Personal Blogs

I can draw a horse, I've been drawing naked people for the last seven years. Horses have their individual character, the same number of limbs and larger musculature ... they don't keep still unless they are eating which is problematic. I've been trying to capture my sister's horses - she has four: two horses, a pony and a shetland. I will have this wrong, but lets say there are two big ones, a medium sized one a Tiny Turner who is either a Shetland or a miniature Shetland.

My goal is to add them to a landscape featuring one of their grand ancient beech trees. I've referenced Thomas Bewick, but haven't the skill or storytelling talent yet to do a miniature episode of the Archers in a woodcut. I've also referenced Arthur Rackham, but mostly I'm just following videos on youTube and taking advice from the my tutor at Bip-Art.

This was/is the dining room/sitting room. I'm the only one at home, it is raining, so everything I am up to has come in doors.

There are four images of Warrior, each one I am trying, for the eight or ninth time, to capture in a black monoprint using different techniques: the cut, wiping ink from the lino and using a mat. To date what I do is paint over the ghost print, but this makes multiple test images of an edition of 1. 

This is the way I like it, and would have made many a regular 'job' unsustainable. I don't know that the tally is - 32 jobs in 25 years? But working freelance as one of those 'portfolio' workers I am content to put in three or four shifts: social media and website for an educational charity, a swimming club teacher and coach (one of the largest clubs in the south of England with nearly 1000 members) and a Town Councillor. This morning I was out with a representative for Balfour Beatty who look after the roads around Lewes: potholes, broken kerb stones and damaged pavements. They're on top of it: reported issues are dealt with swiftly. The Western Front Association saw 313 digital members get a PDF copy of our member journal (we have over 6,500 members, 14,000 followers on Twitter and over 40,000 followers on Facebook). And I'm off to Mid Sussex Marlins in a little over an hour to teach a group of 'para swimmers', then take the junior squad I am responsible for (keen 9-13 year olds) and staying on for our Masters - they're impressive, with multiple World Records to their name. 

And as anyone knows who follows me here the rest of the time is mixed between Markstakes Common, where there are 38 recognised ancient trees: oak, beech, hornbeam, ash and birch. I am starting a report on the additional trees that might be added to this list of 'notables'. My eye caught a dead beech stem covered in oyster mushrooms yesterday.

And drawing/printing/painting: once a month to life drawing at Charleston Farmhouse and once a week to BIP-Art in Brighton to print up lino prints. I'm working on a limited series of prints of a huge beech tree in Northumberland - it's a park beech in a field where my sister keeps her horses. 

So, lots to keep me busy. And for a week we've had a family friend over from Poland. He lives in a city close to the Belarus border and reads Russian so kept us ahead of the news over the weekend by reading what he was getting from Telegram. The aircraft and helicopters shot down by the Wagner mercenaries were being reported as they happened. 

Online providers have developed, and potentially stumbled if AI interferers. For now, I cannot see anything less than human engagement from a tutor/tutors, and fellow students as a motivation to stay the course. That said, I can totally see how the trials and tribulations over six months or more to get a dissertation out of me from a tutor could have been dealt with over a weekend by Chat.AI. It was a case of de-scrambling my multiple, mass ideas and references from soup to a spaghetti with coherent lines of argument. 

Meanwhile, if you Google 'Lewes District Council' you will find where and what I've been at for the last 9 months. I've learnt that for all my love of digital nothing beats a piece of paper through the letterbox, and a conversation tipped to listening to the resident with a problem, complaint or an idea. 

Five weeks ago I was invited to give a talk on the fungi of Markstakes Common; not that I'm a mycologist, simply because it is known that I've taken a few nice pictures with my fancy iPhone 11 over the last 9 months. I then sit down to prepare my talk. I'm thinking I'll get to 16 or so mushrooms - the number I estimate I will identify once I start going through the photographs (I have over 2,000 shot on the Common, initially of the 'notable' trees in various stages across the seasons, then what I call 'PosNots' 'Possible Notable' trees which I wish to add to the national register. And then photos (and video) under different weather conditions: drenching rain, frost and snow, as well as high and increasingly low sunshine morning, midday and early evening over the year. Then I get down to pulling out the fungi photos.

I had got to over 60 slides about two weeks ago, and have now pushed it to 87. Even if you take a few off the times I have used two slides that still is far more than I expected, and a morning workshop not a short talk at an AGM. I'll have to pick my favourites. 

That is how scientific it will be: the ones that look the best, so the Oyster Mushrooms I spotted a few weeks ago, the Scarlet Elfcup I was amazed to spot the other day (I thought it was a crushed Coke can someone had pushed under some logs), as well as the extraordinary Candlesnuff, Coral and Porcelain mushrooms, and the tiny bonnets, Puffballs, Common Earthball as well as Polypores, Brackets and Conks. 

That would do it. I'll leave slimes and moulds for another day and won't even start on lichens. 

I'm at at again. My late Mum taught me at home and I took an A' Level in Art age 17 before the 'usual' three A' Levels the following year. 

At the School of Communication Arts, London I went from copywriter to art director to possible illustrator in two terms - but did nothing with it.

Twenty years ago my mum was pointing me towards academics she know who taught art about taking an MA in Fine Art. I procrastinated, though I put a book together.

I settled into Life Drawing six years ago and printmaking this January.

Who knows what'll come of it. It keeps me out of trouble I suppose, though it is an expense to indulge: paper, inks, access to a press ... 

Ever quisical, the launch of the Human Nature Phoenix Development on the North Street Quarter of Lewes has left me inspired. It wasn't even from one of the speakers, rather a panelist, and not even from a question he answered, but from his brief introduction, in which Prof Raphie Kaplinsky summed up his view on the next 'techno-economic paradigm' and why developments such of this matter. He's an economic historian. I gravitate towards academics I guess. I googled him. I had his book on 'Sustainable Futures' within a day. Music to my ears. 

Keeping several balls in the air I will be returning to professional development as a professional swimming coach - I'm 'poolside' as we say for 15 hours a week, and am working with swimmers who go to County, Regional and National Events.

As well as life drawing I'm now printmaking in the hope that I can cover my costs at least for studio/workshop time and materials. I need stuff I can exhibit and sell.

Which brings me to woods. 18 months in the woods and 9 months returning several times a week to one has me informed, but not knowledgeable enough to contribute to council meetings on land/woodland management. 

And there's always teaching - not online, or 'at a distance', but there in front of students!! 

Its taken a while but learning is learning wherever it might be presented and as having stuff online to do, in part or entirely is standard practice it is just 'learning' - not online learning, digital learning, e-learning, eLearning or whatever terms we made up and have used for the last 20 years.

CPD units online are thrown out like unread emails - things staff are invited to (told to) , expected to complete. As if 'we' aren't already buried in emails, chats, action networks, Slack, WhatsApp, messages and the like. No one EVER uses the house phone. No one ever really rings at all ... 

It is forever 'fall' ... and we risk, always, being buried in the litter of messages coming our way. Miss one and you are likely to get called out, not reply within minutes ... and people worry if you are ill. 

I think I've clicked enough boxes on the iPhone to ensure that inside certain house alerts and messages are set aside to gather dust (and risk being buried and lost of course).

I need a holiday from all access to all things digital - this used to be achieved sailing offshore or going up a mountain, but in both cases now you come across people with a single, making calls, taking calls, using an app, watching a film, taking and sharing selfies ... 

Post at all! There was a time, here included, where I posted something every day. I still had this hangup going back decades that a diary, like bedside prayers, is something you do every evening without fail. I must have done if for 20 years on paper and for a decade online until I realise it wasn't getting me anywhere; it didn't achieve anything.

Is reflection supposed to 'get you anywhere'?

The mistake in a way was to ever imagine anyone would read this except for me.

Anyway, from time to time towards the end of a month, or in the first few days of a new month - and especially at New Year, I think (like tens of thousands of others), 'should I keep a daily diary?'

Frankly I am too busy doing, too exhausted to care to. I'd have to give up the end of day ritual of an hour of TV/Streamed drama. I'd have to give up my Scrabble App. And writing down the day wakes you up rather than sends you to sleep - it will impose itself on you and expand like foam of a can.

On verra.

I did a lot yesterday. Up at 5.00am something to create and post social media for someone, a bit more sleep then out early to walk the dog and track down the source of a local stream (for a blog/social media), then to volunteer the morning and early afternoon to a class of primary school children visiting the River Ouse. After which I had two swim coaching sessions to write, then deliver ... which took me to 9:30pm when I got home. I'm enjoying 'The Empress' right now about the Hapsburg Royal Family in Austro-Hungary in the 19th century.

And while here I looked at Free Online Courses on the Environment, and looked at post graduate study too. My time spent with Friends of this, or that or the other, on planning and environment committees with the Town Council (I'm an elected Green Councillor here in Lewes) has me thinking if I can revisit my undergraduate degree (Geography) and build on that. 

For a decade my go to place to blog was here on my OU student blog. 

This changed when I started tentatively to blog for others, creating and building a website for an educational charity, then taking on social media for them ... and a few others since. So I am online for too many hours a day, every day, all year, but you will find me posting about life drawing in one place, the history of the First World War somewhere else, or the activities on a vibrant nature reserve ... and even for a national political party relating to the work of grass roots town councillors.

This is how I like it. I ought to be blogging about swim teaching and coaching. Something that, after 20 years, I do know a lot about. 

My swim coaching hours per week, which crashed when I came to Milton Keynes and worked for/at the OU for a year, have, a decade later, shot through the roof - and I just love coaching our 'performance development' 9-11 year old girls and 10-12 year olds boys ... and spent all day yesterday from 7:45am to 6:10pm at least, coaching, teaching and observing/supporting swimmers at a gala.

Today is a recovery day: several hours doing what I have now done for 13 months - a visit to an East Sussex wood to see, smell, photograph and document what is going on. Today, after a slow start, the fungi sitings grew and grew to the point that I could take no more ... realy. You spot 8-12 fungi and really can't take any more, or at least I cannot. But then, not trying to find anything you spot a vast Stinkhorn Fungus prodding its way out of a layer of rotting beech leaves and you try to get a picture of it ... and the flies on it. 

Anyway, revelling in a Google Guide award - 10 million views of photographs I've posted or some such, while feeding 20 or more pics to the Town Mayor to pick something for her Christmas Card.

That Steve Jobs quote on his deathbed has got to me: keeping love ones 'loved', friends close, and always eager and open to take on the friendship of anyone, any age, gender, persuasion ... so I mentor/shadow some 14 year olds, and enjoy engagement with the grandparents of our swimmers. I should/could be one.

Pictures to follow, or just Google me. I think I have about 350,000 images online, mostly across Sussex, but also Kent, Oxfordshire ... a bit of Staffordshire, Northumberland ... Belgium, the Tarentaise of course, as well as Malta, Cape Verde, Barbados ... 

(The above is a so-called 'ancient' hornbeam - ancient because of its features rather than the girth specifically: hollowing runk and branches, fallen dead wood, dead branches, holes and water in pockets, lichens and mosses)

I'm an elected Green Town Councillor and will be standing for the District. As well as being, thinking and studying all things green I'll be going out 'door knocking' ahead of elections next May ... and I'm also doing social media for the Association of Green Councillors. It would appear that more desire to spend a good deal of time online is becoming an occupation rather than a hobby. 

(Me in front of a drawing exercise some years ago - a life drawing first executed drawing 'blind' with the non-dominant hand (my left))

I teach social media, I do social media. I balance it out with life drawing and painting, teaching and coaching swimming, and long walks with the dog (looking a trees!) 

An opportunity arose to work for The OU again so I applied; let's see what happens. Maybe departing after just one year the first time round was a mistake that I can never put right - but that was then, and now is now. The kids have left school, gone through university and settled down and 'we' are free to move ... within reason. We'll see. Meanwhile, the two big events of this last week have been trips to Rodmell Food Forest and to Brighton Open Art Houses 2022. 

The Rodmell Food Forest was an eye-opener. I garden on chalk so know how tough it is to develop a sound soil. It has taken me over 12 years to grow substantial shrubs and hedging through total lawn destruction, mulching with kitchen waste and all cuttings, and while there was lawn to nibble my secret weapon - guinea-pigs. (I'm told a goat is handy at the job too. Up in Cumbria we used a small herd of Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs to root up the foot-trodden turf). 

I know now to mulch intensively, keyhole plant, collect rainwater, encourage birds and other kritters to look after the garden for me. We may stop short of having a composting toilet to collect dry human waste - though the head garden Marc Stenham recommended it - that and comfrey leaves.

We left Brighton Open Art Houses late - again. We always mean to make an early start and be picking off a last trail or returning to a favourite one by the end of the month. Here we are trying to cover too much ground on the last afternoon and it went slightly pear-shaped, largely because we also thought we could ditch the car and do it on foot. We spent most of the allotted 4 hours treading the pavements of Brighton seafront; there were some gems though, I loved a return visit to Sussex County Arts Club where I took up life drawing in 2016 and to the work of figurate fine artist Patsy McArthur. I aspire to paint large, on a big canvas or mural in scale. 

Covid Free (mostly). It has taken 16 days of testing positive. Fatigue was the most prevalent symptoms: I needed a siesta - usually for a couple of hours, then an early night; one day I slept through pretty much to the following day. No fever, no loss of taste. Heightened allergy symptoms but hay fever and being in bed a lot would do that, however the aggravation of tickly cough has persisted now for a further week. I'm on antihistamines and nasal sprays and for the first time in a decade or more have a reliever inhaler - not that using it makes any differences at all to the wheezyness.

The testing was interesting. On Day One, -1, I tested negative with a lateral flow test. For a couple of days I took the symptoms to be hayfever. Then I got a positive PCR test. As part of the Zoe Covid Research I log my symptoms everyday and 'they' had prompted me to get a test - still free at the end of March. The first positive lateral flow test produced the two line indicators within seconds. By the end of the infection I had to use a timer as the second line would appear 15 even 28 minutes after doing the test. Finally, there was no second line at all, ever, not within the 15-30 minute window, not overnight. This restored my faith in these as for 18 months I had been testing negative; obviously because my asthma/hay fever symptoms are possible indicators for Covid. 

Having had two vaccinations and the booster I assume I got off lightly. 

There were nights when my breathing become very light and my blood oxygen dropped to a level that required me to get in touch with my GP. I did breathing exercises to make sure I was filling my lungs, not something you want to do when you feel you lower chest is wrapped in elastic bands ... or your are wearing a corset.

Others have been dropping like flies; two council members recently, many others too. I went in, masked up, windows open, to make up the numbers for the Landport Bottom Committee. (Apparently Government guidelines permit this and the Town Clerk provided the advice. We've already had this meeting postponed twice). I wanted to steer the inventive ones away from complicated responses to a bench with a dedication; my thinking, based on 50 or so photographs of benches from across East Sussex, was that something simple can be suitably aesthetic, easy to maintain and not too expensive to purchase and site. I also wanted to share my insights on signage (information boards) and rules/guidelines about dogs on leads around sheep. 

I have watched a lot of TV, and far too many videos on Instagram and TikTok. 

I will be deleting social media once more now that I have my brain back. 'Brain fog' was an interesting one because it was some imperceptible; I could work where this required proofreading i.e. a mindless repetitive task, but I was disinclined to read or write. Interestingly, which might be indicative of brain fog of sorts, my scores for the language app I do several times a week, LingVist, dropped to an historic low of 26%. On a good run I get 80%+ consistently. I'm still floating around the 50% mark. It's as if my brain is unwilling to retain new information. 

I used the fact that I am watching masses of TV and film to revive an interest in storytelling; once again I am spotting opening scenes, 'beats' and turning points in scripts and stories. 

Unhealthily I had been spending an hour or more in a local wood seeking out bluebells, wood anemones, wild garlic and marsh marigolds. For someone who gets seasons hayfever this has probably not been a great idea!