Uncategorized – Page 17 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Snapshot Saturday: Elemental Parys Mountain

As soon as I saw that this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge was ‘elemental’, my mind flew back exactly a year. This was when we were in Anglesey for a week with the boys. This was when we visted Parys Mountain.

What an extraordinary place it is. Its landscape is brutal, ravaged, yet strangely compelling, stained and despoiled by centuries and centuries of mining . The copper ore found there was exploited as long ago as the Bronze Age. The Romans knew it. By the 1780s it was the largest copper mine in Europe, and the ore mined here was used to sheath the wooden hulks of the British Admiralty’s war ships, protecting them from seaweed, barnacles and shipworm. Eventually, as the copper seams became exhausted the site was largely abandoned. An industry that once employed up to 3,000 people was by 1840 giving work to a few men, underpaid, undernourished and ravaged by typhus. The site is stained by leaching ores and acids and pools of chemical waters. A few grittily determined plants make their home here.

There’s still copper . They’ve recently discovered zinc, lead, silver and gold. Work at this extraordinary place continues.

Snapshot Saturday: the texture of tulips

Last week, we were at the Bowes Museum. This place, with its unusual history and exhilarating present deserves a post all of its own soon.

It happened to be the first day of ‘Turkish Tulips’. This exhibition though, isn’t displayed in a dedicated space in the museum. Instead, the artworks chosen have been sited next to existing displays, situated on a grand staircase, or even smuggled into other exhibitions on display. It’s brilliant. These juxtapositions illuminate both the permanent collection and the works chosen for the exhibition.

Look at this. We found it in a room of paintings largely from the 17th and eighteenth centuries. Well, maybe this photo doesn’t convince, but in real life, in glowing, luminous detail, it did. It’s a Dutch 17th century still life, right?

Five tulips in a Wan-Li vase, Rob and Nick Carter, 2016.

Well, no. It was created not by a Dutchman in the 17th century, but by a British couple, Rob and Nick Carter in 2016. This is no oil painting on board or canvas, but an image on an iPad.

Five tulips in a Wan-Li vase, Rob & Nick Carter 2016.

Stop. Look. Take your time. Watch as those tulips, with their waxy-textured petals and burnished stems gradually lose their lustre. Their colour fades. The stems become limp. Later still, those once glossy petals take on the texture and appearance of crisp autumn leaves as the exhausted stems slump slowly to the ground. In some 25 minutes you have watched the life and death of a vase of tulips, filmed over a ten day period.

That film might have been speeded up. But we, as viewers were slowed down. And having taken the time to watch this captivating film, we were ready to give other works in the same gallery our fuller attention too.

This is my response to this week’s WordPress photo challenge: textures. As photos, mine don’t really pass muster this week. Taking a photo of an iPad image in a public gallery is not really all that easy though.

This is not just any mug …..

Mug.

‘Caffeine Queen’

My favourite cup.

Memories in a drink.

Twenty years. Cracked, broken, enduring.

Ellie gave me this mug – oh – more than twenty years ago. Straight away, it appealed to me, though it’s not an item of any refinement. It’s not fine china. It’s not hand made, nor hand painted. Nevertheless, this piece of unremarkable pottery soon became not just another mug, but my Caffeine Queen.

I’m a caffeine queen too. Make me begin the day without a strong shot of coffee inside me and I’ll be simultaneously cranky and listless for hours on end. Caffeine Queen and I are united daily at the breakfast table.

She lived with us in Leeds. She travelled with us when we moved to Harrogate. Then she went to France, and returned to England when we too came back.

Overnight visitors didn’t realise that she was mine, and mine alone. If they chose to drink from her when helping themselves to coffee, or even worse, tea, I’d sulk and fume in silence. Silent, because even I knew I was being ridiculous and unreasonable.

Today though, at breakfast time, I noticed something. A long black crack running straight down Caffeine Queen’s head.

I’ve drunk from her for the very last time. If I fill her with hot coffee she may shatter and break beyond repair. If I’m careful, she may see out her days – and mine – in a new role as my favourite pencil pot.

The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen.

End of Part Two.

New beginnings for Ellie and her boys. A special day.

Fanny the Champion of the World

Today marks 1172 days since cancer came into our family. 1168 days since my husband and I walked through the doors of this hospital, hand in hand, for the very first time.

Those doors were the last thing my husband saw of the outside world, before being wheeled into an ambulance and brought home to die. He said, at that point, that a bag for life would probably be an unwise investment.

Today, 463 days since my husband died, and 343 days since my own diagnosis, I walk out of the same doors once again, on my own, to the outside world, for what we all hope will be the very last time. To freedom. To our children. To countless more days.

Here, they’ve given me the most precious gift – my life, wrapped up in a metaphorical box with a bow, when my husband couldn’t even begin to pick…

View original post 182 more words

A Picture of Denial.

More even than any of her other posts, I think it’s worth re-blogging this one from my daughter, my still beautiful daughter. Read and take note.

Fanny the Champion of the World

I spoke to a friend the other day. A friend who was deeply upset, because one of his friends had left it too late to check himself out… and now has a cancer which can’t be cured. We don’t yet know how long he has. It’s heartbreaking, and more so because it could have been avoided.

In the meantime, I’ve been receiving – for two bloody years – requests to put a heart on my wall, or an eight ball as my status, or to accept the challenge of posting a black and white picture, or a no make-up selfie, to raise awareness for cancer. Well, challenge accepted. Here’s my black and white, no make-up selfie, no hair selfie, no boob selfie, and no husband selfie. Our most recent portrait together, a few weeks ahead of our fifteenth wedding anniversary. ❤️

You don’t raise awareness of cancer by putting little…

View original post 306 more words

Election Day Special

A few months ago, I joined a writing group, a U3A (University of the Third Age) writing group. It’s turned out to be the best fun. We’re quite a mixed bunch. Most of the group write fiction, and a couple have novels on the go. I don’t. Paul can turn out a haiku at a moment’s notice, and John’s turning his life story into a hefty memoir.

Imaginative and inventive, Sheila leads us in a range of exercises that are both fun and challenging. Who know that a discarded shopping list in a supermarket trolley could take our minds in such different directions?

At the beginning of every session, we write. Just write, maybe using prompts Sheila has devised. This is what Paul came up with the other week. What better day to give it a wider audience than UK Election Day 2017?

(Wikimedia Commons, from geograph.org.uk Walter Baxter)

Dear politician

How deep your pockets?

Empty, though, of words

But filled with promises unfulfilled

And crammed with oily silver

Slipped there from your greasy palm.

And

Who do you have in your pocket, politician?

Surely a hedge-fund manager

And a city banker or two?

Maybe some chums from school;

An expense claim form?

For fake responsibilities

Carried out in fake locations

By numerous fake relations?

Tomorrow’s speech there too?

To massage the masses,

Written in a back room

By the spinners of dreams for the working classes?

I wonder if, at the very bottom of this cache,

Remains, from your possibly innocent youth,

A nugget, a trace, a sliver of the truth?

Paul Finch

On a shop in Herne Hill, 2016 (Wikimedia Commons, JWS Lubbock). No prizes for guessing who I’m not voting for.

Happy Birthday, Dear Chemo.

I’ve found this most recent post from my daughter the hardest of all to read, because we’ve seen at first hand the boys’ anger and fear over their mother’s cancer. I doubt if I could have found it in me to reblog her thoughts if we hadn’t been in Bolton this last weekend.

We were there because Ellie wanted to be at her annual professional conference overnight. Voice overs work in the main alone, so theirs is less a conference more a knees-up and a chance to bond. Her colleagues have been unendingly supportive and helpful since Phil’s death, and she spent the weekend being hugged and loved.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the boys were doing their own thing. Twin Number One got invited for a sleepover. Twin Number Two wasn’t, but elected to come shopping and bake a cake with me instead. Then he too found himself off playing footie with his mates and being invited to spend the night at a friend’s house.

Suddenly, we were only babysitting the dog, who required a long, energetic and healthy walk on Sunday.

Perhaps it’s the light at the end of the tunnel. Ellie was happy. She had a much needed break. The twins were happy. They had time away from each other, and they could see their mum was OK.

It’s chemotherapy again on Wednesday. But it’s the LAST ONE. However bad it might be, it’s THE LAST ONE. Then there’s radiotherapy, which will tire her out. But that’s the LAST TREATMENT. She’s booked a family holiday for August. Perhaps they can dare to hope that this is the year when cancer finally pushes off and leaves them alone.

Fanny the Champion of the World

My relentless positivity is waning. The dark thoughts are setting in, and becoming far harder to shake off than the last few eyelashes which have long been sobbed into a snotty tissue. I have two children who miss their father, but I miss him too, and if it weren’t for them, perhaps I wouldn’t have bothered to fight this at all. In fact, I think I resent the fact that I can’t just say fuck it and join him, wherever he is. Because I do have his beloved children, though, and no family nearby to bring them up, I don’t have a choice. But, Christ, it’s hard – especially when the two children you’re doing it for are not helping you to row upstream, but are standing on the riverbank, chucking rocks at you as you try to do it alone.

They’re eleven. Nearly twelve. And they’re about as much…

View original post 1,846 more words

Snapshot Saturday: Reflecting in Gateshead

Reflections seem generally to be below us – in water.

The Baltic, imperfectly reflected in the waters of the Tyne.

Or to the side of us – in plate glass windows.

Sage Gateshead, reflects multiple images of the Newcastle townscape on the other side of the Tyne.

So I was rather taken by these reflections of visitors to the Baltic Centre in Gateshead. Above us.

Walking into the Baltic Centre, Gateshead.

‘Reflecting’ is this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge.

Blue Lights and Red Lipstick.

It’s been a while since I shared one of my daughter’s posts with you. A tough situation has just got tougher. She’ll get through it, and she’s kept her sense of humour, if not her hair. But it’s hard.

I don’t normally re-blog twice in two days. Exceptional times, though.

Fanny the Champion of the World

I don’t like to do things by halves. If you’re going to have cancer, you may as well do it properly, so I’ve been in hospital these last few days with neutropenic sepsis. Much to the disappointment of our children, who were out playing a football match, they missed a very dramatic ride in an ambulance as I was rushed off to A&E (but not before I’d left a present and card on the kitchen table for one of them to take to a birthday party that afternoon, because, you know, motherhood.) Like most women, I’ve always been fearful of having my jeans whipped off by a handsome paramedic on a hairy-leg day, but the chemo has sorted out that problem for me. My blood count had dropped so low that the common cold I caught last week could very well have killed me, but hey – at least my…

View original post 1,373 more words

Snapshot Saturday: No surprise here – a rooster for Easter

Well, he’s a fine rooster, and just the kind of handsome fellow you want illustrating an Easter-tide post, doing his bit to father the next generation of fluffy chickens. Not surprising at all to find him here. All the same, these gaudy colours are quite eye-opening, quite a surprise. So this cockerel can do duty this week in the WordPress photo challenge: surprise.