This week has flown by – back to work after the holiday and this weekend, a visit from some grown-up grandchildren…
1 – The olive buds seem to have set and are beginning to change colour from bright yellow to purple and will hopefully become Black Olives – there were a few last year but not enough to do anything with…
2 – Still grateful for work which took me out of the office briefly – doing a Fire Risk Assessment for my bosses’ property portfolio which they converted an old office block into accommodation and the local council will take over tenancy tomorrow to accommodate their tenants who find themselves temporarily out of home due to fire, flood etc.
3 – Also changing colour as Autumn arrives, the tree which I often park under at work, only to receive gifts from the birds feeding on the berries…
4 – Always on the lookout for photo opportunities – this nice shadowplay on the building opposite our kitchen window…
5 – I posted the last of my group list poetry postcards on the PoPoFest Facebook page – just a few responses to the International list to go. This one was to a poet in Dublin and like me on both the group and International list…
The link is to a news item from 2006 0r 7 of me painting the mural…
6 – I got over the cold I had in just 7 days…
7 – One of my grandsons, an up-and-coming rapper (he had a very small stage slot at Glastonbury) has been staying for a long weekend and his brother, a policeman in nearby Bradford came for the day too so lots of catching up with their careers…
8 – Had a Zoom meeting with my writing Critique buddy after a two month gap over the summer – despite 20 years difference in age, we enjoy our double zoom slot immensely, talking about our writing but also wider issues like politics, AI (he is a programmer) and whales…
9 – I am going to be on a drug trial for an oral version of a weight loss drug used to assist in type 2 diabetes ao that might be helpful…
10 – no, I haven’t hit a brick wall for Ten Things but this is another in my collection of useful textures…
We are The dreamers of dreams But they are the creators of nightmares She cannot bear to listen to the news now He oscillates between feeling fury and futility They control the narrative with false news We cannot believe the lies that others will swallow They wave false flags to justify Their repressive responses We wonder where the bullies came from That swell their ranks They raise their fists in anger We throw up our hands in horror They wave their guns in the air We waiver in fear for our lives But he nurtures resistance And she writes poems and placards He investigates logistics She strategizes They start a movement Others join the march All are non-violent but They shout “We the People!” And congregate to be counted He who would be strong Looks weaker by the day They garner solidarity We can push back I can have hope…
The opening line of this poem is taken from “Ode” by the poet Arthur O’Shaughnessy and first published in 1873.[1] It is the first poem in O’Shaughnessy’s collection Music and Moonlight (1874). In it, he extols the role of artists in creating new worlds and the poem was put to music by Edward Elgar as The Music Makers (Op. 69) – Elgar’s final choral work. Both poem and choral piece should inspire us to come our of the shadows currently being cast by authoritarian regimes around the world today, and to stand together…
We are back from our holiday in Cornwall, which, after all the good weather this year, proved the worst choice of weeks when it rained all but one of the days and one day rained for the whole day! Still we need to be thankful for the rain as we have hosepipe bans in many parts of the UK due to drought, and as it rained back home, my neighbour was spared the task of watering our yard full of container plants (100 literes or ten watering cans full on a dry week…) and yet, a change is as good as a rest, so this is a thankful glance back over the holiday.
1 – between showers, we walked around Charlestown, a port for the St. Austell china clay mining area and heard Cornish fishermen singing a sea shanty…
2 – On the day that it rained all day, we drove to Lands End, but rather than pay to look into the mist and rain, drove down to nearby Sennen Cove to await the promised clearing of rain, eventually giving up and driving back home – but looking at waves is always something to be thankful for…
3 – A garden to be thankful for – The Lost Gardens of Heligan are the largest garden restoration project in Europe – once again, between showers…
The Giant’s Head greets visitors at the beginning of their walk around the gardens…These are Rhododendron trunks grown so large during the period when the gardens were neglected, that you could cut wood from them…
3 – We did visit this beach, Porthlunny Bay, and managed a walk on the sands without rain lol…
Porthlunny Beach, Cornwall
4 – Thankful for the beauty of boats – this one, converted from a fishing boat to a tourist ride in Mevagissy Harbour…
5 – Thankful for the security guards who allowed us down to the disabled car park at Carlyon Bay without a Blue Badge (we are applying for one…)
Carlyon Bay, Cornwall – rain holding offBarbara contemplating the waves…
6 – On our way home to Yorkshire, we stopped for the weekend in Worcester/Malvern – Barbara to stay with an old friend she han’t seen for years and I to join the annual reunion of my schoolfriends of the class of ’72 – 53 years since we left and friendships still going strong. We spent the Friday morning going round The Morgan Car Company, where they still build cars by hand…
The main assembly hall
A Morgan ready for road testing before the bodywork is added (it’s easier to make any adjustments needed)Hand finishing the Ash framework for the bodywork…Morgan’s top of the range offering – the Supersport – 0-62mph in 3.8 seconds (for the petrolheads amongst you…) The price – don’t ask…The last supper on the saturday night – old boys and their gals…
7 – On the Saturday, we visited a tiny two-room museum giving the history of the invention of radar, amongst other things, at Malvern – 2000 scientists were secretly moved to and billeted in Malvern to keep their work out of sight of the Germans during World War 2. The invention of radar and especially the airborne radar in the Battle of the Atlantic was the saving of Britain – for which we are thankful…
Other things invented at the Malvern scientific establishment include Liquid Crystal display, Touch Screens, Night sight vision and the Queen sent the first email from Malvern where they contributed significantly to the development of the Internet…
Also at Malvern Station, the much older technology of cast-iron (with embellishments) gave us these beautiful columns.
8 – On returning home, the weather changed to Fine and as if to taunt us, here is an early morning view from our kitchen window – still thankful to be home safely…
Silsden, West Yorkshire
9 – on the door mat awaiting our return, were 10 more cards from the Poetry Postcard Festival, from which I have received 22 out of 31 from my group so far and 16 from the International list. Most of the festival’s participants are American, but everyone wants to exchange cards with someone outside the US and so we Internationals appear on an additional list. There is no obligation to reply to these “bonus” cards, but if people put their name and address on the ones they send, I feel they are dying to get one back, so I have about 4 more to send still…
Cards from my Group 4 so far…
Postcards from the “International List”…
10 – Back at work again, after a couple of days working at home with a cold, on Thursday, I had to take samples for microbiological testing, over to the labs at Luddenden Foot, and driving back home across the moors, I stopped to photograph this particular landscape, which fascinates me. At the centre you can see strips where the heather has been burned off to let the grass grow through for the sheep, creating a linear pattern at odds with nature. I painted this scene several times for the Postcard Poetry Festival and this day, the clouds were scudding across, throwing different parts of the view into shadow…
Another photo, top left, from which I made three different paintings
Black and white surely opposites? Yin and Yang perfectly nested complete a circle no mixing, no grey areas
White light is a mixture of all the colours whilst dark is the absence of light light’s shadow friend inseparable
For as long as stars burn bright with light and there are objects arrayed to block the light then there must necessarily be shadow until all the stars go out
When we paint we use chiaroscuro to bring our canvasses to life light and dark to throw our subjects into relief to shade them – then we see
that shadows are not universally dark but illuminated by reflection of the light from other objects whose colour has sucked dry those hues that are not it’s to own
Yellow swallows everything that we do not deem yellow and reflected into neighbouring shadow – a hint of gold will now suffuse the shade making it less than black
Nowhere is free from scattered light and so no white nor black are wholly pure Yin and Yang a pure conceit
Shadows are shades of other colours who are merely filters that absorb some wavelengths reflect back the rest to our miraculous eye
Watercolourists work with transparent hues whilst oil painters apply solid, light-absorbing paint and TVs shine out light and print must duller be
We swim in a milieu of light and filters making shades of hues and dappling shadows with subtle colour – we are all in reality, impressionists…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace is hosting Open Link Night when you can post a poem of your own choosing. This one was written for the monthly poetry group at my local library, a small and distinctly analogue group whose subject this month was Opposites…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Punam – paeansunplugged in Poetics, Uncategorized, invites us to write about Happiness and offers a series of titles which we may choose to use one or more of – not wanting to make any of the authors feel left out and unhappy, I went for all of them…
1.The pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardener
2. Happy Accidents: A memoir by Jane Lynch
3. The ministry of utmost happiness by Arundhati Roy
Here in Yorkshire it is not unknown for a man of my years to be addressed by a bus conductor (male) as “Love” but “Flower”is a term of endearment reserved for intimate family and friends and “Petal” is reserved for moments of real affection…
Give me not statins those white little pills give me good greens let me not eat too much red meat whose production decimates our blue marble planet white meat takes a lesser toll I will not eschew the yellow yolks of eggs and go full vegan limited to the orange, brown and greens of lentils the gold of grains the white of rice and others of the blond grasses but let me sway more in their direction – to healthy balance whatever colour that is…
Three years before I was born, my parents drove to London only to be wrapped in the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, the last London smog – born of ten million coal fires insinuating their smoke into the streets and passageways and parks – those lungs of the metropolis – fog turned to smog -mixing its sulphurous poison with fumes from the growing tide of motor vehicles to burn the lungs of the pulmonarily challenge – trees recoiled and people died… A fog so thick my mother had to walk in front of the car waving a torch – a fog that recalls Dickens’ opening to Bleak House, and at least there weren’t motor cars in his day, but this twentieth-century fog too far, sealed the fate of future smogs by ushering in The Clean Air Act and the advent of smokeless fuel…
Police officer with a flare. Source: Public Domain. From The Story of the Great Smog of London
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Prosery, invites us to write a piece of poetic prose in exactly 144 words to include a line from T.S.Elliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – “The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes”. This recalled for me, one of my Mother’s stories about driving to London in 1952 and encountering the last great London smog…
1 – Our Olive tree seems to have set the majority of flowers – whether they turn into lovely black olives remains to be seen but there are far more, potentially than last year…
2 – We were loaded up more or less according to schedule to depart for our holiday in Cornwall – and no, there is no kitchen sink in there…
3 – Grateful to our neighbour opposite for agreeing to water the garden (containers) whilst we are away – the Rhubarb is the bellweather – I hav e never tried to grow Rhubarb in a pot before and it has grown so much this year, after already being repotted once, that I think it will need an even larger pot for next year. It started from a fragment of plant that came away with a stalk I picked two years ago! It has wilted several times with this years heatwaves but has perked up within the hour after being watered…
4 – Gratefull not to have been travelling an hour earlier when a serious accident happened en route for the motorway at a place where, stuck in the queue waiting for it to be removed (took another hour) we could do nothing but chat to other drivers and I took this picture of the landscape. There was no alternative to waiting, no lanes that could be used to bypass the incident – es la vida…
5 – Glad to have been once more passing surely the best motorway service station, possibly in the world! Looking like some ancient megalithic structure embedded in the landscape, this service station is a Farm Shop selling amazing artisan breads and cakes, fruit and wholefood goods. I bought a Sourdough loaf which will last our first week on holiday, apples and a Pistachio cream filled Croissant…
Even the Fuel Station is different from usual…
6 – Glad that this is the season of native English apples and here is my favourite a Discovery apple. The intens red of the skin permeates the flesh inside – and the taste – well, this is to other apples as Champagne is to other wines! Sadly, supermarkets favour apples that last longer (at the cost of less taste) and have their supply lines set to a steady flow of foreign apples – so all the more reason to savour English apples when they are in season and you can manage to find them…
7 – We arrived at 9 o’clock at night after an epic 12 hour drive and this is the little garden at the back of the static trailer. The approach to it is not very prepossessing – a building site! But the accomodation is nice if bijou and there is a stream flowing alongside which gives a constant gurgling soundtrack…
8 – On the other side of the wall is a disused China Clay drying works since we are on the outskirts of St. Austell, Cornwall, where china clay mining has been an industry for a long time supplying clay for uses from toothpaste to glossy paper…
9 – It is raining this morning but we are on holiday so es la vida! (That’s life!) We shall just relax and go with the flow…
10 – We had chip butties for lunch yesterday – how decadent is that!
I hope you are all living your best lives too and if you want to join in – click the link below…
1 – Glad that my partner and I made another trip and managed to reach Whitby, or rather the adjacent beach at Sandsend. On the way, instead of stopping for coffee at Helmsley, we found this Pick Your Own Wildflower meadow where you can also get coffee and cake…
2 – This week’s texture for graphic work – woodchip path at the PYO – one day I will show you how these textures come in useful…
3 – Grateful for the sea whose presence and waves are varied but always there to provide a sort of meditation break from the affairs of men…
Sandsend is a popular surfing spot in the new world of cold-water surfing (who wants to hang out in Hawaii anyway – grab your wetsuit boys and girls…)
4 – Grateful that the Spider Orchid Lily bulbs I added to the garden this year have finally flowered – nothing to do with spiders and not orchids either…
5 – I collect odd bits of detritus to use in collages – this one (probably a piece of gearing from a Bradford Mill or more prosaically a piece of a car engine) is a bit chunky but it reminds me of the 30’s Sunrise motif…
Somewhere in Wiltshire from a sketch I did at 17…
Yorkshire moors between Oxenhope and Hebden Bridge
6 – There is but one Painting/Poetry Postcard to go after this – I am replying to the “bonus” cards sent by participants to the International list (as opposed to the majority US lists) of which five included their names and addresses and so though, under the terms of the PoPoFest, one is not obliged to reply – these guys were obviously hoping for one – in fact one was on my list in 2023 – so I decided to press on with the paintings. I was particularly pleased with these two which are acrylic on paper, because I achieved the sort of looseness of touch that I seek but don’t always find – this may be a result of doing 35 paintings in about 5 weeks…
7 – Glad that a friend of mine who has been struggling with having terminated an unsuitable relationship is getting back to herself…
8 – Grateful that our holiday in Cornwall is only 5 days away and I hope the change of scene will do us both good…
9 – Glad that the apples I scrumped are ripening nicely without loss and that Discovery apples – my favourites – are coming into their all too brief season – it will be Egremont Russets’ turn next…
10 – Glad that dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night gave me the chance to post an unprompted poem of a tender disposition which made a change from the angry poems I find I have to write in these difficult times – you can read it here.
