Race for Life update

Just a quickie to let everyone know that, thanks to a couple of additional donations last week, I have now successfully met my £500 fundraising target for this year's Race for Life. Hooray!

For some reason, there's a glitch on my fundraising page at the moment, so I haven't been able to record the latest donations, but I'll do so as soon as it's working again.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone, most especially to the many visitors to Musings who donated to Cancer Research via this blog. Your support and generosity were overwhelming.

The cover version

One thought which had crossed my mind while taking pics around the beach huts on Saturday - before I took a tumble instead - was to demonstrate the ludicrous over-Photoshopping of the cover image on this recent issue of Essex Life magazine.



Not only the 'upgrading' of the huts themselves from pastel to vibrant colours, and the improbably royal blue sky, but the very sand itself, which has been transformed from gritty undulations, with bands of washed-up shells and seaweed, into some tropical-paradise-effect flawless golden expanse.

So silly. And as futile as the manipulation of models on fashion magazines - excising all trace of character and individuality, and creating expectations of perfection which are destined to be dashed when reality is encountered in the cold (damp, windy) light of day. Why do they bother?

It's nice here. It isn't perfect. It isn't a Mediterranean resort. But it's still nice. Just as it is.

Not TBTA

Nor yet TB the A before last.

The reason being this: I was crunching through the oyster shells along the beach near these now rather famous beach huts on Saturday afternoon. It was very windy and there was hardly anybody else about, apart from some hardy windsurfers. All the beach huts were shut up tight against the elements. Or so I had thought, when some people suddenly emerged from one of them and I stopped for a chat. They'd only just acquired it and were busy 'moving in'.

Wishing them joy in their new retreat and bidding them goodbye, I took a step backwards . . . and pitched straight into a deep hole in the sand which I hadn't noticed was there! I landed on the hand which held my camera, forcing a thousand grains of sand between the rings of the zoom mechanism and into the open lens. All moving parts are jammed. Fantastic. 2008 is proving a vintage year for the destruction of life's essential gadgetry.

So one of today's little jobs is to find a camera repair shop to see if it's worth paying someone to take it to bits and clean it out, and then to find somewhere to take the card so I can at least retrieve the pics.

On Sunday, the weather was generally damp and dismal (just right for the first day of the children's new rugby season) but things brightened up in the afternoon and there was some spectacular light between showers. I walked with the dog for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, starting out in a downpour but ending in warm evening sunshine. The last of the beautiful old fishing smacks - out in force earlier in the day for Mersea's annual Oyster Dredging Match - were sailing home.

I took a few pics on my mobile phone but, despite wrestling with software and cables, I have not been able to persuade my PC to allow me to download them.

All most frustrating.

A window without boats

I'm enjoying this little exploration of window-themed paintings in the blogosphere. Special thanks to Leafy for reminding me of this delightful open window by Dufy:

Open Window at Saint-Jeannet c. 1926

There will be a short break from photos on Musings for a while, for reasons I shall explain in my next post.

A window without a woman

My lovely friend M, at Random Distractions, has pointed out a 'women at windows' theme running through some recent posts featuring paintings, here at Musings and at our friend D's 60goingon16 .


Since I've been working from home, I've been lucky enough to be able to position my big old desk in front of a big old window in two different houses. From my last study, I looked out beyond my all-white front garden, to a vast and ancient plane tree on the village green across the road, which filled pretty much the whole frame. Its huge hand-shaped leaves were constantly alive to the changing light and seasons and it is a major regret that I didn't ever carry out my planned 365-photo portrait of that noble creature. I took a great many, but not one for every day of the year.


Here in my muddy island home, my view is less inspiring - I simply face the houses across the road. But the portion of sky I can see hangs directly over the beach and moorings which feature most often here in my TBTM/A/E photos, and the timing of my walks is often prompted by that sky: I can see storms coming, I can see the first strip of bright light which heralds the end of a downpour, and I can tell whether there's going to be a spectacular sunset.


Sadly, I can't see any boats from my window. That's something I'll have to dream about for the time being. To pull back the curtains of a morning and see the sea - . . . heavenly.


In the meantime, to help with the dreaming, here's my absolute favourite window painting of all (with boats and flowers - what more could one ask?):




Open Window, Collioure by Matisse


(1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Back to Bach (and chocolate)

I'm not sure whether what happened this evening is encouraging or depressing.


While having an exasperated rummage through a load of stuff earlier on (there are simply piles and piles and sheds and garages full of stuff here), looking for something else altogether, I happened upon my Grade VI piano exam pieces. Amongst a stack of SD#1's clarinet music, for some reason. 1975! How long ago that was! I was only a few months older than SD#1 is now.



I opened it up and set it on the piano. Only one piece seemed even remotely familiar - this one:







Still, since I had learned to play these to a proficient standard during the first year of my O-levels, and since I still occasionally sit down at the instrument - albeit mainly to accompany, in a very basic fashion, my children on their assorted fiddles, guitars, whistles and clarinets - I thought I'd see whether I could still play this . . .


The net result, unfortunately, has been ultimate recourse to my old friends in adversity - wine and chocolate!


It certainly wasn't one of those riding a bike moments - once learned, never forgotten. Although I could suddenly remember, quite vividly, sitting at my teacher's lovely Yamaha baby grand, with autumn sunlight streaming through the windows, putting my very soul into this piece. But when my hands hit the keyboard tonight, the truth was all too evident. It was gone. Completely.


I'm not an intuitive musician. How much this is owing to the way I was taught and how much because I simply don't have the right kind of brain, is something I've mused upon at great and probably unnecessary length over the years. I am reluctantly admitting these days that it's a nature thing, rather than a nurture thing. I'm just not musical. Which is a bit of a blow, frankly, because I can't imagine life without music.


On the nurture side of things, I was taught by a wonderful woman - a concert pianist of great talent. And she taught me to 'perform'. Perfection was her aim and I did my best to oblige and passed exams with flying colours. But anything other than rigorous practising of the required scales and pieces was frowned upon. 'Stop fiddling about and get on with your proper practice', my parents would call out when they heard me, well . . . 'fiddling around', I suppose: improvising, experimenting, exploring the notes on my own terms. So I knuckled under and passed exams but my relationship with the instrument was, I see in retrospect, a very limited one to say the least. And this is why I could (can) never play without music, never jam or improvise, never really 'make music' on the piano. Which is a source of huge regret.


And so tonight's two-hour stint with my Grade VI exam book has been a strained and strange experience. There's no doubt that, by the end of it, there was a marked improvement, which I suppose is encouraging. If I could set aside an hour every day, then who knows what I could achieve. But I know I almost certainly can't (or won't) do that.


It felt like learning the piece afresh, not re-learning, or recalling it - and that I found dispiriting, despite the intervening years. I really hoped and believed that it would all come flooding back and simply happen. But my fingers, which I'd imagined would be nimble enough from all the exercise they get tapping away at high speed on computer keyboards, just wouldn't do what I needed them to do. Though by the time I finally stormed from the room they had just begun to show some small understanding of how they were required to behave.


Discouraged or encouraged? Which shall I be? I can't decide.


I'll have another square of chocolate while I think about it.





Oh dear, it all seems to have gone.

A length of thread

Sewing a great many name tapes into a very large pile of new school uniform earlier in the week put me in mind of one of my favourite paintings: A Length of Thread, by Eduoard Vuillard (sometimes known as Interior with Sewing Women).

(1893. Oil on canvas. 41 x 33 cm. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven)

Phew!

I love them infinitely dearly of course - but goodness, how lovely it is today now that all three children are safely back at school!

I know exactly how many solid, uninterrupted hours' work I can do before I hear their [darling little] voices again. And that feels good. Concentration will once again simply happen, rather than requiring effort and being overlaid by guilt.

And, once I've successfully achieved my clear day's-worth of work, this is what awaits me:

No, it's not my TBR pile, it's my TBB (to be blogged) pile. Books I've read which are well worth Musing about, but I didn't have (or make) time over the summer hols to do so. I simply can't decide where to start, so all suggestions welcome!

(Bad pic, sorry - I stacked them on my scanner, which protested about the weight and performed extremely badly to prove the point.)

Wot else I did at the weekend (and a confession)

One of the very best things about my little weekend holiday was that (in spite of the inevitable distractions of inter-sibling squabbling and bickering) I had, at long last (these having been particularly busy and distracting school holidays for some reason) a chance to read . . .

and read . . .

and read . . .
and read . . .
You’ll have noticed that the book I’ve selected to break what’s turned out to be a bit of a reading fast, is Emma Darwin’s enthralling The Mathematics of Love.

And here's evidence of the awful truth: I’m a Spine Bender!

Shocking, I know. I’m not proud of it.

And I’ll quite understand if you hate me now.

Wot I did on Sunday

Second page of new term's News Book:

On Sunday morning we walked from the caravan to the Point at East Mersea and took the foot-ferry over to Brightlingsea. Once again, the chaps at the Met Office had got it completely wrong, bless them: there was no torrential rain and no thunder. Just another hot, sunny day.

Brightlingsea has existed since the Bronze Age and was the site of a Roman fort. It’s a Cinque Port - the only one not on the Kent or Sussex coast – and for many years harboured a large fleet of fishing boats, many of them built in the town. Plenty of the old fishing smacks and bawleys have been lovingly restored and are berthed in the harbour, including this one.

While picking up some provisions for lunch, we noticed some posters advertising a little military history show over at the Martello Tower at Point Clear. So we summoned the ferry again, which took us across the marina and dropped us yards from the tower.

Where we found a jolly little crowd of people dressed in naval and military uniforms from every period. Napoleonic hussars chatting with WWII Home Guardsmen. I had no idea there was an Aviation Museum in the Martello Tower. Complete Boy Heaven for boys such as mine. We left him there for half an hour while we chatted to the nice ladies on the cake stall and relaxed in the shade with books and drinks. Then we walked down to the sea wall, where a display of Napoleonic canon firing and musket shooting provided some noisy entertainment.

While the water was still high enough, the offspring enjoyed another swim – here they are with (you’ve guessed it) the Muddy Island in the background.


Called up the ferry again, nipped back to Brightlingsea and then home to the island again. The day’s few light drops of rain fell upon us as we strolled back to the caravan, but otherwise the weather was deliciously summery all weekend – apologies to all my Devonian chums but we really do seem to have had the best of it over this side of the country this year.

Wot I did on Saturday

As befits the first day of the new school term, here's the first entry in my pristine new News Book:

Enjoyed a blissfully relaxing weekend with my darling offspring at the family’s secluded rural bolt-hole at the other end of the island.

Yes, OK, it’s a caravan, but if one ignores that fact, together with the woodgrain-effect décor and 1970s-style velour furnishings, it’s actually rather cosy and delightful, and a perfect base for muddy adventures, being less than a minute’s walk from the beach.

We arrived at midday on Saturday, to catch the high tide for a bit of swimming and indolent lounging around in the glorious sunshine.



More scenes of erosion and ruined pillboxes in the pics below. The one in the sea was only just toppling when I first started visiting the island a couple of decades ago. Now it’s 30 feet from the cliffs on which it once stood.





Here’s my new best friend – my children’s cousins’ puppy.


In the evening we nipped over to a fantastic party in a specially erected tee-pee village at the far side of Fen Farm. Lovely people, delicious food and fireworks too.





Then back to the caravan, put SD3 to bed, and watched The Commitments with SDs 1 and 2. How many times have I seen that film? 20? 30? It’s one of my ultimate feel-good movies. It ticks absolutely all the boxes. And that night it ticked even more, because it had party-mum here singin’ along, too. Lucky it (Not).

Here’s a clip:




Oh, how can I post just one clip? Here’s another one. (I seriously, deeply love this film!!)



Following which excesses, I left the younger ones in the responsible hands of SD1 and nipped down to the beach with the dog at midnight, for a splash along the still-warm surf at high tide. A clear, balmy, brightly starlit night, but I didn’t meet another soul. How much we miss when we close the curtains and turn inwards instead of venturing out one last time.

Lay awake for ages, listening to the sea and the Labrador’s nocturnal gruntings . . .

Music for the Weekend - Richard Thompson

*Postscript: This is not the version I originally posted, which has now been removed from YouTube for 'violations' reasons. This one has a brief bit of interview before the song.

St Peter-on-the-Wall, Bradwell

St Peter's Chapel, Bradwell-on-Sea, the oldest church in England, stands on the spot where St Cedd landed by boat in 654 on a mission to bring the Christian message to what is now Essex.

Isolated in a flat landscape, overlooking sea and marshland, far from human habitation even now, how immeasurably bleak it must have seemed to the seventh-century bishop from Northumbria when he arrived after his arduous journey by sea in an open boat. (If you click on the pic above, you'll see the chapel dead centre on the horizon.)

I too arrived at St Peter's by boat, but thankfully on a beautiful, clear, calm day. It was, I'm ashamed to admit, the first time I'd ever been there. Which, given my fondness for the two islands with which St Peter's is intimately connected - Iona and Lindisfarne - is a pretty appalling piece of negligence on my part. Still, that's remedied now, and I enjoyed a memorable afternoon, sailing across from Mersea, and walking around the sea wall to the chapel.

First, for those unfamiliar with the early Christian history of the British Isles, a quick bit of background:

Having established many monasteries in Ireland, St Patrick sent his priest Columba to the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, to found a monastery there. From Iona, Aidan was sent, at the invitation of King Oswald of Northumbria, to set up a similar monastery at Lindisfarne on the north-east coast.

It was in the monastery school at Lindisfarne that Cedd and his brothers Caelin, Cynebil and Chad learnt to read and write in Latin and become missionaries. The four brothers were all ordained as priests and two of them, Cedd and Chad, later became bishops.

Cedd's first mission was to Mercia, at the request of that region's king. Following his success in converting the Mercian people to Christianity, he was ordered to take the Gospel south to the East Saxons. So in 653 Cedd sailed down the east coast of England from Lindisfarne and landed at Bradwell, where he found the ruins of an old deserted Roman fort of Othona. There he built a small wooden chapel, which was soon replaced, using stone and bricks from the existing ruins, by a tall church some 50 ft long.



You can see some of the Roman tiles incorporated into the walls (above). And (I think) a portion of the Roman fort in woods nearby (below).


Cedd's mission to the East Saxons was considered so successful that the same year he was recalled to Lindisfarne, made Bishop of the East Saxons, and established a further monastery, in Lastingham, where he caught the plague and died in 664.


In its heyday, St Peter's would have functioned not only as a church and a religious community but also as a hospital, library, school and farm, as well as a base for further missions. From there Cedd established other Christian centres at Mersea, Tilbury, Prittlewell and Upminster. The church continued as a place of worship for over 600 years, but eventually - perhaps owing to the remoteness of its location - passed out of use and was employed instead as a grain store, a shelter for cattle and even a hideout for smugglers and their spoils. (In the picture at the top of this post you can see where large holes were once knocked into the side walls when it was put to agricultural use.)

In 1920 the building was rediscovered. Excavations began, and it was soon realised that this was an ancient sacred place. St Peter's Chapel was restored as a place of worship in 1920.

I didn't get any shots of the interior (it's dark inside and I didn't want to disturb other visitors by using flash) but you can see some here.

The simple modern altar (which can be see bottom left here) was consecrated in 1985 jointly by the Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford and the Catholic Bishop of Brentwood. Its supporting pillar contains three stones - one given by each of the three other places central to St Cedd's ministry: Lindisfarne, Iona and Lastingham.

For more info, the official St Peter's website is here. There's also an aerial view here; details of archaeological finds on the site here; and panoramas of the location and the chapel's interior here.

Here's the Muddy Island, on the horizon, as seen from the Bradwell shore.

Back to my yacht-for-the-day by rowing boat, and, following some welcome refreshment, off across the water to its mooring near Tollesbury, and thence by motor boat back into West Mersea at sundown.

Perfect end to a lovely afternoon.

More TBTM and some geese

Here are some more of this morning's photos. I'm not wildly happy with them, but they reflect the drabness of today's weather and, hey, a girl's gotta fill up her blog with something:

Picked up a take-out hot chocolate for my brek and was just conveying it mouthwards, perched on this jetty, when the dog tripped over, barged into my back and half of it ended up in my lap. Thanks, dog.

A great place to sit and muse.

As I was strolling along the sea wall just after dark last night, listening to the last noisy settlings-down of the birds - among them a loud outburst from some geese (greylags, I imagine, since the Brent geese don't usually start arriving until October) - I was reminded of my WildGoosefest last October. Which all seems mildly obsessive, looking back on it, but evidence of the ability of these birds - their wild, free spirit and their extraordinary journeys - to dig deep into the consciousness.

I'm ashamed to say that I never did finish William Feines' The Snow Geese last year. I must retrieve it from the lower slopes of the TBR mountain and reinstate it nearer the top. In the meantime, the uniform greyness of sky and sea these last couple of days has inspired me to reach again for Paul Gallicoe's The Snow Goose - one of the hardy marshland perennials in the bedside bookshelf - to accompany my weekend perambulations at the other end of the island.