Fog

is what it said on the weather forecast for today.  All day.

Fog?

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Oh, Fog!

Actually, in the afternoon it became quite seriously foggy by today’s standards but having been brung up in Croydon,  I remember the last pea-soupers before they introduced smokeless fuel and we entered the period when real fog was a thing of the past or the future.  Now of course, smog has returned to the world.  Not so much to do with winter and cold but more to do with heat and exhaust fumes.  The more things change eh?

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Well I don’t by any standards do justice to this man’s work but here are more attempts to capture something of David Nash’s work in wood

A couple of other things crept in there; the view from Sister in Law’s window, a couple of giants lurking and a sliver of Yorkshire seen from the shop window while Barney and sister in law watched films – about the sculptor it’s true but I wanted to go out and look!!  And the weather was so gorgeous!

Later though, I did watch the film about the wooden boulder.  David Nash carved it out of a giant tree trunk and sent it on a 30 year journey, starting from a waterfall near his studio in Wales.  It rolled a little distance and came to rest.  After a year or two, floods carried it a little further and, increasingly weathered and beaten, it made an epic journey to the sea.  Sometimes stranded in woodlands or marshes or tidal sand spits, once wedged under a bridge but always, eventually, rolling and floating and tumbling onwards, it travelled, with the story of its journey written on its wooden surface.  I can only guess at the patience and perseverance that must have been needed to keep visiting whenever it paused, often for years, noting down the date and waiting to hunt it down when it moved on after floods or frost disturbed it.

And how extraordinary for a young man in his twenties to conceive of such a journey, to create such a thing and to send it on its way and follow it so doggedly for so long.  To trust in wind and water and time to create the story.

So.  Last seen in  2003.  I wonder where it will be now. Perhaps one day on a journey to somewhere far away, I’ll see it!   As David Nash said,  it isn’t lost because it will be wherever it is now.

On that note I’ll go – nothing is lost.  Wherever it is.

Hmm.

Goodnight : )

Let’s consider music.***

I know that most of the people who visit here love music.  Myself also, I do.  But we do (don’t we?) use it for different things in our lives.  For some of us it’s a whole life.  For some of us it’s an escape and a promise of something outside the daily grind.  For some of us it’s a way to express that which is otherwise inexpressible.  For some of us it’s another way to say in spite of everything (and that may be a lot), life is good.  Or conversely, that because of everything, life is awful.  Oh and of course quite a lot of people just love music for its own sake, using it for nothing and demanding no more of it than that it be there.

Good stuff innit, music.

(I am tempted to misquote someone or other and say that the beauty of music is proof of the existence of people but I forget who originally made the slightly similar quote about the existence of God)

Barney, as usual, is listening to music while cooking.  (He uses it as company and distraction during the boring bits of cooking and journeys and other stuff like that)  Also as usual, his cooking style reminds me of that good old saying about inspiration and perspiration and genius.  It occurs to me that cooking consists of  1% food and 99% clearing up.   Funny how some people can produce lovely food using only 1% of the total requirements for the task.  There’s some genius at work there.

And I’ve been away to Leeds which was sunny and yielded up lovely company (Sister in Law and her daughter), delicious food (both Sister in Law’s delicious meals and Greek cuisine at The Olive Tree), a trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the most wonderful setting for an exhibition of David Nash’s glorious tree and wood sculptures, a blue sky rainbow and time to start reading the Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.  Not a lot of music unless you count the piano concerto playing in the mini bus at the sculpture park*.

Meanwhile (rather a lot of photos to trawl through from Leeds and subsequent sunny, misty walks so not ready to post yet) is this a doll?

Or a New Gorgeous Babe?

(Answer below**)

And just one or two from the Sculpture park

We weren’t allowed to photograph any of the works which were displayed in galleries which was a shame but I did my best from outside.  Well there was also the interesting effect of the outdoor sculpture revealing glimpses of the indoor ones, in their reflections, to consider.  (Please ignore the tubby, striped figure on the right.  She gets into all my reflection and shadow photos!)

Curves and verticals.  Ash Mound I think this is called?

One would think Barney and Sister in Law were more interested in the view than the sculptures.  Though you cold see distant sculptures on the hillside opposite.

anyway, it’s now sunny and misty again.  I’m off : )

*I’m blowed if I could identify it.  It was either Tchaikovsky’s, Grieg’s or Schuman’s from an album of piano concertos I listened to exhaustively in my youth and from which I therefore can’t distinguish any one from either of the others.

**Yes

***Sorry, I forgot to consider any more music.  Another time?