A Walk With Cosmo.

Not a walk with Cosmo.

I didn’t walk with Cosmo today beacause I might have had half a larger shandy with my new comrades and brothers of the ‘West End Theatre Goers Collective’, in the Russian Cafe in Shaftsbury Ave.

I might also have sung Stairway to Heaven on the careokee machine. I do seem to remember introducing the band midway through the song Jimmy Page on lead guitar…..John Bonham on drums ………..and John Paul Jones on bass!

To be a rock and not to roll…

Good night London …!

A Local Creation Story. (part one)

If you remember I mentioned I am artist in residence at ‘The Little Blue Hut’ and I’ve been spending a lot of time there looking at the wind farm from the beach hut which is the location for this residency. Even more time than usual, as I spend a lot of time looking at it when me and Cosmo walk along the sea front every evening.

For this evenings dog walk the weather is rubbish, its raining and the wind is bowing very strongly. But in the beginning there were only the winds, the East, the West, the North and South Winds.

For many years they blew all the moisture in the air to the same place to form the sea. All the dust in the air they blew into another place to form the land.

After many years the winds moved away, leaving behind them 30 children. These are the white wind turbines in the sea and they manage the surrounding sea and lands. The 30 children formed the birds from winds left behind by their parents, and used the birds to survey the lands their parents had made. The birds knew the sea, the cliffs, the fields, and the forests as they flew over the area. The Blean Forests grew with wild flowers and grasses, from seeds mixed up with dust that formed the lands.

After some while pieces of the land broke off and rolled back into the sea to form oysters and the other fish. In due course these Oysters formed pearls, and spat them out onto the land. The pearls then transformed into the first people, our ancestors and lived as community by the sea, which became Whitstable. The people became known as the ‘Oyster people’.

Scyliorhinus Canicula

(small spotted catshark) a bottom feeder that likes shallow waters.

More commonly named the Lesser Spotted Dogfish, more colloquially known round here as those FCUKNIG FISH that get washed up on the beach.

I did a pre dog walk earlier to check out the beach and could see crows and seagulls were still working, where there were still some remains of washed up Lesser Spotted Dogfish.

Later, on the walk Cosmo’s lead was attached a good 500 yards before this particular section of the beach (which is his favourite at the moment!).

Once the hazzard was passed I was able to remind myself that the glue I was using to make my mosaic had gone rather watery. I make my own glue for this purpose and had made two jars. The unused one, stored in an air tight jar was still all jelly, but the one I was using was open to the air, and over a period of about a month it had broken down and gone too runny. It is making the paper too wet and buckling is a problem. Also I noticed that the paper had got so wet it had soaked through and was well on the way to sticking itself to the table top. As it is so watery it is taking a long time to dry in this damp weather. another problem it would cause would be when I need to cut the mosaic into sections with a scalpal the still slightly damp paper will tear rather than cut. This is to be avoided as well.

So, really I was telling myself that for 15 – 20 minutes of time invested in pouring the glue back into a sauce pan add about another heaped table spoon of flour to thicken it up, a bit more salt to stop it going mouldy and boil it up for a few minutes would make the perfect glue.

This would be time well spent. Perfect jelly like glue enables the mosaic tiles to slide over the surface of the paper easily for accurate positioning. It also has less water in so dries better in these damp conditions and wont buckle the paper quite so much.

The other thing that crossed my mind was that I have two schools projects coming up. One in a rural primary school with children who have started life with an advantage, compared to an urban secondary school where my ‘transition’ group of pupils are definately disadvantaged. I am looking forward to this contrast.

Cosmo is walking home with a slight limp?

Firework Night with a fish supper.

I was looking forward to a dog walk as I am just beginning to get really busy again and wanted to just chill and let things settle in my mind. I have already just made a stupid timetable/availability mistake. Something I described as an administrative error in an apologetic email.

But; it is firework night and Cosmo gets what you might describe as ‘excited’.

So I let Cos off the lead and he legs it at full power across the grass towards the sea. Barking. Just barking at bangs, wooshes, bursts, frazzle sounds, glitter, coloured lights and popping noises.

Total full on, out and out wreckless barking at the top of his voice. He got that off his chest as it were and we settled into the walk.

Next thing I know he’s nowhere to be seen and I’m calling him, whistling and that.

The tide is out and he’s down on the beach amongst the groins. I know whats going on and walk towards him. Illuminated by the moon light there is a dozen or more glowing white underbellies of these kind little shark/dog fish all washed up on the beach and I’m treading on them as I realise what they are.

So now I can smell Cosmo at 5-6 paces and I’m marching home with the hump. Then we meet a Wrottwieler on heat and now we are home he’s barking again.

He smells too bad to get close to him in his distress.