Friends

I’ve had a quiet day on my own after a very busy few weeks, and during those weeks I have thought from time to time that it might have been a mistake to give up the blog. I am still considering it.

Today I have written in my journal, mended the pocket of a pair of Dave’s shorts while listening to a fascinating and erudite discussion about Casablanca (the film) on In Our Time (BBC Sounds), started two new paintings, done my Italian session on Duolingo, practised my saxophone, visited my neighbour to give her probably the last bunch of sweet peas this year, and lain on the sofa exhausted.

And while I was lying here I have been thinking about friends, and how I have made friends through the blog, and blog readers I haven’t made friends with have still been friends of some kind, and how it’s a mistake to cut oneself off from friends of any kind. And that friends become more and more precious the older you get.

So I thought I’d say hello.

Het came to visit this week,

and she said I should drop a Christmas message here, but I couldn’t wait. So here I am, saying hello.

I hope you’re well. Say hello in the comments if you see this. 

Sx

Ps. These are my two latest paintings…

The end of the road

   

The blog is becoming sad and bedraggled, and spoiling its noble record. It’s not surprising…I’ve done it for twenty years. 

I first began in June 2006. Admittedly it was originally only a web presence, a blog in name only, hatched because PLOTTING FOR BEGINNERS had just been published. It only became a recognisable blog in the late summer of 2008, with posts like this: 

Wednesday August 27, 2008

DREAMING

Last night I dreamed I was in the kitchen with Dave, and he was prodding me with a fork. I said “Don’t! That’s not nice!” And he stopped. Then I woke up with a horrendous stomach ache.

I could hear from Dave’s breathing that he wasn’t asleep, so I said “I have this awful pain,” and he was full of sympathy, as he always is, and we discussed what might be the cause of the pain, and then I told him my dream.

“Was it a big fork?’ he said.

I pictured a devil’s fork, and couldn’t speak for the giggles. Then, when I calmed down, I said, “It was a kitchen fork, fool. But you had a look of malice on your face when you were poking me.”

“It’s so unfair to hold me responsible for my behaviour in your dreams,” he said. “And you know I’m not a malicious person. Scientific exploration is different. I could hold up my hand to prodding you with a fork to find out your core temperature.”

posted by Sue Hepworth at 5.49 a.m.

But now things feel different. We live in a dystopian world. Mad men are in charge of large countries, fascism is rising everywhere, disastrous climate change is upon us, and Israel is continuing its obscene violence on Palestinians both inside the West Bank and also in Gaza. And it is blatant now; but the issue has vanished from the headlines, the E.U. still counts Israel as an ally and trading partner, and Spain is the only European country to call them out. 

And then there is the universal war-mongering, the loud call from every side for the investment in armaments. “There’s going to be a war! X is going to attack us! We need to be ready!” 

As someone wrote to the paper a couple of years ago…

The world is too dark for me to cope with. But I can’t go on and on, telling you this on the blog.

This is not me in the picture, but I feel the same way:

This IS me:

And there is another problem. My mind is no longer tuned to writing about domestic happenings, making mental notes of funny things to tell you, or issues I want to explore. There are still times when I make a mental note that something is worth blogging about, but then my short term memory is so poor that the idea gets lost.

Other things have changed. I used to feel able to talk about my extended family and to share photographs of them. Now the internet feels like the Wild West, I don’t want to do that. Isaac and family have just left after a lovely, lovely visit. And our  whole family came for tea and outdoor games on Thursday - all three of our “children”, partners and grandchildren, and how I would love to show you pictures, but it’s not OK these days. All I can say is that I went to sleep happy on Thursday night, and I woke up happy, and all that is left is too much fruit juice, and a Dungeons and Dragons character sheet that Cece has made for me, with some dice. There was no time to play this week, so we plan to play on FaceTime. 

But back to the blog: the party’s over. I know I’ve said I’m stopping blogging before, but this really is it. Finito benito.

My view is that the blog had a heyday between autumn 2008 and autumn 2023. Then the latest war on Gaza began, in October 2023. There have been good posts since then, but not so many.

In early 2020, I chose the best posts of the years from 2010 - 2019 and they are available in my book DAYS ARE WHERE WE LIVE.

I have enjoyed writing the blog, and loved the interactions with readers. And it’s been amazing to make friends across the world, through the blog. It will still be online, so you can read it all. But there won’t be any new posts. You can follow me on Instagram @sue.hepworth where I post my paintings.

So, as the lady at the end of the Morecambe and Wise show used to say:

“Thank you everybody, thank you. I’d like to thank all of you for watching me and my little show here tonight. If you’ve enjoyed it, then it’s all been worthwhile. So until we meet again, good night and I love you all.”

On our bi-annual Bakewell Peace Vigil

Blogging in bed

One of my paintings 

Cycling in Boulder 

On holiday with Liz

On a gallery trip with Het

Having a margarita with Wendy 

Early morning sweet peas

Guess who

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.