Trebouchettes, rain and oxymorons

Rain, rain, rain - splish, splash, splosh.

Weather forecast this morning:

So wet weather activities required. I know I said that a little rain was comforting (for dowsing flames) but honestly a little less wouldn't go amiss.

It was, however, dry for much of yesterday, so we swam, slept in the car, visited a castle, slept at the castle, slept in the car, swam (inside because too cold and damp out) and slept and ate. A lot of collective sleeping!

The castle: Mediaeval fortress with trebouchettes (enormous catapults for flinging death and destruction at the enemy) and a labyrinthe of spiral stairs, narrow corridoors and stone cells ... claustrophobia rising with every step.

All a bit too much for little legs ...

And so to today ... too cold to canoe, too wet for tennis, so swimming and shopping on the agenda.

Apparently, its warmer and drier at home.

As for that oxymoron ... later perhaps.

Comments

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten! ...

Life in a time of covid-19: part 18 - Hope. A rant, a little history and some small hope.

Hope : from Old English hopa: definition - verb, to express a desire for something; noun, the feeling of desiring something that's not entirely beyond your reach. So ... I hope to see you tomorrow (verb) vs. It is my hope that none of us will be pinged before our holiday (noun). Hope is an essential part of our lives. Without hope, what are we? Who are we? And where are we going?If hope were completely withdrawn from our lives, most of us would be utterly lost. I know I would be. Hope, after all, is the thing ... the essence, if you like ... that drives us. It is the catalyst of ambition and the enabler of dreams. Pliny the Elder said, "Hope is the pillar that holds up the world." I like that image ... a solid pillar holding up the world ... for us. It is somehow reassuring. But Pliny didn't say solid. The hopeful part of me added that, making it a hopefully solid pillar. What if the pillar were to get a bit blurred? What if it bowed perhaps and buckled? Is the ...

Walking The Dog

Search This Blog