Painting By Zoom

 

My chickens


The last time I met up with my friend Nia was in a cooking video call, where she made supper and I made breakfast. 
This morning we were painting and chatting.
A relaxing way of spending an hour.
Talking and painting.
I plumped for a naive but colourful collection of chickens 
She was more abstract in her much loved colours of blue and white.
I can highly recommend it. 
The conversation has a different pace than if we were talking face to face

The gaps are not awkward, 
They were filled with brush strokes and giggles and lots of I don’t know what I am doing
But like doing someone else’s jigsaw, or colouring in, or doodling 
The painting was strangely therapeutic and relaxing

Nia’s work

Long Legged, Thin Lipped

Waiting outside the vets


My Hitchcock lecture tonight was the most disappointing of the eight I’d signed up for. It felt very cobbled together so I left after an hour and listened to the end of the David Sidaris essay on radio 4, which was more stimulating but somewhat sadder.
In retrospect I hadn’t then realised that I was in no mood for Hitchcock . I had just spent an unsatisfactory hour and a half or so at the vets, being gently bullshitted by well intentioned young vet about Mary’s recurrent ear infection. 
I was polite enough, recognising the way she covered what she didn’t know but when she commented that the old surgery on Mary’s ear was heavy handed then asked where I had the surgery done, my lips went thin and I hardened my tone and stare .
“ The operation was done here !” I reminded her.
My tone and lips became even thinner after I was kept waiting twice for a discussion then for meds which had been labelled incorrectly. 
“This has not been a good consultation “ I told the vet, something she didn’t follow up
I guess that the Hitchcock lecture just irritated me more 

Today’s good news is that I have picked the colour of my bedroom walls.
Given the fact I have a gently vaulted bedroom ceiling which will be painted a brilliant white, the room can take a dark tone of wall colour.
So this will be the palate I will use.....a deep dark blue


Oh.....and Thank you all for your painting advice . I have found the exploration really interesting and somewhat challenging as now I will have to change my bedroom curtains too. 
Expensively glorious Curtains that my husband and I bought together from Laura Ashley 
Our very first purchase for a shared home.
I think “lobster orange”;may be a good choice , lined of course 

I thought it was Wednesday today and am somewhat disappointed that it is  Thursday . 

Bedroom

 With the new bookcase up and running, it’s time to change my bedroom’s colour.
This is where I need some help.
I am working around two very large Art Deco posters which will dominate the room.
It’s taken me an age to pick the ones I want but these are my final choices



I need suggestions of wall colour
I’m thinking chimney breast one colour the rest of the room the other 
I have a vaulted ceiling and a wooden floor of ancient varnished floorboards
The lobster needs a contrasting wall colour 
Ideas anyone ?

Chatter


Just for Lizzy here is a photo of my shrimp vase.  
It’s the biggest vase I own and always has pride of place in the kitchen lane window, where it looks at its best. I always have fresh flowers in this window and in the living room window and have kept the tradition of flowers in the house ever since I bought my first home in 1989.
I note here that I’m not the only one that always has flowers in their windows, it’s a tradition Affable Despot Jason’s wife Claire adheres to
Which is nice
Yesterday I cleaned an old shelving unit and spray painted it.
With the addition of some cheap primulas, hyacinth and herbs like sage and parsley it’s brightened up the patio which still needs it’s cottage walls painting. 
I need some consistently dryer weather to do that .

The choir met last night on zoom.
It was a year to the day since we had our first on line meeting and our conductor Jamie and his 1940s moustache ( but with non regulation overlong hair) has kept us going more socially that musically . 
Mary delights to sit on my knee during out chit chat , watching the zoom boxes and activity through one eye, and she remains so still that several of the choristers shout “ she’s a puppet “ when they see her.

Before choir I pottered. The lane was muddy and noisy as ty newydd farm ( New House farm) was transporting turnips in vast containers from the fields down the lane back through the village, and so most of my pottering was inside. 
However, Mrs K did stop to talk. Her husband has been poorly and she has a habit of telling you  of what many would think as too personal information .
I think she’s frightened and needs to share.
Anyway in between her, and the tractor trailers loaded with turnips a sparrow hawk landed in the lane like a spitfire. She had a collared pigeon in her grasp and started to rip at its breast meat before the unfortunate bird was dead. She must have been hungry for I snapped two shots of the drama before another tractor thundered around the corner and she took flight into the churchyard with the pigeon swinging from one talon. 
The crows from the trees by the pond suddenly appeared calling loudly as did a trio of magpies and I watched the sparrow hawk land heavily amid the gravestones as clouds of white feathers burst along the lane like snowflakes.
  



My DIY bookcase arrived this morning , so I need to channel my inner testosterone in order to put it together. I was only contemplating this with a bucket of coffee when I spied Gentleman farmer Ralph’s wife pulling up at the gate.
She dropped off  my soup container and a few orders of service for me and the other locals.
She looked brave.



Talents

 

Books of all descriptions seem to be lying in untidy heaps on the floor. 
They have got on my tits, even though I like the  intellectual look I think they afford to a living space.
I am shallow enough to have enjoyed this...

This year seems to be a year of the book. I’ve been collecting them this morning and have dusted them off 
A new bookcase will be arriving soon for the bedroom , so very soon order will be restored. 

It’s clean and tidy and modern and it was so easy to buy on Amazon 
My plan today was to pop up to the garden centre to buy pockets of colour for the garden and patio, which now thanks to my sister look lovely but the jungle telegraph from the Trelawnyd Whats app group tells me that the queues at Jackson’s are far too big! 
So I will content myself in the meantime with buying some paint to refurbish another old  wooden bookcase from my office, where I will park more flotsam of my 58 years.

This morning I have already dug deep within my testosterone maleness and successfully changed both of Bluebell’s windscreen wipers !!!!!!
I could have beaten my chest and bellowed a Tarzan call down the lane so happy I was with the result! 
When I walked back to the cottage with my chest bursting I then realised that the whole  back of the cottage needs whitewashing too......
There are not enough hours in the day I think......I’ve always found that during home holidays ....my new bargain buy from Aldi ( five blank canvases for 6£ ) are also eyeing me from atop the kitchen cabinets ...I have a zoom painting meeting with my Australian friend planned for this week......
Is there NO end to this old poof’s talents?




Supermarket Flowers


I heard this for the first time recently 
This and other similar experiences I witness everyday are why I need a holiday this week
I’ve booked holidays from work every 8 to 12 weeks or so 
Prudent me thinks

Milk Bottle


I’m on holiday for most of this week. I promised I’d work an extra 12 hour shift on Saturday to cover a colleague’s birthday, but that seems an age away now. I need a break from death and dying this week.

Today I’ve shopped and got all giddy in the supermarket as we in Wales can now buy things that are not essential 
What did I buy? I heard you all ask
Six painting canvases, eight pairs of underpants and a packet of bird nuts
I’m a mad bitch

I’ve done laundry and washed duvet sets, and towels and blankets and hung them on the field gate and picked daffodils from the field border, placing them in an old fashioned milk bottle given to me by my dear cousin from a local dairy. 

I’ve only seen Animal Helper Pat today. She was dragging a canvas bag of garden detritus to the field bonfire for burning. 


Mindfulness

I’m sat at my desk at work
Cup of tea in hand ( no coffee...I treated myself to a large one from McDonalds )
I’m early ...I don’t start work for another half hour.
But it’s Sunday and the roads were clear.
The talk radio subject on the way to work today was
What has lockdown taught you?

I thought of when I met Chic Eleanor for a walk on Friday
We each had a trendy sandwich wrapped in pristine green bread proof paper and a takeaway cup of tea and we sat on opposite ends of a wooden bench taking in the view and the smells and the feelings of where we were.
Without talking
She’s teaching me mindfulness .
And it seems to be working 


The view from our bench