Cat outside the summerhouse

25.5.20, I drew our then outside cat outside the summerhouse where he used to sleep. Now the bushes have grown up and hubby has stored bikes in there. I’ve hardly been out this year. Too cold and wet, and it’s overgrown around it. We need to prune plants but my arm is not very strong and the muscles ache.

I don’t want the place to fall to rack and ruin. I must make more of an effort. I didn’t realise how much this pandemic could take out of you physically despite not catching the virus (hopefully never) I just wish things were better. Not just here, but everywhere. Goodness knows what atrocities are happening in Ukraine. Trucks are stuck on the motorway going to Dover while ferries are held up for health and safety deficiencies. Crops are rotting in fields, de to various problems including lack of workers because of Covid. Meanwhile our Prime minister and Chancellor have been fined for attending parties, when they had bought in laws to stop the public meeting up at parties – or stopping relatives visiting their loved ones who were dying of Covid. Many bad things, mad things, stupid things. I despair of people!

Memory of winter

The snow has gone for now

Warm winds blow from the south

Clear frosty mornings

Left behind

Rain and showers

Water the blossom and flowers

Cold chill twigs

Now wet with buds.

Birds collect bugs

and think of lining their nests

With moss and fluffy stuff

Warm and snuggled

For eggs and chicks

Farewell Winter.

See you later in the year

As the seasons turn.

Onedin line

I just listened to the Adagio from Spartacus. I know it as the theme music to a 1970’s TV series called the Onedin line. My mother used to collect LPs (long playing records) of classical music, and sometimes we would sit and listen to them. The adagio rises and falls, the music swells before it calms like a settling sea.

I haven’t heard it for forty years so I was surprised at how upset it made me. I cried so much. Memories can have that effect. These were good memories of a long time ago. If you want to hear it go to YouTube. It’s worth it.

Rain

Rain on my window, blurring the view smeared across the surface. April shower crashes down. No thunder or lightning but we may get some. Hidden tomato plants snug in the plastic greenhouse.

My friend now has an allotment. I have offered to water her plants while she’s on holiday. An old gardener there said the plants in her greenhouse will need watering daily! I’m glad of the showers now, they will help fill up the water butt’s. Large blue barrels filled with rain water. It’s good, we had a very dry march so the rain is welcome.

Cards for sale

A mixture of my cards for sale at Etruria Industrial Museum. Mostly green men and sea women, but with a card based on a painting of Cheddleton Station building near Leek, Staffordshire, England. I painted it in 2000, I think. I still have the original.

I have a lot of paintings that I never sold. I’m not a sales person and I don’t think I ever will be. I’m more interested in the process and result than selling art afterwards. I worry my family will be burdened with my art when I die!

Dalek

Hubby grabbed the Dalek arm so it could not shoot at me. Well not really. This character from the Sci-fi series ‘Dr Who’ was on display in the foyer of the Potteries Museum and Art gallery so of course I had to take a photo. The TV series has been on and off the BBC over about fifty years! It’s amazing how the show has such longevity, but then it could be because the ‘doctor’ of the title can regenerate and turn into a new person. In the meantime ii hope it doesn’t say ‘Exterminate!’.

A motto?

This statue stands behind the Bethesda Methodist Chapel in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. I think it is Mary and the Baby Jesus. But what do the words painted on the building mean.

Mercian

Rain God

Laughter

Mercia is the old name for the English Midlands, Stoke-on-Trent is in the North Midlands. Rain God? When you drive towards Stoke-on-Trent you realise it is higher than the surrounding area and rain clouds travelling over the Cheshire plain do sometimes dump their rain here… And Laughter? Maybe that’s about the place, the character of the people, or perhaps the writer was imagining the damp, wet people who had been rained on and was laughing at them. Who knows?

Spitfire gallery

We also visited the new Spitfire Gallery at the Potteries Museum and Art gallery today. Our local council spent millions on the gallery to house a Spitfire E (with shortened wings for low altitude flying). But then earlier this year they decided to reduce the museum opening hours. This means it will be closed two days a week. The Gladstone Pottery Museum will also be closing for five months a year due to council plans to cut budgets. There is outrage in Stoke on Trent. We realise that this will affect tourism in the city and that it is cultural vandalism. But that is what you get when you are ruled by ‘bean counters’ knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing as the saying goes.