The Great Orme

Posted on September 10, 2024 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged bronze age, cable cars, chair lift, copper mines, Great Orme, History, Llandudno, Road, Steam engine, summit, Town, Trains, victorianLeave a comment

The mountain by the sea

A pier stretches out into the water, a grand hotel sits behind it on the shore. Drive round the coast and rise up to the summit by road, or use the tram service, which takes you past a bronze age copper mine. Or up the cable cars to the summit cafe. There is a small nature reserve at the top where indigenous plants are encouraged to grow. The mountain stands above Llandudno in North Wales. The town itself has grand terraces of three and four storey houses, hotels and apartments. Many of them from when the town was a Victorian resort and tourists arrived on steam engines. A good place for a day out.

Small and tidy

Posted on September 4, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2049, ideal home, long garden, small, terrace, Tidy, victorian5 Comments

What does your ideal home look like?

My ideal home is very similar to what I live in, but it would be slightly bigger with an ensuite bathroom. It doesn’t have to be detached, or modern. Maybe a Victorian terrace with minton tiles in the hallway and a skylight to let in more light into the kitchen at the back. It would have a long back garden with mature fruit trees.

One thing I would do is buy better furniture. Most of mine is old and some of it is broken. I can’t afford to replace it, so I would love to win some money, I can’t imagine how else I could manage it. I would also completely rearrange my belongings and dejunk.

One thing I would not do is buy a charity ticket to win a ‘million pound house’, I think the chances of winning are very slim and if I did win it would be a waste because I don’t need the space. I couldn’t afford to run it, nor pay the council tax or the power supply. I would have to sell it off. I also would hate to leave family and friends to go somewhere miles from where I live now

Pier

Posted on February 26, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Beauty, Blue, Llandudno, Ocean, peer, Pier, Poem, Poetry, Sea, Sky, victorian2 Comments

I peer from the pier

At the sea

Look at the blue

Waves and sky

The handrail mimics the ocean.w

White clouds the balustrade.

Llandudno pier

Victorian beauty.

Almost a year ago

Posted on January 16, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged 2021, Art, Dragons, Fountain, Hanley Park, Life, Sketching, victorian, water featureLeave a comment

I was standing by this fountain in the small part of Hanley Park. The main section is over the road. I decided to draw this in my sketchbook. It’s a felt pen sketch and I could include it as an urban sketch. The fountain had been restored after many years and looks wonderful. I think it’s probably Victorian in origin. The previous year it was frozen almost solid with icicles all over it. I particularly like the dragon fountain heads on it. I will have to try and research its origins.

Borg Cat?

Posted on December 9, 2021 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Borg, Cat, Fun, ginger cat, Photo, Plate, print run.co, Sci fi, Silly, transfer print, victorianLeave a comment

We will assimilate you…

Photo of a crunchy cat nibble on a cat plate. It just struck me that it looked a bit like a Borg…

The plate was made by PrintRun.co

I think it’s a victorian transfer print that has been repurposed for a modern market. But the image of it with the cat treat just made me chuckle.

Codd neck bottle

Posted on September 26, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Codd neck bottle, codswallop, Glass, Old fashioned, Thinking, victorian, What is it?Leave a comment

A friend painted one of these and wondered what it was called. I thought it was a codswallop bottle, but looked it up and codswallop is a word for nonsense, for instance used in a phrase ‘a load of codswallop’ meaning a load of rubbish, or inaccurate, or something that isn’t true?

Then when I looked up codswallop bottle it came up with this: ‘A Codd-neck bottle is a type of bottle used for carbonated drinks. It has a closing design based on a glass marble which is held against a rubber seal, which sits within a recess in the lip. Wikipedia‘.

Thinking about it, could this be a cleaner, greener method of closing a bottle? I think it’s an interesting design. I think it’s Victorian?

Here be dragons…

Posted on March 1, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 1st March, Design, Dragon, Fountain, Hanley Park, Life, Photo, St David's day, Stoke-on trent, victorian, WalesLeave a comment

Not Welsh Dragons, but at least they are dragons. Today is Saint David’s day, the patron Saint of 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Wales. But the symbol for the day is the daffodil. This is a bit of a confused blog post!

Anyway this dragon fountain is in Hanley Park, Stoke-on-Trent’s. I think the dragons are more like water monsters as they have fishy tails (and this is a fishy tale!)

30 day challenge

Posted on January 6, 2021January 6, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged advert style, Arteza paints, Fun, metallic watercolours, Sketching, Teapot, victorian, Water colours, Windsor and NewtonLeave a comment

I’m doing sketches for the #30daysketchbookchallenge now. This was for day two. I decided to do a watercolour sketch to represent one of the old adverts you had in victorian times for old grocery shops.

I used Windsor and Newton Watercolours overlaid with Arteza metallic watercolours to make it more interesting.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: victorian