Stoke-on-Trent seeing the ceramics

Can’t say I’ve ever been to Stoke-on-Trent before but having a romantic idea of the brick built kilns from watching episodes of the great pottery throw down I may have expected something different. It’s the ceramics biennale, displays of work by current artists and new takes on some traditional forms  like the flat back sculptures that used to represent everything from murderers to bible stories with little charismatic but crudely modelled groups and individuals. It’s been a good day for inspiration. A reminder to not neglect my art and be bolder, keep confidence in my work and create things that mean something to me that will resonate with someone else and not necessarily with everyone. Forgot to take a sketchbook so a lot of things are in my camera but here are a few things that stood out on the day. I have no idea where they film the pottery throw down but it isn’t where I’ve been today. The old Spode factory is a grand exhibition space but reminded me of the loss of a massive industry.

Haven’t been here for a while!

A lot of things have happened since 2016, the lovely home in the countryside is now sold and I live a new life on my own in a great little terraced house in the heart of Leighton Buzzard town. I have the obligatory two cats but also a decent brick built workshop that I plan to keep making my glass work in and the blank template of a garden that is crying out to be turned into something that will take me through the seasons for the next few years. This isn’t where I expected or planned to be but I’m settling in well and getting ready for finding my new direction.

One of the places I have always wanted to visit is Iceland, so today, I’m making that happen. First trip solo, even that is an achievement for someone so panicky about travel arrangements that involve bus travel but here goes. Not so sure what visiting the blue lagoon in this weather will be like but I’m going to find out.

Goodbye tree, you just got too big - laurels you are just messy!

We have now been at Totternhoe for over two years and we are finally managing to look at what we might do with the garden. Something that has been casting a shadow over part of the garden has been this huge evergreen. It was probably quite happy in its early days as a little tree in the 1970s but not being cut back over the years has meant that it has become rather a giant.

Along with the vast evergreen is a laurel hedge, it grows about a foot every three months and hangs over our neighbour's path and cuts a lot of light from the boggy area just behind the bungalow. I kind of like the greenness of it but we decided that since it is such a pain getting rid of the cuttings the whole thing would go and we would start again. The deed is now done and while it looks a bit bare, once the fence is repaired I know I will get used to it and have some ideas for other plants that will be slower growing and less invasive to put in the gap.

There was one bonus, although these will need to season for another year before we can burn them.

Last week saw four hours of digging to remove a dead hedge higher up the garden, the soil is fine so hopefully the demise of the previous plants was down to old age and disliking chalky soil rather than anything else. In its place and awaiting a mulch is a line of fruit bushes, gooseberry, blackcurrant, blueberry, lingonberry, raspberry and a few june berry (AMELANCHIER LAMARCKII) thrown in for good measure. Doesn't look very promising at the moment but I'm confident that 2016 will see it flourish, so watch this space. Big shout out to Buckinghamshire Nurseries who have a brilliant range of bare rooted fruit bushes that make this quite affordable.

Kew lit up for Christmas

A great opportunity to see Kew Gardens lit up for Christmas thanks to some good friends.  Have to confess, for all the coloured lights and even the light show from inside the giant greenhouse, the trees are still the stars.

Am I becoming used to the countryside?

Not that I was ever averse to being in the countryside but when we fist arrived last November, it came as rather a shock to the system.  The dark was spectacularly dark requiring a torch to negotiate the steps from the bungalow and the journey to the local pub.  Running out of milk meant a 5 mile round trip rather than a brief 10 minute stroll to the local Co-op.  I could no longer hear the neighbours turn on their taps, cough or have jolly conversations in the street just outside the front door - instead I rarely saw anyone, got woken up by owls and battled with a constant stream of insect life that wished to join me in the lounge.  A year on and this has become the way things are, a massive choice of muddy lanes in which to pick blackberries, hills to take in the views and an ever changing sky that seems so wide compared to living in town.  For 2015 I intend to spend more time learning to identify the constellations (other than Orion and the Big Dipper ) since I can now see them and am looking forward to the spring and another lawn full of wild violets.  Still need to keep the torch handy though.







SNOW AND SNOW

by Ted Hughes

Snow is sometimes a she, a soft one.
Her kiss on your cheek, her finger on your sleeve
In early December, on a warm evening,
And you turn to meet her, saying "It''s snowing!"
But it is not. And nobody''s there.
Empty and calm is the air.

Sometimes the snow is a he, a sly one.
Weakly he signs the dry stone with a damp spot.
Waifish he floats and touches the pond and is not.
Treacherous-beggarly he falters, and taps at the window.
A little longer he clings to the grass-blade tip
Getting his grip.

Then how she leans, how furry foxwrap she nestles
The sky with her warm, and the earth with her softness.
How her lit crowding fairylands sink through the space-silence
To build her palace, till it twinkles in starlight—
Too frail for a foot
Or a crumb of soot.

Then how his muffled armies move in all night
And we wake and every road is blockaded
Every hill taken and every farm occupied
And the white glare of his tents is on the ceiling.
And all that dull blue day and on into the gloaming
We have to watch more coming.

Then everything in the rubbish-heaped world
Is a bridesmaid at her miracle.
Dunghills and crumbly dark old barns are bowed in the chapel of her sparkle.
The gruesome boggy cellars of the wood
Are a wedding of lace
Now taking place.

Come on La Thuile get snowing :-)

La Thuile Snow Forecast |

Totternhoe Knolls in flower

Having arrived at our new home in November, we have been making regular visits to the wild places in the surrounding areas to watch the fields and woodlands change as 2014 turns towards summer.  The Knolls have the largest numbers of wild cowslips I  have ever seen and friends have mentioned the wild orchids which are just about to flower as May comes to an end. 

March

April 

 

 

May

 

Visiting the Ivinghoe Beacons Tree

This was a couple of weeks back now but ever since we moved, I have been fascinated by the single tree that appears to be climbing the side of the beacons hill, all on its own.  I see it when driving to the station and we can even see it from the house.  A couple of weeks back, we went walking on the beacons and I made a point of visiting the tree that seems to be such a striking and solo feature of this landscape.

 

Turns out that the tree is some sort of pine, the walk down to visit is steep and these are the views from the tree's point of view.  I'll find some images of it from the perspective of the road, but anyone familiar with this area will know the tree that I'm talking about.

This house has been far out at sea all night,

This seems most appropriate at the moment, opened the door earlier (burnt bacon incident) and the trees up on the knolls are roaring.  Rather than sitting in our chairs we are just about to head down the road to the pub.  Happy Saturday night everyone x

Wind
 

This house has been far out at sea all night,

The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,

Winds stampeding the fields under the window

Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky

The hills had new places, and wind wielded

Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,

Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as

The coal-house door. Once I looked up –

Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes

The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,

At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:

The wind flung a magpie away and a black-

Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note

That any second would shatter it. Now deep

In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip

Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,

And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,

Seeing the window tremble to come in,

Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

t e d

h u g h e s

1930–1998

Champoluc and I can finally ski

Consider myself very fortunate to have had a great week with husband, sister & brother in law and nephews in the rarely heard of secret ski area of Champoluc in the Italian alps.  Plenty of snow before we got there followed by a week of sunshine and enjoying being in a cabin up in the mountains. Finally after about three years I can finally say that I can ski and wish that I had tried many years ago since it is such an amazing experience to be in the mountains and not be quite as terrified.

Here we are, can't find anything :-)

A very smooth move and lots of credit to a brilliant set of solicitors and two fab independent estate agents Plumm Properties and Marshall Vizard.  Bet you don't hear that very often but everyone was very decent and the whole process took less than two months from offers to getting moved in.  The removals team were also brilliant Diamond Removals and definitely deserve a plug.

So here we are at Totternhoe and the only thing I'm struggling with is not being able to find stuff.  It's my first day back at work tomorrow and I have no cycle helmet or hi vis jacket.  I do have work clothes and shoes so at least that is a plus. 

It has been bright and sunny pretty much since we arrived, this has been the view across the garden, I have contemplated it for some time and am still not sure how to make it work yet but am waiting for some inspiration and a large digger perhaps :-) It is much steeper than it looks from this picture and I spotted the first hardy walkers behind the trees heading off for the Knolls on Sunday.

 

At the front of the house we have been watching the gliders taking off and the red kites out practicing their own gliding across the fields.  The crows (or they might be rooks ) gather in the late afternoon then fly over to roost in the woods.

 

 

Haven't had too much time to be sad about leaving our old home but did have a couple of moments looking out on the garden and my fabulous shed when I had finally finished cleaning the house.  The garden had been nothing much when we arrived in fact it had been the place that I was fondest of and where most of my memories were at their strongest.  This was taken from the upstairs window probably Spring 2000 since some lavender had been planted and Tess cat was still youthful.

 

 

This was how things looked last Tuesday when I left.  (Without the cobweb I must add)

 

On the move - Farewell Watford, it's been great.

So, the house is full of cardboard boxes and it feels as if I have been in the loft for weeks.  References were made to shallow grave but I swear that the drilling was to dismantle some shelves.  We have lived in this welcoming house in a lovely terrace in North Watford for 13 years but it's now time for a new adventure.  Heading a bit further North to Totternhoe on Tuesday we leave a heap of memories and some truly brilliant neighbours and friends.  The people 5 doors away who shared our cat for a time and who we have enjoyed the company of ever since, either side who have taken in parcels, plied us with Sloe gin and have experienced goldfinch envy as our tree in the garden has been loaded down with up to 10 of the fighting little blighters at times. 

Here are just a few photos from the collection to show what a great town this is and here's hoping that the house that has looked after us for the last 13 years proves as friendly and welcoming to the new family that will be moving in.

 

And to finish, a poem from Margaret Atwood

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood