Dave and I will be going to the church in Bonsall today to set up the display of my paintings for the Bonsall Art Trail this weekend.
I assembled them yesterday and thought you might like to see them. They are varying sizes. They are all acrylics except for the two that are labelled ‘Collage.’
Forgive the cardboard corner protectors on some of them. They’d just come back from the framer and it seemed daft to remove them when we’re packing them up to go in the car.
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| Collage |
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| Collage |
Someone I know, someone I knew, someone I thought I knew, died ten days ago. He took his own life. He was about the same age as me. It was shocking and sad. No, it was beyond words. All of us who knew him are left thinking about the last time we spoke to him. No-one knew he was on the brink. Why didn’t we know? Had we known, could we have done something to stop him from taking that step from which there is no coming back?
There was a vigil held for him in the small town where he lived, and what became apparent to me that night was how loved he was. All these people from all these different groups in the town assembled to mourn and to talk about how much he meant to them. Hadn’t he known? Did he know but it wasn’t enough? All these questions.
At the same time as he left, a real burst of summer arrived - at last - and having been reminded of the tenuous grip we have on life,
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| Lettering by Elizabeth Forrest RBSA |
…I have been packing as much into my days as I can. As a result of that, I was so tired yesterday that I couldn’t even paint.
The day before, I’d been on a bike ride and we had also been on a double-decker open-topped sightseeing bus from Calver to Castleton, up Winnatts Pass to the Blue John Cavern. There and back. The views were fabulous. We’ve done it twice. If you’re a local, you should go! (I feel like being an ambassador for these buses. You buy a ticket and there is one every hour and you can hop on and off all day if you choose. £5.50 with a bus pass.)
This is me at the terminus enjoying a coffee and the view down the Hope Valley.
Last Thursday when it was a little chilly
And two days ago, when it was warm.
Last week after a long bike ride my knees ached so much that I couldn’t get to sleep. It was the third daily bike ride in a row and methinks it was a bit too much. I do have arthritic knees, but bike rides, being low impact exercise, are generally good for them.
And there’s another thing - yesterday I admitted to myself that I no longer like driving. Everyone seems to go so fast, and if I don’t go the same speed I am one of those annoying pensioners who drives at 40 mph in a 50 mph limit.
All of this stuff is about getting old.
I’m not complaining, just aware.
This is a Mary Oliver poem. You might recognise the last two lines.
Do you remember when I was going to the London Screenwriters Festival hoping to find a producer for my screenplay of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU?
Do you remember how nervous I was?
Do you remember how I wished for some kind of accident that would give me a face-saving excuse for not going?
Well, that’s how I feel about the Bonsall Art Trail next weekend, because I'm nervous!
I have had worries this last week which I can’t share, but painting in blues, greens and yellows has cheered me up. And painting has grounded me.
Have you noticed how tall the buttercups are this year? They’re crazily tall on account of all the rain. I’ve never known them like this. And they’re so beautiful.
My painting is called ‘The year the buttercups grew tall.’
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| Acrylic on board 45.5 x 61 cms |
The other cheering activities were seeing the family, having breakfast with Liz at Hassop Station, going to Quaker Meeting, and going out on my electric bike. I can get to places with wonderful views because I can climb hills that I find impossible on my ordinary bike.
See how tall the buttercups are-
I hope you’re impressed that I have maintained radio silence about the election on the blog. I certainly wouldn’t be silent if a candidate or canvasser came to my door. Sadly we only get leaflets on our lane.
I will not remain silent about the suffering in Gaza.
Please don’t forget about it, just because the election and football are swamping the airwaves.
You can donate to the UNICEF Gaza appeal here.
You can donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians here.
Yesterday I went to the post office and in the course of serving me, the assistant called me “sweetheart” a dozen times. “Can you just pop it onto the scales for me, sweetheart?”…”That’s your receipt for the money and that’s your receipt for tracking the item, sweetheart”…”I’m sorry, sweetheart, we don’t have any ten pound notes this morning”…etc.
I liked it. I’ve never understood those (often strident) people who say they feel demeaned when a stranger calls them love or pet or darling or sweetheart.
I like being treated in a friendly way. I like interacting with human beings in public life. But robots are taking over.
On his most recent trip to Sainsburys to stock up on yoghurt, Dave inadvertently brought home some yogurts he didn’t want. He took three trays of six yoghurts off the natural yoghurt shelf (all that there were), but when he got home he found some unwelcome interlopers - several strawberry yoghurts. They had been mixed up with the natural ones and the cartons look so similar that if you’re in a hurry you don’t notice.
He was most distressed, and not just because he always always prefers natural yoghurt. He was upset because the strawberry yoghurts are more expensive, which meant he owed Sainsburys money. He is honest. Utterly and completely honest. So he rang Sainsburys to pay over the phone for the money he owed and the phone was answered by a robot. The robot could not understand what Dave wanted and after several attempts, the robot said they were trying to improve all the time but they couldn’t understand him and then they said goodbye. The robot ended the conversation! The bloody cheek! There was no option to talk to a human being.
At that point I would have said “Sod Sainsburys!” thinking they didn’t deserve the money. Not so, Dave. He couldn’t bear the thought of not paying the correct price for an item, even if he didn’t like it. So he routed his bike ride past the shop and went in to pay. The supervisor who was called could not understand what Dave wanted. You want money back for some items but you haven’t brought them or the receipt?
He explained again. The woman was flummoxed. This had obviously never happened before. Once she understood and heard that the figure was £3.60 she said thank you but it didn’t matter: there was no need to pay.
This is a long story already but what I wanted to rant about was the dehumanisation of the shopping experience and this is just one example. I hate, loathe and despise self checkouts. I can see they are a boon if you’ve just popped into the shop for a handful of items and you’re in a hurry. But the norm these days in even large supermarkets - such as our local Sainsburys - is to have only two manned checkouts open and to herd everyone else into the self checkouts. I always choose the manned checkout. Going round Sainsburys these days is bad enough: it feels like a bleak warehouse and finding someone to help you locate an item is as difficult as trying to find the item itself.
In some smaller shops there is no option, and there are only self checkouts, so I seek out a member of staff and plead complete ignorance and ask them to help.
I object to the dominance of self checkouts on several grounds:
They cost jobs;
Supermarkets make money out of their customers and they should provide a service - not expect customers to do their work for them;
Most of all I hate it because it cuts out yet another human interaction from public discourse. Everywhere we see headlines saying loneliness is a huge problem these days, for all kinds of people of all ages. The only face to face human interaction some people experience in a day is if they go to the shop. Now even this is being taken away from them.
There are some supermarket chains who are realising that not everyone wants self checkouts. In the Netherlands the supermarket chain Jumbo introduced manned checkouts where customers can have a chat with the assistant while they’re being served. These have proved so popular that they have increased the number. A chain in the northwest of England called Booths have also reduced their self checkouts.
I go to Aldi every week and they’re going in the opposite direction. The Aldi experience is something else, whereby the checkout assistants will not wait for you to pack your items and it’s stressful. But at least they do it with a smile. Well…some of them do. There was one checkout assistant who always seemed to look down her nose at me…so much so that I would come home and say to Dave that I thought she despised me. So not all human interactions in the public sphere are uplifting. But at least they are human.
We need these interactions not just to combat loneliness but so we all remember how to live together amicably. Covid and lockdowns damaged community cohesion and the norms of public behaviour which is why some ignorant people use their phones during concerts and plays. Hey ho.
I will conclude by saying (rather randomly!) that the Coventry Building Society telephone service is top notch. Full marks for a personal approach that cheers up your day.
And now, to make up for all of these words, here is a photo of the moonpennies on our back lawn that I’ve been cherishing during no-mow May and into June.
I had planned to rant about the dehumanisation of the shopping experience this morning, but I made the mistake of going on Twitter and reading about, and seeing, the carnage in Gaza which happened in the mission to rescue the four hostages. At least 274 Palestinians were killed, almost 700 were wounded.
How can it be that in this beautiful world a country can act in such an inhuman way and the world can continue to support them? Why are not our leaders speaking out against this? Why are they still sending arms?
It is clear they think that Palestinians do not matter.
I am heartsick. It makes me not want to live in this world.
And there are millions of shocked and caring people all over the world who like me are appalled and heartbroken and who are powerless to help these beaten, bombed, starving, wounded, desperate human beings - people who are just like us.
I hesitate these days before posting about something domestic or personal because the political situation - national and global - is so desperate.
But everyday life still goes on with its joys and difficulties and dilemmas, so here goes…
You remember the red versus blue coat issue?
The day after I bought the red coat (which all but one people online said I should go for) I was still wondering: did I make the right decision?
I liked the red, but there was SO MUCH red. I mean, it wasn’t just a waist-length jacket.
I told myself I was being lily-livered about the change. Just because 80% of my clothes are blue did not mean it should always be that way. So I stuck with it. Some days it brought me joy and some days I felt overwhelmed by it...as though it was the red coat walking down the lane, rather than me walking down the lane.
A week after I bought it, Dave and I were walking back from Hassop Station along the Trail when he said, out of nowhere: "You can have the blue coat if you want, you
know."
I was startled. I said: "I know you hate this red coat."
"Yes, but that’s not the point. I know
you’re not keen on it."
"How do you know?"
"You usually go on about new clothes. You're usually excited about them. You haven’t been excited about the red coat. You just bought it home from the shop and hung it on the hook in the hall. No dancing around saying Isn't this fab!"
"You’re right. But I do like it, just not as much
as I thought I would. I think it swamps me. The red does suit me, but not so
much red. It’s too in-your-face. And the blue one really suited me. I thought the red one because I thought it was more fun.
"Well, go and buy a new one. A blue one."
"I can’t! Think of the money!"
(You should be aware that Dave still thinks you can get a decent jumper for a fiver. So this offer was startling, as well as incredibly generous.)
He went on: "It’s all running away in inflation anyway
- go and get the blue coat. Get it today. I’m going to Bakewell to get my meds
so I’ll get it for you."
"No, really, don’t. I ought to make do with
the red one."
More insistence and nagging from Dave.
I said: "I was a little bit doubtful the day after I
bought it. I have this maxim - learned from experience - “if in doubt, don’t” - and I ignored it with the coat."
"So go and buy the blue one!"
"But it’s so extravagant! I shan’t be able
to tell anyone. I’ll be so ashamed."
Reader, you need to know that I love new clothes but I still have old ones I wear every year. For example I still wear a pair of Racing Green chinos and two Racing Green T shirts I bought in the '90s.
"Well, if you're ashamed, don’t tell anyone."
"I could wear the red coat to town and for
trips, and the blue one for walks."
"Whatever! Go and get the blue one."
Reader…I did. And now I have two coats. My last Seasalt coat lasted me for 9 years, so these will last me 18 years - until I am 92.
This morning we walked out together, me in the blue coat because it was a country walk with Dave, and I said "Do you feel more comfortable with me in the blue coat?"
"I wouldn't say more comfortable, but when you wore the red one it was like having a boil on my nose or a splinter in my bum."
One month from today I shall be exhibiting and selling my paintings and cards in the Bonsall Art Trail. It's to be held in the Peak District village of Bonsall. The exhibits will be in homes, halls and marquees.
There are all kinds of things to see and do as well as looking at the art and crafts. There'll be workshops and demonstrations, competitions, music, and street food.
You'll find the car park and the hop-on hop-off bus at the top of the village as you approach from the north.
I will be in the Anglican church - do come and see me! How amazing it would be to meet blog readers I have never met before.
Unless they’ve been sold before, the paintings on sale will include these…
There is something entrancing about toddlers.
Yesterday afternoon our youngest granddaughter, MsX, came to visit.
She is 18 months old and learning several new words everyday. This is amazing to me, as her father - the family member who declines to be named - didn’t begin to speak until he was two. Once he was five he was pontificating like his father.
But it’s not just MsX’s rapid language acquisition that’s bewitching, it’s her focused interest and delight and concentration while playing. And playing with her is to escape from the world out there at the same time as digging deep into the present, the immediate. You really do live in the moment with toddlers and it’s so refreshing. I love spending time with all our grandchildren but it’s been ten years since we’ve had such a little one in the family, and it’s such a treat in these dark dark times - times when “civilised” countries can aid and abet a genocide.
MsX was on holiday at Easter and went for her first solo paddle, and I liked the photo her parents took of her so much that I painted it.
Meanwhile in Gaza, children are traumatised, injured, orphaned and starving.
Please don’t forget them.
You can donate to the UNICEF Gaza appeal here:
All I will say about the election is this: I am sure we have already all made up our minds who we are going to vote for, so can we have radio silence from politicians for six weeks, and then vote?
And a propos of nothing…
Here is my latest painting:
I have a vivid memory of my father asking me to cut the bluebells back in his garden. I didn’t use sheers, I pulled the dead stems - which came out easily - and some of the leaves came off too. He was furious and said they wouldn’t grown as well the next year.
We have too many bluebells in our garden. They get everywhere. And every year when they’ve finished flowering I pull them out. And every year there are even more bluebells than the year before, and this is despite my throwing out the bulbs that I find when I’m digging.
Yesterday I thought I’d use sheers to do the job, and it was going well. But something snagged, and a wounded a toad crawled out.
It was bleeding on the shoulder, and crawled away, and I was really sad. If I had pulled instead of cut, I wouldn’t have hurt the toad.
It made me think if this poem by Philip Larkin.
For some reason, the night before I came home from Belgium I managed only 5 hours of sleep, so I was pretty wrecked when Pete dropped me off at Genval station to catch the 8.28 to Brussels and the Eurostar.
I had plumped for a train half an hour earlier than was strictly necessary as I like to be early, and safe. This meant that when the train was suddenly cancelled I waited calmly for the subsequent one 30 minutes later. But that one did not arrive either and I panicked. I rang Pete, who fortunately was at home, and asked him to collect me and drive me into Brussels. This meant a nail biting drive through rush hour traffic and I arrived at the Eurostar just before the cut off time. (As with air travel, you have to be checked in and go through border control well ahead of departure time.)
So I slumped in a seat in the dark crowded waiting area to recover, longing for a mug of sugared tea to help me recover, but it’s an inhospitable space and there are no refreshments.
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| Art nouveau piece at a museum we visited in Brussels |
My sister texted to ask what Pete and I had got up to, and I texted back - “I’ll tell you later too stressed now sorry.” I needed tea. Any tea. It didn’t have to be Yorkshire tea, it could be any old lily livered pathetic tea. Even PG Tips. Even Liptons. Well, perhaps not Liptons.
And then the Eurostar was late departing. By the time I was in my seat on the train I was utterly wrecked.
Sitting beside me, next to the aisle, was a friendly young Belgian woman who had just completed her PhD in sustainable architecture at Newcastle Uni. We had an interesting chat and then as the train set off, she opened her laptop to work.
They don’t bring refreshments down the aisle on the Eurostar: you have to make your way up the train and fetch them. I was still feeling old and wrecked and I thought - I wonder what my companion would say if I said “If you fetch me a cuppa I’ll treat you to whatever you want.”
Yes. I know. Ridiculous. What am I? 103?
I wondered if talking to my neighbour intelligently about her work made me seem more alive and younger than I felt.
Het recently told me about a 90 year old woman she met on a train who had just come back from New Zealand via Jedda, on her own. That is one feisty woman, and I am a pathetic creature by comparison.
I sat on the Eurostar looking out of the window and thinking…if I looked seriously decrepit and walked with a stick, I could probably ask my neighbour to fetch me a cuppa. I turned round and she’d upped and gone, and a few minutes later was back with a coke. Hey ho.
If I’d been next to the aisle I’d have gone myself: it was that extra effort of asking her to move and hauling myself out of the window seat that was just too much.
I tell you this pathetic stuff because it’s the dark side of being 74 and a half and being me.
A friend told me yesterday I was an inspiration, but if everyone knew what went on in my head they would see me for the feeble creature I really am. Plus…I don’t like travelling on my own.
I have been staying with my brother Pete
at his home in Belgium, in the town of Genval, which has a very pretty lake
and is within a few miles of the Chateau de la Hulpe, which is set in huge and beautiful grounds open free to the public. The trees are magnificent and at this time of year, breathtakingly beautiful. Strangely, I only took pictures worth sharing of ferns.
We walked and talked and watched favourite old films, and had all but one of our meals outside - bliss. And we sat side by side in his excellent studio and tried different approaches to the same subject. Pete intends to paint a large picture in oils and this is his preparatory sketch.
Every morning I look online at the front pages of all the newspapers, and while the majority of them have serious stories, the Daily Star always has something that makes me laugh. And I love it’s irreverence.
This morning this was it:
In that vein, please tolerate the following post - which I have delayed writing on account of its triviality, when there is a genocide currently being tolerated by the West, and which rarely leaves my mind.
So…
I needed a new coat, a raincoat, as I live in England. I have had the same one - made by Seasalt - for nine years. It is a beautiful soft turquoise colour that really suits me, and I bought it because of the colour, not because I was looking for a coat at the time. But it was a terrific buy and is still 100% waterproof. The trouble is that the cuffs and edges are looking shabby. The fact that a man on a galloping horse wouldn’t notice this has kept me from replacing the coat. Regular readers know by now that I LOVE clothes but am beset by a Quaker bent towards simplicity and frugality. Also, my clothes budget is small.
I am going to see my brother Pete in Belgium for a long weekend and we will be spending a day in Brussels while I’m there, so I felt that it was time, finally, to buy a new coat. I could waltz down the Eurostar platform towards him looking chic and feel fully confident in the Grand Place.
Amazingly, our small town of Bakewell, which has lost all its useful shops except a supermarket and a cobbler, does have a branch of Seasalt. So I popped in on Sunday after Meeting to buy a new coat. Why would I want anything but Seasalt when they make such colourful coats that are 100% waterproof and last for years?
Another side to this story is that after years and years of having a wardrobe full of blue and turquoise clothes I have been yearning to wear bright red. I used to wear it a lot when my hair was brown. I even had a bright red coat when I was 40. And I still have a bright red Biba dress in the back of the wardrobe.
I immediately found the coat I wanted, but… which colour should I have? Bright red, because it’s different and because it’s fun? or the classy Prussian blue that I would normally go for because I love the colour and because it suits me so well?
When you have been wearing variations of the same colour for twenty years it feels exciting but risky to make a change. I had in my mind that THIS coat would also have to last me nine years, though Dave said yesterday “Nine years? We’ll be dead in five! We won’t make 80!” But you know Dave.
The lovely assistant took a photo of me in each so that I could text Het and my daughter Z. Neither responded. Hey ho. I took the red and went to the counter and asked the assistant if she could save the blue till the next day in case I changed my mind, and she said yes.
By the time I had left the shop and was packing the coat into my bike pannier I had two texts.
Het said “I like you in ❤️”.
Z said “Either.” Then she said “Blue is classier.” I texted back “Blue is classier and a very nice blue but I thought the red was more fun” and she responded “My thoughts exactly.”
When I got home Dave said “Why didn’t you ask me?”
“Maybe because you don’t have a mobile phone and because you’re colour blind?”
I didn’t say “because you have zero fashion sense,” because that would have been mean and also it would have led to him saying he had a fine sense of style and didn’t I remember his tartan tam o shanter when we were students, and I would have said yes, precisely, that tam o shanter was DREADFUL.
I was still dithering over the colour however so I emailed Pete. He said “the blue is more discreet and the red is really classy, a gorgeous red.”
So, friends, what do you think?
It’s here! It’s come! It’s finally arrived!
The leaves on the lime trees across the road are out - at last - and our copper beeches are following suit.
It’s warm enough for my sweet peas to be moved from the bedroom windowsill to the cold frame. I have a clear view again. Hooray!
Yesterday it was warm enough for me to eat my tea outside, and the day before I had to take off my jumper on a bike ride.
Even our bluebells are out.
I don’t even care that something in the shed has eaten all my cosmos and marigold seedlings. I shall sow good old dependable nasturtiums in the front garden and to hell with my colour scheme.
It was the longest winter of my life and at last, at last, it’s over. Thank God.
