The end of Summer...

So that’s it, the end of the summer and what a great summer it’s been. I’m sure that we must have had wet days but if we did I seem to have managed to dodge most of them. Of course, sharing my time between Cheshire and our tiny, dusty cottage in North Wales has helped this whole process along and summer has seemed like one long holiday to me. Four days in the shop, three days on the beach, three days in the shop, four days on the beach; all-in-all it worked out pretty well.

With time to do it I suppose I could have cut the hedges, instead we spent our time re-exploring our part of Wales. Going back to beaches and places we haven’t visited for years was a real treat, almost like discovering them all over again. Bardsey Island, Aberdaron, Porth Neigwl, Abersoch, Porth Colman, Bangor Pier, Port Ysgo (the beach in the picture above), Borth-y-Gest… Almost a different beach each day with cowrie searches (you can die if you don’t find one and if you find thirteen you have to stay on the beach until you find another), the watching of waves, the sound of the breeze in the sand. Butterflies, birds, hedgehogs at night, the bright moon in the crisp night sky, and almost twenty years of memories.

Food and alcohol played their part too. Well what would life be without wine? Picnics with hard boiled eggs and home grown tomatoes eaten from benches overlooking the sea, rolled and stuffed breast of welsh lamb roasted crisp in our dilapidated oven and served with roasted potatoes, crab and prawns, bread and soft French cheese, pasta and meatballs, sweet and sour fish, cider and beer, wine and beer, wine and cider, and black coffee – but only when I had to.

Yes, a good summer. One to remember I think in a world where it’s far too easy to forget how beautiful the scenery is and the fun of just walking along a sunny beach. Now it's back to the real world (well realish) with all its routine and getting there on time. Of course we'll still be coming to Wales, but not as frequently as of late; summer has gone you see. So, see you next year summer, here comes the autumn.

To the beach...

After being told that I should get a job and start living in the real world yesterday, I want to share this thought with you.

My job is to make the world I want and deserve a reality and always has been. 

Fortunately through hard work and good fortune I can live in the real world that I want without having to work long hours and feel stressed any more. It is called planning. You may have heard of it.

So to that idiot who called me on the telephone yesterday to impart such pearls of wisdom I say: thanks for the advice. People such as yourself are full of it but I'm off to the beach instead.

Have a nice day.

A spell on the beach

Know anything about Runes?

To early people writing was a very serious thing - it was full of magical power.

In Europe our Germanic ancestors used a runic alphabet as their form of writing. They used it to identify their possessions - combs, brooches, shields, cattle, wives - help them to make calendars, encode secret messages, mark their sacred monuments and burial sites. They also used them to cast spells - make love charms, curse their enemies, cause their neighbours crops to fail, cure the pox. Usually the ceremony of writing the runes was accompanied by a chant or prayer and sometimes a curse to make the spell. They called this a rune as well, and the two runes combined – written and spoken - made the magic work.

They called it the ‘whispering, secret talk.’ I love that…the whispering, secret talk - it sounds so completely magical.

Ingwaz is the rune of harmony, approval, unity, agreement, love, peace. It’s an important rune, a powerful rune, a very positive rune. It was used to make fertility magic; magic for farming, growth, health, balance. It was the rune of the god Ing, and associated with Frey - god of the weather, generation and fertility - and it’s particularly potent at the time of the new moon.

I built this sculpture on Dinas Dinelle beach last summer – it’s the Ingwaz rune. I like to go there to watch the small planes at Caernarfon airport. They’re pleasure craft and go around and around in a ten mile circle, landing, taking off, then landing again. Don’t worry I’m not an airport freak, the airport is a really a landing strip and the planes are micro-lights, biplanes, and single engine Cesna’s…actually that does make me a plane freak doesn’t it.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the tide was out. The beach has a high pebble ridge along its length, falling away to firm sand at low tide. I found an old, rusty bike wheel, a broken branch and some polythene. I wanted to leave behind a statement about how beautiful the day was and how positive I felt on that day.

Yes, I’m bonkers - but you probably know that anyway, and if you need even more proof - here’s the whispering, secret talk I chanted to make the magic work.

Ingwaz
Rich dirt
My seed to grow
My hearth to simple burn
Rest godly laboured
Not worn in toil
Blessed by new life born

There you go, if you knew nothing about runes before, you know a little now… did the magic work?

Not so far I’m afraid.

Dali's cat 2...

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You’ve probably noticed a surrealist theme emerging in my blog? Truth is - I guess I’ve always been a surrealist at heart. There is something about stumbling across the unusual in the usual, finding the the-out-of place in the in-place, seeing the slightly odd in the perfectly ordinary, that makes my imagination set alight.

André Breton was the major spokesman for the surrealist movement, he was a poet, and didn’t paint as far as I know. He wrote their manifesto. He said that Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in ‘an absolute reality - a surreality.’

Interesting…how often do you awake from a dream unsure if you are still dreaming? Could it be that just for that split second the world of dream is joined to the everyday rational world? Perhaps in that split second you truly are experiencing the surreal. What do you think?

People use the ‘surreal’ word a lot, usually out of context - I wish they wouldn’t. They use it to describe things that aren’t surreal at all. I once heard a friend describe a man walking along a busy high street in top hat and tails as surreal – ‘now that is SURREAL!’ he said. It wasn’t. It was just some man walking along a high street in top hat and tails probably on his way to a wedding. Now if his face had been devoid of any features, or he’d been floating in mid-air, or even if it’d been a sunny day and he hadn’t cast a shadow then he may have qualified. Another time I heard a chap in the pub call a packet of crisps 'surreal' because they were described as hedgehog flavour. Watch - my - lips.... Hedgehogs (even cooked hedgehogs that have been used to flavour crisps) are not surreal, they are just hedgehogs.

Anyway – here’s my Dali cat built from found stuff on the best wash-up beach in North Wales. I’ve been doodling Dali cats for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve built one.

Hope you like it.

Oh, and by the way - that funny little thing below is something that followed me out of a dream this morning and stuck around. I think that it might be Yves Tanguy’s pet mouse.

Beach Sculpture