I’m not sure what high school is? When I was at school we went to primary, then secondary school. The top (final year) was the sixth form where you took your final exams.
One of those was biology, we studied a lot of information, photosynthesis, stomata in leaves (the holes underneath leaves that allow gases in and out. Things like the function of the kidney (was there something called a glomerulus?), the layers of skin, probably the structure of the eye? I think liking art helped because I could draw diagrams.
I enjoyed biology and am glad I chose it as one of my subjects.
Today was a sad day, leaving my studio at Spode is a real wrench. I have had to gather up my belongings including paints, canvases, an easle. Even the mirrors on the walls and the nails that supported my paintings over the years I’ve been there.
How do you remove hexagonal mirrors that are glued to a wall? With a claw hammer and very carefully is the answer. Now some paintings are at a friends studio and others are here in my living room. Hopefully I will soon get sorted out.
Sketch of an eclipse on canvas in acrylic paint. I challenged myself to just paint with red, yellow, blue, white and black so I had to mix new colours using the primary colours on the pallette. I added a tiny moon surrounded by the corona of the sun visible against the darkened sky. It might be something I paint properly in future.
Holidays, more memories of adventures long gone by. Camping in a tent at Easter thirty years ago.
We’d cycled up to Clitheroe in Lancashire and used our cycle trailer to carry our camping gear.
The holiday started out sunny, but the wind picked up and by the time we had the tent up the snow was blowing sideways at it. I even wrote C 4 R on the snow on the side of the tent.
We went off for a cycle into town and stopped off at a tiny cinema. It was very posh, there were photos of the Queen in the ladies loo! I remember we got a bit of warmth while watching the cat from outer space.
We had dinner at the local pub and cycled back to the tent afterwards. Luckily it was downhill but we were slipping around on the falling snow. We ended up putting on extra clothes, three jumpers and an extra pair of trousers each. We found out in the morning it had been minus 11°C.
The rest of the week was almost as cold and we cycled back in deep snow!
I’ve cycled for exercise when I was younger and I loved the freedom of it. You could travel for miles, with the ability to see places you could never get to on foot and if you travel in a car or a train the world goes by almost too fast so that you don’t get the connection with the land that you do on a bike.
We cycled for many years and I went from pushing my bike up hills, to slowly slogging up in bottom gear to being able to make good progress up to a summit. I could tell my fitness was improving, my breathing improved and my physical strength improved too. My hubby and I could cycle up to a hundred miles in under eight hours!
The worst thing that happened to me was a bike accident that eventually persuaded me to get a car. I should have continued to cycle.
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
The, Martian is the book I’m currently reading and the film was recently on TV.
I like it because the story by Andy Weir is more science based for a sci-fi film than fantasy. It depicts an astronaut who is abandoned on Mars after a freak accident. His colleagues assume he is dead and have to leave because their escape rocket is about to topple over which would trap them on Mars.
Why do I want to be the character in the film? I like the problem solving that has to happen to save the astronaut. He has to work out how to increase his food supply, chemically create water, travel across Mars and communicate with Earth after the communication system was destroyed. There are humourous episodes throughout the film, and tension increases as various mishaps occur. Not all the science is right but it is an enjoyable film. If I knew I was going to survive and come home I would do it.
My college thesis was on Pre Christian Celtic art. I have continued to love the knotwork designs they created. I was interested how the Celts moved westwards across Europe and into the British Isles. Their art was stunning. Various archaeological discoveries of intricate gold and bronze artefacts showed the sophistication of their culture. A massive horde of treasure was found at Sutton Hoo and historical artefacts were found in Halstatt in Austria? I’m sorry it’s 40 years since I wrote it and memory fades.
I continued to draw celtic knotwork, but this style of art needs practice and I haven’t done much of it recently.
A giant cat wrapped around a pottery bottle oven, called keeping warm. I drew this along with a few more cat and pottery designs back in 2017. It just came up on my Facebook memories today. Black and white sketch using a black biro if I remember correctly.
Set on a planet where the inhabitants hardly see one another except holographically, where babies are ‘made’ by being grown in tanks. A human, detective Elijah Bailey is bought to the planet to investigate a murder.
Baileys home on Earth is a crowded underground mega city where humanity is living cheek by jowel. Spacers (other world citizens) have little to do with Earth, thinking the beginning world of humanity is beneath them. Bailey had previously worked with a Spacer called Daneeil Olivaw. (the Caves of Steel, also by Asimov) Bailey did not realise that Olivaw was a robot and so could work with a human. After they successfully solved a murder on earth Bailey is promoted and bought in on this investigation with Olivaw as backup.
I first read the Naked Sun as a teenager, I still have the copy, and every so often reread it. The science fiction is interesting, it examines the way humanity has diversified, how robots are integrated into society, the completely opposite lifestyle of Spacers and how detective Bailey has to try and live on the surface of a planet after an entire life in subterranean crowds.
Asimov book is dated, but insightful, it’s sometimes melodramatic but enjoyable. It’s not just a “shoot em up” cowboy or cops and robbers story in space.
Asimov wrote many robot books, came up with the three laws of robotics which with a bit of thought I could probably quote.
His book “I robot” was the basis for the film of the same name starring Will Smith. Other films have been based on his books.
I think it was written in the 1950s? So expect the Naked Sun to be a little old fashioned, but maybe give it a read?
Mallaband-Brown 