New paintings and regular art updates.
Climb a tree
Go up high
Up the branches
To the sky
Rough, hard bark
Hard to climb
In the dark
And down again.
Eighty foot
Old and strong
Limbs of great girth
Twisted and long.
Memory showed
Trees far up there
If I climbed up?
I’d get a scare!
I remember a cyclo camping holiday in Wales with my hubby. We forgot the main tent. We got to Wales on the train and to our campsite. It was only when we unpacked the tent we realised we had left the tent airing on the washing line at home. We had to tie our groundsheet onto a young man’s tent for shelter, it was raining and not good under there despite having our sleeping bags. So we went in the camp bar and bought the lad whiskeys to say thanks for him helping us out. Then in the morning we realised we had spent all our holiday money on booze so we had to comeback the next day. We ended up in the guards van of the train with a rugby team because there were no seats. They were Very Rude! Worst holiday ever!
Hot day, blue sky, barely a cloud in the sky, cattle in a field, reflections in the canal. Memories are made of this, blues and greens, shade and light.
I have memories of days like this, maybe not as hot, but they were calm and happy. I remember a time when things were not scary. Oh there were diseases around, and awful things were happening. But I was a child. I didn’t know about them.
Then I remembered the disaster at Aberfan. There was a land slip of old mining waste. It slid down a hill and landed on a school. Children and adults died. That was the first TV report I remember seeing.
Now rivers rise and places flood all the time, “hundred year events” happen every ten or twenty years. Storms dump three months water on a country while other places suffer heat domes and wild fires.
Will the wonderful days of summer be once in 100 days instead? Maybe we need to sort it out NOW!
I wrote this a few days ago but for some reason it did not publish? Now on a grey, dismal day I look back after another walk and Im sad it wasnt like this, but glad it was a lot cooler!
I decided to reduce the size of my photos (optimise them). I have an anti virus software that does this for me. So I pressed the button and 1852 (or so) photos later the size reduced and I deleted the big files.
But now after clearing all the empty files I have found that they’re all saved under the same date! 18.10.18.
Me a couple of years ago painting banners for our mystery play we did. These are pictures of the willow pattern from Spode that I was copying for the performance. We hold it on a Saturday towards the start of July. Unfortunately we could not hold it last year and only had an online event this year. I hope it’s reinstated when things get better.
I’m so busy with college work it would have been difficult to make the time but I love doing this. It makes me feel part of a community. I also miss all the friends I have through being part of it. X
Sunshine, a stick of rock, sandy beach, bucket and spade to make sandcastles. The cool feeling of wet sand as you wiggle your toes in it…or the hard ridges of sand rippled by shallow water. Memories of collected shells, long thin razor shells, cockle shells, mussels, spirals and smooth. So many types.
All these memories were made on various holidays and day trips to beaches, looking out over the sea, walking through seaweed that littered beaches, sand flies and sand hoppers.
Remembering catching various trains, some of them were steam trains. Watching the countryside fly by, a river running on one side of the train, then the other. The train running past the caravan site we stayed at.
Sunshine, rain, home made cooking in the caravan on a tiny stove. Sleeping on a bed made of boards and cushions where the table had stood. Gas mantles that hissed when mom lit the lights at night.
The tiny crab that escaped from my plastic bucket and spade and hid in my shoe… And it’s pincers snapping on my little toe!
Memories and the wish to make more. Missing the seaside.
Along the pier
Walk out to Sea
Across the tide
My life to be?
An old man thinks
Of times gone by
Boyhood days
Of gulls and skies.
Of storms and fog
Waves rolling high.
A girl goes skipping
The length of the pier
In the arcades
Candy floss, she cheers.
A woman now
Looks back in time.
Worm eaten memories
Are lost in rhyme.
From young to old
Each person’s regrets
Are tied together
In their own nets.
Sea and sand
Cliffs and rock
All remembered
As the gulls flock.
As I walk I’m looking at trees, I’m waiting for the buds to burst, the leaves to stretch and expand. But we need some rain now to get the buds to swell. Then I will have more idea of what these trees are.
Oak before Ash,
In for a Splash.
Ash before Oak,
In for a soak….
The old rhyme of what to expect from the weather this Spring…
Also the weather has been very windy after a quiet start to March.
The saying for that is :
In like a Lamb
Out like a Lion.
(it can be vice versa), old weather saws that my grandma told me…
Well I decided to do a collage for #bandofsketchers prompt virtual travel. This is using bits of monoprint, bits from magazines, green post it notes and black ink pens. The view is where I want to be, Bovisand Bay, near Plymouth, South Devon.
I wanted you to feel the warm sunlight and the tide as it sweeps in and out of the bay. If I could be anywhere now it would be there!
Me when I was a student..
When I came to Stoke as a student our first year was in student flats but then we had to find our own accommodation. Six of us (three couples) shared a terraced house. Two bedrooms upstairs and me and my boyfriend now hubby shared the front living room. No hot water, just a cold tap in the kitchen and a broken electric water heater tap thing over the sink. No bathroom, loo at the end of the yard (freezing cold, you took a torch with you at night). No central heating. Just an open hearth with a grate in the back living room. We used to burn old wood and bits of cheap coal. No TV, just a radio…. I remember one winter it was so cold we slept on the floor in front of the fire. My hubbies crank on his bike snapped when he tried to ride off in the snow because he kept it outside and it was well below freezing. Oh and single pane glass in the windows. Had to go to the Polytechnic every day for a shower…
It was tough but it was fun. When I saw the young ones TV programme a few years later it reminded me of that house!
Mallaband-Brown