New paintings and regular art updates.
When I was young we used to see
Children’s programmes on tv
Chigley, Trumpton, Camberwick Green
Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb were seen.
Then came the Herbs and a dog called Dill.
Parsley the Lion, I remember him still….
The theme music that we would sing
The Clangers, and Magpie, fun they’d bring
Puppet shows galore there were on TV
Like Stingray and Thunderbirds you’d see.
With Bill and Ben
Wild flowerpot men!
So much to remember from years ago
When I was a child…Memory fast not slow!
I’ve started doing the daily prompts on here but I can’t help wondering about giving away information. I’m not the most interesting person in the world, and I don’t want to share stuff that could allow me to be scammed. So I don’t share per names, or relatives names. If anyone did get into my pages they would find I have a separate password for everything. Capital letters, numbers, symbols, long words. So password protected is real in my case.
I do talk about my past life sometimes, but it will be vague, and I try not to identify with definite dates.
The prompts are questions, which I’m not sure I like to answer, and yet they make me think of things that I would not necessarily write about otherwise.
Who was your most influential teacher? Why?
My most influential teacher taught Geography. He was very good at explaining the subject, but he was also very humane. He would put information in context, and talk about how the world was changing. I think he talked about the population explosion. How people were being exploited, and how countries were growing cash crops despite their populations needed food for themselves. So as well as learning about oxbow lakes and contours on maps we learnt a lot about the world. I don’t think we would have been taught like that today.
I just found this photo and remembered the morning I sat in my car and saw these spectacular frosty fronds inside the windscreen. I think it was when the heater in the car was broken. It was a few years ago. I don’t think we have had such a cold spell in a few years. Yes it gets cold, but not this cold. It’s due to get cold again this weekend, a few snow showers, maybe some rain.
I remember when I was a child having frosts like this on the inside of our bedroom windows, Jack Frost really did visit in those days. We even had snow in June one year. We had been on the train and when the sky turned orange grey and the snow fell. But that was fifty years ago. Times change.
I was sad to see winter
I want life to be renewed
Green and gold leaves
Pink blossom
Blue sky with fluffy clouds
Pour on a wash of yellow
Daffodils and tulips
Give me Spring!
Now.
What was the best compliment you’ve received?
Years ago, I was in my twenties, my friend and I were staying somewhere on a residential course. She was a musician and there was a piano in lounge of the house we were staying in. I asked if I could try singing something (it was before I had singing lessons).
I’d just finished singing ‘Over the Rainbow’ and a man came in. He looked at us both and said to my friend ‘you have a lovely voice’ . To which she replied that it was me that had been singing! Then the man said something like ‘was that YOU singing?’ I think he was surprised because I wasn’t pretty and I had big glasses and probably didn’t look like a singer (what do they look like?). He said ‘you were very good’ again and left! I take that as a big compliment even if it was a bit strange…
Went to sea, in a beautiful pea green boat…
They took some money and plenty of honey, wrapped up in a five pound note….
A nonsense poem by Edward Lear, who also wrote the Dong with the luminous nose and the Yonghie Bonghie Bo. There used to be a TV show in the seventies that included these characters, but the animation was very weird and too colourful if that’s possible with the poems set to odd music, and I’m afraid it actually put me off reading them!
I also get Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll ( who wrote Alice in Wonderland etc) mixed up.
I realised this morning that I have the iconic animals sitting on my bookcase in the bedroom. They are a tiny cat made by an artist friend and an owl I made of clay pressed into a mold. I hadn’t put two and two together before. I guess that anything can spark a chain of memories, there’s a phrase for it in semiotics, about signs and signifiers, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it!
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
When I was young I could cycle forty miles in three hours (including hills). We once did a hundred mile reliability trial in five and a half hours, we used a tandem. The one we rode on was two bikes welded together. One of the chain wheels was on back to front so a pedal unwound and fell off during the ride.
After I sustained an injury we got a car because my bike was damaged in the accident. It went in to be fixed and the shop lost it! I don’t drive much or very far now. In fact I travel less than I did when we cycled. Most places we go to are only a few miles away unless we go on holiday. I drove less than a thousand miles last year, so I guess my carbon footprint must be low.
No, I don’t use the train. If you go anywhere from Stoke-on-Trent on the train it’s hard to find one that comes back late in the evening so you either can’t spend a long time away or you have to come back the next day. We are also bypassed by the West Coast main line I think…. Bad for a city! Bus? Yes sometimes, but it depends again if there is a bus back and the routes keep getting changed or cancelled. And planes? Are you kidding…. Too scared.
The tall chimney tapers
High up in the air
Birds soar around its slender height.
Blustery and white
Clouds scud across the blue
A memorial to ancient potters
Who wheezed in its smoky shadow.
Coughed clay into spittoons
Made and created beauty
Paid little
Working hard
In their race to death.
What makes you most anxious?
The world I’d bleak and I don’t know what to say or think. Words and thoughts churn round in my head. I feel anxiety about not getting something right, something I should have done months ago that could have massive consequences now or in the future.
Because I was focused on myself I didn’t see other people or a person who might have needed my help. It’s six months and the Earth has travelled half way around the Sun. That’s 186,000,000 miles. And now I’ve only just realised I should have been there for someone 186 Million miles ago! I feel idiotic, I feel great anxiety that I will not be forgiven. I feel I have lost a chance where I could have been of help…..
Even now, writing this, it seems a trivial response, too self serving, am I writing something that will help, or to just try and exonerate myself. Guilt and anxiety, mixed emotions and sadness…
Mallaband-Brown