In Slate

 

SLATE REPORT

 

The story of the slates.

Many years ago, my folks were offered fairly serious money for some really old tiles on a really old cottage. They turned it down - wanting to preserve some sort of ideal.
I always felt- "sod that" - we could use that money to competently re-roof it with good composite tiles.

 

 

So the years past
and came a point where the whole of the roof had to be fixed ~ There were no other alternatives.

 



 

So -

It was basically a family affair & we painstakingly stripped the roof. The slates were pretty weak, crumbly & probably not worth anything at all - useful for hobby enthusiasts maybe.
Ho Ho.

I piled them up in little stacks.
They can be used again, if you construct little lead washers to fit over the frayed holes. In order to build small "hobby" roo(ve)s

 
I suppose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I mean,

When you haven't got video, wi fi, phone or car - What can you do?



For me,

Its an age old problem of when I try to improve on an idea - make it bigger and better - I can lose the initial spirit of it.
When I take a sketch and upgrade it with etching to glass or metal, the actual "nowness" of the process gives it a newer life, more vibrancy.
Scratching onto slate doesn't do too badly
 

 

I found
a three inch screw and sheaved it in a duck tape holster.
Day by day, I couldn't live without duck tape.

 

 

Not especially this one, but  some of the slates were better represented and more readable when inverted and adjusted on a computer. (Digitally Yours)

 

 

 

 I found that on occasion the image would actually be progressing when digitally manipulated. Well fair enough - who am I to argue with progress?

 

Mammox

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 PANGENTAL

  

 

One specific train of thought started during a conversation with my brother Tim who considered some of the images to be "otherworldly"

Which prompted me to get the dictionary out:

Mystical

Supernatural

Unearthly

Weird

Impractical

 

Out of this world

Marvelous

Miraculous

Superb

 

Of this world

Temporal

Terrestrial

Lay

Material

Mortal



 

I started to think that a lot of the beings that I seemed to be giving life to where a bit hybrid, griffin like - more heraldic than mythological.

Maybe spirits in their own right rather than sentient beings that had any interest in our existence whatsoever.

 

 

On the "weathered" side of the slate

 

 

I suppose that I do believe other life forms exist, but they don't have anything to do with whether we are good or bad or what may or may not happen to us when we die.

*

 

Poltroon

 

 

Hedge Man

 

*

*

 

 

Anyway, Ive started looking for names of sprites and after conversation and wine came up with "Hob" who seems to be a localised house spirit.

 

*

 

 

Then I wonder, what is the Gremlin like thing that clings to some poor blokes back and simply wont let go?

A bit like that cold advert with a mucus monster.

 

 

I make a bird - start at it's beak - go down to its feet.

 

 

 

*

 

*

*

 

 

Life in a conch shell

 

 

 

 

 

 *

 

 

The prayer flags fluttered in the stiff breeze.

 

 

 

Pangental

This post is in memory of Grandma Macleod who showed me a different nature to doodling.
"Wanderings of the spirit" as she called it.