Spring - Autumn 2022

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 This is a catch up post. I have been so busy that life has taken over. I love creating this little sort of diary. More of a point of interest for family and friends but open to everyone - what I'm doing, perhaps my thoughts and photos of inspiring places. Saying this I have not yet uploaded any images onto my new laptop so I've looked to the past for the photos here. I love my past - most of it.

I count myself very fortunate as I'm usually pretty inspired by the world around me and by my imagination. In short I'm never bored. Though I do find that after covid was more tired than previously in the afternoons for a while. I surrendered to Hypnos and Morpheus and learnt to enjoy the journey and simply stopped resisting. In return I was able to conjure images and ideas that were/are quite literally as food from the gods. 

As some of you may already know, I have another studio to work in that also comes with storage space - incredibly useful. Also the use of a polytunnel although I prefer to think of it as a greenhouse. Make no mistake - it is a polytunnel and I'm rapidly learning the difference. But my mind keeps saying greenhouse so I'm going to say the same - it's far more atmospheric and old fashioned after all and comforting as I can transform it in my mind into a long Victorian greenhouse in a walled garden. It's a place where I can listen to the birds and the wind in the trees, the rain on the roof and look out across a valley to the sea beyond. I am blessed yet again. It's now beginning to provide green leaves and herbs plus a few strawberries and a place to safely keep my pots of transplanted garden plants - members of my family - gardeners will understand.

It's quite a jungle or will be. I've strung up a hammock so that I can slip occasionally into that alternative reality of feeling completely weightless - the perfect departure point for the imagination in fact. I've started to paint and draw in there too - lovely when it's raining. 

The studio space or rather spaces are exactly what I was hoping for when I was looking for my next studio last year - the perfect place to make all my YouTube and future Patreon tutorials (hopefully in January 2023) - spaces that are Set Decorated to look like home though in fact I don't actually 'live' here as I'm still technically homeless and stay with friends on a sort of rota basis when not working - for the time being anyway. 

What I like about this arrangement for now is that I do get to meet up with friends regularly - those who can put me up anyway. As a maker and an 80% introvert I can easily be completely preoccupied with my own inner world.

However I am constantly on the lookout for a new home but these are extremely hard to find right now. Prices have rocketed and so many people moved out of London and other cities in favour of a less stressful and expensive life. Well, less expensive for them but the result is that it's far more expensive for the people who live here. The ups and downs of life. Adaption is called for yet again. At least I have a place to work and I quickly decided that that was the priority.

So as my working space used to be initially a dormitory, then a hospital, then university offices, then a kitchen was added, then workshops and studios, it does naturally lend itself perfectly to my way of working. I have a series of dedicated spaces - one for jewellery making and video tutorials, one for painting most sizes of canvases and panels, one for my 'Sofa Chats' videos that I began in lockdown, the old kitchen is my papier mache studio as there is water and I have a portable induction hob for mixing up gesso, gelatin and also beeswax polish, a dedicated area for for drying by fan - it works - and my microwave for the quick drying of beads and small bowls etc. It's also ideal for video tutorial making as there is so much natural light. I even have an 'office space' and a place to edit and upload vlogs at the end of the corridor - fairly small but big enough.

 The room with the least light and a loo are piled with boxes of things I have yet to organise and for which I need to put shelving up but as yet I haven't found the time. I did manage to put up my daughter's big Victorian brass bed that I store for her, as I can store more boxes underneath it as well as create a huge 'table' with with my old market trestle tops on top where I now have a dedicated photography and packing area. One has to be creative with space. I still have lots to sort out and in theory I try to sort a bit out every day - I set my timer and give it half an hour. It adds up.

I sometimes house-sit a large rambling old house on the edge of Dartmoor when the owners who are friends go away with the possibility for long let in the future. In the meantime it's head down and work undisturbed and thank God for my friends and their spare rooms. 

Fortunately or not I'm one of those people who needs very little sleep and I've always been a very early riser - I love to welcome in the dawn and especially at this time of the year it is perfect as I can quietly leave wherever I happen to be and drive to work without waking anyone and start my day. My circadian rhythms give me a sharp mind from about 3.30am so I can be at work at usually 4.30. I know this may sound crazy to many people  and yet it is the way I am wired - I have had the same circadian rhythm all my life. I love it.

At present I am working on 18 new A4 boards that have been laser cut to make a new collection of paper mache jewellery. I'm constructing some paper mache bowls - rough textured and appearing to be weighty and resembling ceramic - think old Japanese masters of ceramics. 

I found a torn off strip of some kind of black waterproof paper that seemed to have acquired a richly textured layer of mud and green algae that had weathered and dried to an incredibly beautiful appearance. Naturally I brought it to my kitchen studio where it's been waiting to be transformed. The start of a new series. I'm currently filming that process and will then show how to create that effect without old mud and algae. So video to follow in the next post.

When working on any craft based project it'a all about processes and organisation. I have had to re-organize my studio so many times. This is effectively my 48th move. It's not as stressful as people think - though not without stress.

Autumn is now here and it's a great year for sweet chestnuts.

I'm continuing to gather the old dried out stems of foxgloves and bracken etc when I'm mooching about on Dartmoor. They provide me with endless references for paintings. C'est la vie. Toodle-loo.

MOVING ON 2021\22 - September/March

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I've learnt to rather like 'Moving On' and really I do seem to have a tad more than average experience in doing so. I'm now right in the middle of sorting, packing, labelling and consequentially piling up boxes wherever I can find some space in my very small cottage in readiness for Moving Day - Part One - interspersed with the rather more exciting activity of getting the feel of my new home. I have developed a habit of going there and just standing in each room, looking out of the windows, getting the feel of the place - it is growing on me.

Although when you are out at sea and looking for a safe harbour there is an overwhelming sense of gratitude for any terra-firma I imagine. Either way this is the only place that offered itself to me and for that I am very grateful.

I'm now busy cleaning and painting - walls mainly (32) plus a few ceilings (8) and lots of cupboards (?), window frames (12) and doors (8) - all requiring quite a few coats between them - plus wonderful though neglected parquet floors. 

Please don't get me wrong - I absolutely love doing this - it's simply a matter of timing before moving begins and then the cleaning and tidying up the garden at my little cottage. I may need to outsource that final activity if my back doesn't hold out or is that 'up'? I have been training my back for months for this moment - as it can be a little unpredictable at times.

The most wonderful side of all this activity is that I'll at last have space to paint and to make and to move between the two. Or failing that - storage.

I've had the help of wonderful removers - as in removal company - without which this task would have defeated me. My back is still intact anyway. The weather was wonderful - warm and sunny and if it did rain then it did so at night. I couldn't have asked for more.

The most striking thing about my new place is the deep sense of peace - it is really quiet but it is much more than that. I feel as if I could almost float upon this serenity. It could also I know become a real challenge in long dark winter months.

The place itself is old and somewhat neglected. I can sympathise. I am not neglected but ageing inevitably brings new problems to try to solve. A long period of silence now began. I survived the isolation and even the lack of a car as mine finally refused to start and no garage could find a cure. I imagine it was only a loose wire but it would cost far more than it was worth to spend the time to discover exactly which wire. I am now about to look for a replacement. Something that will happily take on Dartmoor lanes and journeys to the sea. A mobile studio in fact is my ideal. They're hard to come by nowadays. 

I can now 'take up my pen' and report that once I stopped moving I seemed to come to a complete standstill - I suppose all the stress that I was suppressing (and there was too much) finally had the chance to start to manifest in all sorts of totally unexpected ways - I won't go into detail but they've surprised me. Some were and still are aspects of Long Covid, according to my doctor but really there's no conclusive proof. Either way I'm doing my best to move on from that, but it seems to be a long, slow and confusing process. I've far less energy and a complete disappearance of my usual joie de vivre - one of the many blessings that I've never taken for granted. So I went to ground and hoped that hibernation and rest would do it's magic - not yet. 

I try to make myself go through all the motions in the hope that memory will kick start my love of life but not yet. Sometimes great waves of deep and profound sadness almost overwhelm me - even more so now that the crisis in Ukraine is gathering momentum. 

I've always loved my own company - I learnt to as an only child I imagine and yet even then I longed to belong to a different family - my own yet expanded to include an even bigger rambling house with a father who was gentle and thoughtful and reserved and my own mother just as she was but with the addition of many brothers and sisters. I longed for never ending interesting conversations around a very large kitchen table and ad hoc pot luck meals with an Elizabeth David air. I have often wondered if there is a sort of muscle memory locked in the morphic field of our DNA and of the legacy of our ancestors - for good or bad - that we have to continue to work it out on their behalf as well as our own that could then create an added depth of security for the generations to come. These are the kind of thoughts that I ponder when alone as that big kitchen table is lost in metaphorical storage somewhere so no discussions can take place. This can spill over into a deep heart wrenching sense of loneliness of the soul. On the edge of being unbearable.

So finally I've come to London with my daughter to try a change of scene - my first real journey anywhere since lockdown, to see if that would do the trick. Not yet - I've been to some of my old haunts - Chelsea, East Dulwich, Richmond and have wandered around the old Victorian streets of Peckham and through parks and built up housing blocks and so on and I still feel unmotivated. Perhaps it is ageing but I have always determined not to rust away through age and neglect. There's a little demon inside me who has a tendency to feel sorry for itself that can from time to time overwhelm me like a soporific drug and one which I always try to overcome. Recently I've been watching YouTube and three people in particular who are just the kind of people that I would have wished to be sat around that childhood kitchen table - they are Dr Rangan Chatterjee, Richard Schwartz and Gabor Mate. They seem to hit the nail on the head for me. I'm at the beginning of my journey with them.  

I've always been able to write from my imagination and have found it to be incredibly revealing and helpful and also entertaining if that's the right description/word to use. So now that I've spent the sunny days out and about I am going to focus on my daughter's garden - a very small affair but has a bit of potential. Weeding, removing builders rubble, cutting back a headstrong Buddleia, scrub off algae from wooden fence panels and add wires for roses etc, remove moss and algae from steps, cut grass and clean paving stones. The garden was neglected when she moved in and I love to do this - I do recognise that I have a certain sort of list of things that I seem to like to do wherever and whenever I can. I think that I could easily expand it to include as yet undiscovered delights. Maybe my joie de vivre lies hidden out there.

Papier Mâché 'Pottery' - Learning Through Making - 1

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My focus is on learning through making. My medium is papier-mache and resin in the main.

I am making a series of new video tutorials for YouTube and Patreon.

First of all I'm making a Flat Lay Board - I used to have a stack of old doors and driftwood that I would use to take photographs on and I want to include current methods too. Flat Lays are really popular because of i-phones and Instagram. And they look great for certain things. I have an i-phone and an Instagram account so here goes. 

I'm working on the back of a small Ikea trestle table top that I sometimes use in my studio and thought it would double up as a good surface for displaying work on if I painted it first. 

My thoughts are to make a series of vessels using different methods in papier-mache. I'd also like to make moulds and forms for vessels from scratch or from found objects.

I'm always attracted to colour, texture and light and was never particularly drawn to earthy colours that were so prevalent in the 20th century British pottery movement. I do like their forms and lifestyle. 

I'll start to collect and list all my references as that may be of interest to some.  

January 4th 2021

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So - here we go 2021 - what do we call you? You're still the 20's - We had The Roaring Twenties 100 years ago but not many of us are exactly roaring, apart possibly Elon Musk as he heads off into space. 21 is one of those - just a little bit 'special' sounding numbers and anything related to it gets a sprinkling of hope from the start. We're talking of the great reset and goodness knows we need one but we're a divided world - polarised and arguing - a lot right now. 

I have and am enjoying lockdown in its various tiers - it's as if the world has joined the artists, the philosophers, the contemplatives and the sages of old in living a life less travelled. So welcome and let's make the very best of it.

My world has changed for the better. The love of solitude has crept up on me determinedly and steadily. At first, quite a surprise as I'd always pictured myself living in a big happy family as a child - so where were all the others? They never materialised. But I did eventually find them - not the other children, rather the essence of mother nature - the world of nature - in the garden, when out exploring the countryside and in the infinite realms of the imagination. So for me, solitude became a place where one finds both magic and safety. 

During lockdown, I've been able to make time for painting and am delighted to find that I have a bit of an obsession for flowers. Wildflowers, a little abstracted and layers and layers. I used to paint much more realistically but always with a touch of magic - a twist on reality. Going into winter I find I need to collect armfuls of dried wildflowers - dried by the wind and the rain and the change of the seasons - silhouetted against the sky and now against paper and canvas. Raw linen canvas and canvas coloured like faded frescos, intense and brilliant colours and deep mysterious colours from the world of the Renaissance. And layers on silver, bronze and gold, wisps of trailing white, smudges of pale turquoise. I paint in my head throughout the day just as I also develop and hear conversations between my characters in my stories in the early morning and the times of falling to sleep.

And then there is the business of business - my business and of earning my living. The dream I had years ago where a rather beautiful and somewhat elegant lady - yes 'lady' rather than 'woman' in this case for it seemed she had momentarily stepped forward from of the world of an intelligentsia of selected females to meet me. The feeling accompanying my dream was that I had always known of her and admired and respected her so I was delighted and surprised to see she was the person who was running or owned the art gallery I'd chosen to first show my portfolio of paintings to. She was rather like a historical figure from a time and place long ago. I have just realised that I have a woman who is of exactly her ilk in one of my stories called Zuleika - it translates into 'brilliant and fair' - she is, though eternally old now. But here I have to emphasise that I'm not using 'ilk' in a pejorative way but as an antonym. This became all the more profound when she suggested that I cut up my paintings and make jewellery from the fragments. 

I was horror-struck - all the more as I respected her considered opinion above everyone else's. So you see I didn't expect her - what I felt, was a putdown. And yet in reality she'd thrown me a lifeline. I did as she suggested - after all, it was a sort of question - 'why don't you?' So - I did and it was another turning point. I see her rather as one of the three graces - Charis possibly as she is grace, kindness and life. It fits in my mind.

Lockdown has been another turning point. The turn I'm in the process of making right now is the one we call Patreon. I've always taken to social media - it's ideal for someone of my temperament - I love to communicate and sometimes to meet people but need to be undisturbed in the main. This is so that my imagination is given room to reveal its gifts. Also, people have disturbed me a bit too much for my liking during my life. I was unprotected. I am wiser now. I don't hide away. I simply love contemplation and the joy that lives in solitude.

So - Patreon? Well, I've been thinking about it and now I'm researching just what I can do with it. I don't appeal to everyone - who does? But after so many years of being true to myself, I do know that I have a following of interesting and interested people who love what I make and some of the things that I say. So I have the required foundation on which to build a Patreon account - that is an established presence online.

I used to be an Art Teacher - not for very long it's true - I didn't take to the system or the curriculum or the general school culture. So I handed in my notice and went my own way - hitching through the South of France and Spain. The streets were sometimes paved with gold. Not always. And they need a little polishing right now. But I love teaching - sharing and making and know for sure that millions of us do too. I don't really look at other people's ways of doing, making or sharing so I suppose I risk seeming somewhat unusual. That's ok - I'll keep on following my own path.

The thing is I feel very safe, very confident and very enthusiastic about this next stage. I've been keeping up with social media since its arrival. I've always been able to see the point of it and its possibilities. A bit like the wheel and clean water on-tap. Or telephones or boats. Anyway - I'm trying to work out what certain phrases, jargons really mean and to see if I need them. I don't have people I personally know who are embarked on the same journey to ask for guidance and actually they would probably say as I will - you need to work it out for yourself. And we have forums - just like Ancient Rome. And I even have my own permanent pitch on our modern-day Agora - Totnes Market on Fridays and Saturdays where strangers and old friends meet and have the most interesting and spontaneous conversations. The wisdom of the market place is a reality.

Making a very large tray

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A sort of visual step by step of how I made a contemporary take on a traditional method of making a rather large tray. Designed to give a hard surface on a red upholstered pouffe.
The final piece is painted in a matching red acrylic paint from Golden paints and gilded around the deckle edge with Sterling Silver leaf that will slowly tarnish as the Renaissance Wax with which it's polished gains it's patina through repeated polishing and buffing. to be finshed..

Thursday April 8th? Staying at Home

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I fully realise that I'm very fortunate to actually have a home - albeit a rented one. It's a safe harbour after all - even though I may be told to leave at some time in the future. I have never known the security that must surely come with living in ones own home. No tides of the equinox can wash that away. Though perhaps a tsunami.

I'm also painfully aware of the disparity in our society between people staying at home in in Grade 1 listed estates, mansions, houses with walled gardens, gated town houses, farms, country houses and villas, suburban detached houses with land and gardens, little terraced homes with gardens - like the one I'm currently living in - to all of the majority who have no gardens.

Then there are those living on the ground floor to those living in high rise buildings of many many flats - some have a balcony thank god - most have not. 
And then there are the displaced and the refugees and finally those in permanent lockdown in prison or in institutions and 'homes'. 

I've never taken whatever situation I've been in for granted. I always feel very grateful. I've been homeless on a few occasions - for a short times - but long enough to feel the fear and the cataclysmic shift in society's attitude. You seem to become like an untouchable to most people - even those you may have thought were on the way to being 'friends' - I have developed a healthy wariness of people on the whole now.

I feel that I should to say all of this every time I write a post - to put what then follows into some kind of context. But fear not - I will not - it has now been said. 

So the thing is that I've always wanted to share with those who have far less of my own experiences of living. A sort of sharing and by way of some form of encouraging. 

I remember once driving to Liverpool along one of the many out of the way back roads. Liverpool is a city I knew well and loved. 
I was going to hire a large van after my father died - to start to unravel and hopefully sort out and move some of his lifetime collecting and hoarding acquisitions - from anything to used paper bags and newspapers to Chinese porcelain and 17th century glass and furniture, silver, books and carpets, paintings, clothes and tools. 

It was in February and very cold (one of the reasons I moved to the South West - winters are milder - the air is cleaner) and I passed tower block after endless shabby depressing tower block and thought of all the single mothers struggling (I now being one after my divorce when my son was  five) to give their children some sense of inspiration that life has many different possible scenarios. 

I hadn't yet been to Venice at that point but it was one of my somewhat confused messages of hope and inspiration - at least it was something that I could focus on a bit to relieve the drudgery and oppression of life at times. 

I'd read a lot about Venice - it's fascinating history and some fanciful and charming modern and older novels but more to the point I'd often seen paintings of Venice. 

Especially contemporary ones - usually of waterways with poles - reflections spiralling down that reflected and shifted on the ripples of passing gondolas. It was the rippling warm colours in the cool moody atmospheric blues and silvery blacks of the Grand Canal that did it for me every time back then. Venice Insider

I was also acutely aware of the privileged life of anyone who could get the time and have enough money to go there in the first place. Then I recalled Thomas Coryat who even in Shakespeare's time found a way to go - he simply walked there. His adventures first published in 1611. 

I 'determined' (good old reference to Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit!) who struggled quite a bit) that I could maybe inspire people - especially these imaginary but you know - real - mothers - to expand there horizons if they had a need to or a mind to (another poem I recall writing about expanding horizons that I'd completely forgotten about is flooding back through time to me now - must search on Finder and find it)

Venice - Carnival Time -
definitely for the more privileged

I would love to read blogs by people from all backgrounds. I know that the person is not always dependant on their 'lifestyles' - I have met many really kind and considerate rich people and many prejudiced and mean, resentful people who have little. I have also met many kind and considerate right wing voters and many intolerant and scathing left wing voters. There are no rules. Each person is responsible for how they live there life to such an extent.

I know that my consistent happiness - but not at all in a hedonistic sense comes from within and from nature and from seeing the goodness in people from afar. 

I am fortunate enough to be creative to some degree. I love to make things and to relate deeply to colour. I love music - classical, lyrical etc. Birdsong, weather, dawn, autumn, tarnished silver leaf. 

That reminds me of a poem I came up with - as that's how they seem to arrive - once upon a time - about colours. 

I'll see if I can find it - yesterday I 'cleaned' my very old Macbook-pro and most of my more interesting files have been put in another place - yet to be discovered. 

That's a good reason why some of us prefer to live in creative chaos - it may look untidy from the outside but at least I know where everything is - not by consciously remembering but a sort of 6th sense. But then again it is so nice when it is clean and tidy - when it's still sort of un-lived in - for a while anyway.

I can find some reference to it - at least in the prose form -

Is there grey in love? 

After a life time of loving I can say that I for one don’t think so. Not at least until there is doubt or fear, then there is grey. Lovers don’t wear grey they used to say but of course recently grey is so fashionable that they must be. However -

The grey matter of a dull, dull life that doesn’t matter, of sleep without dreams.

Bring some colour, bring in some colour. 

Silver.   

Silver - so much more exciting than grey after all.
Stepping out of grey with magic and with sorrow.

Through the rain the birds are singing. 

Tears that reflect the light of life as it slips through our hands until we are alone, with anguish and  passion, ice pierces our hearts.  

Tarnished by years of neglect, by years lost from sight, lying half forgotten for another lifetime until we are transformed by love and care.

Until we can show the world  the patina of time, our  age reflecting it’s own smooth, warm serenity.

This is how to grow old, for we all have sadness and despair, it is the common currency of a life being lived. 

I take shelter in the old shed with the sacks and buckets, the smells of earth and dust and the spiders obliviously spinning and waiting.  The rain beats on the roof and window panes, the birds are singing still.

Silver is the colour of the moon, tonight she will be full, half forgotten sister to Apollo. The moon goddesses, the children of the moon, the women of our world. Our half forgotten other selves.

With the night, the moonless night and the absence of light comes black, slowly descending. 

Black. 

Black - the colour of despair and desolation, rejection and abandonment, of futility and lost dreams, depression and nightmares. 

Black as the traveller, alone on the road at night, no moon, no stars to guide the way home. 

And for those times in our lives when there is it seems no home, at least not tonight but maybe tomorrow. 

We cling on to the hope that all is not lost forever. 

Black as the pit and the raven, as the soul of the devil, tormented in hell, unable to escape. 

Black as the black dog that enters my room at night.  

As the eye of my lover, wide eyed and amazed by my twists and turns, by the many facets of my vision, exhausted and confused, entrapped and bemused. 

Black as the shadows, lost in the shadows I cast.

Red.

Red as the blood that flows through my veins. 

Red as the deepest rose. 

Red as rubies cast within the fire - raging with passion.

Blue.

Blue as the blues,  that goes without saying. 

Blue as sapphires, Mediterranean skies, as lapis lazuli in the folds of the Madonna. 

Blue as ephemeral wisps, vapour trails across the sky, cerulean depths and beyond the patterns of dappled waters of transparent azure and shadows of indigo. 

Blue as cornflowers and love in a mist, of periwinkles and the hush of bluebells in the woods in spring.  

Blue as the bruises you left on my face when understanding left your side. 

Blue with and without you. 

And blue as that electric blue of the meteorite that lands at my feet on the mountainside when the world is asleep.

Green. 

Green as they come, waiting, holding back, bursting with life, delighting in the myriad shades, merging and submerging into the deepening light.

Green of summer woodlands, blinded and suffocated by the engulfing light - cool and enclosed. 

Green of beginnings, fresh and healing, as emeralds from distant lands.

Golden. 

Golden - the colour of dust in shafts of sunlight, of ancient coins worn by centuries of changing hands. 

Of necklaces from Egyptian tombs and rings of love, of kings and queens, of emperors and gods, of chalices and idols, of nuggets in streams and buried deep within the mountainside. 

Golden as the morning light.

Of the halos of saints and the desires of sinners.

And golden as the light of all that is divine - fused with the light of love - the love  that creates and the love in every atom of life that we call may even call God, that we do call Love.  

We are golden, the colour of Love.

Staying at Home 7th April 2020

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Every morning when I take Bella out for her morning walk the air smells cleaner, better by far and really fragrant - rather like working my way through a floral selection of gentle eau de colognes on a perfume counter in the South of France. 

As if I were to have opened Bonnard's window during an imaginary lockdown. 
I sometimes wonder why I write this blog - keep this diary - and why I make it available for anyone and everyone to see. I'm sure I'm not alone in the world of bloggers. Sometimes I can go for weeks - even months without actually getting round to saying what's on my mind or what I've been making. Being in lockdown is I think changing my relationship to my blog now. 

The one thing I pretty well always forget to do is check my messages or comments. They don't seem to turn up in my email box.

For any would be phishers or spammers out there or anyone offering me fortunes or unbeatable opportunities - I never open them - and on Instagram I'm very particular would I even let follow me. I am guarded by my intuition and the older I get the stronger it is. So if you work on an oil rig or have a high rank in the U.S military, love children, dogs and God and also Donald Trump - I will block you instantly. 

Sorry if you are by any strange chance genuine! I can't see why you would be interested in my life. My social media spaces are for me to choose. And that includes who I let into my life. I'm not collecting Likes or numbers. 

And I don't have any money - I am probably one of the poorest people in the land. My wealth is my love of life and my love of nature. I am a solitary person not a socialiser. I don't drink, take drugs, smoke, paint my nails or wear heels. An I am probably old enough to be your mum. Not that I'm offering!

So this morning on my phone - which is now being used as a hub (for broadband) in the kitchen by a north facing window so I cant't use it for Instagram but check my emails every morning I was really surprised to find a proper and incredibly lovely message from someone living in New Zealand who has really followed me and actually read my posts - saying she'd been thinking about me. I must have had a premonition - I often do - to check my blog for messages. 

(Intuition is'nt an unusual thing - most people have it daily, they just don't really talk about it for fear of seeming weird. It's not weird - it is perfectly natural and a great thing to acknowledge.)

I also started to delete most of my old messages on my blog - the ones that read as if they've been sent by a bot at least. Then I found the most beautiful message from - wait for it - four years ago. Mea cupla - mea culpa. I apologise to everyone I've missed, which is probably everyone who wrote to me and especially to the writer from Canada from so long ago whose message I read this morning and brought tears to my eyes - I've tried to reply but nothing seems to work. 

A lot of exclamation marks today. I am appalled at my own lax attitude. I never really though anyone was interested in what I have to say, I sort of do it because I enjoy it. I live on my own, I am used to being on my own - I was an only child and in my mind I also tell myself that I am writing it for my grandchildren - not that I have any yet but at least they will get a full (ish) picture of me when they come along. 

Periwinkle - The Language of Flowers -

for blossoming friendships that are still 

in their first stages.

Optional paragraph - (My daughter never knew my mother as she died 6 years before she was born so I know the importance of at least their presence. Saying that I may well be super enhancing their role - my granny lived with us from when I was eight to when I was eighteen - I held her hand as she died - though she never ever told me about her own life or actually spoke much at all. I'll talk about Jane another time. 

And I only very rarely saw my other grandma - Margaret - as she lived too far away - far away in the 1950's at least when the only way to get there was by country buses - maybe two buses a day so a bit of a challenge added to which my father put an embargo on visiting any of my mothers relations as he didn't like them. So we had to make a dash for it when he was out for the day. Very stressful. 

My mother's advice to me was only tell your father (he was a Cancerian) what he wants to know - as in probably not the truth. This was impossible for me as I was and am a stickler for the truth in all its forms.)

Today I am finding myself feeling quite sentimental and really upset for Boris Johnson. He's our Prime Minister for anyone who doesn't know across the globe. I've always had a bit of a guilty soft spot for Boris. Politics aside. It's the same soft spot that I have for Prince Charles. Monarchies aside. And God. Religions aside.