Driving to Plymouth

Posted on January 13, 2025 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged 1980's, bloganuary, bloganuary-2024-13, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1816, Devon, Driving, Memory, Motorways, Plymouth, TravelLeave a comment

Think back on your most memorable road trip.

In the 1980’s we went to visit a friend from college for the first time. It was a journey we would make every couple of years until he moved up to the North of England.

We lived in the Midlands and I’d learnt to drive about 6 months before. I was driving a Morris Marina.

We took the M6 then M5 motorways until it ran out and changed to an A road. We stopped off for breakfast at a service station because the journey was about 240 miles. I hadn’t been on a motorway very often and as we came out of the service station I ended up on the North bound slip road! I did something illegal. I reversed back down the road and then took the South road!

Luckily the route was very simple, we got to Plymouth, and the house we were visiting was a few hundred yards away from the motorway junction. I remember we took bicycles on the roof of the car so the rest of the week was spent cycling to beaches and visiting various interesting places. The trip back was uneventful!

This was pre satnav and we used maps to navigate. To be honest I still use an A to Z if I want to find somewhere. But my driving is restricted to short journeys these days.

Cadmium colours

Posted on December 28, 2024December 28, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Cadmium, Colours, Fine Art, heavy metals, Orange, Pallette, purifying colours, Red, Yellow4 Comments

In the 1980’s My hubby worked for a few years in a cadmium colour factory, they processed the raw pigments to get colours from pale yellow, through orange to red and deep matoon red. He bought me jars and jars (empty coffee jars) of the colours home, but as they are made of a heavy metal I decided to give them to a friend who knew how to use them and grind her own oil paint.

I don’t know if he was allowed to bring them but I think he knew I would love the colours and I did. They were the purest colours I had ever seen. To quote Rudolphs song “you could almost say they glowed”. As Cadmium is similar to Lead though, I decided not to use them.

Those paintings

Posted on March 11, 2024March 12, 2024 Posted in Cat, Fine Art, Memories, Sketching, UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Black and white cat, Cat, Gift, Memory, Pencil sketch, Poppies, Tortoiseshell cat, Tuxedo cat, WatercolourLeave a comment

Here they are, quickly painted. I think the date on the bottom one is 1988? I am sure they are watercolour and pencil drawings now I look closely. I’m not sure if they were a birthday or Christmas gift? It’s lovely to see work I did over 35 years ago! To think they still exist x

Old oil painting

Posted on January 23, 2024 Posted in Cat, Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Art, Fine Art, large painting, Memory, narrative, oils on canvas, Old House, Painting, Time, twenties8 Comments

1980s large canvas. Painted in oils, it was only a few years later that I started using acrylics instead. It’s about 5 ft by 4 ft or something like that. It depicts our old front room, in the house we used to live in. The cellar underneath the front room was starting to collapse, its vaulted ceiling held up with an acroprop. Why was I painting a giant cat? Because I love them, and patterns (wallpaper, clothes etc). The small cat in the corner is playing with a roll of wool. The box says Walsall Art supplies, where I came from. I’d call this a narrative painting.

Mr X

Posted on November 21, 2021November 22, 2021 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Art, College work, Fine Art, Mr X, Oil on board, Oil painting, PortraitLeave a comment

Oil painting on board of a friend I painted while I was at college. The Mr X refers to his name when he was in a band. I glued the poster to the painting and added an image of one of his pictures in the background behind him. I think I did the painting from life but I don’t really remember, it was painted about 40 years ago x

1980’s views

Posted on October 16, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Forty years, Memory, photo album, Photos, Remembered, Snow, Time, Winter, YouthLeave a comment

Photos from an old album. They were taken forty years ago. They won’t mean anything to anyone except me. They are old memories. Of winter when snow fell deep. When I lived in a flat. When the underfloor heating woukd blow out in a strong wind and me and my friends would be very cold till it was fixed.

It also has memories of when the skyline of the city was simpler, when some of the houses still stood. The colours are strange because I always used 400 iso film. That and the misty murk makes it look very gloomy despite the snow. So much has changed since then. No tape recorders or cassette tapes. No black and white TV’s. Even videos seem to have come and gone. Computers were only just being introduced. Yes my memory goes back a long way.

Bibendum

Posted on December 13, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Bibendum, Coal mines, Factories, Michelin, Northern, Pottery, Staffordshire, Steel, Stoke-on-Trent, Twentieth century, Twenty first centuryLeave a comment

Bibendum is the name of the iconic symbol for Michelin tyres. There was a large factory near us run by Michelin. Sadly the factory has mostly closed now, its mostly a training facility. The one improvement is that the smell of vulcanising rubber no longer hangs over the city. Like many of the factories and manufacturing in Stoke-on-Trent the jobs have gone. Potteries have been badly affected. Steel manufacturers have gone and other jobs like coal mining went in the 1980’s. Northern areas of the United Kingdom have been badly affected over the years of the late twentieth century and twenty first.

Tranquil water

Posted on November 26, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Bright days, Life, Photo, Poem, Poetry, Summer, Sunshine, Tranquil, Water2 Comments

Tranquil water

Peat stained stream

Full of life

Nature’s dream.

Tiny fish

That hide in pools

How I miss

Ice cream, cool

Dappled sunlight

Dusty paths

Sometimes too bright,

Sunlights flash!

Over stepping stones…

Feet to splash

Memories recalled

Of times fast dash.

1980’s self portrait

Posted on July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Art, Blending, Fine Art course, Learning, Life, Oil on canvas, Oils versus acrylics, Painting, self portrait, Youth2 Comments

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Oil on canvas

Forty years ago I was at college learning how to paint. I had lots of fun and did some painting too! I used to paint in oils until I discovered how fast and clean acrylics were a decade or so later. I’m a fast painter but acrylics go off very fast so my style changed somewhat. Instead of mixing colours wet in wet on the canvas I ended up trying to get my colours right on the palette. I think I probably ended up with a more splodgy style until I learnt to blend layers on the canvas.

Many moons ago

Posted on July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 1980's, Bangles, Eyepatch, Fun, Hooped earrings, Laugh, Photo, Pirate, Poem, Poetry, Silly, Time, YoungLeave a comment

CaptainBirdsEye (1)_optimized

In a time when photos

were printed on paper,

and swords

were made of cardboard

and silver foil.

Hooped earrings were in fashion,

And bangles jingled.

I wore an eyepatch on my glasses

and pretended to be

Long John Silver,

or Captain Hook,

Red beard

or some other rapskallion…

Oh what fun!

To be young again,

and silly…

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: 1980’s

Driving to Plymouth

Cadmium colours

Those paintings

Old oil painting

Mr X

1980’s views

Bibendum

Tranquil water

1980’s self portrait

Many moons ago