Another weekend. Another festival.
I was reviewing the Friday evening only at Maryport Blues festival. H stayed at home and I went with Pete and Sarah It was great to have them along. Sarah is doing SO well after her redical surgery only 2 weeks ago. What an inspiration.
First band up were Laura and the Tears. Not bad at all. The main event though was Jethro Tull. Talk about a trip down memory lane. I loved it! They did ‘Aqualung’, ‘Heavy Horses’ and ‘Thick as a Brick’ amongst others and as there were even folks there wearing patchouli perfume it was like being back in 1973. Sigh…..!
The last band were King King and then we ambled home under a starlit sky and in the comfort of the car.

FARMS IN PLASTIC…..PORCELAIN IN TREES…ROADSIDE PAINTINGS…RADIO SOUNDTRACK AT A LAKE….
Today we’re doing a tour of the FREDs (An Art Invasion Across Cumbria). Cant wait. We LOVED some acouple ofyears ago. The plastic multitudinous windmills on the shore of Ullswater in 2006 is one of my happiest memories. Even the weather looks like it might be quite good so I think that a picnic is in order too…and we just happen to have some nice French baguettes…..

When we got up this morning and looked out of the window we saw a group of people in the field outside the house doing, what we presume was, water diving. VERY interesting. I’d love to learn more. Before I could get dressed to go and have a nosey they had all gone.

No matter that this funny clip is from the 60s – it still says a lot about us all conforming. The best bit is the younger man towards the end.


Elevator Candid, Must See… – video powered by Metacafe

Ever since seeing Fields for the Britain Isles : the 4,000+ host of terracotta figures : I have been enthralled by Antony Gormley’s sculptural work. The figures are tightly packed into a gallery space and when looking at them I suffered a strange vertigo – like I was a massive giant and they were a vast audience looking at me.

The most famous of his works is the huge and utterly gorgeous Angel of the North at Gateshead, a sexy spiritually powerful asexual iron figure : 20 metres tall, with a 54 metre wingspan and weighing 200 tonnes, and Britain’s largest sculpture. I took this picture on a lovely and bright December day.

I was so impressed that I made a handful of my own terracotta figures at pottery class (I AM that sad old hippy!) – only mine have boobs and hair (!) They sit on a wooden bench at my front door!

or… the PotFest (Ceramics Festival) in the Pens at the cattle auction mart. I’m looking forward to it a lot (Aug 3 – 5th). Every year I go, every year I promise myself I’ll only buy something ‘useful’, but every year the something useful idea goes out of the window when I buy the one thing I spot that excites me. Pah! Its only money.

Its also well worth going to PotFest in the Park too – less utility and more arty. Stuffed full of wonderful ceramic art. (July 27 – 29th)

Here are some pics of the work of a few of my favourite ceramicists
(L-R, Mark Halliday, Karen James, Fiona Mazza)

Can you raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
If yuo can raed tihs, you hvae a sgtrane mnid, too.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

If you can read this, your brain is 50% faster than those who can’t.

So, what does an inch of rainfall really mean…
Well… one inch of rain fall over the entire UK is 1,723,042 million gallons.
One inch of rain on just one acre of land weighs 113.31 tons and is 27,154 gallons…. Imagine how much water that is draining from the land onto flood plains.

If… and only IF you felt like digging directly down from under my house straight through the centre of the Earth and its molten core of fiery iron you would eventually pop out into the ocean almost exactly on the international date line around 1200 miles south east of New Zealand.

A great quote from Stephen Fry…
It was reported that an Australian Aboriginal on seeing the total eclipse was heard to exclaim…
“Kerosene lamp belong Jesus gone bugger up”

I’ve actually remembered a joke…

What do you call a horny Smartie®?……

a drawing pin!

Did you see the story in the news about a Bowhead whale that had died and it had a (circa 1880’s) 130 year-old bomb lance harpoon in its body?
It means that it was at least 150 years old when it died (whalers in the 19thC didn’t take young ones). The experts now think that these whales can live to over 200 – their slow metabolism is probably the reason. Wow! Imagine their experiences and maturity. How can humans consider slaughtering these exquisite and gentle creatures?

Something Tony Benn (fascinating man!) said on Question Time last night made me wonder and get my calculator out….
Did you know that if an average generation is 25 years apart, and you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents etc etc, then 500 years ago you had 2,097,152 ancestors.
And if you wanted to go back 1,000 years years ago it’d be a scarily HUGE – 2,198,863,800,000! Surely that means we are ALL related to one another right across this earth.
Wow…..

We couldn’t believe this badly loaded truck…just after we took the pic it turned right and scared us to death as it tipped. We gave it a VERY wide berth. Madness.

I saw a bumble bee in the garden last night. Seems awful early in the year for that.