In the swim

Swimming is the answer at the moment. The question is a bit more  difficult to get at, but following a bout of norovirus, broken ribs and a DVT just over a week ago, I've decided that life is worth living. Tried out the ribs and the leg with a bit of gentle swimming three days ago. Upped it a bit yesterday and today I did 35 lengths in bunches of five. That's seven sets by my reckoning. The ribs are still sore, but not so much that I need to stop and the leg and breathing are working fine. The best thing is that I feel great after the exercise. Thirty five lengths was a warm up not so long ago, but just now it is fine. I've got a theory about the DVT... it may be bollocks but no one else has come up with an explanation. Okay, so due to the broken ribs and because I have been sitting around a lot, being an art student, I haven't done very much exercise. Just taking Harvey for walks, going up three flights of stairs now and again and that's it. Usually I am pretty active and the blood is rushing around my system, but it hasn't been doing that for about ten weeks or so. Now my resting heart rate is 48, so my blood gets pumped around the old bod at quite a leisurely rate. Usually this all changes when I start running swimming or cycling, but as I say, that hasn't been happening, so the blood has just been ambling around. My lay man's understanding of a blood clot is that the same sort of process is happening in the vein that happens when you cut your skin. The body creates a scab or a clot with some clever little binding thingys. So with the blood moving slowly through the veins some of it attaches to the wall and the binding thingys get going. A clot forms and gets bigger by this process of binding and eventually blocks the vein. Bits detach from the clot and travel up the vein to the heart and lungs and sometimes the brain... which isn't good news. Now I know there are many factors which can cause clots - the pill,  HRT, sitting in a plane, hereditary factors and the 'I haven't got a clue' answer, so who's to know. The interesting thing is that when I got my first DVT in 2007, I hadn't been active for quite a few weeks due to... yes - an injury. In both cases I had been sitting for about 2 -3 hours , driving and writing an essay.(even art students have to write them.) But I had moved around a bit and it seemed unlikely  to me that these were the only causes.
From now on, in between taking rat poison and getting blood tests, I'm going to be getting some nice, regular exercise.

All Clear

Over the last few months, my friend, Christine has been going down to the Western General Hospital to  get a three weekly dose of chemo therapy. Last week she got the results back from the scan and blood test and brilliant news, she is in remission. During the time she spent getting treatment, she continued to swim and run, showing great courage and spirit in the face of adversity. Recently, she had been giving me some tips on swimming stroke improvement, to help me realise my New Year's resolution of swimming less like a snake and more like a swan, and its working. Not my opinion, a long time friend who works at the Loch Centre pointed out my snaky technique to me before Christmas. Yesterday, he said he couldn't believe how much my technique has improved. So, what I have to do now is keep on until the body memory of the good technique is laid down and I don't slip back into my bad old ways. 

I wanted to mark Christine's good news in some way and she had mentioned (on the blog) that she liked one of my paintings, so I put it in a mount and gave it to her... with unanticipated results. And I mean results... yesterday, I got a real spike in the hits on my blog. Usually, the stats are between 20 and 40 hits a day. Yesterday they hit 62 and the majority of them were on the blog which included the painting that Christine liked. You've guessed what happened -  Christine wrote her blog about her recent good news and mentioned  the painting with a hyper-link to it. So lots of people who were reading her log popped over to take a look... sweet or what!

On the painting front, I'm in the middle of a project. I have been bowled over by the conical shaped building I came across at Hedderwick Hill Stables. So I have been back there and sketched it. I did a preliminary painting of it and now I'm doing a bigger one - 20 x 16" As usual I'm learning as I go, so watch this space.

The Fridge.

What a 'weak' end!

Interesting week end. Went to the vet with Harvey on Saturday to get a new splint and bandage cum handle bar tape put on it, then spent the rest of the week end explaining to complete strangers that the whole thing looks a lot worse than it is. He has broken a small bone in his front toe ... not a total crush fracture of the whole leg... pass it on. The bandage lasted one and half days. He broke the splint on the East beach at North Berwick this evening, playing with friends, which includes every dog he ever meets... so another trip to the vet tomorrow looks in order . Saturday afternoon saw me joining  a Life Drawing class (not as the model!) There followed by a session of drills at the triathlon swimming club. Most of them were about swimming on your side, which maybe lead to the very runny nose and all the signs of a cold this morning. This should have given me a good excuse to lay in bed till lunch time, but instead I was harried into a run with Frank along the half marathon route. I bailed out at 'Joiners Brae' making excuses about my cold. I reckon I did 8 of the 13 miles plus a mile home and unbelievably felt a lot better at the end than I did at the beginning.

Water colour class

First day back to Sheena Phillips water colour class today. Sheena must be doing something right because it was a full house of about 20 people. Most of the class from last term were there, but one of the men  was missing, which means there are only two of us now. One advantage of there being so many women present, is that they come laden with cakes and biscuits. The Christmas cake was particularly good. The subject today was light,colour, tone.  and  The painting plan was to use a  limited palette of Naples yellow and neutral tint (a grey colour.) I didn't have either of these colours, so I used paynes grey and yellow ochre. This is the result:

On the way back from Musselburgh, I called into the Loch Centre at Tranent for a swim with Christine. We have been doing some drills that involve swimming for six kicks on one side and then six kicks on the other side. There are some variations of this drill, all with the intention of improving the roll of the front crawl. I'm hoping that this drill and others will help me achieve my New Year's ambition of improving my swimming form.

Festive painting, running and swimming.

I've been keeping busy during the holidays with a mixture of festive running, swimming in the sea and in the pool and sketching and painting, indoors and outdoors.
On Christmas eve, Tom and Phillipa Harley organised a festive run at Pencaitland. About twenty people including a couple of Santa's and lots of tinsel took part in a relay with a Christmas cracker as a baton. It was all followed up with some of Phillipa's delicious baking.
On Boxing day, I went along to North Berwick and joined up with Saartje for a swim in the sea next to the harbour. Luckily the air temperature was unseasonably mild. The swim was great, even though we were both in cossy's. The secret is to keep your head warm... no diving under the water. I took Harvey along with me and Saartje had a brown lab called  Haggis. We left the dogs playing on the beach, only to find that they came in after us. Harvey had some sense and turned back after a short while but Haggis swam around the buoys with us. We were in for about 10 minutes. When we got out, we ran up the beach... a great way of warming up. Later on I posted the work I have been doing on a portrait of Lia. I had taken a few photos of the painting process and posted them too, this is something I hadn't done before and I found it really useful, it's something I will do more of.
The next day, Harvey and I met up with Richard and his dog Sevy, a Rhodesian ridge back and went for a run from Yellowcraigs to North Berwick and back. Sevy, being a big dog lopes along with Richard and exudes a calm feeling of being in the present moment. Harvey, ran as he usually does, criss crossing the beach and occasionally disappearing over the dunes... every dog on the route is given a quick sniff around it's private areas.
On 28 December, I went along to the Loch Centre and worked on my swimming technique. I took the attitude to quantity rather than quality and did a series of sets which I was surprised to add up to 2300 metres. Since then I have come across an on line coaching set-up called Endurance Nation US. They give some great advice on their swimming clinic. I have downloaded their ebook, so New Year's resolution number 1 is to use it to improve my snaky technique and become a streamlined swim swimmer.
Yesterday, I went back to Hedderwick Hill Stables to do a sketch of a conically shaped building that I spotted on the Dunbar running club's festive run. It's  a great place for dogs and a great place to do some sketching. Someone told me that this building was used to with horses walking around in circles to grind flour.... not true. I knocked on the door of a local cottage to ask about it. It's a fridge, which used to store cattle carcasses, the inside is made of slates which  keeps it  cold in the summer. My plan is to turn this sketch into a largish water colour painting, if I can  work out how to make the reddish sandstone colour which the building is made of.

When I finished, I went along to Innerwick and had a run through the fields and along to Oldhamstocks... Stuart Hay country, got back just before dark.

Back in the groove

The last few weeks have seen me getting back into a few of the things I enjoy doing. I have been out running, done some cycling and splashed about in the swimming pool. I always feel alot better when I'm involved in regular exercise, with any luck, I'll keep injury free and get fit again.

I have also renewed my aquaintance with Sheena Philips. I admire her water colour paintings and it's a delight to go to her classes and learn the tricks of the trade. Here is a water colour we did in class over a couple of weeks, called 'The Garden.' On this occassion I would say that the real thing has more impact than this version taken through the scanner

Let's go to school

Those of you who have read my blog over the last few months will have noticed that I’m developing my interest in painting and drawing. At this time of the year there are a lot of opportunities to take adult evening classes in these subjects. The problem is deciding which one(s) to pick. I have been pouring over the courses available in East Lothian and just to make it more difficult, I have had a look at what is available at the Poldrate Arts and Crafts Centre (PACC,) in Haddington. Thankfully, I have come to a decision. I am going to sign up for the Acrylic painting classes at PACC. I have never painted with acrylic, but I have read about it and am intrigued. I also fancy the painting and drawing classes on Tuesday afternoons at PACC, so that shouldn’t interfere too much with other things. On the adult learning side I have paired the options down to Life Drawing at North Berwick and Portraits which are on a couple of week ends in October. Looks like September to December could be busy.




Visited Whitesands beach yesterday, not to paint it this time, but to have a wee swim. I wasn’t the only one. My granddaughter and her friend, my son and two daughters and two dogs all got in. It was breath taking cold to start off with, but amazing how quickly you adapt to it and you are left me feeling very exhilarated. There was only one after affect that I know of- n Harvey, who must have drunk too much sea water and ate too much sand has had very runny diarrhoea today!

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Tumble turns

Still not running due to an Achilles problem. I’ve been doing some swimming and have been out on the bike, which has kept me reasonably sane. Last night I went along to the Tranent swimming club, Masters section. I usually go to this on Mondays because the coaches are helpful. It also means I do breast stoke and back stroke as well as the usual front crawl, this believe it or not is a good thing!. Last night the session was early, due to the summer holidays. I got there at 7 pm and the pool was full of minnows and no masters, so I joined them. The kids are so fit, it makes you get out of breath watching them. The warm up was swimming different strokes around the pool, yes, around the sides and widths. We then practiced tumbles turns (not my best activity.) Then it was how to push off from the wall in breast stroke. The best was still to come – two x 20 sets of tumble turns across the widths. This was followed by swimming underwater for one, then two, then three widths. I was pretty waterlogged when I got out, but those tumble turns will either sort out my technique or kill me!

I have been visiting Butterdean woods with Harvey quite a bit lately. It is a great wood, with lots of native trees in it and some good paths. Here is a sketch in fineliner ink.

I have also sketched my dad recently, here are two of them.

A newbie on the block

I’m a newbie, virgin, just off the boat beginner at the blogging malarkey. The blurb says it's just about writing down your thoughts and sharing them with people… aye right!
If anyone is going to read my blog then it will have to offer them something. I’ve already hinted that I’m a bit of a butterfly, landing on the flower that seems to be the most interesting at the time. Is that a good thing for a blogger to be? In fact, what is a good blogger? In the best traditions of social research, I decided to do some fieldwork and find out what makes a blogger.
First of all the fieldwork. I looked at the styles of well know local and international bloggers. This wasn’t as difficult as it sounded. I had four bloggers who I occasionally read and they acted as my random sample.
First the international blogger Natham Bransford. This guy is a literary agent for a high flying publisher and a highly recommended and prestigious blogger. He lives on the West Coast of the US and writes about all things to do with writing and getting published. Having read some of his posts I noticed two things - he is well received and gets lots of comments – okay three things – he writes very well (annoying ), four things – he writes like a West Coast American, with lots of references such as ‘Let’s shoot for the high country,’ or ’ I'm a Times New Roman guy, so I'd shoot for 3-4 pages double spaced TNR.‘ Having read this I must be on the track of something.
Next comes a well known runner (in East Lothian he is) and jazz enthusiast Stuart Hay. Now I can really relate to this guys wit and in depth knowledge of the said running and jazz, both things I like, but maybe not as much as Stuart. Applying the test of noticing things about his blogs… well yes he does sound a lot like a Scottish runner who likes jazz and has a lot to say about running and jazz. So that can’t be a bad thing can it?
Now I come on to Nicola Morgan, who describes herself as a ‘crabbit old bat’ who helps people who need a publisher. Reading her posts, I notice that she tells her readers that getting published is an incredibly difficult business, rent with heart ache and disillusion and the only thing to do is ‘ never, ever give up writing.’ She also mentions chocolate quite a lot. Now this woman is very successful, she has published loads of books and when I met her she was the chair of the Scottish authors society. Does she live up to her title?… well she likes to think so.
My final piece of research takes in my good friend Christine Howson. Now Christine is a mother, a very good swimmer and she likes triathlons. So we have a lot in common, apart from the mother bit and of course I’m not a very good swimmer, anyway, what she writes about is her family and various aspects of family life and events that happen to her, such as swimming and entering triathlons. I must say that she sounds like a mother a very good swimmer and of course, a marine biologist… that is obvious from the photos on her blog.
So what has my research shown? Well all four bloggers are good writers and they write like the people they are, and about the things that are important to them.
And what have I learned?
1. A blogger is a person who likes writing and posting things on a blog site.
2. It’s important to be a good writer.
3. It’s a good idea to write about things you are interested in with a style which is instantly recognisable as your own and not somebody who lives in San Francisco.
4. It helps if the things that interest you, also interest other people who can comment on what you have written.
5. Reading other people’s blogs is good idea.

Now that I have carried out this research I feel ready to move on to the next stage in my blogging career and find out how to become a good writer. Work out which of the many things I am interested in, I should write about. After that I can write a little tag line describing my blog and what it is about… brilliant.