreading fake news about the lawless nature of Great Britain – not realising that even our right-wing yobs require a more nuanced form of gaslighting than some members of the MAGA base and such fake news, mostly falls flat here – or so I thought until I saw this sign outside the Polish shop where I buy sauages most weeks…
7.- My late Mother’s birthday was on July 4th and my younger sister Helen’s birthday is on the 8th which made them easy to remember – as well as to remind me to wish my American friends a Happy 4th July and I hope you all had a great day! I got a certain something off in the post to Helen – no spoilers as she sometimes reads these posts – and I am hoping the Gods of postage will deliver it in time. Talking of post, the Poetry Postcard Festival lists went out yesterday, only for me to discover I am on two lists! I can hardly back out of one of them now, and I don’t mind doing twice the number but it is quite expensive when sending a mere postcard, abroad costs £3.60! Thank goodness I am not doing as complicated cards as last year (original paintings for each one) but am doing cyanotype and lino prints – watch this space…
8.- My copy of Miski’s poetry book has arrived today – well it was yesterday but UPS delivered it to 31 and not 31a… Looking forward to reading it!
9.- Grateful for this community of grat folk…
10.- Glad not to be having to water the garden but there is presently no sunshine to make my Cyanotype prints lol…
In honour of the Leeds statues, here are some othe Bare Naked Ladies with a favourite track…
