New paintings and regular art updates.
I used to toast these on the bars of the gas fire when I was a child. We used a fork hooked on by it’s prongs to the horizontal bars in front of the white ceramic blocks that the flames came up through.
Toasting the bottom of the crumpet first, then the top. It would get really hot and the butter would melt all the way down into the bubbled tubes of the crumpet. Delicious x
(not to be confused with English Muffins)
An advert for evaporated (condensed milk). But I’m more interested in the fruit salad portrayed here. That bowl represents at least one whole can of the stuff, I know because me and my sisters used to squabble over it in the 60s and 70s. If there was only one cherry in the tin our mother used to cut it into four. It also has peaches, pears and I think pineapple.
We used to have sliced white bread and butter with it. Oh the simplicity of the past.
I love my little notebook, getting filled up with sketches and doodles and bits of writing prompts. This bird recently appeared squeaking and squaking (odd word spelling I know) on the page. With this drawing comes memories of drawing odd bits when I was a child. I used to try and draw butterflies and moths and horses too. It is about learning to draw and freeing your imagination. Art is life!
Esther requested a piece of writing about a funny moment this week and my memory went back to my early childhood…
Thinking of children and what they say and do. I was a young child, probably about 5. I was developing a wart on my thumb and asked my mum what I should do? She told me to rub some bacon on it and bury it in the garden. Some time later she found me outside calling for her, asking if I could come back inside? I’d rubbed the bacon on my thumb then shoved my thumb into the soil! I always have taken things too literally!
I had a little nut tree
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg
And a golden pear
The king of Spains daughter
Came to visit me
And all for the sake
Of my little nut tree.
Funny how your mind looks for something interesting when it’s got nothing to do. I used to know a lot of nursery rhymes when I was a little child. This one I would say is well known? But who knows this one that I used to sing when I was on a seesaw.
Seesaw, Marjorie Daw
Jenny shall have a new master,
She shall have but a penny a day
Because she can’t work any faster!
I want to try and remember more. A couple in Manchester or Salford? Collected a lot of rhymes and children’s songs in the early 1900s. I think their surname was Opie. I’m sure there’s more information about it on line. They found that a rhyme sung in the south of England could travel to the North of Scotland in about two weeks by word of mouth (pre telephone).
What makes you feel nostalgic?
The WordPress image library is hard to use to find British pictures. I was looking for an image of “Robin Hood” but I could only find the bird, or a coat hood or the hood (bonnet) of a car.
I want to share some of the 1960’s TV shows I remember from childhood. Some of them are being shown again.
They include ‘the Avengers’, not the marvel ones, but John Steed and his various female companions. For example Mrs Emma Peel and Tara King. They were secret agents.
Then there is the Champions, three investigators, starring Stuart Damon, Alexandra Bastido and William Gaunt. They were transformed into people with superpowers after a plane crash in Tibet.
Also, Randall and Hopkirk (deceased). Marty Hopkirk is killed in the first episode and returns as a ghost to help his friend to undertake Private Investigations. Marty’s wife Jeanie is often involved.
There are so many more, Dr Who, the Tomorrow People, Space 1999, Jason King, Department S. The Saint, the Persuaders and The adventures of Robin Hood…. So many, some from the 1970’s. And not forgetting Gerry Anderson shows like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and Joe 90. They give me a warm glow if I see the programmes, although some of them haven’t been on for decades. I get drawn back to sitting infront of the TV watching my favourite shows. Getting excited about their adventures. Life was so much simpler then.
What historical event fascinates you the most?
It’s fantastic that in my childhood men landed on the moon, not once but several times. Using computers that barely had the memory of a pocket calculator.
The race for space started after the second world war, when Wernher Von Braun went from Germany to America to continue research into rocketry. In the meantime Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and his Russian team were working on the problem in the USSR.
The teams gradually designed rockets that could travel into space. There are many books about the space race that are worth reading, telling the tale of the triumphs and tragedies that happened as the race continued. First one country took the lead then the other.
It all culminated one July day in 1969, I remember being bought downstairs to watch the landing. I hope to see people go back there.
What does it mean to be a kid at heart?
Up until recently I think I’ve been a child at heart. I loved to joke, to see the lighter side of life. I liked nothing more than a good comedy, or watching silly videos. Using puns or wordplay to make merry.
But now? A year of world tragedy, personal grief, heath issues has stomped on my head.
I want a time machine, a way of going back, or at least a way of improving my timeliness. Give me a glimmer of hope, lift some of the gloom. Let me get my hands in paint again, spreading colour and love around me. Give me a box of glitter to shake over it. Please. X
What’s the trait you value most about yourself?
I try and be compassionate and care about people. It’s hard sometimes because you have to care about yourself too. If you don’t you can sink under the pressure of peoples problems.
I was bought up to be compassionate, I would watch things on TV or listen to the radio and feel bad for people in trouble, I understood some of the pain they were going through. I don’t know why? I was just doing what people around me did, but it’s stuck with me throughout my life. I hope it shows through.
Traits are hard to recognise in yourself though, it’s not something I go looking for but deep down its there.
Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?
I loved the school book about Greek Myths and Legends we had to read. I remember short stories about Pandoras Box, when the box was opened all that was left was Hope. Then there was a story about Jason and the Argonauts, and his quest for the Golden Fleece. I think there was a tale of the Titan Atlas being sentenced by the god Zeus to support the heavens on his shoulders.
Each story had lovely illustrations, and the inside covers of the book were equally well decorated.
Getting the attention of children with artwork aswell as words is a way of catching them at an early age. I know a lot of books are now online, but I think real books are wonderful treasures.
Mallaband-Brown