Brexit.. Done

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At 11.00pm (23.00hrs), Britain left the European Union. After a day that had been grey and drizzly, and a day I felt infinitely sad.

I did not vote for leaving the EU. But about 70% of the people in this area did, do I guess I expected rock and roll bands and masses of fireworks?

Instead we got about ten minutes loud music from the local pub, followed by a minutes fireworks at 10.58pm, then silence… A nice damp squib.

Other friends have posted statuses which sound similar. Perhaps people have become inured to it. Maybe they realise they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces….. As my hubby Sat’s, this world will go on…..

Spock drawing

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A few years ago I was on a website called Sketchfu which eventually closed

It had very simple tools to draw with but I enjoyed drawing all sorts of portraits, including Lord of the Rings characters. I put a lot of them on here a year ago. But my favourite is Spock from the original Star Trek series. He was not easy to draw but I think I got a good representation. The little pink face in the background was the icon for Sketchfu. I do miss it. It was a great site but it was difficult to communicate with the site owners even though I was a Moderator on there. I can’t believe how long it is since it closed.

Why use ‘woke’ as an insult?

” In its modern-day, politicised context, ‘woke‘ is defined by the OED as ‘originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice’.”

I’m guilty of being ‘woke’ I guess. I try and care about things, I’ve always questioned why people can’t get on. When I was a child in the 1960’s I remember I asked why people were nasty to brown people and not pink ones?

But recently ‘woke’ seems to be being used as an insult. Like you can be too ‘woke’ to be interested in helping others? Too caring? Why? Why is it OK to tell someone off because they are too politically correct, or disagree with populist ideas? The world seems to get more selfish by the day.

I don’t think everyone should agree with me, I can agree to disagree. But what do you do when someone constantly disagrees with you? Or dismisses what you say. Even when I’d agreed to disagree a person who I’m not naming kept digging. Recently they started to call me a snowflake and woke. I said I was pleased to be a snowflake as we can gather together and turn into a blizzard! I don’t want to stop being in touch with this person as it means I’m not totally in my own bubble. But I do wonder if I should unfollow them. The world seems to lack altruism, everyone is in it for themselves, hopefully the tide will turn.

Farewell Europe

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At 11pm tonight Britain moves into the transition period of Brexit, we will still be a member of the European Union until later this year when negotiations are completed, but as far as our government is concerned we are OUT. Not all of us are happy that celebrations are taking place tonight. A crowd funding plea was started to pay £500,000 to arrange for Big Ben to ring 11 times to welcome in the change. That’s about £45,000 a bong!  But it didn’t collect enough money. I wonder who gets to keep it? If the government was so keen why not pay for it themselves. Oh I forgot to say the Conservative party, who recently won the general election, is stuffed with Millionaires.

Fifty Two percent of those that voted in the Brexit referendum chose to leave. But forty eight percent said no. I’m one of them. Brexit is not in my name. I get fed up of being called a ‘remoaner’ and being told ‘get over it’. I can see how all this is affecting my European friends. I’m wondering how it will all turn out. I have also seen tea towels and mugs for sale from the Conservatives, I don’t know why they think people will buy them? Our Prime Minister keeps telling us to be optimistic. He promised and end to austerity before the election, now they have announced at least five percent cuts! They are able to do this because they have a massive majority in parliament.

So what do I think? Brexit is a massive waste of money and irrelevant. We should be concentrating on climate change, not throwing away a treaty that had lasted almost fifty years.

Perhaps if I read this in a year things will be OK, but I doubt it.

One of those days.

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Grey and depressing, icy cold, big droplets of rain. Disappointing as well, I keep trying to get the car mended (someone broke my wing mirror, the glass is cracked, and someone must have reversed into my nearside wing, it’s all scraped and dented. But I rang up, and the mechanic, who is trying to find the right mirror rang in sick this morning. I will have to try again tomorrow. Then I collected some paintings from my studio to try and get into a local craft centre. But the owner has been inundated with local artists. He is interested in more work but needs to sell some art first. He has had people in but one comment he got was “is it really That much?” for one if the pieces in there. It’s the usual thing in this area, people don’t have money, or if they do they don’t want to spend it. It’s depressing (oh I’ve already said that)……

Memory 2012

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2012….Another Sunday morning, husband went off about 15 minutes ago, and me and the cat are here waiting for the sun to rise. The sky had gone from coal black to a dark shade of Paynes Grey, in fact in the few minutes since I sat down it has lightened considerably….. The cat is happily lying on the desk next to the computer, turning over to have her tummy tickled, she doesnt like being ignored and keeps trying to sit on my drawing tablet that also acts as my mouse! that knocks the text off so I have to reposition the cursor every couple of minutes…The blackbirds were singing in the garden at 6.30, husband went out to listen and one carried on while the other Pink, pinked its alarm call… the song continues high and beautiful, shapley whistles that vary over different combinations of notes…. I am staying up in case his bus does not arrive. One last look at the sky, only slightly lighter, blue grey, no glimmer of sun yet and overcast with lowish cirrus? clouds…thank goodness for the prospect of a warm bed and a book if he does not come back. (It has happened in the past when the bus driver forgot to get up!)

Willow pattern

Images of a painting I did of the Willow pattern ceramic design a couple of years ago. The pattern is based on a few images that I saw online and copied, so it’s sort of a generic design. Many pottery companies had their own specific design. There are variations in the positioning of figures, placement of temples and types of vegetation. This was the British attempt to copy Chinese designs.

How to tell the earth is a sphere…

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So how can you tell the Earth is a sphere? The ancient Greeks worked it out ( I don’t remember the name of the person who did).

The experiment was to put a stick in the sand at or near the equator, so it would have a tiny shadow directly underneath the it at mid day as the Sun was directly overhead.

If you place a stick upright, at 90° to the Eaths surface either North or South of the equator, the stick casts a shadow at mid day. (Look at the hands of a clock the hands move round in the same way). Say the equator is 3pm and the Sun is overhead, you would get no shadow, then as you go further away from the stick at the equator you get increasing angles (see diagram). Eventually at the poles the shadows would be at their longest.

So how can you tell its a sphere? The angles add up. You can calculate the curvature of the planet from these simple experiments. The ancient Greeks got very close to calculating the circumference of the Earth. Their calculations were only a small percentage out on their measurement.