Coronation?

I don’t have any pictures of the Coronation of King Charles III today as they will all be copyrighted.

I didn’t watch it except for the royal carriage taking King Charles and Queen Camilla back to the palace after the service in Westminster Abbey. The British do create a marvellous spectacle, ceremony or pageant. Not everyone is a royalist in the UK. But we still call ourselves the United Kingdom.

I was amazed at how many people slept out in chairs just to have a place there. And the weather was typically British for the occasion (raining).

How do you sum up something that happens so irregularly. The Queens Coronation was 70 years ago and who knows when Prince William will be king? but he is next in line in the succession to the throne. This is despite King Charles having a sister and brothers. The rules of who gets the crown are laid down in history.

This Coronation will go down in history too…

Rainstorm

Detail, pastel, my drawing ‘land and sky’

“it’s gone black over Bills mums” they say round here when it goes dark and cloudy. When the clouds pile up and you sometimes get snowy white tops to them when there is some blue sky too. The wind suddenly whips up. I was out in something like this today. One minute rivulets of rain were running of my brolly (umbrella) and the next it whipped inside out! The gust almost took it out of my hands.

I turned into the wind, getting soaked, and used the gust to bend the umbrella vaguely back into shape. Then I closed it to make sure all the little struts were shutting properly. One thread had wrapped itself round a strut, so I had to release it before I could concertina it down into shape. But all was well.

On the way home the sun shone in front of me and I looked behind at the dark clouds in the hope of seeing a rainbow, but sadly there was none.

Bench view

I wonder how long it will take for the leaves to come on these trees in the park. Then the view of the horizon will be covered for another six months. The hills in the distance will be gone. My hubby, sitting on the bench before me will be in shade during the morning and in light in the afternoon.

The clouds will drop their rain and the leaves of the trees unfold. Every day they will take in sunlight, until the temperature drops and the light levels fall. Then the wind will blow and the leaves, that have now rurned to brown and orange, will fly from the trees and uncover the view again…

Thunderbolts and lightning!

What is your favorite type of weather?

No thunderstorms in my sketch, just heavy rain. I have memories of several ⛈ thunderstorms though.

Years ago I dreamt of meeting some friends in a thunderstorm, a few days later we cycled over to visit our friends. We suddenly saw them coming towards us, we met up, pleased that we had got together. Then it started raining.. Hard! We ended up sheltering under a bus shelter while it thundered and lightning struck all around us.

Another incident was visiting a friend and a storm started a couple of miles away. We sat and watched it move across the sky while drinking red wine. As it passed over a beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky.

Finally during a particularly vicious night time storm I stood on our back doorstep trying to catch an image of lightning on my camera phone. I did, but I can’t find it on my phone to show you so I’ve posted this drawing instead. X

Three new?

Enjoyed starting a few paintings today at the Orme Art Group after turning up with no reference photos, I forget to take my phone and it has some flower photos I was going to use! Thanks to a lady called Steph for letting me borrow her pictures.

These are only daubed in… I will go over them and add details later. I started one little canvas but I didn’t want to muddy the colours so I started another picture, then another. I’m hoping these all have a feeling of atmosphere. I want them to look misty and damp.

Farewell feathery frost

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.

Wet!

There is a saying ‘in like a lamb, out like a lion’ (and vice versa) when it comes to March weather. We also talk about March winds.

After a very dry February, March has turned wild. It started quietly, but as the month has progressed the rain and wind has blown in over the Atlantic, causing low pressure systems to scud over us with record levels of rain falling.

Last night the wind was howling, one of the cats ran in, his coat glistening with rain. He looked like an otter that was just out of a river! He slept under the cover of my chair, like it was a little cave to keep warm in. He knows when to stay warm despite seemingly loving the awful weather.

What I learned recently?

What is the last thing you learned?

I always wondered where all the water was when snow melts. There can be so much snow, but the sun comes out and there are no huge puddles. So where does it go to?

I was watching a TV show called QI, a comedy quiz show that comes up with ‘quite interesting’ facts. I’d never realised that snow is mainly air, I wrote about it a few days ago, and I learnt it from the show. Snow is crystaline and so its spiky structure traps air. So ten centimetres of snow only leaves about one centimetre of water. That’s why there aren’t huge floods after even very heavy snow fall. Rain is much more damaging and with climate change we are getting a months worth of rain in a few hours nowadays.

Yes I’m British and yes I talk about the weather a lot. Its what we do.