New Editor?

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Has anyone else seen notices on WordPress about a new editor being released? I’m just about OK with the classic editor, and I don’t like the Gutenberg one. Is that the right name for it? Anyway, I am confused. Is the new editor a brand new one or the Gutenberg one? There are posts saying get ahead with it. There were previous ones last year about ‘levelling up’. But I’m not a revolutionary sort of person. I don’t need change every year. Let me use the basic skills I have as a slightly older writer. Don’t force unnecessary change on me. Please.

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Glass of wine

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I went to Germany on a wine tasting visit in the 1990’s. It was overland and by ferry, so it took about twelve hours on the coach. Plus I had a bad cold, so it wasn’t the best trip. However I enjoyed it and bought home a German glass. I got that and a small cookoo clock to bring home as souvenirs. One man that travelled with the tour was convinced we had gone over the border into East Germany. He was quite strange. We were actually going to the Rhine area.

We went in the autumn and the trees were changing colour, we went along the mosel River and sampled ‘qualitatswein mit pradicat’ if I remember correctly. The sun set an hour earlier because we were in a different time zone. We enjoyed a trip on a river boat, and to a winery. The steep valleys and winding roads were spectacular.

On our way back we watched the film ‘the hunt for red October’ on the coach TV’s that was the first, and last time I have watched TV while travelling.

Day 33, what does quarantine mean to you?

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After several weeks, I’m a bit fed up, and my hair is the longest it’s ever been… But we are coping, I was going to draw my mostly empty fridge. I don’t have much veg….

I enjoy drawing with charcoal pencil. What you lose in definition you gain in character I think. I wasn’t trying for accuracy, but I wanted to depict my mood.

Five more days to go, then I may start doing something else.

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Getting back to normal?

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Day 32, urban sketchers challenge.

Medium, spectrum noir colouring pencils with a metallic sheen.

This morning when I got up I saw another con trail in the sky, this time horizontal north/south. Then as I started to draw I saw a plane and another con trail cut across the sky, west to east. I could see the tiny plane. I knew I would not be able to do it justice so I left it out.

The next door neighbours back yard beyond the trellis fence is a bit boring. I’m waiting for hanging baskets to hang off the fence and brighten things up.

Back to normal? I don’t think so…..

Con trail excitement!

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Just had the excitement of seeing a con trail overhead. Con stands for condensation, it’s when a jet airplane flies high up and the hot and humid exhaust gases from its engine condense out as ice crystals in the very low temperature and low vapour pressure air. Its like when you breathe out in the winter and your breath turns into ice if its cold enough.

For some reason there is a conspiracy theory that the vapour is made of chemicals and that governments are spreading them from the planes.

Ask yourself, why would they do that? There were experiments in the mid twentieth century to try and ‘seed’ clouds to make them rain. But it didn’t really take off!

It is strange how these weird ideas get into the world. I prefer thinking things through. If it doesn’t make sense can it be true?

Anyway I don’t think one con trail makes for the end of the lockdown here, like the old saying ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’. And really, I for one would like there to be a lot less flights, or more ecologically sustainable ones when things do resolve themselves.

In the meantime please stay safe.

Good morning.

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Kitchen at night

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I am just putting my phone on charge and I looked up and saw the light from the back door porch shining through and reflecting off the walls and the windows. As you can see I’m growing a lot of Christmas cacti and other plants including a baby oak and a sweet pepper plant on the windowsill. There are also glass mobiles hanging up there. Why? Because I got burgled twenty years ago and as well as an alarm I decided to make it as awkward as possible for anyone to try an climb through a window without knocking stuff off.

I think this might eventually turn into a painting. Night all

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Russian vine

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I don’t have a photo, but this afternoon we removed what feels like miles of Russian vine from our hedge. I think it’s also called mile a minute. It’s also growing at the back of our garden, and bits of it have grown up the telephone wires and even into our shed!

It was hot outside, so we worked in the late afternoon as it started to cool down. The Russian vine is wraping itself round a couple of leylandii, up an old willow tree, into our walnut tree, and around the Holly tree. It’s tough stuff. We should dig out the roots, but it’s too entangled. So we are cutting through the largest vines, then you pull at it, and strands of vine twenty foot long come out of the hedge. Each vine splits into branching thinner pieces. The leaves are green and heart shaped. It looks like a nice plant when you get it. With small white bunches of flowers in the summer. The bees like it, but our privet hedge flowers and that is more pleasant than the vine.

Unless you have a massive garden don’t grow it!

Solstice

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As the year waxes and wanes,

as time passes,

light rises and falls.

Life comes and goes,

hearing bird song, then silence.

Summer solstice,

the world is warm,

but days will shrink and shrivel.

Winter solstice,

the promise of warmth,

locked in ice,

day lengthens, nights slowly shrink.

North and South

seasons, polar opposites.

Hot in one hemisphere,

cold in the other.

Unless, near the equator,  

seasons are less obvious, 

No frozen wastes here.

World floating in space,

around Sol, the Sun, our star,

Earth tipped at an angle,

anchored by moon,

held in mutual gravity

Eternal?