Mothers Day and mine and Theo's Birthdays

Nice day today, Mother's Day, my son gave me a lovely card and some yummy chocolate, Daughter in Africa at the moment. I went out into the snow this morning, rather pathetic snow but I needed to get milk and I wanted to go before it got any worse, as it turned out it stopped not long after I got back to my stepfather's house.
We've just had lunch, very un-traditional pasta, and rice pudding for dessert which I overcooked, not used to an electric oven!
I've had a nice 10 days here with Jack, a lovely time at my grandson Theo's 5th birthday party, some lovely presents for my own birthday which is the day after Theo's.

Theo, face painted as a skull, receiving a balloon alien at his party

Apologies for dodgy framing of picture, my camera had a broken LCD screen at the time so I had to point it and hope. Very pleased to say I have replaced it myself, chuffed to bits about that!

I took myself off to the British Museum on my birthday, to see the Ice Age Art exhibition. Definitely worth a visit, some absolutely amazing stuff, carved with bone tools by supposedly primitive people, alongside some contemporary artwork, reflecting the links to, and influences on, modern art of this work

These are some small sketches I made of 3 of the pieces, not brilliant but I wasn't allowed to take pictures, took 2 before they saw me but shhhhh! One didn't come out anyway.
Many thanks to the Foundling Museum for giving me a map when I took a wrong turn getting from Euston to B.M.
I'm mulling over how I can use the inspiration of the exhibition in my own work. I have some nice flat pieces of bone saved from dinners, I may have a go at carving some. See what happens.


Anyway, we had a nice family lunch yesterday, everyone who could be there was there and it was lovely.

Pretty snowdrops just to finish off.

Back to Devon tomorrow, please no snow!

Day out at Westward Ho!

Bit of a grotty day after all that lovely unexpected sun recently, we had decided to go to Westward Ho!, well known as the only place with punctuation as part of it's name. We realised that we'd never been there, despite living here for 7 years and having visited the West Country loads of times on holiday.
It's a nice Victorian village, with a broad sandy beach, it has a pebble ridge behind the beach which is probably part of the sea defences. There are plans to 'do up' the village a bit with a nice revamped green behind the beach, nice modern seating and lots of glamorous sea front apartments.
Being awkward types we walked along the pebbly, rather' bouldery', bit on the left hand side of the beach, which becomes ridges of slatey rocks leading out to sea. There's a nice tidal swimming pool in the rocks, where we watched a black Labrador having a lovely swim!
After lunch in a nice little cafe we walked along the prom towards Abbotsham Cliffs, very windy but rather a nice walk.
At the end of the village, standing alone on the edge of the cliffs, is a terribly sad old house, it looks Edwardian or late Victorian, and is completely neglected and falling to bits, lots of lovely stained glass all getting vandalised by stone throwers. It's all marked as private keep out and there appears to be a camera in one of the windows! What a waste of a lovely building, there's rusty scaffolding on it in places so maybe someone is trying to bring it back to life.

Walking back along a concrete covered pipe I discovered that this is a fabulous source of Anomia Cepa shells, otherwise known as Jingle shells, they are a variety of small clam which live attached to the shells of other sea creatures or to rocks, even to each other if no other surface presents! This means that their shapes vary considerably,so much so that they were called Anomia, meaning nameless, as they look so different from each other. I've found a few on my local beach at Ilfracombe but we found loads at Westward Ho!, they seem to have a thicker shell than the ones I've found before but they have great colours and are really iridescent both on the outside and inside.

Here's today's hoard soaking in soapy water to get the sea off them! Aren't they pretty!

I have two pieces of jewellery made with these shells so far