New paintings and regular art updates.
This morning the last flower on the Gladioli stem had fallen onto the path. I think someone had knocked it off as they walked past. I picked it up and put it on my step because I liked it’s beauty against the old peeling paint. It will soon fade and wither so I’m glad I captured it before it’s gone.
Apparently there was another aurora show last night but I must have been asleep. There is another one due tonight in the UK but now it’s raining! This bad photo is from a few weeks ago. I have a tremor and as this was a long (night) exposure over 60 seconds it means I have awful camera shake. Anyway it seems Auroras are increasing because we are close to solar maximum (the sun’s magnetic poles get more and more tangled until suspots explode out as various coronal mass ejections or solar flares, maximum is every 22 years) Then in 11 years later it returns to solar minimum. I’m sorry if this isn’t explained very well.
I decided to write a poem on a poetry page on Facebook. Here it is.
I would like to be brave and post something here.
But my poems are mostly spontaneous.
An explosion of thought on the page.
My mind dances around thoughts,
Spiralling into nooks and crannies.
Flying across the landscape of my brain.
Hopefully landing safely and intact.
It was warm in my bedroom last night, so my cat who usually sleeps on the floor next to my bed must have decided to sleep on the windowledge where it’s a bit cooler. The ivy and buddliea growing outside help shade the stairs landing. I need to cut it back but it will be costly. Meanwhile the cat snoozes happily.
Hydrangea duplicated, green faces seem to emerge from the background of bricks. Pareidolia at large.
Ten year old sketch. I used to like drawing people when we went out to the local pub, or to visit friends. It’s just an easy and quick way of keeping my hand in for drawing portraits.
There are groups you can join on the Internet to draw portraits of each other but I always forget its on until it’s over and I hardly go anywhere anymore.
Today is Staffordshire Oatcake day. According to Google:
“Oatcake Day is celebrated annually on August 8th to honor Staffordshire and its famous oatcake. The day began in 2010. Some people celebrate by visiting Staffordshire Oatcakes in Hanley to learn how the Potteries staple is made. Others share their oatcake creations on social media using the hashtag #StaffordshireDay.”
Basically the Staffordshire Oatcake is a thin pancake style flat tasty disk made of oatmeal flour, yeast, water and possibly other ingredients. It is cooked on a hot griddle in a thin layer so it ends up looking a bit like a lace doily but with fewer holes. You can buy a dozen or half a dozen to take home, or if you get them from an oatcake shop you can have them with various toppings. Mostly cheese and bacon, or bacon and mushroom. My favourite is sausage, cheese and tinned tomatoes. Sometimes with a bit of brown sauce. You can also eat them hot with butter and jam, but that’s probably not acceptable behaviour! And rolled or folded? That’s your choice!
Definitely a Staffordshire specialty. Not to be confused with Scottish oatcakes which are smaller and thicker.
Local artist, poet and author, Arthur Berry wrote “Ode to the Oatcake”…
I asked WordPress to show me a photo from it’s free photo library of ‘parking restrictions’. So I was slightly surprised to see a racoon nesting in a tree! I do wonder what criteria it’s search engine uses. But it was amusing so I’ve posted it.
Why am I thinking of parking? I live on a street with residents only parking. I don’t mind if other people park up as long as I can fit in but recently builders have been parking up while renovating buildings in the street.
Today I saw two men in yellow fluorescent jackets wandering up and down the pavement. One seemed to be writing something in a book. Dreaded parking wardens. They ticketed a van. If the owner had knocked on my door I would have lent him my car parking pass. But it’s a good job I didn’t as I now have a visitor and she needs it.
We were asked to write to the prompt future and as I don’t have a crystal ball I decided to look back at what our future selves might remember.
“In future when people look back at the first quarter of the twenty first century what will be remembered? A first black American president, increasing global temperatures? Will the remember the global financial crash with Lehmann brothers? Bird flu and Sars then a global pandemic of Covid 19. Massive forest fires, huge hurricanes, tremendous tornados? The deaths of famous people including Queen Elizabeth the Second. Madness of global leaders? Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, so many wars.
Will our future selves see a disintegrated world, a dystopia bought on by the lack of interest in pollution or global warming. Big business using its powers to continue to push oil and gas and plastic use? Will our seas fill with more pollution or the pollenating insects die off so crops fail.
Will they see this part of the century as depressing, or will we take the future into our hands and pass on a cleaner and greener future to our children and their descendants?”
I went out today to the health clinic. My friend helped me out so we went off for a hot chocolate afterwards. We were going to one cafe but the road was closed because some buildings are being knocked down. So we took a side street and ended up at Middleport pottery in Stoke-on-Trent.
The cafe there is in one of the old pottery buildings and overlooks the canal. I’m not sure who painted this mural but it is a delicate one that includes the love birds that appear on willow pattern plates and pots.
We sat near the door in a cool breeze and I enjoyed a rest after walking the short distance from the car park over the cobbled roadway to the cafe. I felt like I could start to recover.
Mallaband-Brown