We have had roofers here for over a week, with scaffolding round most of the house and a skip in the drive.
But the front garden looks beautiful if rather wild - here’s a video:
And the back garden looks even wilder, though still beautiful. Ignore the scaffolding pole.
Stay cool.
First - thank goodness for the sound majority of Andy Burnham. Phew. Reform was soundly beaten.
🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Now for what I wanted to write about today. In my last post I wrote about Len. Check it out. When I first wrote that post I was sitting in bed. I couldn’t remember how the inscription read on his bench. (At that time I thought there was only one bench.) So I asked Google AI if it could tell me what the inscription said, and I posted the result on the blog.
This is what AI said:
But I was uneasy. It didn’t sound right. So when I got up I went down to the Co-op and read the inscriptions on both benches for myself. And I corrected the blog. This is what they both said:
So I went back to AI and told it what the inscription actually said.
This is how the conversation went. It’s long, but worth reading. The first bit in quotes is what I told AI. AI starts with “Honouring Len Alesbrook.”
And now for a nice photo of something completely irrelevant. Except that loveliness is always relevant.
I was standing in the check out queue in Sainsbury’s, watching a man take an age to pack his shopping, while the cashier sat watching him, and we all waited patiently, and I thought about Len.
Len was a middle aged man who worked in the Co-op supermarket in Bakewell, 20 years ago, in the days when I often did a weekly shop there. That was before ALDI arrived a mile away and before the Co-op changed in response from being a useful shop for locals into a shop aimed at people holidaying in the area.
Len was the cashier whose checkout all the locals chose. He was cheerful, friendly, smiling and super efficient. In those days cashiers offered to help you pack, and Len was an expert and intelligent packer. When Len died, a bench was bought for him with a commemorative plaque that says
We valued him.
Oh for the days when it was a pleasure to do the shopping. Oh for the days when there were people stacking the shelves in Sainsbury’s so you could ask them for help when you couldn’t find something. (Yesterday I had to ask a customer where the coffee was.) Oh for the days when they manned all the checkouts. At least in ALDI there are people on the tills, even if it is an unseemly race to put the items in the bags in your trolley before they fall off the end of the till.
Bring back all the Lens. Make public life human again. Make conversations with strangers an everyday occurrence. Let me have more conversations with women knitting on station platforms, reminiscing about how we hated our knitted bathing costumes when we were children, because when you came out of the sea, they sagged down to your knees.
Oh that frabjous day, calloo callay, when my mother told Jen and me that she’d bought us elasticated cotton ones.
Like this:
This week is Refugee Week.
I was online looking for something I’d written in The Times and instead of finding it, I came across a piece I’d written some time ago for national Quakers about my concern for refugees. I thought you might like to read it.
Follow this link:
https://www.quaker.org.uk/action/our-stories/bridges-not-walls
And here are a few photos from our Refugee Hospitality Days over the years …I can’t show you our guests for privacy reasons. And that’s such a shame, because it’s the people and the enjoyment and the beaming smiles that are the point of it all.
Two text messages from the early days when we invited survivors of human trafficking.
“David was an inspiration to artists and an evangelist for joy who gave the gift of his art to a world that really needs more not less of him right now.”
Tacita Dean, artist
She speaks for me. He was an inspiration. I loved his colour, his continual exploration and I loved his accessibility, his lack of arty-fartyness, his humour, his dress sense, and his joy. And I appreciated the fact that he made painting landscapes, trees and flowers cool. He painted what he loved.
I shall always remember his 2012 exhibition A Bigger Splash, which I went to, 8 years before I started painting myself, and which even features in one of my books - Plotting for Grown-ups.
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| My poster, sadly faded now My souvenir carrier bag, not faded…  |
During lockdown, his Normandy Spring iPad paintings brought me huge joy, as well as inspiration. Het went to the exhibition in London and sent me the book. Thank you, Het!
While Dave has had constant heavy rain and even hail this week, we had another lovely day yesterday. Cold and sunny but warm enough out of the wind to enjoy the beach. This time we had a small one almost to ourselves. It was hot out of the wind but when I got to the sea the air was too cold to do anything but paddle.
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| Photo by Liz |
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| Channelling my Gran again, knitting socks. Photo by Liz |
Yesterday’s beach below. Note the one sock, to cover a sunburned foot from the day before.
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| Photo by Liz |
We didn’t just drive there and flop. We walked there and collapsed.
After the beach yesterday we called in at our favourite tiny plant place and cafe, where they bring your tea and scone to you in the garden.
And after that I wanted to see the lovely flowery path again,
but the rangers had got there before me.
Was it necessary to be quite so brutal? Hey ho.
Today is rainy so we’re off to St David’s.
More holiday snaps. I’m feeling too lazy/relaxed to write.
Stackpole Estate on Sunday…
