New paintings and regular art updates.
Random stamps seen at Spode studios while I was at a meeting today. We were deciding on when to hold the next open studio day (August) and these were on the table. Someone must be a philatelist there. Three cents seems very cheap today, but I wonder how much that would be in today’s money. And I have no idea what the exchange rate would be between New Zealand and the UK.
Argh! My handbrake seemed to be slack so I took the car in the garage today. What was going to be a simple job turns out to be worse than we thought. The brake calliper on one side has been leaking brake fluid. The problem is the car is old, so parts are hard to get hold of. If they put the calliper back together it might fail and if I’m on a hill, or even just driving it I could run into someone! So the car is staying at the garage till at least Monday!
I guess I just have to be glad that it’s held this long and I haven’t had a bump in it! Phew
Write about your first crush.
I was seven, he was eight. I think his name was Henry? We were in the same school. All the girls liked him. He had a nice laugh, he was tall, (about 3 ft 6 inches?) and he had blond hair. He was in the class above me.
I can remember playing tick and chasing round the playground after him. I remember standing on the wide shallow steps where we waited to go into school after breaks and jumping down them because he encouraged us to play tinker, taylor, soldier, sailor. Many old nursery rhymes had games made up to go with them. I don’t think he was bothered about me with my hornrimmed glasses and pudding bowl haircut. But it was only a crush, I was far too young to have any real interest in boys. I think I liked him because he was clever and kind…
I think he moved to a different school when he left junior school. I don’t remember ever seeing him again. It’s funny how you don’t think of anyone for years and then a prompt like this sparks a memory and there you are back in the past…
Just rememberd another nursery rhyme:
Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry,
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away!
And I remembered my grandmother has a teacup with a cartoon of this rhyme on it….
Today was the Summer solstice, the longest day here in the Northern Hemisphere. In Scotland it was Dawn before 4am and after 10pm … 19 hours of daylight. From now on the day length will start to shorten again until we reach the shortest day in December.
So in the next ten minutes before British summer time midnight I shall cherish those extra minutes of light. I hope we have a good (and cool) summer and that we don’t get mad temperatures like last year, but I doubt it, we have already had a hot June and it’s not over yet.
Think about climate change and the things you can do to help keep overheating down. Hugs, happy solstice.
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was Voyage. I loved drawing galleons when I was a child… I was all at sea with this challenge till I thought of that! Felt pens again…. A galleon ship sailing off along the sunset…
Great minds think alike?
I drew this this morning but hadn’t published it. I was just going through the reader section of WordPress and found someone else had done a very similar image. I did this digitally, playing with a drawing that I had been altering over the last couple of days. The other person’s art is four different female faces, using a totally different technique. It’s so interesting that artists come up with similar ideas from different beginnings. I like her style and work, good to see the creativity here!
Tonight’s rehearsal was fun. We discussed our performance on Sunday at Middlewich and agreed we had done well to cope with the Loud music from across the road at a local restaurant. Our choir leader was pleased with us and told us people had come up and shook her hand!
It was also good to perform alongside her and her friend Esther from the Boat Band. When you normally sing a capella and without microphones it’s difficult to tell how things are sounding, but we didn’t cause any whistles or squeaks or feedback….
So tonight we were planning which songs to sing in a mediaeval event in July, we started singing a French song and a few other old favourites. It’s surprising how things come back to you even if you haven’t sung them for years…. We were sounding quite good by the end of the practice session.
Oh dear, I’m in a whirl again, lack of sleep isn’t helping. Someone was chatting with me today and yet again I found myself crying. When will I ever feel happy again?
It was raining this morning when I went out, so I decided not to wear a coat. Cool, damp, with a breeze, it was good to feel a little more comfortable. When I got home the fan went on, and that’s stirring the air up nicely. I’m going back out later, but for now I just had a nap (I must be getting old). The cat came and poddled away kneading my knees and then fell asleep too.
Shall I dream of life and loss again tonight? I don’t know. Its hard to control things when you sleep, then wake up in a tizz.
By the way the drawing on the right was based on the drawing on the left, just by sketching over it. I decided to turn it upside down to match my confused mood.
Another quick fingerpainting this time just in sketchbook app. You can vary the pens and brushes, there’s a large selection, but they are almost too numerous to work with. It’s hard sometimes to decide which to use. Thank heavens for the back button so I can delete what I don’t like. This started out as a quick sketch that I was drawing to show a friend how the app worked, but then I decided to finish it tonight.
How do you want to retire?
The UK government changed the retirement age a few years ago. They bought in a sliding scale so that women cannot retire until they are 65 or above (it was 60), and men’s retirement age had gone up from 65 to I think 67?
What that does effects millions of women and men. I would have retired by now, I could have still worked, but it means I cannot get my state pension yet, even though I have been paying into all my working life. The result is that a lot of people will get less of an overall pension for what is left of their lives, and are more likely to die before they get it. That also means the government will get to keep more of it.
So? People were living longer until recently, but the age you die has actually reduced, especially with the drop in wages, and increases in poverty. Older people tend to struggle to pay bills or afford to heat their homes, and as they are more likely to have health issues their lives may be shortened.
One possibility though is that the governments decision might be overturned. The WASPI women (women born in the 1950’s who say they were not warned the retirement age was due to be raised), had a judicial review pending at the start of June. I haven’t heard the outcome, but maybe I can retire…. SOON.
Mallaband-Brown