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Sefryn Penrose

@everydayelvis

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Seacreature, mapreader, roadrunner, daydreamer

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Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

15 October

Half way through the month. How did that happen? Time to remind you that I'm not doing this for the good of me health. Wtf. What kind of fool do you take me for? I'm rotting from the ears in. I'm shrinkwrap sealed with a thin film of the excretia of thousands.
I am doing it because, as the Harbour Commissioner reminds us with almost Newlyn standard regularity, there's a shit storm in the water again. Is it the Harbourmaster's duty? I don't 'kin know. The Environment Agency has a big red no on swimming off the Hoe today. And yesterday and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow no doubt. What does South West Water say? Something about why we're still in drought. Idk lads maybe because you let all that tasty rain make soup out of our shit and put it out to sea. Why? Do you think it's going to evolve into a Toxicroak that can hitch a lift on that monster RFA Proteus and play underwater autonomous warfare with the Russians? I've got news for you. The 'kin thing can't see the Russians through the shit haze you've pumped into the Sound. Oooh! But we need to invest in defence! Oh put a sock puppet in it Swinney. If you're going to invest, invest in all this leaky creaky crapfrastructure ffs. Make floaters in a National Marine Park rare again. Find the magic money trees you croagunks. Ask Mariana. She knows where they are. You know who else can see them, through their creepy Google glasses? The parasitic public good gulpers at the likes of Lazard Ass-hat Management who suck the shiny stock out of the literal shit show that is Pennon Water. Happy little boardrooms of illuminati island-hoppers like Peter Mandelson and David Prior. Arrows in the eye for them. They can optrex with pure Plym springwater.

My grouch is too long for this branch of Metaslime. Ragebait fully in pic or on Disgracebook.

Speaking of slop.... Link in bio
https://surfers-against-sewage.sync.giving/fr/cr-03r1v0j0o9om

Swim location: Uncivil Beach
Companions: Piccini the Grouch; a man whose qi we unbalanced; barstaff who know a good song well sung; unholy parasites
Today: National Grouch Day
People of Today: the og master of both waste and grouching, Oscar the Grouch by @everydayelvis

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a day ago

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

14 October

It's all about standards. We have standards. Here are the standards: Wastewater & Water Services (ISO/TC 147 & ISO/TC 224). More sewage advisories to stay out of the water and my ear aches.

You know what else has standards? Systems of classification. For fossils for example, class: order: family: genus: species. Over at Western King Site of Special Scientific Interest I went looking for fossils. Not hunting because we leave them be. Just look at them and measure them. What I really wanted to find was its famous conodonts: the tooth-like structures of tiny, extinct, eel-like chordates. But I don't know what that looks like so who knows if I found it. Fossil finders, like others I know, like to poke around in Devonian cleavages. I must say it is pass-timeable indeed.

At Western King, the tide rises quickly and it's good to remember that one outcrop will block off Firestone Bay for you if you get lost in cleavages. So I find myself wading through tooth-like structures of giant, alive things wondering why I never bring the sea shoes to the right swims.
Anyhow. ISO 15314:2018. Plastics-Methods for marine exposure and others. Some technofossils of interest were found. I couldn't remove most, so embedded in the cleavages were they. And then I almost became one myself.

Class: back to elementary fossil school for you Penrose
Order: Order of the Dip-a-Day Fools
Family: none that were around to rescue me
Genus: not a genius
Species: specious
You can see my fossils in the pix. One of them is definitely a weathered ammonite. Different standards of measuring.

Swim location: Western Kings Point
Today: World Standards Day (big up the ISO); National Fossil Day (US, but I have heritage, whatever Malcolm); I Love You Day (I love you); National Dessert Day (be thankful for small mercies)

www.worldstandardsday.org
royalwilliamyard.com/things-to-do/geo-trail
www.plymouth.gov.uk/western-king-geological-sssi
#dipaday by @everydayelvis

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a day ago

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

13 October

We have all lost best beloveds to breast cancer. We all have best beloveds that have survived it. It's No Bra Day. A day in the Breast Cancer Awareness Month calendar and if you want to drop extra dolla today, Ma Pen did a lot of extra walking in September to raise money for Cancer Research.

Or there's lots of other great folks doing the good work. Nobody needs health advices from me, but y'know, follow the guidance for your age/life. Don't let the docs fob you off if you're spooked. Hold your loved ones dear. Feel their boobs. Feel your own boobs. Feel the boobs of your polycule. Feel all the boobs (consensually obvs).

And send all the love to all the people and hold 'em close even if they're gone. Too much! I know. No Bra Day has made me ponderous as well as pendulous.

It's also Yorkshire Pudding Day. Don't say I never give you anything.

Things I learnt today: Yorkshires - no good at all in the water; Aunt Bessy's - not enough coverage of your Aunt Bessies; I have an embarrassment threshold I didn't know about AND YET I CROSSED IT. My body, my art. My Yorkshires, my medium. The medium is the message.

Swim location: Moldova
Companions: none that I knew, but rather too many for the matter in hand (an unholy abundance of Yorkshire puddings and boobs to be specific about that matter)
Today: Breast Cancer Awareness Day; No Bra Day; Yorkshire Pudding Day

https://breastcancernow.org/about-breast-cancer/touch-look-check
https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/angelas-giving-page-133185 by @everydayelvis

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3 days ago

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

12 October

Piccini spent the afternoon wrestling with a data projector. Penrose is in a tender hole and not the good kind. All the other not-the-good-kind-holes will cost more than the national debt to fill. Yesterday was Mental Health Day, but that's all over now. There's fools and idiots sitting on the trigger. Best go for a swim. Why scream into the void when you can scream into the sea mist?

Swim location: Tinside Steps
Companions: "Mad as Hell" Piccini; two bemused Tinsiders; gulls thinking mutual kawing is fun. All the fine folk at the Dolphin now the screaming is done. Celine, at first, rising. Imminent. Beautiful South. Visibility good. Living La Vida Loca. Very high. Falling quickly. Fiddles, moderate to good. Accordion polkas. Becoming cyclonic.
Today: International Moment of Frustration Scream Day
People of this Day: Ruth and Thomas Roy: the og carpe diemers. Fun folk who literally made my day. https://wellcat.com/pages/holidays by @everydayelvis

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4 days ago

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,
11 October

In the 1180s, the Canadian Knight, Dom Fuas Roupinho was riding full kilter after a beautiful deer in the wooded Tamar Valley. On he galloped. Ere he got close, the deer would disappear, reappear through the trees, out of reach again. Charging on, Dom Fuas barely noticed as one of they Plymouth sea mists descended, barely noticed as wooded terrain gave way to rocky ground, barely noticed the muffled crashing of the sea. Touching distance from the deer, it veered, hard left, and suddenly, chasming below, the crashing Atlantic, chomping and salivating. He threw a prayer to the Virgin. Intercession. An apparition. On the cliff edge, her hand held palm out to halt the horse. In a rocky grotto -the "stone house" that gave the area its name- Dom Fuas fell to his knees and gave thanks. He promised the mysterious figure of the Virgin of Nazaré that he would honour her. A great spiritual centre. Pumpkin pie. Venison with all the trimmings, if only he could catch it. These 850-odd years later, on the site of the old Winter Palace, built by Dom Fuas' descendants, the Earls of Edgecombe, the nuns of Nazaré look over Tranquility Bay with their charges. A statue of Our Lady clutches a lighthouse in the colours of Dom Fuas' home flag. The maple leaves will soon fall around her. Only a special few enter the crypt, where an ancient wooden Virgin stands. Some say, horses' hooves are imprinted in the ground there, beside the indents of Dom Fuas' knees.

These crashing waves now lure Big Wave Hunters in search of the 100-ft ride. It's crashing today, warm and wild. I forgot my togs. But that's fitting enough. Most of the thousands of worshippers that gathered here for the Círio de Nazaré have dispersed but some still bob their thanks, dressed in Dom Fuas' heraldic plaid. The sea plays with us but intercession is ours. We leave gifts of maple syrup and Nanaimo bars to give thanks for our own Canadians.

Location: Tranquility Bay
Companions: N.S. Fatima standing in for N.S. Nazaré
Today: Canadian Thanksgiving 🇨🇦; Cīrio de Nazaré 🇵🇹🇧🇷
*Details may be confused. Don't @me.
https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/cirio-de-nazare-the-taper-of-our-lady-of-naz by @everydayelvis

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4 days ago

37 Looe Street hosts

✨ MAYLYA ✨

For @plymartwkndr

We’re over the moon to be hosting the glorious Sovay Berriman @sovayberriman in residence!

Maylya is a performance to camera, exploring themes of ancestry, labour, responsibility and connectedness, made during residency at the National Trust’s East Pool Mine. The (13.11min) will be installed in the gallery. In response to the work, all this week Sovay will also be working with copper from the former Plymouth Arts Centre.

Plymouth Art Weekender:

Friday: 11:00–17:00
Saturday: 11:00–17:00
Sunday: 11:00–16:00

37 Looe Street opening event - Fri, 16 October 2026, 18:00–21:00

@everydayelvis
@aapiccini by @everydayelvis

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4 days ago

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

10 October

Today could have been a real coup. I got friends in high places, I thought, I can pull this off. Plymouth Lord Mayor, Mayor Kev, is no doubt mayoring up to the gills today, but Deputy Lord Mayor, Ma Pen, could be lured down to the sea in her ceremonial chains for a swim and a hug, and that would make for an excellent proxy on Hug a Kevin Day. Hug a Deputy Kevin.

Not to be. The DLM is out politicking. Fighting the good fight. Worry not. Everyday is a day of plenty. I toddled down Bretonside to The Old Queeriosity Shop. Happy Bookshop Day! I wished El, the purveyor of these fine books. I picked up a copy of Sacha Coward's Queer As Folklore. Next stop, The Book Cupboard, on the Parade. This cornucopian cavern spooked us all by closing for a few months on the death of its owner. But his family have reopened it. Praise Be. For this city is underserved by independent booksellers. I was too early for it today though, so happy enough in the company of queer sprights I stepped into a very low tide, sewage-warned Tinside West. What am I wearing? This bikini isn't mine! Oh! What are you wearing Angela? That is mine!

Swim location: Moldova
Companions: Bookshop; wanton mermuses; Angela - mermaid on the shore'o. No Kevins.
Today: Bookshop Day; Costume Swap Day; Hug a Kevin Day.
People to celebrate Today: @toqs_lgbt; the_book_cupboard_uk (the last second hand bookshop in Plymouth); Mayor Kevin Sproston, macebearer Kevin; @sapphos_Plymouth - why not buy the book I just bought and read it there and not in the sea? by @everydayelvis

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6 days ago

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

9 October

A curious event happened today. Sovay and I wandered the waterfront chasing the late-in-the-day sunshine pressing down on the swelly sea. At the side steps at Tinside East -wind a so' wester, so the most sheltered spot- a swimmer was just hauling in, the excitable rising tide landing him safely on the steps. It'll just gently push you back in, he said reassuringly. I was just letting it heave me out when a glimpse of orange caught my eye. A strange shape drifting towards us. I swam out to see what it was. An odd little hollow boat. Funny little windows with some kind of script or sigil emblazoned. A striking woman inside. I ahoyed her and she replied. Utmost communion but mutually incomprehensible. We garbled at each other for a while. She curled her lip on sighting the modicum of sewage scum clinging to the steps. A sense that this happened a lot. I told her that our MP said we shouldn't swim at the moment. She rolled her eyes, gestured back the way she'd come, towards the glorious glow still opening up in the west. We posed for a photo and off she went. No power, no engine. But once she was out of the swim zone, she and her little boat quietly whooshed away.

I mention the curious event to Mo. "Oh, sounds like the utsurobune," he says. Thanks be for friends who know these things. "Utsurobune," Mo continues, "The hollow ship. We first find it recorded in 1815. Records seem to accord with an incident of 1803 when fishermen reported just such a vessel as you describe". A woman stepped out of it, about 20 years old. She could speak no Japanese and wasn't understood. She got back in her ship and left. "The fisherman said that the interior of the ship was covered with writing, and that she had a box, a water bottle and a pair of boots." Just so, I said, like a pair of og Fluevogs, and the bottle like the ridiculously expensive one Binh An wanted for Christmas. She was older than 20 though, despite her catwalk looks. But I wouldn't have said she was 243. Well, an all round mystery. What a curious event.

Swim location: Tinside East
Companions: DoP: Sovay Berriman; Master of Mystery: Mo Bottomley; 謎の訪問者
Today: Curious Event Day by @everydayelvis

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7 days ago

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

8 October

Some many moons ago, a Swedish girl asked my name and I said "Sef" and got ready to correct the inevitable, but she got it. "Sef, like cephalopod". She resisted my charms. Maybe because I wasn't a cephalopod. Maybe because she was a marine biologist. Today, International Lesbian Day and World Octopus Day. October 8 because 8 legs and 3 hearts and no bones and blue blood is what we all have in common. Octopuses are on the up. "The UK might have about five tonnes of octopus just a few years ago and we're now in the thousands of tonnes," Ed from Plymouth Fishing and Seafood Association says. A veritable floating world, but a bit of market havoc. They get all slippy in the lobster pots. You've seen those prints. They've done for the brown crabs. But so have the parasites from the pollution so y'know, look closer to home lads. Things I have learnt about Octopuses this year that might also be true of lesbians: they have communal nurseries, they're building cities out of scallop shells and scrap metal, they like to dress in practical clothes (shells) but can also dress glitzy (shells), they're getting into hats (shells), they throw shit at guys they don't like, they might strangle and bite the heads off ones that make unwanted advances, they really wanna get their beaks all up into clams. Let's revive the old Octopus Cult (5 Oct throwback - iykyk)

A lot of female octopuses die once their babies are brewed. But if their optic glands (not nerves, not nervy, we) are removed they leave the babies and live their lives. 4 more months. So it's World Sight Day too. Eyedk. But I've read a lot today about octopuses and it just really makes me wonder about marine biologists.

We were cold when we arrived. But the water: warm and buff. Enough to make an octopus wanna bloom. Tentacular.

Arms: I have 4 already - 4 more made of tights + bubble wrap
Mantle: net - left over from Gullfest scrapstore loot
Tentacle: what you don't have one?
Swim location: Swan Landing
Companions: Angelapod
Today: International Lesbian Day (originally 🇳🇿🇦🇺 - no coincidence that's where the Octo cities are); World Octopus Day; World Sight Day. by @everydayelvis

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8 days ago

6 October

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

I asked my neighbour if she could lend me a pool noodle. It's International Noodle Day. (It's International Taco Day too but you can't handle that 🌮). She could but I started to stress about the closed-cell polyethylene foam which -as you know- degrades due to sunlight, chemicals, and physical wear and is a neurotoxin. Hey, you asked. You always come out with more than you went in with. Much like intergenerational wealth transfer. So I took some pho noodles instead. They did just the job keeping me afloat as I received 5 euros from Ma Pen. It was a transaction fraught with peril. Barnacle scratches trigger me (stop me if you've heard this one before) and Ma Pen nearly slipped.

Beautifully warm at Uncivil Cove. A few other October swimmers and a baby receiving her own milky wealth transfer from her ma while her dad did the dip. Ma Pen intervenes for the next gen girl child and advocates ISAs. I don't know that they're what they used to be, but thanks for bailing out Bertie after His Majesty's Revenue & Customs ate my profit margins. Nothing like running your own business to make you peeved at Reeves and steely with Healey. Nothing like Revenue & Customs to make you want to run rum. But you know I reserve most of my coldwater ire for that traitor Osborne. Arrow in the eye for you Gideon. But I'll take that 5 euros if you tax that pardoned crook that owns that yacht that's been hanging out in the free parking spot off Drake's Island for the last couple of months (how many floating padel courts does an 89 year old need? This is not ageist: everyone knows the elders are tennis purists.) Oh it's moved on to Gibraltar. Anyhow. Thanks Ma Pen (for bail outs and bail bonds. All I have to offer is bail buckets).

Location: Uncivil Beach
Companions: Ma Pen, Angela, breastfeeding girl child, Octobrrrs.
Today: Transfer Money to Your Daughter Day
People of this Day: wealth fund kleptocrats that own money transfer subsidiaries; mothers and daughters; honeys with moneys
https://www.jrf.org.uk/wealth-funding-and-investment-practice/how-can-the-great-wealth-transfer-enable-people-and-planet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviva_(98m_yacht) by @everydayelvis

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10 days ago

5 October

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

It was a naked girl, with her back to him. She was not quite naked. She wore a broad leather belt round her waist with a hunting knife in a leather sheath at her right hip. The belt made her nakedness extraordinarily erotic. She stood not more than five yards away on the tideline looking down at something in her hand.

Honey Rider is collecting Venus Elegans, or Hysteroconcha dione. You can go down a spectacular rabbit hole on that filthy bivalve and its scandalous nomenclature. I recommend it. Far too sexy to wear a shirt. I make do with scallop shells from A birthday feast at Rocket Stores, Boscastle; a knife borrowed from a fancy restaurant; but a genuine Navy belt at least. In the movie, released 64 years ago today, Ursula Andress wears a white bikini and a genuine Navy belt and is intent on queen conches.

Harlyn Bay. The water is as warm as that private Caribbean island. A little more embonpoint than anyone wants to see, but art is art: this reenactment, performed by the book last night, sans bikini, in the close moist mist while smugglers lanterns danced in the coves; and as per the film today. White bikini ok ok old white bra. Ursula's bikini has its own Wikipedia page. But those shorts could almost be Daniel Craig La Perla no? Anyhow, I'm more of a Jane Seymour girl. Don't judge. We can't choose our awakenings. And I'm here to deliver you the environmental message of Dr No anyway. He says he's birdwatching. She asks him, what kind of bird? Roseate spoonbills. They're all gone, says Honey. But she's overfishing the clam beds anyway. We celebrate with what is definitely a dry martini shaken not stirred and not -as Angela says- the most vile thing I've ever had in my mouth (insert your own punchline). A tin of Absolut passionfruit martini if you must know. Don't do it kids. Just Smirnoff your Um Bongo.

Location: Harlyn Bay
Companions: Angela -so much more Andres- and Frodo the dear old deaf spaniel
Today: James Bond Day
People of this Day: Ursula Andress, Eon Productions
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/dacosta.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_bikini_of_Ursula_Andress
#dipaday by @everydayelvis

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11 days ago

4 October

Dear Dip-a-Day Diary,

I had it in mind to go to St Nectan's Waterfall - where they found a unicorn last year - but so did everybody and Mo brought to mind the rock-cut spirals of Rocky Valley - Glynn Duwy (dark river). The spirals are a repeated motif in the Museum of Witchcraft so go where the spirit takes you on your birthday. Spiraling spiraling. Other motifs of that magical repository of charms and the less charming: horned skulls of caprinae, feet of musteloidea wrapped in atrophied ancient scripts, felines felines felines. Animals you might say. We stopped by St Piran's Well to honour that venerable drunkard with his animal acolytes, Bear, Badger and Fox - Badh, Brogh and Lowarn.

Down rocky valley where slated steps shelve into cool pools - sleek black and grey but for flashes of iron in the black rock of the Trevillet River - dark river indeed. Down go St Francis and I. My St Francis was smashed when a poet backed into the gull shrine at Gullfest in June but his top half survives. He's from Brazil via Oxford. Still bedecked by seagulls. It's a birthday suit day. We wait for the area to clear and I'm almost dressed again when we notice the clear horde of geography students cresting the ravine smirking like juvenile crows.

But my cold shower in the chill, flashy stream is over. I am bathed in the rain-rinsed nutrients of field, fowl and farm animal, before it splashes into the waters of Avalon.

Swim Location: Rocky Valley, Bossiney
Companions: Geographers; Angel
Today: World Animal Day; Feast of St Francis of Assisi
People of this Day: St Francis; dog lovin' Heinrich Zimmerman
#dipaday by @everydayelvis

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11 days ago