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A few more shots of the interior of The Reid Building at Glasgow School of Art today - animated by having the students in it. Official opening day looms and there are still cranes and scaffolding and men in hard hats all over the place. Tricky work environment for all of them at the moment..but I for one am still getting good vibes from it.... See 3 more posts on this subject under Simply Inspirational (Categories sidebar)     
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Le Temps Retrouvé? Is it possible, I've been wondering, to recreate the carefree feelings I had as a child of say 8 or 9 years of age. (See yesterday's post.) What would be the nearest adult equivalent? And it dawned on me. A holiday in a hotel! So that's why people go to hotels (lightbulb moment....) Clothes decisions already made when you packed. Meals provided. Bed made, housework done for you. Time otherwise all your own - it gets more and more appealing! We have always self-catered/camped/stayed with friends and family/done study courses/swapped houses/house sat... Tell me, is there a downside to staying at a hotel? A really nice hotel that is. There is the cost - it is not cheap to pay for other people to take on all these responsibilities for you! I suppose there is a bit of an obligation to be sociable, but I could be that recluse in the corner who doesn't talk to anyone at breakfast. I'm OK with that. What is your experience? Would you recommend it? Do read Swissrose's thought provoking post here about her carefree childhood. 
Watching the children from the local Adventure Centre wandering the beach sometimes makes me very nostalgic for carefree childhood days. I would blithely head out of the door on a sunny morning with 'Be back for lunch at one o'clock' the only warning, clean clothes provided, meals laid on, few decisions other than who I would play with that day - it was often Janette, we regularly laughed ourselves silly together (at what I don't remember). The street, the park, the clay works - riding on the 'puggy' the little train that took the clay the short distance to the brickworks...we had a lot of freedom as children. Did you? It involves a lot of hard thinking about what exactly your priorities are and a lot of decision making -I'm sure we all know how tiring that can be! You have to accept that, to coin a phrase, you can't have it all. Not if you want to live more simply. You can't do it all either, and you can't be it all. But knowing this is so can be a bit of a relief... You have to choose and try to make good choices. I've done it slowly, mindfully, over four years. Has it been worth it? Absolutely Leo Babauta at Zen Habits says it is painful. See here. Would you agree? 
on my walk today..
Our first really good gardening day, and I have overdone it a bit as I always do! Little got done in the house, but I always feel if one or two favourite spots in a room look good I can enjoy that and ignore the rest. The alcove in the sitting room is my favourite spot and the tulips didn't yawn or bite Cath, but lifted their heads, opened out a little and began to look like tulips!  I have learned to stop before I'm totally wiped out and I still have the energy for a simple meal with a glass of wine, to light some candles and to listen to Barbara for an hour or two before I tackle all the jobs still to be done (I'm an owl remember - I get a second wind about 10pm!) ( I think I find Barbara so relaxing to listen to because I'm far from fluent in French and have only the vaguest idea what she is singing about..) Do you work till you drop when it's at something you like doing? Or have you learned to go at a more measured pace?  The alcove is newly painted..which makes the whole room feel fresher.  We're still enjoying the stunning photgraphy in 365 Ways To Save The Earth. (Thank you Charlie and Mary.) I always keep this surface uncluttered but when I lifted the book to check the title the clean patch revealed how dusty the rest is! Certain tulips at a certain stage look more animal than vegetable I think. (Sea slugs? ) 
Perhaps I shouldn't mention sea slugs in the same breath as cakes.... Yesterday's cakes were a standard Victoria Sponge recipe of 4oz butter, 4oz sugar, 4oz self-raising flour and 2 eggs, oven 200 for 12 mins, and the buttercream was made with 4oz of butter, 8oz icing sugar, and 2tblsp fresh lemon juice. I saw a pretty picture of primroses on little cakes on Sarah Raven's website and copied the idea, but with a simpler cake (as befits the title of this blog). Stick to primroses or violets though - daffodils are toxic! Thank you for your helpful comments yesterday on using a pedometer. I agree 10,000 is a lot Elaine! Doing a little research tonight I read that 6,000 steps a day is a good target for health, and 10,000 for weight loss. Liz, I've signed up for a 10k charity walk in May - I've a way to go! I am wearing mine attached to my belt all day, Cath, and am shocked at how sedentary I am. Also I think your pedometer is more sophisticated than mine. Looking at all the different kinds, ranging in price from 66p to £138.06 (mine was £4.99) I see you can measure just about everything, calories consumed, heart rate, glucose levels... I will definitely adopt Swissrose's idea and measure our favourite walks in steps. The forest walk I showed you yesterday is only 2,538 steps. I thought it would be much more. Today I walked 7,276 - a record! Yesterday I made these lemon primrose cakes, so I needed those extra steps. Fortunately the family came and helped eat them all....  ....and sleet, and hailstones, (sunshine today Yay!) but I am still walking most days.  I am lucky to have some very beautiful places to walk.  This forest walk starts at the Schoolhouse Burn. From there it's fairly steep going..(good for the heart!)....  to the Laird's Grave, from where on Thursday I took the next shot, which I've used as the new banner photograph. 
I sheltered under the yew trees from the hail, and waited till the light struck the snow. Dramatic and beautiful is Creachan Mor in the snow. The mountain - the name means great stony hill - is 2156 feet high. We see it across the bay from the windows of the house. The lower slopes are oak and birch woodland which colour up beautifully in autumn. I shall take more photographs of the lovely walks around - it will be an added incentive to keep walking! Do any of you use a pedometer? 10,000 steps a day is the recommended target? Well !! I love this clever and colourful little 20 second video! I love Matisse. An exhibition not to be missed.. (You have to scroll down the page, and it is worth making it full screen. Enjoy.) Do you indulge in risky behaviour? Risk/uncertainty/imperfection/accidental effects/randomness/daring (see yesterday's video) I am interested in the part these things play in creative endeavours of all kinds. In my own work I sometimes deliberately add a random effect. It works like this. I am well into a painting, it is looking good, there are some nice passages, but....it's a bit, well - predictable. Summoning up my courage I load the brush - perhaps with a colour I've not yet used in the painting, perhaps by just streaking it right across the palette, then I turn away completely and paint a stroke or two at random! I turn around and see what I have done.... What I have done is set myself a new challenge and I look at the painting for a while (actually I usually go and make a cup of coffee at this point). Then, it may be straight away, or it may be the next day, decisions have to be made. Do I try and retrieve the previous harmony and balance incorporating the new elements, or have they set me off on a new and original tangent. Whichever way I go it's more exciting than it was! Love it. Here is one of my paintings. Very abstract. It's called The Pink Calls To The Yellow. 
Today is the first day of spring, isn't it? It's just that the gritter has been out and the forecast tomorrow is for snow....and yes, I know they're having barbecues in London and wearing shorts! I've mentioned the Goldmark Gallery before. They have a great selection of short films of artists talking about and demonstrating their work (99 under 'ceramics' alone) The current exhibition is of the work of potter Nic Collins. In this 7 minute video he extols the virtues of imperfections and random accidental effects in his pots, features that he says would once have made these pots 'seconds'. I'm not entirely convinced by his arguments.... What do you think? 
They are only in the bowls for the photgraphs! I envy people who can have sweets sitting around looking pretty, in jars and bowls. Audrey Hepburn ate, we are told, one chocolate a day! One, and then stopped. I rarely have chocolates, but when I do I scoff them straight from the box I'm afraid, and after all my talk of chocolate yesterday I just had to go and buy some... Can you resist?  Today is the fourth anniversary of my blog and I'm celebrating with some chocolate. The trouble with chocolate is that it sometimes lifts me up, and it sometimes drags me down,  but I never know what effect it will have, until after I have eaten it!  From Tiger. £1. I drank a Scottish toast to your health tonight 'Slainte Mhath'. (It's pronounced Slanj-uh va.) To say thank you for reading and for your thoughtful and interesting comments. I enjoyed the wine, but I didn't, alas, have any real chocolate.... ..of new plants! I love growing from seed and cuttings.  The little Mexican daisy erigeron karvinskianus roots easily from tip cuttings..I take another ten each time I'm in the greenhouse. I cover the tray with fleece at night.  Here they are sprinkling down the steps on a summer's evening. They are a bit tender here, but some usually survive in a drier gravel area under the eaves of the house  The seed tray is full of native primroses, primula vulgaris - destined, after pricking out and growing on in cells, for Coronation Wood (see under banner photograph).  These were growing on a hillside up the glen (must try some violets from seed too).  With luck we'll have a few sweet peas flowering on the Open Days at the end of June..  Heavenly! Are you a gardener? Do you like growing from seed? I have to stop myself from sowing far too many....  These tall and dainty daffodils are called 'February Gold' though they never appear till March. But worth the wait.. ....to Gregorian chant overlaid with jazz saxophone. 
Kelvingrove Art Gallery was the magnificent setting for Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble's performance of Officium Novum on Friday evening. 
The accoustics were superb and at one point when the singers and the saxophonist were walking on the outer edges of the hall and through the arches it was like being immersed in liquid sound. You can hear some of it here.. The tickets were my Christmas present to my husband - he loved it! There is a 2 minute video of the exhibition I mentioned yesterday here Architecture was a compulsory subject when I was at GSA. I'm so glad I studied it - it led to a lifelong interest, and later to study in Landscape Architecture. Architect Steven Holl gets up at 6.30 am to do these tiny watercolours (another 'lark'). It's quite exciting to look at them then walk across the road and see the huge real thing! You can click on the images to enlarge and there is lots more at www.stevenholl.com  Yesterday I was shown round the Reid Building at Glasgow School of Art. I've been thinking of it since, and went back today for a closer look at the exhibition Drawing on Holl from where the above image comes. This exhibition (free admission and on till Mar 23) is worth seeing and the fact that it is on display inside Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Art School building gives you, if you don't know the building, a useful little experience of Mackintosh's articulation of space and light which influenced Steven Holl in his design. The entire effort here is an homage to Mackintosh says Holl. I was lucky enough to spend four years studying at GSA, two of them in the Mackintosh building which I know and love, so, like most alumni I imagine, I was not a little wary of what I would find, and sceptical of what seemed a possibly overly concept-led approach. See this post for further links, photographs, and a (rather waspish) review. I am still processing the experience of being inside the building (which is quite different and ultimately much more important than merely looking at it) but my first impressions are of a quite poetic and elegant manipulation of space and light, of beautifully generous proportions.
It's dynamic and exciting and, sticking my neck out here, I'm going to predict that it will (in time) become a much loved building.....Yay for GSA! And for Alan and Sarah! Thank you. Chalked on the pavement in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow today -  It says 'Don't grow up it's a TRAP'
I'd love to know who wrote it! And why.. In six months time Scotland votes on the question Should Scotland be an independent country? I've just watched three programmes called Referendum Documentaries on BBC iPlayer. I thought they were very good. Episode 3 in particular, Episode 1 for background (and I was least impressed with Episode 2). I will be voting No, thank you. To my mind there are enough divisions in the world already; I feel British first and Scottish a close second and am privileged and proud to be both; and I think the only people who would be better off would be the batallions of lawyers who will be negotiating terms for decades to come. OK, OK - no more politics on this blog! But I do find it fascinating. 
It's not often I see the dawn....
I am and always was an owl. Are you a lark or an owl?
A mobile by Alexander Calder made in 1947. It is like a line drawing in the air - so elegant and, literally, perfectly poised. Only 10" x 15". A lot of his works were very large and made of heavy metals. The makers of Flensted mobiles (see this post) acknowledge his influence.  First cuppa  check the blog and email  a little laundry to put away  and some time in the studio  a little sunshine!  and the robin is posing - wish I had a better zoom lens  a quick look at the day book..  a nice wee group  I like circles..  and look -  here comes the hail! It's not going to go viral is it !! But I don't suppose you come to a blog called Live Simply for excitement and scandal.. I decided today to take snapshots of my day just as it sometimes is - ordinary. Peaceful and quietly productive. Ordinary can be a blessing, can't it. I hope you had a good day too. Thanks for reading. |
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