Future birds

Over quite a long time I've painted birds: chickens, mythical feathered creatures, and, one of the first, a red feathered 'peacock goddess of the pomegranates' so enchanted was I with the fact that we had pomegranate trees growing in our at-that-time-new garden in the South of France. 

I'm probably in awe of birds above everything else on this planet. Just the way a wood pigeon heaves its considerable feathery weight into the air, or a tiny hummingbird flaps its micro wings at 4,000 beats a minutes. Wheeling swallows, plunging Cormorants, the garden robin landing with absolute precision on a branch of a pine tree. We are so solid and clumsy in comparison, our flying consisting of keening for the drinks trolly at 30,000 feet, or a few minutes hearty plummeting towards the Earth's crust under a hopefully-going-to-open parachute.

Feeling a need to have a break from my timed sketch paintings I looked at the 'hero sparrow' painting I had done in the summer - an ode to a male sparrow who had cheeped for a mate for four months - and thought, birds. Birds but with a story behind each one, future birds that might be moulded by environmental events. Obviously that's leaving out the thousands of years evolution element, but . . . who knows. Nothing much currently seems overly real . . .

Below, my first future bird: Picus Centrum Datorum, as painted by The Londonian Birdsmiith in 2097.

Appearing within the Unknown Times following the Final Curtain as a cross between the European Jay and climate driven arrival, Levaillant’s woodpecker, the Picus C D became an issue with deteriorating data center cladding and infestations of cable eating ants. 

The Picus having the beak impact of ten hand drills was able to enter the largely under-maintained structures in search of ants and residual heat from the dying computer systems. Most data harness centers have now a colony of many hundreds of Picus C D within them even though the heat has long ago dispursed. It is thought the birds will probably return to the trees once the forests have once again attained their planetary rightful place.

small plastic rant

I've done many over the years, some large rants, some just a huff at the general stupidity of our manufacturing industries.

I hardy buy any cosmetics but I do like a bit of face cream in the evening applied just after writing my diary -so not to mess up the fountain pen with greasy stuff. I've bought 'Le petit Olivier' cream in the past, and they used to do an almond milk one in a little recyclable tin - gone long ago . . . I know their factory must be the size of a data centre, or possibly bigger . . . no, probably not, but the type face and nice little olive tree drawing, and it's relative cheapness compared with all the scientists-in-white-coats type of products promising eternal smoothness drew me in. 

While putting shopping away on my return I dropped the pot and therefore studied the underneath of it. The cream is incased in roughly half of the container size, the bottom third, clear plastic, plus the thick clear plastic of its main body meaning you are paying for about half the product. That's annoying but it's the fact that in this age where, surely, most people must be aware of our planet groaning under plastic, or perhaps not but it should be up to the manufacturers to highlight this problem and make stuff accordingly.

Bring back the little metal tin. At least there would be a choice that some folk would make and question why everything else is encased in thick petrol-chemical industry by-products, not to mention the contents.

Think I'll go back to olive or almond oil. Fraction of the price, encased in glass, and better for your skin no doubt.

An overview of A I risks

Another of Mr Hagen's superb 'Frankly's'. This one is essential viewing, beautifully laced together with the story of Icarus. Informative, comprehensible, thought-provoking as ever. 

Extreme bodging

Like extreme sports but a lot less expensive and on the whole less dangerous. Probably doesn't have the cachet of pitching a tent on a sheer rock face, diving two hundred meters into an azure sea or base jumping from one New York skyscraper to another. But it is a challenge, and adrenaline pumping (a bit) when you can see the bodge taking shape.

Take our upstairs windows for example: the single glass panes only held in with the original panel pins and decades old lines of putty which had mainly turned to sand. We'd had an odd job guy round who had stared at the windows, eyebrows arched to their limit and had suggested he'd start with the shutters, but the resulting work was a lower grade bodge even than mine, so I decided I'd attempt the windows, even if it meant standing on a very high ladder to do part of the job.

Extreme bodging has its own special creativity, sort of experimental, like a good dose of improvised jazz - suppose I use this very excellent white wood filler instead of putty? Putty takes weeks to dry; this stuff takes two hours .  . yeah, sounds great. supposing it doesn't last as long? rubbish, of course it will . . . and this weird bent spatular, rather than the correct putty knife? yep, works well! Then the wielding of the masking tape - hate this bloody stuff as it always rips diagonally for no apparent reason - the extreme bodger must have a good eye and steady fingers too bend the tape around the wonky filler, leaving small bits of vacant glass that will fill with paint thus creating a fairly straight edge. Straight enough when viewed from the ground floor and squinting against the sunlight.

It's done. The windows certainly won't fall out, and I'll patch them a little each year like the ground floor ones that underwent the same treatment, and we saved about five thousand euros . . . - quote from PVC window persons. Yep, not good on the heat escaping situation but the old velvet curtains will keep out the worst of the cold. 

Early October

And certain things always come round . . .

My birthday for one, and this year, unlike many where I'm working, or Mark is away on a gig, it was very memorable. 

I got on a train in the early morning, headed for Bordeaux and met someone we follow on various platforms, and greatly appreciate. He bought me lunch and we chatted avidly for a couple of hours. I felt quite bereft when he had to go - a sudden rich encounter probably not to be repeated as he lives on another continent, but you never know. Afterwards I wandered about sketching as I do, slept soundly in my little B and B room and caught the train back early the next morning. Quite an extraordinary day which I will remember all details of, such are those memory forming times.

The other early October happening for us is the making of pomegranate jelly. Never bought ones! they have to be found just like all other fruit we turn into jam. We've been doing this now for about twenty-five years, ever since we moved into our French house in the South which had several 'grenadiers' clinging to a steep and dusty south facing slope in our garden. Each year the harvesting would happen; out would come the chopping board, hefty knife and rubber gloves, and I'd sit outside on the terrace splitting the fruit and scooping out the seeds. 

The yearly crime scene

Since moving Northwards we're still in a pomegranate possible zone although the trees are not common. Such happiness when I discovered a couple of grenadiers in someone's garden in a nearby town. They looked somewhat bemused (the people, not the pomegranate trees) when I asked if we could take some, but six years on, and we're still visiting the tree, making jam and taking the tree owner a pot to thank them.

Wembley? . . . Nah.

House concerts. Slipping back towards the time where most houses, however modest, had a piano in the parlour, and aunty Joan or someone would know how to thrash out a few tunes for a sing-a-long. 

Being fortunate enough to have inherited my wonderful godmother's grand piano, and even more fortunate to have found a house with an unusually ample salon to install it in; and even, even more fortunate to have a brilliant pianist to play the thing as part of the household, house concerts were an early idea when moving here.

This appears to be the future, to my mind anyway. Fuel is going to become expensive enough that people may seriously start considering whether driving two hours to stand within a heaving crowd to listen to live music is actually a fun thing to do. Pub bands, local theatre, pantomime, chamber groups, local choirs, and house concerts might be a better option, along with strengthening local community, and actually meeting your near and slightly further away neighbours.

We put on several concerts last year, one a month, mainly in the winter when most of the town's activity has quietened. Anyone looking for something outside of snuggling in front of Netflix could walk, cycle or drive to engage with some live music. 

On Friday, we started a new 'season' with an evening entitled "London - Past, Present and Future", including book reading from my novel Londonia set in 2072 and piano pieces written by Mark for the the audio book version, pieces by London composers from the time of the 1st World War, moving into the 60s and the 80s with a few iconic songs, and finally "Champagne Charlie" the main song from the 1944 Ealing comedy of the same name, with 'audience participation'!

A wonderful, warm and sociable evening, where we got together with friends, neighbours and music school associates. It's not just the music and the theatre; it's the sharing of food, drinks and above all conversation. It is the future I think, another element in a system that must surely change to local inventiveness, sharing and appreciation of friends and colleagues talents.

Amongst other concerts for this season so far planned : jazz duo friends, opera from Tours, darkly atmospheric oud/bass guitar/modular synth outfit, a concert celebrating the centenary of Morton Feldman - (a favourite composer of Mark's); open mike events, and a celebration of "Fecos" - carnival music from Limoux where we used to live in the south, and a concert of our son and his girlfriend's duo... if I can persuade them.

                            Me reading through the verses of Champagne Charlie

                                                           One of the winter concerts

Very, very, very slow fashion

The tale of a 1980s Gaultier shirt.

The garment appeared in my life after I bought it a second hand clothes shop in Birmingham in about 1985, then it continued to feature in my wardrobe until last week, September 2026. I'd worn it a few times each summer but after more than forty years! maybe I'd grown used to it just hanging there and other garments had taken preference. So, I put it on Vinted and someone in Spain bought it. 

Made in France, re-sold in Birmingham, worn in the Uk and all over France, and now, new life in Spain.

Just goes to show, an originally, no doubt, expensive garment lives on, decades after anything Fast Fashion would have hit landfill. Vive second hand!

Update . . . didn't stay long in Spain as the woman complained that it was a bit old . . . Vintage with a very small price tag for a Gaultier shirt! Anyway, it was returned with no hard feelings on either side. 

I think it is a sign. It wants to return to me. In fact the main reason why I stopped wearing it was that there are no cuffs, and it's not possible to roll up the sleeves. I don't like feeling trapped in garments when it's hot. The solution - I will alter it with my weird needlework abilities, or perhaps my soon-visiting expert seamstress cousin will have a go at it. To be continued . . .