New paintings and regular art updates.
How do you pronounce Scone?
Is it sk-own, or scon?
Each is used in the UK
How do you serve it?
With Jam
With Cream
With Butter?
Or all three?
Etiquette matters!
Cream first
Jam first?
You can tell if someone
is from Cornwall or Devon.
I can never remember
which way they choose?
Just they do opposites
My way is butter, then jam
and cream on top. Yum
And with hot chocolate.
Although it should be tea to drink…
Dilemma time!
Crashed UFO at the play I went to yesterday. It wasn’t actually on the stage but in a seperate room on the way in.
In a strange way it reminded me of a Santa’s sledge I saw once outside Santa’s grotto as a child. You then got into another sled inside a large screened of area and the landscape on the sides seemed to move. It was actually a painted backdrop on rollers that ran round so the landscape seemed to scroll past. At the end of your “journey” you got off to see Santa and get your present…. Oops rambling there
..
I could imagine doing the same thing with the UFO so it would look like it was flying through the sky with stars and clouds.
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.
I’ve just got back from the local theatre, Claybody Theatre at The Dipping house, Spode Works, Church Street, Stoke upon Trent, Stoke-on-Trent.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable performance. It was set in 1967 on the Bentilee housing estate, on the edge of the city of Stoke on Trent. A city of potteries and coal mines and steel works that had since suffered industrial decline.
It’s late summer on the estate when several people see a bright glowing light in the sky that goes from red, to slightly greenish to a blue hue. It ended up on TV with locals talking about what they had seen, but no real explanation. (this was the era of science fiction programmes on TV, like The Invaders, or Space family Robinson and even Fireball XL5.)
What I enjoyed was the local knowledge. The speech was real Stoke on Trent accents, with a smidge of Durham and a twang of American or Irish.
I won’t go into detail with spoilers, but there is a mixture of 1960s memories, a touch of romance, a lot of local in jokes. It was useful knowing Bentilee estate, I have worked there. The comedy made the audience chuckle and laughter out loud. I do enjoy Deborah McAndrews writing. The play got a loud round of applause at the end. Good to see local friends who had come out to see it!
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
I guess this question is asking what jobs you would consider if you already had sufficient funds and didn’t need to earn more?
I would like to do jobs that were useful and interesting, and that helped people. Perhaps someone who volunteered to support patients and visitors at hospital, explaining where various wards and departments were, offering to get people a drink of water or show the where they could get food?
Alternatively I would like to work on some environmental issues, support natural wildlife, perhaps in a hedgehog hospital?
Finally I would have liked to persue a more formal career in art. I’ve always painted but never been able to make enough money to turn it into a career. Oh and sell books too!
But basically I think it’s important that people are paid a decent living wage. So many people have been working at below the poverty rate and taking two or three jobs to survive, and that’s just in industrialised countries. Think about it, one man is likely to become a trillionaire in the near future and also being offered tax cuts to increase his income even more. Total madness.
#bandofsketchers prompt was fly. I had to ask for a pallette on Saturday at the Orme Art Group because I’d forgotten mine. I splodge some paint on it, but had some left at the end of the day. I doodled wings and legs on it because the splodges looked like insects.. So I’m calling this “flies”!
What could you do more of?
If I could do more exercise, I think I would be healthier. But everytime I try and do something? Something else goes wrong with me. I’m like a car that had had all it’s wires disconnected and put back in the wrong places. My head would fall off if it wasn’t screwed on! I know I need to do more but I’ve hurt my leg (well my cat stuck her claws in it) and it started to weep. Now I’ve got a cold. I just feel fed up of being a wreck.
I think I will do something about it soon, in the hope I can improve my health. Fingers crossed.
My phone is full of photos and every so often I optimise them because the file sizes are too big. But that always mixes the dates up, and this time many photos of my hubby showed up out of the thousands of images I have.
Cue deep greif again. My man was funny, eccentric, bombastic, able to express himself. He was emotional and sometimes irrational. But he supported me and we loved each other. He had a mad sense of humour and although he could get angry about things that was more about incidents in his life that had caused him to suffer from PTSD.
Each time I see his face I remember and I am upset again. Decades of life together has made our link so strong. I wish I could have him back, not just photos, but the reality.
Commissioned acrylic on canvas. A surreal abstracted spirit : Green woman. With antlers adoring her head. It’s taken months to finish because I shake even though it’s only about A4 size. I imagine her standing in a grotto of trees, hidden from mortal view. She is nature, watching carefully as the land changes through time. She fights for the natural world and environment.
I got home in time to miss the worst of the storm. Thunder rolling over the hill. I stepped out of the car and only got a bit damp, but the lightening was coming, and with it the rain.
The heavy rain has now been falling for hours. I videoed a few seconds, but my phone was out of charge so I gave up trying to catch a lightening strike. I posted what I had recorded on Facebook. Water cascading from the gutter in front of my door, rushing down the hill, overflowing onto the pavement. The sky was dark and full up with energy.
Six hours later and the storm has rebounded back to us a few times, lightening flashes and the loudest roars of thunder I have heard in years. The lights flickered off and on at one stage.
I count the seconds after each flash. 2 seconds is a mile. So I can judge how far away the storm is, if the thunder rolls straight after the flash it’s overhead, if it’s heard after 2 seconds that’s a mile. Currently it’s rumbling 6 seconds after the flash so that’s about 3 miles away.
If you want to look at live lightening maps across the world go to https://www.blitzortung.org
Currently on the site the main storm is a few miles south of Stoke-on-Trent. Looking at the rest of the world the USA seems very active. I recommend turning off detectors and turning on the sound so you can hear how active the storms are. It’s safe to accept cookies but I close all ads.
Mallaband-Brown