Shall we go for a walk?

Beach

Marsh

Kew botanical gardens.

Coastal heathland.

Estuary nature reserve.

And a memorial bench

with a plaque that simply read,

'Wish you were here.'

Henry and me

I am not sure

why I have

a signed photograph

of Henry Moore.

(I found it in my box of ephemera.)

We met his Reclining Mother and Child

on our last visit to Kew.

On an unrelated matter.

How can I possibly be

62?


Perhaps I should now read War and Peace
as Mary Hobson did.
So moved was she, that she started to learn Russian 
while convalescing age 56, so that she could read the original 
and then enrolled at the University of London at age 62
and completed her PhD aged 74.
She won the Pushkin Gold Medal for translation.

Oh and she is now at 89 in training for a 5km run.

Christmas trees past

We never tire of this walk on the Sussex coast.

Every visit is different, dependant on tide, time of day, 

time of year and weather conditions.

Recently there have been storms and big tides which pushed all the shingle away 

to expose flat sand and

ancient preserved trees. 

Large chunks of a sunken forest have been torn up  

and thrown onto the beach.

Thought to be at least 6000 years old,

oak, birch and hazel have been identified in the peaty masses.

Sea levels here were about 100 feet lower than they are today

and the forest was preserved when sea levels rose and flooded the woodland.

What you see is not fossilised but the original spongy tree roots and branches.

Recent man made structures are also weathering

and present wonderfully sculptural eroded forms at low tide.

The archaic smile

John Fowles described the archaic smile in The Magus as being

'full of the purest metaphysical good humour'...

'timelessly intelligent and timelessly amused.'

With this hovering smile, Greek archaic sculptors were thought to be

suggesting that their subject was alive and infused with a sense of well-being.

Well the Millesgården certainly had the same effect on me.

The sculptor Carl Milles and his wife Olga a painter,

came to live in Stockholm in the early 20th century.

The house, sculpture garden, and gallery

were donated to the Swedish nation in the late 1930s.

The breakfast nook in their kitchen with Olga's decorative paintings

on the cupboards inspired by the Delft tiles on the walls.

Sadly behind a window, with some touristy bod

(you know who you are P) reflected in the glass,

Anne's house, built for Anne Hedmark, Carl's assistant,

who lived there after his death in 1955.

The furniture is designed by Josef Frank.
I could have settled quite happily into the armchair
by the fireplace, perhaps listening to this

We visited Svenskt Tenn of course,

where I would happily have chosen any number of lampshades

were it not for their eye-watering prices,

so after a rather sobering discussion with the very cool sales staff

I came away with these scraps

rather specifically described as breadbasket liners.

I will not be burying them under my bread rolls.

A strange thing happened to my camera
while I was there.

It decided to take pictures in black and white for a while.

 I rather like them.
Here is Glenn Gould in black and white.

Blue and gold

We've had some beautiful blue sky and gold sun at last.

So I'm making a blue and gold bowl.

This is work in progress.

Like Sarah I thought it was time to liberate my art materials.

I might not make something perfect

but I'll make nothing at all

if I leave them in the plan chest.

I might finally permit myself to use some precious leaf metal to line the bowl.

It has waited twenty years for its moment in the sun.