#1276 theoldmortuary

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, domestica, SerendipityLeave a comment
Current work in Progress

26 years ago I started my journey towards taking a degree in Fine Art. Something I wanted to do at 18. Suddenly art began to create a bigger need for stuff. Evening classes and short courses prior to this moment tended to provide materials so art stuff had not left a big footprint in my storage. The next 26 years have been significantly different. Two homes have had actual art studio spaces. Two have not and currently I have a hybrid space that requires me to be more sensible about what I keep and what I don’t. However the garage at our current home housed 26 years of my creative left overs. As an art gear archive the garage was pretty poor, and it had been packed by our removers. For some reason on the last day of the fifth heatwave the time had come to sort out and clear 26 years of stuff that might come in useful in a creative way. Occasionally I dug into the various blue IKEA bags but nowhere near often enough to make the storage a sensible use of space.

After the clear out

The garage is clear now, two trips in the camper van did the job. A small amount of materials went into my current workspace.

I had thought a clear garage was just a long overdue project, but it turns out it is not just the garage that is clear. My head is significantly lighter. A good few hours of going through and getting rid of old paintings and the associated materials I gathered on the way has been astonishingly cathartic.

What a puzzling and delightful outcome.

#1275 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Devon, Serendipity, Stonehouse, Words1 Comment
Breakfast of figs, fresh from the tree. Strawberries were from a supermarket.

We seem to be on the backside of the fifth heatwave of 2026. We woke up to an entirely different feel this morning. More normal for an English summer, some overnight rain and cooler. Dull.

Since May my days have been planned around heat avoidance. Today there is no need to take Lola out for an early morning walk to avoid her getting over hot and her paws getting sore from baking pavements. Today all thoughts of sun drenched and over-saturated colours have faded to greige.

I walk past this sign almost every day of my Stonehouse life. It protects a car park of 11 spaces overlooking  one of the most interesting sea views in England.

Joy Sucking Car Park Sign

Every day I look at this sign and think. Surely this could be achieved in less dispiriting language and still deliver respectful and appropriate parking.

You can hear and feel the joy and colour being sucked out of peoples souls as they are confronted with this message in such a beautiful spot.

The Cafe itself does not suck joy. Drinks are served in ceramic mugs, the cheesy chips go down very well. Especially with fresh figs during a heatwave.

Their bacon butties ignite warmth in winter swimmers.

But that sign! Every day my heart slumps a little bit as I feel joy being extracted excruciatingly by words, harshly used, in a beautiful place.

#1274 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn WordsLeave a comment

How do you deal with uncertainty?

I have fairly firm, certain,views on uncertainty and am a little uncertain about the order I should write about uncertainty.

Uncertainty should play no part in certain aspects of life, for those parts of life you need to know what you are doing, have a plan,the skills and materials to turn uncertainty into certainty.

Uncertainty can be banished by confidence and training.

Intuition is a great tool against uncertainty.

Uncertainty can be allowed its own sweet time to resolve.

Uncertainty is not always a bad thing, particularly in the creative world or when dealing with other humans.

Personally I love the serendipity of uncertainty. I prefer people who embrace uncertainty but not to the point of being irritatingly whimsical. People who are forever certain are not my cup of tea.

This prompt arrived less than 12 hours after I deliberately avoided a fellow swimmer who I don’t really know. She is impossible to have a casual conversation because she is certain about everything, often wrong and talks in a series of statements. A little diffidence would benefit her social skills.

Life is just too short for so much certainty.

#1273 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Firestone Bay, Serendipity1 Comment

The Sunday Ponder. 50% of the Weekend.

The news article below is really interesting. I had weekends until I was 14 or 15 then a Saturday job ate up half of my weekend and school holidays. This continued through school and college until I stepped into a career that required 24/7 staffing. Weekends were an occasional treat until I retired from a ‘proper’ job and weekends and some days off in the week became normal.

I became Russian 1929-40 for most of my life.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/aug/16/the-weekend-is-100-years-old-skiveday-fridays-and-hybrid-working-ruined-it?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It was my normal. On -call rotas do not respect weekends off. Reflecting back I realise why I have virtually no hobbies. Art could easily be squeezed into gaps in my schedule but I couldn’t commit to anything remotely team related. I dabbled in hobbies but nothing stuck. I wonder at people who are experts at a hobby or interest but realise I simply didn’t have the time or reliability.

Post retirement from a proper job, have I learnt to sail or joined a band as a sultry bass player. I have not. I do a lot more art, help to run a club and swim in the sea alone or with the Bobbers.On reflection would I give up weekends at 14, never to see them regularly again for 46 years? I would not, but it seems I may never have been a hobby or team kind of woman regardless of availability. Just two, water based, activities have featured regularly in my life but only after the age of 45 for gig rowing and 60  for sea swimming.

Sea swimmers and gig racing in the same frame.

Despite starting this blog early the day ran away with me. For some inexplicable reason we decided to clear the garage of stuff that we stored 5 years ago, when we moved in. Most of it was completely untouched in those 5 years. Most of it has suffered a bit from five years of storage, most of it will be going to the tip.

50% of a weekend well used.

Not all on a grubby job which is a virtuous thing in this heat.

Quite a lot of time was spent bobbing about in the sea.

We were not alone !

#1272 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

What keeps me up at night? All sorts of nonsense dressed up as Insomnia. Nothing like the insomnia of an Insomniac. I manifest stress and sadness as insomnia but also creativity and problem solving. Random, stupid inconsequential thoughts also keep me awake. 30 years of on-call for radiographic and cardiac emergencies has even given me the tools to put myself back to sleep , but only ever after 2 hours, at least, of awakeness. A cup of caffeinated tea and a plainish biscuit do the trick.

Last night’s awakeness was caused in part by some sadness, a friend had died on Thursday evening. But also by the inability of photography to show the recent partial eclipse as myself and the bobbers experienced it on Wednesday night.

The third completely random thoughts involved Tea bags. Of all the technological, cultural, scientific or personal developments in my life the one my silly, busy head concentrated on was living through the dawn of the tea bag era.

Oh the swirling thoughts of  2 am.

Sadness is normal.

The T-Bag era will never become a true historical era.

I puzzled out a way to create the flavour and colours of our hour long Eclipse bob, distilled into one image that fulfills all of the sensations and is accurate but not entirely truthful.

Swimming out and about in our usual swimming areas with several pairs of eclipse glasses stored under my hat , to be used at sea, for nearly an hour was really quite the memorable experience. So it absolutely deserves an image for posterity.

©theoldmortuary Eclipse Work in Progress

This morning , thanks to insomnia I achieved exactly the feel I was after.

#1271 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

It has been an exciting two nights in the sky for Plymouth. The British Firework Championships were over head. All enjoyed at one step removed from the comfort of our own backyard.

Home comforts

The first night we had had such a long swim under the light effects of nature during the eclipse it seemed too much to pop out to see fireworks in the same sky. But sitting in our yard we heard every pop and bang of the fireworks which were let off on a pier less than half a mile away from our yard. We had also committed to having a small granddaughte sleep over for the second night. So her parents could see the fireworks Diligently we watched the previous nights event shown on YouTube with her. She was thrilled and we could turn down the volume.

That was followed by the three of us  competing to do the best interpretive Firework Dance with sound effects in the half an hour before bed time.  Then as the second evening of fireworks started overhead and bangs and booms  filled the air we fretted that she would be woken up.

A love of fireworks can be complicated.

#1270 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn artLeave a comment
Working lunch.

The 5th heatwave of the year has slightly driven me indoors to start some post summer art projects early. The research and thinking/tinkering process has been ongoing for some time but yesterday was the first paper and pencil/paint  action.

But the heatwave drove the day and my daughter and granddaughter wanted to do a cool dog walk and then an even cooler dip in the tidal pool. I suppose I have never taken the time to sit on the edge of the tidal pool in peak summer and just enjoy it as a safe play area and people watching zone. I love it best when it is empty or has just one lone figure. 6 people as in this picture are way too many. Imust have cropped out 30!

The heatwave drove us to have a very continental lunch. Cheesy chips from a cafe and fresh figs from the tree on the tennis club.

I have no idea when my current arty project can be shared. Contemporary Witches could be the working title.

Quite a lot of witchery work was achieved yesterday. The tidal pool came into its own while I was ckearing up after the creative phase of the day. I submerged one of my very simplified water witches under the waters of the tidal pool. Giving myself an accidental pool witch.

©theoldmortuary, The Firestone Water Witch

I love the struggle of creating art, the struggle is where lovely accidents happen. In setting out on an actual project it seems I have found myself a side project. Heatwaves have a lot to answer for.

#1269 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing1 Comment
The 95% Eclipse Bobbers

10 bobbers bobbed together for the whole of this evening’s dramatic eclipse.

Proper protective specs were worn on  land and at sea. The colander was not so useful in the wet phase of the bob. It was a really special evening, beautiful colours as the eclipse developed. Sobering that none of us will be alive when the West Country see’s the next eclipse of such significance, in more than 70 years time. But that is for the future,  for now we have the happiness, on repeat, of gathering together regularly and on special occasions, talking too much , swimming a bit, eating cake and enjoying life.

What we saw through our specs but couldn’t photograph.  © Plymouth Post.

Novelty picture of the night.

#1268 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, dog walks, Stonehouse, ProcrastinationLeave a comment
Early morning boat

A fifth heatwave looms, so Lola and I set off early to get a decent walk under our belts before things get too warm for her paws. Instinctively she pushes the walk , pressing me to add her favourite sniffy places  as appendices to my planned and intended walk. At a basic level I need her to have had a couple of effective wees and a poo. She knows this. In the pouring rain both are achieved with speed and she turns her head for home with determination.

Days like today she  holds on to her eliminations, rationing them until she has had her desired length of walk and her fill off sniffing other dogs wee messages.

I look at little boats and plan a painting.

Although right now I am supposed to be focussing on figure drawing not solitary row boats. Or indeed clearing out the campervan after a weekend trip. The art of art as procrastination.

#1267 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Hugo and Lola1 Comment
Accidental Colour matching.

In lots of ways our weekend away was all about Lola. In the dog picture she is being Queenly in the van.

In the brick picture I just caught the delicious colour combination whilst she was having a determinedly slow sniff in a sunny corner of a National Trust property.

Our weekend away was about swimming at dog-friendly beaches and using our National Trust Card. Dog friendly beaches in summer months are a rarity and we don’t tend to use our National Trust card so much in peak tourist season.

We concentrated on beaches at the bottom of lush green  valleys. It was way too hot for anything else.

There was a delightful irony at one dog friendly beach. Dogs had free access to the beach, there was a coffee shop and shade. All sounding rather perfect but the beach was primarily a water sport location and for safety swimmers were corralled into a triangle of the sea, that was about the size of a swimming pool.

I did manage the usual splashy pose but it was hardly an open sea swimming experience. Although I did have the pleasure of swimming really close to a Cornish Pilot Gig.

All in all a successful experiment of finding exactly what Lola likes, exactly what we like and for the most part still avoiding hoardes of tourists.

I am not a tourist hater at all, they bring essential revenue to the Devon and Cornwall region. It is lovely to talk to people from all over the world who find this corner of England fascinating. I love touring our own visitors around in the summer months , I just prefer avoiding big crowds of people anywhere.

Just to prove my tourist loving heart I thought I would share one of my favourite sounds. The sound of the small wheels of hand luggage cases on the cobbled streets near our house. I realise the people pulling those suitcases may feel less romantic about the historic surface but it is a happy quirk of mine.

Less of a happy quirk recently when I was touring my old history teacher around our historic area. He had, what can only be described as a hand luggage mobility scooter. I think he felt every cobble on my extensive history tour. Two forms of suffering for him, an aching bottom and spine and my haphazard history tour with random facts flitting in as I recalled them.

A history tour not too dissimilar to a blog really. Random ponderings stitched together with slightly iffy threads at times.