Grey Dawn awoke me
Went to bed at three
Read a book to soothe
But could not grasp sleep
Dreaming the word eluded
My mind on fire
Swirling like smoke
Snap a nap then awoke…
I want to find a way in
To oblivion.
Three hours sleep.
Tag: Fire
Hot
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was hot. I drew flames and then use photodirector to add texture and pattern. I liked imagining the different colours in flames. I think this has a watercolour feeling to it. The app gives it a more even look, as without it the felt pens I have used look a bit rough because the tips of them are wearing out and getting broken and the ink is drying up.
Almost burnt
We had finished tea and my hubby took the plates in to the kitchen to be washed up. He shouted through to the living room ‘are you cooking something else?’… ‘No’, ‘well you’ve left one of the gas rings on?’ I didn’t realise I had and I walked into the kitchen just as he lifted the Wok lid up off one of the gas stoves burners at the back. He’d only just turned the burner off and as he lifted the Wok lid by its plastic handle he let out an involuntary ‘ow!’ Turns out when I poured some pasta into the big pan of mixed veg and salmon I was cooking on the front hob, I must have dropped the wok lid over the back hob without switching it off. Because the gas was on low, and the lid and handle are heat resistant nothing caught fire, it just got very hot. If the pan lid had any food clinging to it, it would have caught fire, and because I can’t smell things properly we could have had a real problem. Thank goodness hubby spotted my mistake!
Leopard Hotel may be restored
About a year ago, the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. was destroyed in a fire. I was distraught because I had painted several murals in the Arnold Bennett suite at the back of the hotel. I had also been an extra in a horror film called Humanus which was partly filmed there. I would love it to be restored. It was old and quirky, and episodes of ‘most haunted’ were recorded around the building. But now? It’s a shell of its former glory.
The Leopard had fallen on hard times when it was taken over by Neil Cox and Neil Crisp in the early 2000’s. They started to pull the business round and bought out the essential quirkiness of the building, organising ghost tours and revising ad improving the good and drink. It was soon a venue people loved to go in. During that time they wanted some murals painting in the back room. I spent a couple of years between 2006 and 2007 painting ten or eleven of them. Why can’t I remember?
I loved doing it, and the figures in the paintings were often based on the locals, I even gave a talk to the local history group about what I had painted and the sources I used to decide on the subjects.
Now? I will definitely visit if its rebuilt. But I don’t think I could physically paint those murals again. And as I was only paid £75 per picture, for two years of work, it was never going to make me a profit, but I did it for the love of Art and the Leopard.
Flaming torches
When I dropped my hubby off at Penkhull it was amazing to see three or four hundred people crowded on either side of the road getting ready to set off on the Wassail. There were people carrying lit flaming torches which Sent sparks up into the windy air. I let hubby out of the car next to the Domesday Morris dancers, they were dressed in their costumes with fairy lights wrapped around their hats. The sun was about to set and I wished I was going with them down the hill to the ancient apple tree to beat its boughs so that it will be fruitful in autumn. They would be walking around some of the boundaries of the village and stopping off to dance on the church green then calling in at the local pubs and the choir I am with would be singing Wassail songs outside them. Unfortunately I missed all of that. But I went home and had a rest instead.
Curry dragons eye
A mad idea, a curry dragon! I was just going to write about a nice curry we ate and I was looking for a photo but my finger slipped and I chose this photo instead. But a curry dragon, why not? There have been soup dragons that lived with the clangers that lived on a moon on TV in the sixties and seventies. Now I could imagine a hot fiery and spicy curry that could fly away and set fire to the table.
Riot outside Leopard Hotel…
Still proud of this mural that I painted in the Leopard Hotel in Burslem in about 2006 or 2007. The hotel burnt down earlier this year ans all my murals were destroyed. Someone asked if the murals had been removed from the building? No they were painted directly onto the wall with emulsion paint. These were some of my favourite works and I was devastated when they went up in smoke. The root crowd included local people and staff of the Leopard Hotel plus my hubby. A lady called Margaret Moxom used an image of it for her book. The riot was in 1842 and a man was shit dead during it.
Fire?
I don’t know what happened but there was a fire last week on the old Falcon Works pottery site near us. We saw a column of smoke rising from behind the Portmeirion pottery that is across the road from us. Then we heard a fire engine heading towards the pottery. The smell was very strange, like burnt rubber. My hubby went for a walk round the back of the works when we got back from Cornwall, he said it just looked the same as normal?
It turns out that the land has recently been sold to developers. Could this be a coincidence? A lot of old derelict industrial sites in the area seem to be hit by suspected arson recently. It is worrying to think of the damage being done to our heritage.
My Burslem Angel mural
Thank you Sharon Crisp for sending me a photo of my Burslem Angel mural (lost in the fire in the Leopard Hotel in Burslem). It was painted in emulsion directly into a framed area on the wall that had originally been filled with flock wallpaper. I had asked if anyone had images of my murals a few months ago. This one was missing as was on of a woman standing outside a pottery with a row of bottle kilns. I’m really pleased to see this again.
I think it’s interesting how the clouds in the background look like smoke or flames.
Leopardess
Here is a better photo of my mural that was destroyed in a fire at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem earlier in the year. The landlady was said to have come over from the Caribbean and married an English man. She then ran the hotel. The trouble is I painted this in 2006? I honestly can’t remember the story I was told and now the hotel is gone.
Mallaband-Brown 