Adele Cosgrove-Bray is a writer and artist based in Wirral, England. Her writing has been published traditionally in magazines and anthologies, and she has also explored self-publishing.
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All Things Grey and Miserable
A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about how the internet wasn't as much fun as it used to be. I stand by the remarks I made back then, though I still make use of Facebook, (largely because I have real-life family and friends who use that site and it's an easy way to to keep in touch).
My views in that old blog post are echoed in the video below, which I stumbled over when randomly websurfing - or as random as any algorithm-controlled websurfing ever truly is these-days.
Have a listen:-
I often pass a lovely old house. It was probably a vicarage once, as it stands beside an ornate old church, the sort which has carved gargoyles for gutter spouts and a towering, needle-thin spire. The house is a sturdy square, its main entrance door set between two large windows. A walled garden wraps around all four sides of the house. Its roof boasts chimney pots like mini castles sprouting from its lofty heights. From the outside, it looks delightful, and it came up for sale.
And so, being a self-confessed nosey-parker when it comes to domestic architecture and interior design, I took advantage of Rightmove and stole a peek inside. Disaster! Someone, no doubt with good intentions, had modernised it to death. All original quirks and character had been obliterated in favour of bland nothingness. The sleek, pewter-coloured kitchen was one of those modern monstrosities whose aesthetics offered a setting more suitable for an autopsy than a Victoria sponge.
The sad thing is that many renovated homes have been subjected to similar treatment. Open plan may look fine on a sunny day when the house is pristine, but do you really want to shiver all winter, (or suffer huge heating bills, as the alternative), or spend your evenings trying to ignore whatever you've left soaking in the kitchen sink?
Another design element I would never choose are bar stools. You see them lined up beside an overhanging worktop, inviting a person to munch their breakfast there. This is all fine and good for people who are 6' or more in height, and who can casually swing a long leg over the stool and gracefully slide onto the plumply cushioned top. When, like me, you're 5' 1", to venture aloft these contraptions requires a gymnastic leap worthy of an Olympics competitor, only to be left marooned and teetering, hardly daring to move towards your toast in case you overbalance and go crashing to your doom on the - probably grey- tiles below.
One major pet hate of mine, which often rears its ugly head in open plan homes, is a staircase in the living room. Not only do they look ugly, and allow all the heat to escape upstairs, they create an awkward wall space. Many people shove a sofa beneath the stairs. This means that whoever has the misfortune to sit at the lowest end risks concussion if they stand up without care.
But, yes, like the lady in the video above, I loathe this obsession with all things grey. Consider the virtual infinity of wonderful colour hues, be they subtle or bold. Why oh why do so many people adore miserable, dreary, monotonous grey? Our video-maker suggests it's all to do with corporate conformity and timidity in expressing individualism. What's your opinion?
Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist". I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...
"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood. In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself. Folklore and myt...
Do you keep a diary? Why did you start it, and, if you started one then stopped, why was that? What sort of things do (or did) you write about? I ask as, as a long-time diarist myself, there is an interesting piece in The Guardian today which talks about one woman's diary habit, which she began at the age of fourteen. I started a diary around that age too, but destroyed it after my mother accused me of using cocaine. A stern scene followed, with both parents perched ram-rod straight in their armchairs, while I was subjected to a heated inquisition. Where had I bought it, and who from? Didn't I know such things led to death and doom? I struggled to decipher their bewildering accusations, until Mum blurted out, "I read it in your diary!" To find my diary, Mum would first have had to rummage through my dressing table, obviously when I wasn't around to protest. Her intrusion on my privacy was assumed by both parents to be acceptable, and now, with this handwritten c...
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