Category: Uncategorised

It’s Saturday. Earlier today we did a big Tesco shop. And had brunch in the café. Teresa totally bowled me over on Friday by calling our place our ‘Heavenly home’.

I can get down on our home, on account of several things, from the clutter, and the old inherited decor, to some difficult times I or we have experienced. To hear it described as Heavenly, and to therefore be brought back to the living truth of that observation, is… well, manna from Heaven, so to speak.

I’m very lucky to have Teresa in my life. I’m not altogether sure that, without her, I’d even be here at all. I’m not being a drama Queen, either. I really mean it.

This theme of ‘Simple Things’ is really terrific. I’m learning to be less snobbish. It’s easy to make one’s own life less pleasant by saying only certain things are up to snuff. Being discerning has its plus points. But if you’re not careful, too much stuff can become distasteful. And then all the joy is sucked out of life.

Teresa’s crocheting a baby blanket for her cousin Oliver’s child. I adore the colours. She’s said she’ll make me a tank-top. I’m going to hold you to that, Sweets!

I love how we’re organically developing a theme of greens. This hasn’t been planned. It’s just evolving, naturally. Love it!

Driving to a short work shift. And it’s just another gorgeous day in The Fens. There’s a certain charmingly ‘umble poetry in some of the place names roundabouts.

I love the name Friday Bridge, for example. And this wee village has two quite interesting towers. A wee little’un. And a gurt big’un.

Here they are in the same shot. Is it Little/Big Tower or Big/Little Tower?

The weather, whilst still cold, is improving. And it’s getting noticeably brighter later.

This book was supposed to arrive – as a similar item indeed did – for my January 5th birthday.

After HM Customs & Royal Mail sat on it for roughly a fortnight – it’d be fun to think they’d enjoyed reading it, but as the packaging hasn’t been interfered with, I guess not (it seems they just like to hold on to stuff for ages!) – it was finally delivered this morning.

Oh frabjous day!

This brings my ‘library’ on The Van de Veldes to three books on just them, and several others in which they feature.

But this is far and away the ‘flagship’ publication, being as it’s hardback, a recent edition with fab colour images, and in English.

My first book on these guys was small and mostly black and white. My second was in Dutch. So this is great.

I’m hoping that we might be able to get some of the images printed locally, for framing/display at home. That’d be fab! I also intend to use the art of the Van de Veldes as inspiration. Either copying directly, using elements – cloud and sea studies, for example – or in various other ways. We shall sea what we shall sea…

Simple stuff. Homely stuff. It’s good!

Today I’m working a late shift, in the evening. So during the day I’m doing lots of little things: returning an item to Amazon (Dixie cap US Navy hat, that’s too small); tidying the bedroom, area by area; mending a broken picture-frame; and hanging some art back up, on’t walls.

The Brice Marden artwork above has a damaged frame, sadly. I’ll prob fix it soon-ish. Or I might just get a new/replacement one?

As is so often the case, with some of these myriad little jobs, I forgot to take a before pic, re the tidying up of cables and power supplies near our bedroom TV and DVD-player.

I decided to attach some of the junction type units – an HDMI adaptor, and a four-way plug adaptor, for example – to other things. To create some order where all was ugly and dysfunctional chaos!

The little round HDMI hub, or junction box, is now on the back of the TV, instead of just hanging mid-air. And one of the four-gangs is now attached to the wall above the skirting board.

And then there’s a Vermeer print with a broken frame and missing glass. I found the missing glass. And the frame is currently gluing… I trust/hope?

I even tidied up the area – last night and this morning – around the dining table. I did that for Burns’ Night. Here’s how it looks now:

Just in time for Burns’ Night leftovers…

I took a day off my delivery work yesterday, to do my end of year accounts.

This involved a review of my annual figures, since I stopped using Alan Kindred as my accountant. This year, 2022-23, is the third, doing them myself online. I’ll come back to this later.

I also wanted to try and calm down, as my anxiety levels have been rising precipitously. Sadly a very stressful (and totally pointless) chat with dad, fairly early in the morning, scuppered that hope. I had to disengage from my accounts, and anything else, to calm down.

I did manage to calm myself. And I did get back to, and finish, my online submission. Thank goodness! It’s not a chore I enjoy.

*Florence Baptistry mosaic.

Another difficult part of the day was a phone call to HMRC. The robotic preamble to being placed in the queue says it’s a 30 minute wait. Ha! I knew it’d be longer.

The call itself was one hour and twenty minutes long. Only the last fifteen minutes of which was my conversation with the advisor. She was very helpful. But it’s criminal how underfunded and under-resourced all our public services are.

As Richard Osman said pointedly to camera, on his House Of Games show, Britain needs to wake up!

Anyway, accounts submitted, it’s now just a case of waiting to see how my latest figures impact on my overall fiscal situation.

Teresa rustled up a fab’ meal of Haggis, wi’ mash, n’ whatnot, for Burns’ Night. We couldn’t find the CD o’ his poetry we usually listen to. So it was YouTube… this was nice:

In the past we might’ve had a wee dram o’ whuskey. This year, alcohol free, it’s Nozecco!

And wasn’t it lovely? Yes, it was.

Out and about on my errands, up in Kings Lynn and environs, the skies were utterly magnificent. I wish I had a better camera, for to do them more justice.

I also stopped briefly to check out a lighting emporium, and on the same street I spotted these fabulous doorframes:

I utterly adore such detailing. The grooves on the columns, the acanthus leaf type patterns on the capitals. Gorgeous.

Slightly tattier, but I love the green notes. This style is probably more in keeping with the Classical era influences and their Victorian homages than the previous modern overpainting, in uniform grey. ‘Though that said, the modern approach remains very, um… groovy.

This third example differs most. Wow! What a riot of pattern and detail! Really quite stunning. Whenever I see such stuff, I think to myself, how can I incorporate some of this richness into our home? Is that madness? At the very least I find it feels uplifting and inspiring just to contemplate this kind of architectural and design filigree.

I stopped en-route home, for petrol. The garage had a lone serving of sushi for sale. I snapped it up and wolfed it down. Yummy! As little footnote: the sushi – £2.85 – wouldn’t scan at the till. The lady kindly scanned something else – donuts, 89 pence – so I got a bargain!

And home…

Joni is/was astonishing. A one-off. She changed my life.

She broke my heart many thousands of times, not just through the artistry of her work, but also as an unattainable paragon of womanhood.

Now, after 40 odd years of being in love with her, and her artistry, I see her more as the flawed human she doubtless is, rather than the perfect Goddess that dominated my early obsession with her.

But solid – or rather fluid – and consistent throughout, are the humanity and artistry. Definitely the greatest female music-maker of modern times, bar none. And right up at the front of the line regardless of gender.

I’m a rationalist type of guy, who started ditching religion (it can take a while!) around the same time I started to fall in love with Joni. But it’s undeniable to me that the best art, such as she’s made in such staggering abundance, is kind of magical and alchemical.

I also generally hold that her ‘golden era’ was Song to a Seagull to Hejira. But then I hear something like this, and realise it’s the same gentle-spirited genius.

Love you forever, Joni. Thanks for all the joy and the tears down the years.

OMG!!! What an ecclesiastical erection St Peter’s, Walpole, is… and no mistake!

A pal told me recently that the Indian religious honourific Bhagwan actually means big dick! I do so wish that were true. But a quick look online suggests not.

This looks and feels like a shockingly grand edifice for such a small obscure location. Look at the entrance. And then inside the entrance; dig those bosses and the vaulting.

This is a truly breathtaking building. I found myself experiencing waves of mounting ecstasy just contemplating it. And how amazing is that!? The very building itself facilitates a kind of chemico-psychic reverie that one could easily call either simply ecstatic, or perhaps even deeply spiritual?

That the ceiling bosses, as you enter, demand your attention, and lift your view skywards, towards the heavens, is so utterly apt for a church.

I really must investigate exactly what it is about some church architecture that engages me so strongly. I think it’s a combination of associative ideas, pure aestheticism, and the hedonic chemical circuitry.

One thing that’s very striking about St Peter’s, bringing to mind Hardwick Hall – ‘Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall’ – is the abundance of huge windows. And the resultant light. Would these originally have all been stained glass?

There’s also a plethora of wonderfully worked woods. It’s truly astonishing. Everywhere the eye roves, it’s a feast for the senses, and in turn for the mind. And yet, whilst it simultaneously overwhelms one’s faculties, it also seems to soothe them.

No matter where you turn, there’s artistry of breathtakingly exultant quality, in stone, glass, metal, and wood. Lots of wood!

It’s also wonderful that such a treasure trove as this can lie open and unattended. Many churches now are locked up. Sadly due, one imagines, to thievery. I’m so glad St. Peter’s was open. It provided me with an epiphany of sorts, for which I’m truly grateful.

Churches, at least of this grandiose sort, always exhort the visitor to look up. And when you do… well, wow! The symmetry, the rhythms, the light, the accumulation of sensory input, all of it sublimely and divinely uplifting. Talk about a pleasing unity of form and function.

This church really is something very special. One of the best I’ve discovered in my recent ecclesiastical ramblings. I’ll be coming back here, for certain. Love it!

Been awake since about 5.30 am. ‘Cause that’s when Teresa wakes up! Had a weird night of strange dreams. Anyroad… I’m about to set off for North Walsham. Almost two hours away. Why? To buy the plan-chest pictured above (and below), from a chap advertising on Gumtree, for our Art Studio.

I’ve been after some plan chests for years. But they’re usually unaffordably expensive. I bartered the seller down on this, a little, making it worthwhile, despite the travel time/petrol costs. Setting off at 8am. That’s not really that early, I guess. But it’s early-ish, for me!

As soon as I get this home (getting the thing in the house on my own was an ordeal!), King Chester claims it for his own! What a star he is. Really take a good look at that beautiful face; it says, in a relaxed and frank manner, ‘All is well in my world. And all of this is my world.’