Month: May 2020

Pandemic Pondering #54

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

The Colour Purple.I am thrilled and happy when people comment on the blog, whichever platform they use and especially in a hand written note or just through good old, and much missed currently, random conversation. I’m going to try to answer FAQ within this blog.Today’s blog shaped itself early. As of yesterday we have to adopt a much healthier diet .

This morning’s first step was a blueberry smoothie,
which when set down beside the tagine from yesterday’s blog created a nice purple image.Both these images were popped into my archive because I know I am short on purple images. Then coincidence played the trump card of images.Our daily exercise with Joe Wicks gave another little pop of purple. Which sealed the fate of today’s blog.https://youtu.be/UW7b-hDt2OkA new purple cast on Joe’s wrist gave me the ability to write a blog I’ve intended to write for a little while but with a purple theme to drag the story along. We are working our way through his exercises from the beginning, hence the date disparity.A daily blog is quite a commitment and it was never planned to go on for this long but the follow up course is delayed by the current situation. I decided to stick with it because the follow up course is postponed indefinitely. Pandemic Ponderings has probably persuaded me that a daily blog is entirely managable.The important point is to get a blog out and I’m very aware that my punctuation is, at times, scatty and my narrative a bit rambling or convoluted. Correct spelling can at times elude me. I’m also aware that I can be guilty of ‘Purple Prose’ but there are worse things kicking around the internet.Thinking of a subject has not turned out to be the problem I imagined , even in lockdown. My range is certainly curtailed but as you will see from the end of this blog. Today’s blog pictures were all a few places from each other and the filler is all in my head. Last night for the first time I dreamt about a blog. I had, in my dream failed to write a significant blog over a year ago. It was so vivid I actually checked my phone to be certain that no such subject matter had ever been planned or the photographs filed away.It is the very ordinariness of my life that inspires me most of the time. Normal stuff is what most of us do nearly all the time.I can’t imagine writing about cleaning the bathroom, but one day it might just feel like the exact thing I need to natter about.The final purpleness of today is a bottle of beer awaiting a beer drinker being allowed to cross our threshold and a favourite jug and some ageing tulips that sit next to the television as we exercise with the man in the purple cast.https://www.staustellbrewery.co.uk/beers-and-brewing/all-our-range/tribute

Pandemic Pondering #53

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Baking1 Comment

Today I broke my pandemic bread making virginity. Later than most people in this pandemic apparently.

The main reason is that my bread making in the past has been a somewhat lumpen experience.

We were gifted a Dutch Oven home-made loaf a month ago which was delicious. So I had a pretty tough act to follow and no Dutch oven.

But I do have a tagine with a cast-iron bottom.

Turns out Tagine bread is a thing.
https://www.jocooks.com/recipes/no-knead-bread/

The link above is the recipe I used for No Knead Bread.

A really nice flavour loaf that is also visually pleasing and if I’d bought it in an Artisan bakers I would have been happy with it.

But I made it, it’s beautiful and I’m ecstatic. Happy Monday.

Pandemic Pondering #52

On By theoldmortuary.designIn BooksLeave a comment

It’s Sunday so there is cake.Merlin Jobst- Best Boldest Coffee Cake- For Jamie Oliver.In true Sunday style half the cake has gone off on its travels. Tomorrow another quarter will go on its way.This Sunday the cake accompanies books.I’ve been invited to share 7 books I enjoy on Facebook. No explanations, no reviews. Then I invite 7 friends to do the same.It just seems a bit sad not to share my reasons so I’m doing it here and I can pop a link on Facebook.In no particular order.This is a recent read , all the action takes place on one New Year’s Eve. But the narrative covers almost 60 years of New York History and the personal story of Lilian Boxfish. It was a page turner yet the subject matter was poetry, advertising and the life of a business woman. Hardly normal page turning material.I love words. I’ve owned this book since 1972, it’s preferable to on line thesaurus searching.Like the Thesaurus this book is never far from my bedside. 5 minutes or 5 hours can be lost between it’s covers. My favourite diarist in this brilliant book is Alan Bennett.New York by Edward Rutherford. The same city as Lilian Boxfish but this time the history is counted in centuries. As a reader I was kept on the edge of my seat/bed/sunlounger by the way history turned and altered not by planning or intention but by coincidence, missed encounters or wicked intent.Colour theory and the history of colour are some of my favourite subjects to read about when I might get interrupted. This book always accompanied my on- call nights in a London Hospital . It didn’t always get a lot of attention.Blood and Sugar , a story of Deptford that taught me so much and explained why the historical architecture of Deptford is so outrageously and shamefully grand. I use the word outrageous and shame deliberately but this is a great piece of historical fiction.

Another tale of London set in part just 50 yards from the London Hospital where the Colour Book accompanied me in my On- calls. A great read about a prostitute and her ‘ protector’ and the characters around them, it has a curious end which is tidied up by a subsequent collection of short stories

Pandemic Pondering #51

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and FamilyLeave a comment

A complex image with a lot going on.

Pondering now and yearning for the ‘New Normal’

This reflects our minds at the moment @theoldmortuary. It’s Saturday, a day before the Government presents the new roadmap of British Life in Lockdown.

That’s one roadmap to consider then, there is our personal new roadmap to think about and the roadmaps of those we hold dear. That’s a lot of roadmaps to keep twirling. We keep busy and we work hard physically but sometimes in this pandemic those two things are not enough to keep us asleep at night.

What we all need are our friends and family, close enough to hug, squeeze, weep on and snuggle into. We are all denied that. We are touchers, I hadn’t realised quite how much we touch our friends and family. I miss you all physically, emotionally and desperately.

Ironically during Lockdown we have gained some new friends and many of our neighbours have certainly raised in status to aquaintances. The epic week working on the Cornish Hedge outside the oldmortuary gained many regular friends and quite a few offers of contracts to tidy up other people’s gardens. A new friend, S, has suggested we call our business “The Lady Gardeners”. Seriously our skill level is way below a name of that Calibre. We swap calories with S, containers of baked and cooked goods find their way from one house to the other whilst maintaining social distance. Those foods are then shared a third way with MLR who is isolating completely, she in turn provides our grandchild’s plush pig with crocheted super hero clothes.

We work on the theory that shared calories don’t count and obviously all super heroes wear crochet.

We’ve never met MLR or indeed M who is part of the food share and lives with S. But we have seen him on a balcony. This all goes to prove you create friends that you don’t touch or even get closer than 2 metres and even don’t really know.

Friendship is an organic thing.

Other 2 metre friends, A and K were first met last week in two different social distancing queues. By the power of Facebook we met them in a queue again today and then spent some moments sitting in the sun 3 metres apart enjoying a take out breakfast.

Then we took the dogs for a walk to a favourite ‘pop up’ social distancing coffee shop and met two of the owners who we’ve known as customers for three years and usually greet with a hug.

Then outside Lockdown, there is the infinite variety of our longstanding friends and family that exist ‘out there’ that we cannot see face to face or talk to without using technology.

Friends and family come in all shapes and sizes with varying longevity we are missing you all, we’ve added some strangers to the mix while we’ve been apart.

New Normal cannot get here fast enough. Someone find us the roadmap. We are desperate.

Pandemic Pondering #50*

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home TownsLeave a comment

* The late edition.
Apart from garden chores, we had no great plans for today. VE Day has written this late edition itself. The day started, as they all do, with a Joe Wicks Work Out.The picture below was taken during the two minute break between exercises. The dogs love Joe Wicks, the cans are our improvised dumb bells and the velvet cushion , an item that should actually be in every gym, is a great asset for the kneeling exercises. Out of shot are the cake plates.

Once Joe is out of the way it’s time to shower but the dogs were very excited by something outside.A small, unannounced, outdoor memorial service was happening just across the road. Just a vicar and a standard bearer and 5 or 6 people all standing apart, silently witnessing the service. 2 minutes silence in the midst of so much silence was intensely moving.

I was, however, not dressed for church.

Sometime later a Civic group appeared to lay a wreath.

Our poppies put up a natural show of respect.

Clean and sparky we set off on a dog walk. Someone in the estate just beyond the church was playing Glen Miller on a sound system that would not have been out of place at Notting Hill Carnival. The sound was the epicentre of our circuitous walk and we’ve chosen to listen to similar music all day.

This cute window display was just beyond the Glen Miller Sound System.Then a little further on this jeep appeared.

The Nature Reserve itself was unmarked by anything, but in its quietness it has always marked history

During lunchtime I remembered a friend in London has a Union Jack, in pristine condition. It survived the whole of the second World War and spent actual VE day flying from the roof of a house in Grimsby. This morning he ironed it and it posed in his garden and ethereally in his bedroom window, for this blog.

His cat Banjo was perplexed and intrigued. Banjo is a Gipsy Hill cat but not ‘ the’ Gipsy Hill cat.

While we are in Gipsy Hill, on the route of the number 3 bus, we found a shot of a number 3 trying to get through Crystal Palace on VE Day.

This evening we were on a social distancing adventure. The evening dog walk was in Plymouth where we had Click and Collected an order of fish and chips which we ate in the van. The van was cleaned today for its first run out in a month.

Then it was off to the Hoe for the evening dog walk and a visit to the many war memorials. This year there is a new one for the Merchant Navy.

Plymouth Sound was looking gorgeous.

We also found a new sculpture, the bottom and hand prints of the Beatles.

Sunk into the earth where they, the Beatles, relaxed in the sun before their gig in Plymouth in 1967. The moment preserved by an iconic photograph.We finished the day with a cup of tea and a scone. The scones were traded to us by a neighbour for the loan of our hedge trimmer.A cup of tea is a fine way to end a blog on VE Day. The last image of the day is my favourite WW2 picture from the South West Image Archive. The Archive is held by The Box, Plymouth and is of a woman, drinking tea while sitting on the rubble of her destroyed home near Plymouth Dockyard,

Pandemic Pondering#50

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderings, SerendipityLeave a comment

Another significant number in Lockdown and a significant day. The 75th anniversary of VE day.

In lockdown this anniversary will be something that we have more time to reflect upon than usual.

There will be no street parties, civil events, sombre church services or riotous family gatherings around our own familial heroes.

Flags and bunting are popping up in our local town, but not in the amount that would have happened had life been normal.

Britain does not wear its national flag on its sleeve or in its gardens or even up its flagpoles quite as much as many other countries. Days like today are the exception. Although our own riverside town has quite a flamboyant exception to this statement.

The Union Inn, on the Cornish side of ‘ The Great Divide’ , the River Tamar, boundary between Cornwall and the rest of the world, is an almost daily fix of the Union Jack.

As I write this I can look out on our local church at a flag that would have fluttered on actual VE day

In the past my daily commute took me up Regent Street, a street that was never shy about getting its flags out.

Pandemic Pondering #50. A significant number and for world history the anniversary of a truly significant day.

Worthy of two blogs I think. This is the Early Edition.

Pandemic Pondering #49

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

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Or preserve them, a couple of years ago we had a lemon grove attached to a holiday villa in Greece. We preserved a litre and a half of lemons , brought them home and they’ve lasted until now.

Gathering lemons in Greek sunshine to the accompaniment of goat bells and in the company of leathery faced women wearing black is not a chore.

It was not a particular chore to buy unwaxed lemons at Lidl but it does have zero romance. The sunshine today was pretty similar to Greece. No goats and the only leathery faced women were wearing fleeces, not the same at all.

Now preserving lemons is not a huge subject for a pondering but it saves you all from more hedge trimming Ponderings. The storms of yesterday disturbed the bits of hedge we had chopped but not been able to pull out. We’ve tweaked it to near parfection now.

I really believe this is the last time the hedge will get a mention.

Pandemic Pondering #48

On By theoldmortuary.designIn WordsLeave a comment

A new word on a stormy day. Chrysalism.

Peggy the Pink and Orange Caterpillar

The act of feeling tranquil while being indoors in a storm.

I feel that that could also work for feeling tranquil indoors during a pandemic.

Peggy’s Pink and Orange Cosy Chrysalis

I’m not sure lockdown at home is always quite as tranquil as a chrysalis but just like Peggy we will emerge from this state of Chrysalism altered creatures.

Pandemic Pondering #47

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

Late April and early May brings a simple pleasure to the walls around the old mortuary. It’s so simple I couldn’t really think how to weave it into a ponder. The area immediately next to our house was an old quarry which means there is an abundance of walls around us, presumably built with rocks from the quarry.

Daisies, however implausible it may seem, just stick themselves to the rock and grow. Early in the season they are lush and beautiful, later on the they get scraggy and ugly. Not Surprising really.

I took these photos yesterday with the idea of a future blog but overnight Cornwall has been hit by a fierce storm.

©Cornwall Weather Team

Given their precarious existence serendipity may have made me photograph them on their last day of lushness.

Update

After the storm

Pandemic Pondering #46

On By theoldmortuary.designIn archive, Pandemic ponderings, SerendipityLeave a comment

Even in the midst of this pandemic there is some great thoughts and conversations happening around how we will remember this period of our lives.

A smart phone has made diarists of us all. My phone is set deliberately to store all the pictures my family and friends send me. I delete some but most are kept as a personal archive.

This blog contains my pictures and ponderings shared to those who care to read it. Facebook and Instagram are more public. Instagram is the quickest, I think, to give a flavour of the times. I just scrolled through my Instagram grid to check out how 45 days of restricted living and Lockdown looked in picture form from @theoldmortuary.

This grid marks the end of normal life. The bottom 6 pictures are from the days running up to the official lockdown. The next row up shows a poster for a cancelled art exhibition and the offer of local help plus the all important hand washing picture.

The cancelled art exhibition poster also marked the beginning of Pandemic Ponderings.

The top row are images from early Ponderings. In private I was pondering on the madness of thinking I would find something to write about, every day, when life was so restricted.

This second grid shows a life of settling into Lockdown. The bottom row shows memories of foreign travel. A wet footprint on some decking in Hong Kong, it was so hot that image lasted less than 5 seconds as it dried off. The picture represents my first meeting with our adored granddaughter in 2018,We thought it was awful that she was thousands of miles away and our meeting with her was so brief. Then her mum and dad decided to move home. Just 50 miles between us and still we rely on phone calls to chart her progress.

The Pangolin pictures in the middle were an homage to the poor creatures caught in the middle of the controversial ‘Wet’ markets where this pandemic is said to have originated.

An image of coffee shows our early pangs of missing out on coffee shops and the bottle of Cuban rum marks the beginning of our cooking obsession.

This last grid shows us settled into Pandemic lockdown life. No longer worried about the subject matter of Ponderings I just natter on about any thing. There are two images that mark slight freedoms. The roots on the second row up were photographed when it was made clear that we could drive a small distance to take exercise and the cogs on the top row were photographed on our first trip to a proper independent coffee shop this Saturday. Yesterday, the very first picture on the grid above, there was of course, Cake.