Watercolour study of oak leaves. I'm typing this while waiting for a builder arrive.  An ominous horizontal damp patch has appeared along our dining room wall.  Judging from the ridges in the plaster beneath the new-ish wallpaper, this has been a recurring problem for some time. So next-door's builder came in to offer his opinion, and he pointed out that the damp course along that section of the house is too low to the path so it can't do it's job.  One option would be to jack-hammer out a trench "soak away" beside the wall and hope the old damp course would then work ok.  He recommended that it would be easier to simply install a new damp course.  The spoiled plaster needs to be replaced, which means the radiator has to come off first.  Also, an original Victorian downspout has rusted through quite badly and needs replacing with a new plastic one.  It's a pity to lose the historical one but carbuncles of rust are bubbling through the paint along its

Wild Swans in Birkenhead Park Birkenhead Park is currently home to two adult swans and their seven cygnets.  They're a delight to watch as they sail majestically through reflections cast on the water by autumnal trees and shrubbery.  The colours of the foliage are striking, and the ground is already thick with a crisp carpet of fallen leaves.  Everywhere you look, grey squirrels are munching acorns, fattening up for the coming winter. Our dogs found a frog in our garden last night, the first amphibian we've seen in our new-to-us garden.  The one thing I miss about our old house is my frog pond.  I've been eyeing a corner of the lawn, with a view to creating a new one here.  It's a project which will have to go on the To Do list. Meanwhile, I continue to work away at my second NVQ Level 3.  I have two modules, totalling 6 credits, left of the mandatory modules, and then I move on to the optional ones.  There is a huge amount of writing involved - enough for a nov

"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 mythology ab

Marsh Sentinel; watercolour; Adele Cosgrove-Bray 2015. This week saw me sailing down the Shropshire Union Canal in a narrowboat.  The weather was lovely,  warm with bright autumn sunlight which proved perfect for sitting on the prow of the Pot of Gold, eating egg and mayo sandwiches while ducking under towering weeping willow trees and dodging wasps which homed-in on the Victoria sponge cake. The narrowboat is owned by the Wirral Community Narrowboat Trust , a charitable organisation crewed by trained volunteers. We sailed past Waverton, and admired the houses whose gardens run right down to the water's edge.  Then we left suburbia behind and slid through open countryside, passing by a long, long line of narrowboats with permanent moorings.  It was like a floating village, some of the moorings being equipped with wind-power and solar-power systems.  Some narrowboats were cheerfully painted, others had more sombre colour schemes, a few looked rather rusty, while others'

My brother-in-law, Andrew Hart, passed away on the 10th August.  He suffered a heart attack, following a stroke earlier this year.  His funeral took place on the 21st, at Southport Crematorium.  Andy was known on the northern club circuit for his singing, and in younger days for his musical contributions to Golborne Brass Band, The Philtones and the David Charles Dance Band. Rapid sketches of ducks and geese, August 2015. I was unable to attend the funeral, having started a new day-job all of nine days before this.  I've been talking to my sister Evelyn, though, and nagging her well-meaningly about eating decent meals and taking care of herself, making a joke of "sounding just like Mum". There's not much anyone can really say at times like this.  It's instinctive to want to fix things for the person going through an awful experience, but really all anyone can do is simply listen. So, I started a new job...  I'm still doing arts and crafts, and si

Orange  daylily - Hemerocallis fulva Fabian: An Artisan-Sorcerer Story  is now being edited.  The novel will be published on 1st December 2015, all being well. Today I had a wander round The Arno, a small park in Oxton which gets its name from fusing two Anglo-Saxon words:  'arne' (hill) and 'howe' (which means either the name of a person who was as strong as an eagle, or that this was a hill where eagles nested.  Linguists weren't quite sure which it was, apparently).  But a host of volunteer gardeners have been busy making The Arno into a lovely little hideaway usually known for its formal rose garden, but which also has a vibrant Long Border crammed with numerous and colourful cottage garden plants.  If any Wirral artists are looking for masses of flowers to paint, this would be a good place to head to right now, as you can see from this post's photos which I took today.  Click on the photos to see them larger. The Long Border at The Arno, Oxton.

Patio, June 2015. Some of the lovely lilac and purple poppies which grew in abundance through the block-paved drive at our old house have managed to hitch a lift in the tubs we brought here with us.   They weren't deliberately planted in the tubs; their seeds must have been in the soil which came fresh from our compost bins.  The poppies hadn't been deliberately planted in the block-paved drive, either.  They were supposed to grow in the rose border.  Not one poppy grew by the roses.   But along the drive there were so many that by Autumn it was easier to run the mower over it to gather up the dried-up stalks than to clean it up by hand. Anyway, here they are again, springing up with glorious abundance amongst tubs of plants around the patio.  I'll leave them to seed themselves as they wish.  They probably will, anyway. Richard and I did some of this year's annual Wirral Open Studios Tour , which was great fun.  Artists and crafts-workers across Wirral throw ope

Poppi & Emily enjoying their new garden . Yesterday was devoted to writing and little else, and as a result the first draft of Fabian is almost complete.  So it now looks like the novel will be available by December, which is good news for all those who've been emailing me to ask when it's likely to be out. We've settled into our new house and absolutely love it.  The photo of Poppi and Emily, shown here, was taken on Thursday this week, when they were lounging on the patio area of the garden.  We've tidied up the previous owner's collection of patio plant pots, removing spent spoil and weeds, and we've been enjoying the gradual process of discovering what the collection holds - such as the lovely iris which burst into bloom this week, (see photo below).  The patio border has a fuscia, too, which we're glad to see; they're one of Richard's favourites but we could never get them to thrive in our previous garden. It's not so sunny toda

The Boathouse in  Birkenhead Park, April 2015. Moving house for the ninth time in my life was organised like a military operation, and the task was completed smoothly with the help of Greens Removals of Chester , who I am very happy to recommend.  All they wanted us to do was keep out of the way while their team of five men loaded their two vans and then, once at the new place, tell them where to put things - which we did, and yet still felt exhausted by the end of the day. Starving, we stood in the unfamiliar kitchen and stared alternately at the ultra-modern computerised oven and its instruction booklet.  The oven did not react as the instructions said it would.  To anyone even remotely familiar with instruction booklets this will come as no surprise.  Richard managed to get the thing going by accidentally pressing the 'wrong' button, which is actually the right button.  The instruction booklet has errors, which effectively undermines its whole purpose for existence - b

Pen & ink drawing by Richard Cosgrove-Bray I have just arrived home from an enjoyable walk with my dogs through the meadows between Hoylake and West Kirby, which stretch around Gilroy Nature Park.  The spring sunshine was bouncing off pools of water lying half-submerged beneath drooping tussocks of winter-bleached grass.  A small flock of goldfinches was flitting around the bare trees.  The birds are back early after wintering abroad.  On the duck pond were the usual mob of Canada geese, mallards, coots and moorhens, plus a large flock of redshank who prefer the pond in the flooded field on the other side of the public footpath. Richard and I are still waiting for the conveyancing on the house sale and purchase to complete.  I went into our estate agents' office on Thursday to enquire into the delay, and asked if the process usually takes this long - 10 weeks and counting, now.  The delay has been caused by our buyer's buyer, who had to wait for a divorce settleme

For the last three years around New Year, I've created a list of goals which I hoped to achieve within the following twelve months.  This is one way to keep track of the progress of various projects and it's a bit of self-entertainment. My goals for 2014 were:- Finish Fabian. Publish a 3rd free ebook anthology which will be called Travel Stories . Write one short story per month (minimum). Continue to collect dolls, swim and have more fun! The bad news is that Fabian:  An Artisan-Sorcerer Story still isn't finished.  The good news is that there remains less than 10,000 words to go, and so the completion of the 100,000 word first draft is well within sight. The proposed free ebook anthology, Travel Stories , has been cancelled as I'll be moving to another area of Wirral and so my involvement with Riverside Writers - the main source of contributions to the ebook - will be greatly reduced.  For the same reason I recently resigned as the group's Chairperson,