eat more flowers! be a lotus eater… well thats been this years motto… yet another summertime experiment… honeysuckle iced tea with a sprig of garden mint the taste is kind of watermelon-esque, with a bouquet of pumpkin, well at least to my hayfever addled probiscus most of the fun is gathering the blossoms, an abundance up castle hill, thanks to sarah for pointing them out appartently honeysuckle (woodbine!) flowers contain salicylic acid… aspirin! so good for all sorts of fever and footie induced hangovers oh and probably for love charms too… i should coco
Steven: Looks like you’re naked Richard 🙂 Are you prepping for Buddhafield
aw, as well you know, to preserve its magical properties, honeysuckle must always be plucked whilst naked and cavorting in the dawn dew… you coming to the field this year? xx
chili! been growing plants from seed this year, first time, they really are lovely and astonishing critters!… sherbailey gave me a Red Thai Dragon last summer, the spiciest thing possible! the madre has burgeoned into a monster and is flowering nicely… which is a suprise as i just presumed they were annuals, like toms, and she would keel over somewhere midst the dank british winter i saved a few seeds, not really expecting them to germinate, then lo and behold, through the miracle of sunshine water and soil they are doing just smashing garb is a homage to McEnroe circa 1980’s Vimbleydon, heatwave fire… tho as it often is with on here, bored with programming and seeking attention x
heartfelt thanks for all the birthday love beamed in my direction! all hugely appreciated, wonderful!! tho like many folk i struggle a bit with birthdays… lawks knows, ha, i’ve had a few, so should be used to them by now it’s not so much the gallumphing of age, on the whole it’s been a blessed and miraculous journey, just the awkwardness of both needing to be the center of attention and simultanously embodying the epitomy of reluctance so thanks! So what do you get for the self obsessed narcissist who has it all? well if your joe, you do a painting of them as a surreal colourful probiscus/mandrill monkey, and hang it in the most ostentatious gold frame imaginable!! truly the most preposterous pressie i have ever received, i feel like the supreme ruler, life long emperor of tajikistan! complete alan patridge super fan stalker gift. genius!
artist, work, museJoe Rothkooriginal pirate material
kings of da fooking mountain! Finn and i did the London to Brighton yesterday (fathers day too!) more snaps and a leisurely tale later, probs, but we both made it cycling up the beacon! euphoria… and a lovely eagles eyrie view up top Finn youthful, upbeat and determined, and on a reasonable bike, skipped up wheras i slipped into granny gear and grim ground it out… as often with me, an astonishing over achievement i hadn’t intended to pedal up, but once you start, there is a certain reluctant stubborn-ness, ha! mostly it’s that it come after 45 miles when your a smidgin weary from spinning wheels to put it in perspective tho, the young lad we were chatting to, who took this snap, made it up on a 1970’s small wheeled Raleigh shopper, with no gears impressive
froth of white blossoms galore on the hillside, sacred to venus aphrodite, i’ve been thinking to garner them for the last week… but was waiting until the moon was waxing rather than waning… when you don’t know what your doing always helps to make it up
broadly take some scissors and snippety snip the flowers and tender young leaves, above the woody bit basically, i was nibbling blossoms non stop and such a refulgent pong!
shove flowers into a demi john, souse with the cheapest wodka lidl can provide… hide in a dark cupboard for a month (tincture not me!)
Rachmaninov! you know its going to be good when named after a melodramatic Russian piano noodler!
ah i love writing the same post every year! seasonal circular… but hawthorn, may, member of the Rose family, the best medicine for a broken heart and most other cardiovascular conundrums!
oh listening to this its got that ‘all by myself’ melody, blooming Rachmaninoff ripping off 1970’s soppy ballads
possibly one of the dullest snaps i’ve posted (even by my not exactly exalted standards!)… here/now up in the loft next to my computer …. but but but… also one of the more exciting! seeds galore! the perplexion of potential… too da max! nature abhors a vacuum (i’m not a great fan of hoovering myself)… all being well… with a little sunshine, periodic watering and my singing to them … rainy night in georgia being todays fave in a few months, all will be glut and abundance. sow seeds now! tis a revolutionary act! this batch toms, chilles, courgettes and lettuce… mostly stuff which has loitered forgotten about from last years crop, that and some from the marvelous seedy sunday this year i am cheating slightly… shop compost, my home produced wonder stuff… size of a cow… will be for when they go out into the cruel harsh world as with mine theres always random nettles growing through… too many years of nibbling away playing lettuce or vetch… usually vetch i retch anyway eventually it will stop raining? easter blessings y’all xx
katie: This is definitely not dull!! It’s brightened my day no end…the seeds sown and Randy Crawford on a rainy day in Seaford. Thank ou
ha! better than a Seedy day in Rainford… my pun-tastic brain wants to say, hope your all getting on swimmingly!… pop in some day soon, and will keep ya posted if theres any socials up at the garden xx
hannah b: Of course you know Katie Hall, Richard Basgallop ! Haha. I also like your seedy pic, need to get going with mine bit involving a toddler in the rain makes it more of a daunting task than usual… 😉 ! Need to meet up soon xx
ha! my tentacles are everywhere… get going with your sprouting, tho yeah must be many toddler-esque distractions! we should all rendezvousvous… now that all be spring xx
megan: I have started lots of mine too. Nothing I can think of provides more hope and optimism than this!
growing galore! life fills me with profound astonishment… with the caveat that just as well i don’t have to survive solely on the shoots i tend, ha… hope all be glorious in that most beautiful of cities xx
‘Our Angel and Lady of the Dance’ I love St Nicks, a beautiful, ancient, sacred place and a fab space in which to boogie. we are blessed It’s fun, at the start of the evening to unlock, then swing back, the old wooden door… Church as a place of Sanctuary else last thing at night, by the light of a single candle, hollering a solitary Ommm up into the vaulted ceiling above It’s a church of many marvels, rich in objects and stories, from numerous ages for today tho i want to center stage this beautiful and occasionally overlooked statue (well technically i guess it’s a relief) apologies i had to teeter atop a chair to take this snap with my phone It’s from 1830, a memorial of a wealthy aristocrat to his dead wife… and hey, thats all i know 1830 tho, the year also that the Prince Regent (George IV) died, the domes of the pavilion are still fresh, the smell of wet plaster… and brighton is swinging, in the pomp of it’s first and most preposterous heyday! whats more, tho a country of horrendous inequality… the Chartist movement will rise up within 10 years… it’s a land burgeoning with confidence and power. the Railways are coming. swagger. not a place that would entertain the notion of kitsch. so why should we Our Aristo had probably been on the grand tour to the eye opening wonders, the classicist glory of Rome and Italy… in fact I’d guess the marble was carved in Italy, seems too delicate and exquisite for the more artisan efforts of contempoary English carvers? I feel he probably loved his wife, and was geninely mourning her, that she was young, beautiful and possibly died in child birth The sculpture is also profoundly influenced by Romanticism… Keats, Shelley and Byron are all also dead… but it is they who hold sway on the imagination of the day… ‘half in Love with easeful Death’ the ethos is very much one of beauty, eroticism and yes death… to the modern mind, it’s a curious blend… look at the diaphonous nature of her gown… that sensuality probably won’t be seen again till the 1970’s ponder too the mastery of the carving, how do you tap away and create transparent garments in reluctantly yielding stone? the poise, mastery and focus to create such a piece… one wayward chip and the whole thing crumbles to catastrophic ruin… no payday then ha! so much of context, what do i feel? Is it about transformation? the angel is female, mbe our heroine is like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, the transcendance of flesh into spirit but no, for me, of course, it is a dance… yes, the woman is rightly reluctant and fearful of her death, yet there is a softness of touch, the way the angel reaches her hand to linger gently on an arm, a supple intricacy of movement… but mostly it’s the yearning… in their faces, reflected, as i dance, here in my soul i sat by the pillar the other day, a little bored, it happens sometimes, and watched the statues from a distance, through the cheerful turmoil and press of bodies so yes usually in my stodge plod movements i am clodhoper, quagmired in earth, marooned in the dreary realm of judgements and thought… but for all of us, sometimes we catch the breeze of spirit and soar high above yep yep plump plum lavish of words, poesy… but hey they’ve stood there nigh on 2-0-0 years… world flows through us, hopefully they will remain when we, and all that we cherish and love, are but cheerful worm fodder wah gwaan! a sculpture languid with obdurate beauty
