Early Days...The Potters House Penketh

 Sometimes I start looking through my photo files for something ...

..and then have to stop at an image I'd completely forgotten about...

...such are these early pics from the beginnings of the business we now call 

The Potters House Penketh.

This is a pic of the very first sales day at St Joseph's Summer Fair on Meeting Lane in Penketh...late 70s.

Well the clothes say it all......!

..and hiding behind me advising on prices and top saleswoman...is my lovely late mum over from the troubles in Belfast for a week of peace.

You can see that it wasn't all Alan's ceramics then he was still teaching... 

...as head of art at Penketh High School.

We backed quite a few of the Traidcraft organisations.

And I also did a bit of dealing in vintage and collectables..anything to get the business going.

Every Tuesday I hired "The Institute" on the main Warrington Road.

This is a pic of sisters who came with their mum and shared the building..it was a place of fun and friendship.

Later it became a coffee house for the local church..St. Paul's Penketh and was renamed "The Manna House" ..and when sold on to a young local entrepreneur...Andrew Mulholland...it kept it's name and is used for grand parties and celebrations.

It meant a lot of packing and unpacking and lugging heavy boxes of ceramics and craft goods.

...and our old car at that time often needed a push to get the engine going!

There were many lovely people who became involved by baking and making for stalls.

So much laughter and naughty innocence...it was great to remember it all as I looked through the file of pics.  

The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter 3... The Road

Chapter Three

The Road Taken

                               
Journeys nowadays are speedy affairs... well that is if the traffic isn’t too jammed up... or the road works aren’t bringing us all down to one lane . But in these days that I write about, there were no bypasses or dual carriageways, so every trip was a major undertaking.
Which of course made it all the more exciting.

There was one special road that led to Newtownards. We called it, “The Switchback”.
It had no bends in it at all ... it was simply a dead straight road going up and down and over the hills. .The alternative road...the wider road was more regular, and thus deemed boring. So the cry went up from the kids on the back seat, “Dad, please take the hilly route!”.
As far as I can remember nobody was car-sick, but that may be because I didn’t want to admit to such feelings. Hauling your stomach back inside you as the car bounced over the top of the hills time after time, with Ian shouting “faster, faster dad!”, meant that I couldn’t let myself down by admitting to nausea.
Through Newtownards and the road edged along Strangford Lough, eventually turning left towards the village of Carrowdore. Isn’t it odd the feelings you get on some roads? It seemed to me that it was out in the wilds and had a wild west deserted look to it. Thinking back, farming wasn’t the pretty, crafty place that a lot of it seems in the fashionable magazines today...and the people were possibly poor cottage farmers....I'm not sure. Or maybe it’s just another example of my insatiable imagination!
 Right turn at the end of the village and we’re almost at the field, the farm, the caravan,
                                                             
                                                                     Ballyferris.

. Ah! Ballyferris! What magic is conjured up even at the mention of the name. As we come over the last hill the competition is on to be the first to shout out...“I see the sea”. ?
 I really, really want it to be me. …but usually it was my big brother Ian, Iupy ...the son‘n’heir.
Now and again we journeyed down by a different road, driving past the old windmill at Millisle, before turning right to join the coast road again. That was always a great route because dad really loved icecream, and there was a wonderful shop in Millisle selling cream ice in a poke (that’s a cone to you!) ...which was then dipped into melted chocolate and the joy as you crunched through the hard shell of the chocolate made a memory never to be forgotten.. So we were happy bunnies when we reached the field...........

 

..if also rather sick!

Poem...Gathering Bones

ipad drawing of bones at Largy

I’m gathering bones together

On the studio floor.

Crouching down and

Staring at an  assemblage.

Here a nest of bones as

Pale as shadows

On the polished wood.

There a craze of broken glass with

Distorted reflections.

I’m Alice.

Walking through a splintered world

Bridging the actual and

The probable.

 I’m pacing the room and

Glancing back at a vanitas. I 

hear the sound of my own wretched bones

And weep at coming death.

... after reading Gregory Orr’s poem…."Gathering the bones together".

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I'm involved with an email post called

LITERARY COMFORT FOODS

It's such a good link with people who inspire me in so many different ways and with the lockin holding fast the internet is such a blessing.

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This poem was sent and received and a grand kind critique along with it also.

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I've plucked up enough techie courage to send it to 20 others.

Poets, artists, musicians.

My only mistake...as dad used to say...was not reading the instructions carefully.

20 women.

I put 3 men it there!!

Ooops

I think they deserve to be there!

Song for Spring

Song for Spring

Praise be to the swallows

Who dared to venture north this week

Praise be to those fellows.

Praise be to the sun

All glorious in the shadows it throws

Praise be to the sharp sun.

Praise be to the green grass

Softening the verges with the red bilberry

Praise be for the petrichor.

Praise be to the coal black ravens

Nesting high in the tallest beech trees

Praise be for cawing birds.

Praise be for the seasons

Catching us unawares each year

Praise be for the northern spring.

...there is time to enjoy and time to reflect...

Art challenge...Day Six...Jonah in the Boat Asleep.

Day Six of the potters art challenge.

Many of the series Alan has produced have been based on well known Bible Stories. 

This is from the story of Jonah who disobeyed instructions...and ended up inside a BIG fish!....he eventually obeyed ...though still wasn't very happy...read it for yourself!

In this piece from the series Jonah is asleep in the boat...just before they throw him off to the fish!!!! Typical of the potter's sense of humour.

Day Four Art Challenge....Alan Snape

Day Four...Alan Snape's Art Challenge and this Penguin is proudly showing off her/his Venetian crown. 

We spent many happy hours at The Brighton Arts Festival at The Open House of @AnneliesClarke for some years. 

She asked us to consider a Venetian Theme and this is what the potter came up with and very happy we are that he did. 

You can find them in the galleries that supply his ceramics as well as here at The Potters House Penketh......... there are other less theatrical penguins available ........!!

Alan Snape's Art Challenge...Day two.

Day Two for the "Potters" seven day art challenge.

one of the main ceramic pieces that Alan has produced here at The Potters House Penketh has been The Landscape Pots. these have each been individually produced with both land and seascapes.

These can be seen at our shop and gallery and also the galleries that stock his work in Southwold, Snape Maltings and Whitstable.

Day One...and the work from Alan Snape...aka the potter...

This is from the early days when he was still working on canvas and wood and metal assemblages....

"Honesty"...oil on board.6x6...still on the wall in our home...I love it. Gx

A Poem for Thursday

This poem has had a spring clean....some editing!

It amazing what a month or two of lying low can do for words.

The arrogance of birds...
or ...
The jealousy of ground dwellers.

Here's what you get for having a tree in your garden.

You get magpies and crows, wood pigeons and robins,

 Who perch on the very top branch in an April morning

When the mellowness of Spring mists are rising.

And they look down at the world around them

 Feeling superior to us below at ground level.

And that's what you get for allowing a tree

To reach its ultimate height...... apart from the oxygen.

...you can see more of my pics at instagram geraldinesnape

A Poem for Thursday..."A Time in Times"

 

There are times in all of our lives when we have to stop on the road we are travelling...look around at the circumstances...and review the situation.

 

It can be a change of direction is needed...and a change of priorities

 

This was our experience...it made us the people we are today.

 

A Time in Times.

We disappeared into a nether world.

Became invisible and without form.

People who had known us passed by unblinking

Those who sensed our presence were few and far between.

All that we had been had disappeared with the mists of time.

Persona non gratis is what we became.

Even Harry Potter could not have gone as completely as we did.

So new rules had to be formed.

New priorities and timings worked out.

This nether world was to us an enigma.

And so we set to learn the laws in our new country.

A Poem for Thursday...."The Aunt"

AUNT HELEN
I once heard them call her the weak one,
The youngest, the runt of the pack.
Without grace they said, weak-boned
Hen-chested,  round backed.
Taken away from her mother perhaps
Taken away too soon?
Taken away from family
And the comforts of her home.
I loved her, I love her still,
It was never a slight for me
To get the sharpness of her tongue
Or the sting of her repartee.
Dympsy pink, eau de nil!
Mauve and duck egg blue.
Cherry trees in the late spring
From the veranda viewed.
Garlic flowers in the woods behind
And the heady perfume of bells.
I gathered up armfuls in April days
Of the blueing crooks in the dell.
Now all I have is the ground I stand on,
That and nothing more.
And fast fading memories of our walks
On the  lough's grey stoney shore.
And the smell of tweed skirt from Donegal,
 Damp in the moist-laden air.
With a whiff of the essence of violets
That told you the aunt had been there.

The Greening of Penketh.

The local council has set up a programme of tree planting here in Penketh...hooray!!...

We have been doing our own greening over the 34 years since we took over the land which belonged to Greenalls the brewers.

Then it was used as an unofficial tip...dumping ground for old bikes, prams, wooden windows and shattered glass....awful.

Below is the birch stand we started to plant as each member of our family was born.

Now there are eleven...and probably no more until the grandgirls...all five...add to the numbers...one day!!!

Each April I watch the greening of the birch grove and marvel at the soft green leaves as they develop.

A Poem for Thursday...."The Flood"

 

"Noah survives the Flood"...ceramic by Alan Snape

The Flood

Two four six is a children’s rhyme.

Two, four and six is the sleepy time.

Don’t frighten the kids just give them a smile.

Can’t go swimming for the waves are too high.

It’s only the earth dear when all’s said and done.

It’s just the blue planet, see… we orbit the sun.

There’s no need for temperate people to fear.

They’re far, far away from the garden my dear.

Go fly a kite while the winds are so high.

But don’t frighten the children,

Just give them a smile.

I wrote this quite a while ago after the Japanese tsunami.....

...since then edited it...

but I should think ...the people of Somerset are wondering about Noah and whether they should start building those boats.

Leighton Moss...Autumnwatch...

I was only 15 when I first came to The Bay...

 ..that's me looking like a tomboy rather than the glamorous two beside me!

...the Bay of course being...

...Morecambe Bay..

..with the most amount of sand in any of the British bays...though often...deadly....100 sq. mls of it!!

...it's quick...very quick!!

Skirting the bay is a wonderful nature reserve called ....

...Leighton Moss.

Up on a twitter site came the information that the BBC Autumnwatch  series this year was to be based by the bay.

So we went... and loved it...

...not so much because of the birds...we are not birders let alone twitchers..

...nor the deer just entering their rutting season...

..also interesting..

...and we didn't catch sight of the beavers...bah...

..no we just went to be nosey I suppose, and then got caught up in it's otherworldliness.

I took the Lumix Panasonic DMC-FZ45 with me to take some pics...

...but my tiddling little camera was as nothing compared to the whoppers owned by the serious snappers..

...why some even had a sort of structure on their back to hold the length of the thing!!

So I resorted in the end to my Apple ipad and took some views on Instagram...which I have to say is such fun!!

But you know me...I haven't yet worked out how to transfer them to my blog...

one day!

So here are a few pics taken with the camera..

and edited a smidgen on Picdeer, beavers, birdsMonkey.

..you can see that it's well worth a visit.

Maybe catch you there one day...who knows!!

A Poem for Thursday...dVerse openlinknight week 106

Today

we met again

after forty years

this shrunken woman/child

with the monkey grin

who backed away

even as I stepped forward with

“Do you remember me?”...

“Oh yes”.

Once, she walked

hippety hop …up on her toes

once beat on a drum

‘til my eardrums screamed

STOP!

though through it all

my monkey smile

stayed

fixed round my teeth.

Memories

strummed memories on my heart

when I saw her again

taught and taut

the strings of lost feelings

singing out .

Word on the street is

she’s become a poet.

so two years up and moving forward in the poetry cyberworld is dVerse...and this one is for openlinknight week106. have fun everyone!!