Candle time...

There’s no doubt that we are slipping into autumn quickly now. My back yard is going wild in a last minute spurt of over-indulgent growth; the nasturtiums taking over, snaking everywhere, filling every space with their lush oval leaves. I expect I’ll have to soon start trimming it all back ready for the winter, before it simply turns to rot.

Early autumn, the last of summer.

The evenings are upon us quicker too and with each passing day it’s getting cooler, the temperature dropping to cold with the vanishing light. A fire’s already been lit in the hearth in the living room and the central heating flicked on for an hour or two when a jumper isn’t quite enough to brave the halls and kitchen. The candle time has come.

Yes, it’s becoming cosy - early mists, the last of the blue skies, the slowly turning leaves, a smell of drifting smoke, rain sparkling on the window glass, the whipping winds coming out of nowhere and with the lighting of candles the promise of winter on its way.

Candle time.

No worries, there's plenty of light if you know where to look - no matter the time of year.

Living in a soap...

When I was little I wanted to be an astronaught despite the fact that back then the pilots of the Gemini space capsules were sitting in what was basically a tin can with a bomb beneath it. Yes, those early astronaughts had a dangerous job to do; not all that dangerous compared to some though. The most dangerous job is not, as you might expect, astronaught, bomb disposal expert, steeplejack, or Formula One racing driver. The most dangerous job seems to be having a role in one of the UK’s most well known soaps.

The average life expectancy of a UK soap character is 52. In the real world in the UK it’s 80. Staying alive in a television soap opera is not easy, deaths in soap operas are almost three times more likely to be from violent causes than would be expected from a character’s age and sex outside of the world of television.

During Coronation Street’s long life, there have been 146 deaths, ranging from natural causes to murder, disasters, accidents and the occasional suicide. May Hardman was first when she died alone at number 13 from an inoperable brain tumour on 30^th December 1960. Sunita was last when Karl Munro removed her breathing tube – allegedly. But that won’t last long with Karl still at large.

A character in EastEnders is twice as likely as a character in Coronation Street to die during an episode. But who cares? They are all so bloody miserable they deserve to pop their ‘cats and dogs’.

Emmerdale is even worse for its frequent and dramatic deaths, coming second only to Brookside among British soaps. Remember the plane crash in 1993 that killed all the passengers plus four key characters and what about poor Tricia Dingle who was killed when the woolpack’s chimney fell and crushed her?

Brookside must have been the most dangerous place on earth to live. In the twenty-one years that Brookside ran for it clocked up an enviable death count of 72 humans, six dogs, six chickens, two rats, a cat, and a goldfish!

So, what are the key messages for aspiring soap stars here? Well, it seems that characters in soap operas lead very dangerous lives, even more dangerous than deep sea fishermen and professional stunt men. Most people suffering from a life-threatening disease have better five year survival rates than soap characters.

I wonder… could the exaggerated violence of soap world and the dangerous lives of soap characters be contributing to our perceptions about violent crime and death?

I’ll have a think about that one. I can feel a rich vein of blogging material coming on…

Piles of money…

On the polished oak surface of our hall table sits a lone penny. It’s right at the back by the almost redundant landline telephone, just next to the unused letter rack where we keep the takeaway menus as nobody seems to send letters these days. It’s been there for ages. I’m not sure how long; but I’m not talking weeks or months - I’m talking for as long as I can remember. I don’t know how or why it got there, but there it sits doing nothing, only moved and shuffled from here to there when we feel the need to dust. A lone penny just sitting doing nothing, a single penny without much value at all - perhaps that’s why it’s there.

It’s not alone. In the kitchen at the side window - the one that has no view other than a brick wall - right in the corner of the window frame, sits a pile of coins. Like the penny it’s been there for ages, years at least, an unattended pile of coins – a small stack of tuppences, pennies and a single pound. It must belong to one of us. But there it stays, almost without ownership, forgotten in the corner by the glass.

Upstairs in the bedroom there’s a dish that is full of small loose coins gathering dust. Some of the coins are American, others Indian, but within the global mix are perfectly pocketable UK coins - all they need is sorting.

There are loose coins at the bottom of ALL of my wife’s bags. Not that I’ve looked. I just know.

My car has an ashtray full of copper.

I find pennies and five pences, tens and twenties at the back of drawers all the time. I’ve no idea how they get there. Maybe they roll into them on their own.

There’s even a small elastic-banded bundle of nine old pound notes in the draws at the top of the third floor landing.  They lie forgotten (far too late to change at the bank) a remnant from past times - just overlooked for some unremembered reason.

 

I wonder if I were to search all the nooks and crannies, each drawer, every pot and dish, the backs and sides of sofas and chairs, just how much lost and forgotten cash would I find in our house – three, five, ten, twenty or more pounds?

Lost, orphaned coinage - some almost too small or worthless to be noticed, others made invisible by familiarity.

The UK has a population of around 61 million people. Since the average number of people living in a household is 2.36, the number of households is therefore approximately 26 million. If each house and flat and mansion has just a single lost or unattended penny inside it somewhere that’s £260,000. If, like me, it runs into a pound or a few it’s £26 million minimum! Money that could be doing something useful and not simply gathering dust.

It makes you think doesn’t it? 

Painted pebbles...

Whilst I didn’t get around to doing much of the sketching I promised my inner artist whilst I was in Wales, I did spend a lot time looking for pebbles.

I know it ain't art but it’s been in my head to paint some pebbles for a while now. I’m not quite sure why, sometimes I seem to have no choice in these matters. The idea pops into my head and then – at some future point – I find myself doing it. Of course we all painted rocks as children, didn’t we? Finding our pebble and then painting it with whatever took our fancy - bright blue, yellow and red powder paints splattered all over the stony surface in a variety of suns, flowers and fishes - only to be left outside to wash and fade in the rain.

I’m obviously in something of second childhood, wandering the beaches of North Wales looking for a pebble to paint, and I was rather hoping that the pebble itself might inspire me; calling out ‘look I’m a fish’ or maybe ‘there’s a dragon hiding inside my stony heart’. As it happened all the pebbles looked pretty much the same, no screaming and crying about the entities to be found hidden inside them, so it was up to me and the paint to turn them into something more whimsical.

I was hoping for something a bit tribal, mystical even. As it worked out two of the pebbles seemed to turn themselves into owls and the other into a cat without too much interference from me. I'm not sure if these fun or tacky, but I'm not too unhappy with the way they turned out. I may even make some others perhaps in bright blues, yellows and reds - a variety of suns, flowers and fishes – tribal of course.

Sketchy sketch...

Before I went to Wales I wondered if this time I’d actually get around to doing some sketching. It’s always my intention and I usually have a sketch book or two in the boot of my car in order to make my intentions good. This time I took it a little further, buying some new pencils – from H’s to B’s and back again – and a smart bound A5 sketchbook. I was all set, nothing could stop me now.

Of course the strange thing about sketching is that no matter where you are you can’t seem to find quite the right thing to sketch. There’s always something not quite right - the trees, the flatness of the light, the wind, the rain, the sun. Any excuse not to start sketching. After all I know that nine times out of ten I’ll be disappointed with what I draw and will end up throwing the damned thing away. Even the tenth is only kept as evidence that I had a go.

My sketch books start out fat and end up thin, my pencils slowly but surely migrate to that mysterious place that all the pencils go, my patience runs short and my intentions run dry.

Here’s the one I kept.

Dreaming, sleeping, slipping...

Of course, not everything is exactly as it seems. Things that you think are permanent and solid can slip and slide into something else, something that you don’t and can’t recognise unless you look too closely.

It’s all about the masks isn’t it? Those masks that people wear to make them appear more acceptable, believable, honest. The sleepy cunning smiles of pretend innocents who have lived a life so full of lies that the truth is not even a memory. Sweet old liars living in a world sculpted by wishful thinking, self righteousness, convenient Alzheimer like forgetfulness, uninformed opinion, habitual habit. Such a pity… and pity? Well, at times that’s what I feel although most of the time it’s disgust.

Don’t worry, I haven't lost sight of the sunshine. It’s only a ponder; something to mull over now that the nights are on the cusp of autumn and starting the drawing in. It’s not real, just a sleeping slippage really. A dream.

The tales I didn't tell...

And so for now I leave Wales behind after a few small adventures which I shall fondly
remember. I haven't recounted them all over the last week or so but there are a few that I'm sure will appear in my blog at some point in the future.

I could have told you about how I queued for over an hour, in good humour and fine camaraderie, at the Castle Fish and Chip Shop in Criccieth and how my fish and chips were well worth the wait.

I might have related how the women in Llithfaen, up the mountain and into the fog, seem to have an unusual amount of facial hair and strongly resemble their husbands in lots of other ways.

There’s a tale to be told about Fort Belan, built in 1775 on the spit of land by Caernarfon airport, and how one day I hope to visit this castellated fortress that was erected to keep marauding American pirates out of our waters.

There’s the lesser spotted woodpecker and the nuthatch that both posed for a photograph at my feeders just as I had placed my camera on the kitchen table indoors.

I could have told you about the cutting of hedges and the placing of our new bird box high in the holly tree and how I managed to place it at the jauntiest angle, although I’m sure the birds won’t mind next spring.

I might even have written about the weasel that ran in front of the car, narrowly escaping death, the walk we took to the last thatched cottage on Anglesey at Church Bay and the long and treacherous reverse I had to make when I met a hay wagon on a narrow and winding Welsh country lane in need of a passing point or two.

Ah Wales! Parting is such sweet sorrow, particularly with the magical mists of autumn about to clothe you anew in its earthy hues and the stunning sunsets that I know are yet to come.

I’ll be back though, I’ll be back.

Be seeing you.