The news from here

 Hello.

What to talk about? Andy Burnham and his refreshing approach? The fact that he knows how to connect, and he seems to care about ordinary people? Or Andy Burnham and the fact he voted for the Iraq war, against the Chilcot report, and the fact that there has been a US bombing mission started from a U.K. airbase? OMG.

None of these.

Here is the official selfie from my fabulous holiday at Het’s house:

And here are my three latest paintings

Midday sunshine

Evening sunshine

Lying down in a buttercup field

I just read something in the Instagram feed of an artist I follow - Sally Puddifoot - that I really liked. It made immediate sense to me:

“When my paintings come together the feeling is very sweet and those paintings have an energy and honesty that I can see in the visual language. They have determination and passion in the layers of paint.”

Not everyone will like my paintings and that’s OK. I like them. And some others do too. That’s enough.

I have been able to paint this week, but not able to cook, knit, garden, push the gear lever on my bike or use the handbrake in the car. Why? Because I wounded my left thumb in a bike accident on the Trail. It wasn’t my fault. Someone pulled out without checking and I braked suddenly and skidded on the loose gravel and came off full frontal. I got away with impressive bruises that don’t hurt but had to go to the minor injuries unit to have my thumb dressed, and to get a tetanus shot. It doesn’t hurt now and is healing nicely and in a week I hope to be fully functional again. The NHS was wonderful. And Dave has been pretty wonderful too.

Next week the Americans - Isaac, Wendy, Lux and Cece - are coming for a few days. Yippee! 

That’s my news.

A change

 I am staying with my dear friend Het in Cornwall. It’s heaven.

Dave is at home, watering the plants.

This is the view from my bed last evening.

How lucky am I?
I don’t feel like writing any more, but I heartily recommend this piece on Garrison Keillor’s blog.

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/a-long-night-on-the-east-side/

Dr Hussam Abu Safiya

 

I refer you to this article in Middle East Eye:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-west-must-act-save-hussam-abu-safiya-risk-killed-captivity

And to this one in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/06/detained-gaza-doctor-almost-unrecognisable-injuries-israeli-jail-hussam-abu-safiya

Please write to Yvette Cooper and insist that pressure is brought to bear on Israel to release Dr Safiya.

Untitled

 The headlines say the UK is investing £4.7 billion in defence. I call it warfare. Why aren’t we investing in diplomacy? Why aren’t we investing in STOPPING a war from happening?

In Gaza, horrors continue. This is an excerpt from the Refuser Solidarity Network’s latest bulletin (RFN is an organisation that supports conscientious objectors in Israel):

In Colorado, there is good news. Jewish Voice for Peace reports the success of their support for a Democratic candidate who cares about what is happening to Palestinians. (For your info, AIPAC is a very powerful pro-Israel lobbying group)

Here at Hepworth Towers, we call a genocide a genocide and we don’t believe in war.

And our garden is taking over. I call it a garden, but it looks more like an abandoned park, or even a meadow. It is so untidy, with clumps of flowers flopping and draping everywhere. It’s a wonderful exuberant mess. But also a little disreputable. Imagine all my borders looking like this one. 

The sweet peas are flowering, and the wildflower patches I sowed are also starting to bloom. The gooseberries want picking - a job I hate because of the prickles - and the blackcurrants are ripening so soon it will be jam time.

On the painting front, I have four paintings in an exhibition in Ashbourne Town Hall.

Photo by Valerie Dalling

They are all for sale, but I won’t find out if any have sold until I go in Saturday for the last day of the exhibition, when I’m on duty as a steward. Fingers crossed.

The last thing I want to say is…I have just read a wonderful book, (well actually I listened to it on Audible while I was painting and I LOVED it) - The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans.

Do any of you have any book recommendations?

Our garden

 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.

A Cautionary Tale

 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.

Oh for the days when…

 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

And there’s another bench with a plaque outside the shop, too, that says the same,

Two benches!

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:

Refugee Week

 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 Hockney

 

“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.

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!

Thank you, David.

Snaps

 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. 

Photo by Liz

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. 

Photo by Liz

I need to tell you that every day but one we have walked for at least half an hour (but usually an hour) to get to whatever beach we were going to. 

 

And then walked back.

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.