New paintings and regular art updates.
Blurry photo of a heron chilling out on the canal bank today. It leant forward a few times and looked into the murky brown water but then resumed it’s original position again. I guess it must have seen a fish.
We have previously seen people magnet fishing in the canal, they said they sometimes find things, but nothing valuable. Is a shopping trolley or bike frame worth it? I guess you can weigh things in for scrap. In the meantime I hope the heron got his dinner!
Lunch today
Cheese on oatcakes
Yummy tubes
Of oaty goodness.
Made of batter
Made with oats
On a griddle
Served sizzling hot
Melted cheese
And hp sauce
Make a snack
Or a meal.
Delicious with jam too
Staffordshire oatcakes
For me or you!
The car door was caught by the wind.. And slammed into my leg! Luckily I was wearing trousers, not a skirt, but then I felt a wet trickle running down the outside of my leg. The door had cut through my skin despite not cutting the trouser cloth. I got inside and cleaned up the wound as well as I could. Hubby bathed it and was going to put a plaster on it but the wound, though shallow, was about the size of a twenty pence piece. Luckily I found something clean to use as a dressing. I put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. I’ve got the dressing held in place with plasters, so hopefully I won’t need to go to the doctors on Monday. I’m not going to A&E on a Saturday.
In the check office at Etruria Industrial museum. There was an interesting video being shown.
We went and watched a half hour video compilation by ( I think) Ray Johnson. The film was showing areas in and around Etruria and Shelton. These included the old Potteries loop line that ran through Etruria, Shelton, Hanley, and Cobridge. The line up to Shelton bar, which was the steel works was so steep it had to have special four cylinder 0-6-0 steam engines to take ore and coal up the steep slope from Kidsgrove up to the Steel works. A lot of the film showed the working conditions there with temperature s in the blast furnace area between 1500 and 2000 °C!
The film also showed how much work was done by steam engines. Apparently there was 50 miles of track in the steel works. Not only did they make steel, but they supplied the gas works next door with coal gas that was converted into ‘town gas’, that used to be stored in the old gasometers next door. The film also showed coal being dug from the ground. It also the coal being used to power the flint mill. It showed the crushing of bone and flint at the Flint mill that was produced by the Princess beam engine at Etruria. A very informative video.
If you won two free plane tickets, where would you go?
I might donate them to a family that need hospital treatment abroad, but I won’t be using them!
I do not want to fly, or more accurately I don’t want to crash. So I make excuses, it’s not good for my carbon footprint, Also, who needs to travel thousands of miles? The majority of the world can be seen on screens.
I recently saw a marvellous cruise to Antarctica advertised on TV, presumably you have to fly to catch the ship. But why? The cost must be exorbitant. And what are we doing tramping around pristine environments! You see the world burning and you think I want to add to 5ue temperature? Nah! Not me!
Millions of people fly each year, but until we are able to harness solar energy to power them I think I’ll give it a miss. Does anyone remember the flight of the Gossamer Albatross? Look it up!
Not a good photo, but my hubby is lending some train models to the Etruria Industrial museum for the weekend. We may donate them as they have a display case they can be shown in. We have too many bits of collections and sometimes we have to declutter. It feels strange letting objects go. But like paintings, you can’t keep all of them.
Bit of a bad photo but I had some good news today!
Great to hear I’ve sold this which was on exhibition at Etruria Industrial museum. It was only a small painting of the governor on the Princess beam engine at Jessie Shirley’s bone and flint mill at Etruria, Stoke on Trent. I took another painting up which was also based on a photograph that I’d taken at Etruria at its last steaming event.
What questions do you ask the net?
Today I asked what type of car was in the Randall and Hopkirk TV show from the 1960’s. Where is a train station that was on the TV? Turns out the answer was near Newcastle upon Tyne.
Then I asked about the profitess Cassandra. I had done a drawing and wanted to ask about the title I was going to call it. I’d also recently asked about Atlas holding the world up. I use the free images on Jetpack sometimes, but they often don’t come up with the image I’m looking for.
I have to admit, I don’t believe half of what I see on the Internet, but I think Wikipedia is not too bad. I also consult a site called Snopes.com which is a fact checking service.
I think its important to ask questions, knowledge is important. I won’t always remember the answers, but I try.
What’s the story behind your nickname?
I don’t have a nickname anymore. I used to have one, but I’ve forgotten it. I’ve changed as I’ve got older and only my hubby would use a nickname for me, and he stopped that a few years ago.
So when I was a child I was called nicknames by the school bullies. They took my surname and changed it to blueband (there was a margarine by that name) and used to shout it at me. I hated that. So I was pleased when I moved up to senior school and the bullying stopped.
As I say I had a nickname given me by my hubby, it was something silly, but I truly can’t remember it. So I guess I’ve answered and not answered the question.
Plus, what if I use my ex-nickname as a password for my computer, some of these questions rely on you being honest, but what if someone else reads it and uses the data? That’s a good question. Thankfully I’ve never used blueband as any kind or part of my passwords (plural), and now I’ve mentioned it I never will! Put that in your thesaurus and smoke it!
Etruria Industrial museum is steaming it’s engine again I think this weekend.
Wet weather is still in the forecast, but we might go up and see what’s happening. It’s good to see historic things like these old barges. It’s amazing how they can stay strong when effectively they are half in and half out of the water. Every few years mu friend used to put his barge in dry dock to recaulk the gaps between it’s wooden planks. You can get steel hulled barges, and I think they last longer?
There is a whole art of decorating barges, look up roses and castles if you are interested. They are traditional designs that are often painted on barges together with spectacular lettering for their names and the companies they belonged to such as Fellows Moreton.
The canal system in Britain has been greatly improved by volunteers that help keep them going. This after years of neglect until the 1960’s and 1970’s when groups of people got together to restore them. We have a lot to thank them for X.
Mallaband-Brown