Month: May 2020

Pandemic Pondering #64

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderingsLeave a comment

As dusk falls Smeatons Tower, on Plymouth Hoe, is lit up in shades of blue as a sign of respect for the regular Thursday night clap for carers.

I have to admit to a huge conflict with the whole thing. For political and personal reasons. I’m inclined towards the views of the anonymous author of the article in this link.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/21/nhs-doctor-enough-people-clapping

A whole career in the NHS, when I was repeatedly expected to work in less than optimal conditions,has always made me want to be in a properly funded work place with good working conditions.

All the clapping in the world cannot make this a reality.

However I am not so hard hearted or embittered not to be moved by the regular Thursday night clap. It affects me in a way I find hard to explain.

The silence surrounding the blue- illuminated Smeatons Tower, two hours after the clap, was a completely different sensation. Something entirely secular, thought provoking and calming. A sort of visual two minutes silence.

Time to reflect.

Pandemic Pondering #63

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

The world for now has become a little smaller and our garden a little more stony. The two are linked. The area in front of the garden studio is a muddy lawn during the winter months and for some time we’ve wanted to turn it into a Dungeness, Derek Jarman style garden.


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/15/writers-join-campaign-to-save-derek-jarmans-cottage

It was my love of the poetry of Derek Jarman that first took me to his home on Dungeness and it is Dungeness that has stolen a big bit of my coast loving heart.

His poetry book, A finger in the Fishes Mouth, found its way into my life a long while ago. It took me to Dungeness.

I love the serendipity of following a poet to his special place and then finding one of my own. The flat blank mounds of pebbles inspire me to paint, and photograph


and now obviously to garden.

Who knows when we can next travel to Kent to recharge our batteries but Lockdown has given us the chance to start our stone garden .

Much laying of membrane and humping of pebbles, quaintly described as Raspberry Ripple, has turned the grotty lawn into a miniature space of pebbles , I can read a Sunday paper on it.

Today we are resting our aching muscles on it whilst basking in the sun.

Dreaming of endless pebbles.

Pandemic Pondering #62

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Fitness1 Comment

Insomnia/Dungaree Day/Exercise

I’ve been struck by Pandemic Insomnia. The causes are multiple and the Italians warned us all that it would happen. You would think hard Labour would give some protection but despite shifting tonnes of gravel yesterday my head was very busy overnight. Contrary to popular wisdom Blue light can make me sleepy in a way that a book does not. So I have some constant companions on my night time sojourns into smartphone enlightenment.

Messrs Google, Guardian, London Evening Standard, and a little Instagram and Facebook.

Last night the main topic of my swiping and browsing was stay at home exercise. My guru is Joe Wicks but yesterday I listened to a podcast of Joe talking to Lennie and Jessie Ware on Table Manners. I’ve reccomended this podcast team before.
https://play.acast.com/s/tablemanners/58b1f7e1-a06b-476e-83a8-e0590acb45f4

Joe said his wife, Rosie, sometimes used other on-line fitness coaches. No shock at the virtual dining table as Jessie’s husband is a fitness coach and she also used someone else.

Not being married to a fitness coach I feel no need to be unfaithful to Joe. Last night I browsed other sites, gazed with only a reluctant shoppers eye and decided to stay with Joe.

Last night, I learnt some adjunct useful tips that I can apply to our fitness regime.

Some we’ve initiated without the help of the internet. Baked bean cans have been ditched in favour of proper dumbells. The cans had a life of their own, once put down, and the exquisite pain of a can being exactly where I plonked my commodious bottom is a Covid-19 memory to cherish.

Apart from bottom injuries, uneven weights can cause harm when you exercise. I mention this not because my beans were uneven but because some unevenness occured coincidentally this morning, more of that later.

The internet warned about being obsessive about home exercise. This morning I took heed and didn’t wear lycra, bringing a certain casualness to the event.

Now to the unevenness of weight during an at-home exercise session.

Hugo is an empathetic dog. He has lived his life predominantly with 3 women . He is in tune with our emotional and hormonal states. An emotional or hormonal state brings Hugo to his true purpose in life. To calm and console, with a cuddle that is as close as he can possibly get to the woman in question. He also mimics the symptoms so he has in the past suffered from horrendous hangovers, romantic break ups,shocking grief and menstrual cramps. Insomnia is unknown to him and is more difficult to understand. It is rare if not highly improbable that a dog would actually suffer from too little sleep. Hugo decided that my cure would be his constant close attention.

An uneven weight for indoor exercise.

So now onto the blog I should have written today.

Pandemic Pondering #61

On By theoldmortuary.designIn artLeave a comment

Hugging the void. I wanted to find an image of a hug to illustrate this blog. My own archive didn’t have what I wanted. I don’t remember my exact Google search, maybe ‘famous hugging painting’. Klimt came up with several versions of Kiss, all gorgeous and sumptuous but not what I wanted. @theoldmortuary we are huggers and touchers. Like many people, we really miss everyday human touch. Family hugs and good friend hugs are obviously top of the list but random people hugs or a touch of an arm to express understanding or support are also much missed. It just feels strange not to touch other humans. It is also important for our health. Let’s do it more.
During a hug we release oxytocin, a hormone that relaxes us and lowers anxiety. It’s often called the “cuddle hormone,” and when it’s released during a 20 second hug it can effectively lower blood pressure and reduce the stress hormone norepinephrine. … Good, long hugs are good for your heart , mind and all the other important human bits.

Regular readers would know that we live very close to a church. There is one vicar who absolutely rocks a good hug outside the church gate. It crosses the boundaries of secular and sacred and it seems so right when people are in distress or blissfully happy.

But back to the image I found that expresses hug so eloquently.

The fact it is painted on a huge chimney plays nicely to the void part of my first sentence. Painted by Loretta Lizio in Brunswick, Melbourne, Australia.
https://www.lorettalizzio.com/

It depicts Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand Prime Minister comforting a Muslim woman after the Mosque massacre in 2019.

The subject matter is significant but it’s the rendering of the hug that made me choose it.

Hugging goals for when we can do them randomly and with no restrictions.

Pandemic Ponderings #60

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, WordsLeave a comment

A day of two words.

Now there really is no link between these two words apart from the serendipity of them turning up within a lunchtime conversation within one minute of each other.

This is Pandemic Pondering #60 and I like to make special numbers a little bit different or special.

Kakistocracy could be worthy of a blog as some parts of the world are living through one right now , but I’m not certain I would feel uplifted by discussing it.

Petrichor is quite another matter. I’ve loved Petrichor all my life without knowing the word until today.

In rural Essex , where I grew up, Petrichor was pretty rare. Essex has one of the lowest rainfalls in Britain. But when it happened it was glorious.

The word was created by two Australian researchers in the 60’s. The smell is actually produced by bacteria that release Geosmin into the air when rain hits healthy soil. Humans are particularly sensitive to the fragrance and it is almost universally loved. Curiously it is also responsible for the earthy taste of beetroot which is not universally loved.

Beetroot and feta galette with za’atar and honey.

Sam’s Tamimi and Tara Wrigley, from Falastin a cookbook.

So the smell of Geosmin is what I and most humans love, and certainly my Essex experience would exactly be explained by Geosmin.

But what about my love of London streets after rain, there is precious little healthy soil in some parts of the city but there is warm tarmac and cement added to the Geosmin from parks and gardens.

© theoldmortuary

St Paul’s and its neighbours in the City of London.

Cornwall and rain are inextricably linked and Petrichor is a rare treat because once the rain sets in there are very few chances to enjoy that wonderful smell despite us having acres of lovely healthy soil. Some of it on riverbanks.

Pandemic Pondering #59

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog)Leave a comment

The textures of Sunday. Lockdown Sundays are supposed to be days of relaxation and recuperation from the giddy whirl of trying to fill the previous 6 days with tasks and dog walks, which will keep our minds and bodies happy and active. We’ve not always been successful, there have been some not so happy days and some curiously exhausted days. This week has felt full to the brim with thoughts and activities. We’ve had a whole new way of eating to consider , no carb, no dairy and as of Wednesday a slight relaxation of Lockdown rules. We coped better with the change of diet than we did with the new freedoms. So all things considered Sunday should have been a day of reflection, relaxation and recalibration but for some reason that wasn’t quite suiting us . Hannah opted to do some hard landscaping of the garden storage area. It’s a bit of a struggle to get pebbles or other garden DIY supplies. There was no real choice so our hard landscaping has been done with soft sounding pebbles described as Raspberry Ripple.

It is fitting really that Hannah was working on Raspberry Ripple because I was in the kitchen using up carbs and experimenting with new ingredients.

Bread and Butter Pudding

Mayonnaise.

Cauliflower Hummous

Time to read a book!

Pandemic Pondering #58

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home TownsLeave a comment

Deja vu.

©Wikipedia

Hours, days, weeks and now months have blurred boundaries. Just about everything we’ve done this week has been done several times in the last couple of months.

Saturdays have a new shape, for three weeks we have been able to get our favourite Hutong Coffee. Following that we do a favourite dog walk but we’ve done todays so many times I won’t bore you with the details. But everything on our walk looks a little bit brighter. Lockdown has given people the chance to get all sorts of jobs done and everywhere looks a little bit twinklier.

The best example of twinkle was this motorbike which had been ridden into town and was still so pretty. Presumably it has had a lot of attention in the last few weeks.

Plymouth has also gained some new street art and not a moment too soon.

We also found this picturesque wasteland.

And finally our used compostable coffee cups crossed the Tamar to our compost heap.

Not a bad Saturday.

Pandemic Pondering #57

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home TownsLeave a comment

All dressed up and nowhere to go.

Smeatons Tower on Plymouth Hoe has shrugged off its ungainly scaffolding and has emerged into the bright sunlight with a beautiful paint job ready for the Mayflower 400 Celebrations. COVID – 19 will have disrupted the events that this bright new livery was created for. Just like humans, Smeatons Tower is not going to be at the centre of of a party any time soon. Luckily a few more people can visit the Hoe now, to enjoy the view and the lighthouse with its crisply painted stripes.

Smeatons Tower even made the clouds smile today.

Pandemic Pondering #55

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, Serendipity1 Comment

Easing of lockdown in England and Cornwall. There is a joke here as Cornwall believes it is, in many ways, a separate entity from the rest of the United Kingdom. Unlike Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland which have some self-determination, Cornwall has not been able to stick to comfortable, safe lockdown.

We were obliged to travel into the rest of the UK this morning across the Tamar Bridge.

Watercolour © theoldmortuary

We’ve had to do it a few times during Lockdown but always in very controlled situations where social distancing has been easy. Shopping at Marks and Spencer and Holland and Barrett in Drake’s Circus, in Plymouth, was entirely relaxing and easy, but one other destination was just too much contact with other humans. We quickly left.

Emerging from Lockdown is going to be a strange and challenging experience. We felt like country mice suddenly being thrust into the Hurlyburly of Christmas shopping on Oxford Street. In truth the experience this morning was nothing like that , but that’s how we felt.

A Jack and Jill Book . 1962©Fleetway Publications

The illustration is from a book I had as a child and it always made me anxious, although Katie Country Mouse was always quite a role model.

The project for today was to sort out our glass jar storage area on the Cornish Range and label the jars , as many of our new healthy eating ingredients look similar. It was quite the task, but meditative and relaxing, which was just what I needed after the jarring retail experience to get the bloody labels. Now I’m a bit further away from the expedition it’s easy to see why it was quite stressful. The store was just too big and we probably saw more people than we’ve seen in two months. Everyone was pretty good at social distancing but there were too many people there and too many who should not have been out, let alone in a large retail store. I’d be struggling if I had been told to isolate for 12 weeks and I might also have slipped out for a bit of fresh air. A massive shop is not the place for those with compromised health. My worry for them made me sad.

Anyway back to the jars. All filled up and properly labelled whilst I watched Sewing Bee on the TV.

Link to The Great British Sewing Bee.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03myqj2

Two friends have sent me something, via digital media, today. Both are appropriate for the end of a blog.

One is a quote from someone I’ve known since I was 11, we share a love of language.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make beginning. The end is where we start from.

T.S. Eliot.

The other is a sunset over Plymouth Sound from someone I’ve known two weeks. We’ve shared a large space in a coffee queue.

Happy Hump Day