Welcoming the New Year

Sometimes the unexpected happens even flowers can bloom where they want to.

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I have been writing this blog for nearly ten years. It keeps my creative spirit going and ensures I still take photographs of my garden, allotment and when I am out and about. I still paint a few pictures, write fragments and poems. 

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Whatever you are up to Happy New Year.

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Fragments from 2019

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The sheer joy of a horse chestnut tree, kicking through wet leaves, finding the last  conker.

 

           

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Well it’s like this even a witch can have a bad spell day

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Guess it’s my interest in shadows from the past still haunts me when I am drawing

      

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the sunset

the sea
a solitary bird
a crescent moon
a full blown rose – just an ordinary evening

      

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Shoreham on a stormy day!

         

swans sleeping at Shoreham

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Love the more disorganised charity shops. Warmed to ‘How to look after your Hamster’ although haven’t had one for years. Bought ‘Beningfields Countryside’ but the ‘Shorter Oxford English Dictionary’ volumns one and two’ will probably stay there forever thanks to the internet and their weight alone.

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Summer disappeared just as I found the right hat! Back to the drawing board!

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‘Where the bee sucks there suck I’

Roots for one rogue passion flower growing through first step to garden!
Needs to be chopped.
Had a chat to bees about it and they would welcome some sort of compromise!

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Love the Persian silk tree (Albizia julibrissin)

Not to mention plenty of other joys at Emmett’s.

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The Depot

Sipping Hampstead tea

eating coffee walnut cake,

waiting in the sun for Mrs Lowry and son.

‘Everything starts with flake white`

loved the sad film and gritty north.

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Enjoyed painting an image for another of my poems – could become a habit!

   

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As I get older it’s the dance in the detail and closer to home.

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Bits and pieces on my kitchen windowsill.

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I was 18 when the part of Tomboy came up in a second feature film, about travelling in a tiny yacht through the canals of France to St Marie. A braver girl from a sailing family crossed the channel in an Avon dinghy, a stunt that helped with the finance. My journey was hazardous too.

   

My rite of passage came to end dancing in the grounds of a chateau in a dress designed a famous fashion house ‘Frank Usher.’ Nothing in life goes to plan!

 

   

The experience was captured on the left in my poem Ambition from The Puppeteer;’s Daughter.

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She looks how I felt
after spending all morning
clearing out the pond
thank goodness for begonias!

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Trying acrylics rather than watercolour or oils, this is a sketch of a globe from a pic I took in Earls Court Square when I was a poet in residence two years ago. 

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Written in Lavender time. – Maybe just in time to make an old fashioned lavender bottle, the lavender must not be too brittle. Here is one we made earlier’ as they used to say on Blue Peter! Good luck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C_m_QXW4DQ

 

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Roses

I planted a climber ten years ago, praying it was the same as Grandpa’s rose arch in London. He had returned from the Somme suffering from the aftermath of gas and shell shock and was hospitalised for two years. Later he worked part-time in the family fruit shop ‘R W Parkin and Sons’ in Goodge Street and walked back up the hill every evening from Tufnell Park Station. On most summer nights he could be found in the garden watering hls precious roses. Identical to mine

 

The Poetry School

Wonderful walk in Rotherhithe with Tim Dooley as part of a Poetry School course ‘The Urban Pastoral’. Tim and Tamar Yoseloff take alternate weeks.
Tamar took us for a walk in Lambeth a couple of weeks ago. All with wonderful poems associated.
It was an extra treat for me because my Pa lived and worked in this area in the late seventies as part of an Adult Education programnme.

      

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Rottingdean Bazaar – Wow! James from Rottingdean Bazaar brings me a bouquet and a copy for each poet including me, featured in their new book ‘Paul Smith by Rottingdean Bazaar!’

I’ve been running this poetry group, which is strictly for beginners and aspiring poets, at Open Art Cafe for eight years. So thank you lovely poets and to James and Luke from Rottingdean Bazaar.

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Kemp Town Carnival – Loads of music, amazing food, craft stalls and fun!
Sheila (one of my daughter in laws) is here with her hand painted Glow bulbs. Robin is helping of course!
Going to be a long day and night!

 

     

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along the walkway

listening to rhythm of waves
washing the pebbles

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Red moons blue Mondays

thank goodness nearly Tuesday
and we are still friends

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74 Dartmouth Park Hill. N.19   – Art work I did a while ago but used for a project on family history earlier in the year at The Keep.

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Our Christmas Pantomine marionettes made in that house in the 50s that I filmed 15 years ago.

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I caught sight of her

checking her Oleander
light dancing on glass

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  in memory of my mother.

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