Month: Sep 2023

#685 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Drawn to the Valley, SerendipityLeave a comment
Tessa Sulston- Turner walks in the Tamar Valley

If Turner had been walking in the Tamar Valley today he would not have been looking at any views. Today was a fine example of Tamar Greige. The grey lovechild of mist and rain rolling together in a fertile valley.

As luck would have it for me, I have spent the last two days in the gorgeous Autumn Exhibition of Drawn to the Valley Artists. So I know how beautiful the valley is when it is in full colour.

Calstock – Carolyn Wixon

My morning started close to home with my own painting showing the tidal pool in full colour which it certainly was not at 7:30 this morning.

Then a drive up through the Tamar Valley in the thickest of Tamar Greige conditions. Not for me the colours of Sonia Wicks , Looking for Luck.

But the mist did briefly clear, just around lunchtime. Cotehele House, a National Trust property serves very fine sandwiches with a great motivational message.

As an aside, I rarely need to be motivated to eat a sandwich. But at lunchtime I was not the only one nibbling and crunching on National Trust comestibles.

No motivational message for the squirrel on the bird feeder, they also need no encouragement to eat. This lovely lunchtime encounter happened as I overlooked the Cotehele Dovecot.

Dovecot-Carolyn Wixon

A completely greige afternoon carried on the weather theme but I can illustrate my return with one last painting.

Tamar Sunset- Michael Jenkins

A greige day, illuminated by some great paintings and a cheeky squirrel.

#684 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn dog walksLeave a comment

Our morning walk,yesterday, took an unexpected turn, the sun put in a sudden welcome appearance and we jumped on a ferry to Mount Edgecumbe with no planning or forethought.

We arrived before almost everyone else and quickly made our way out of the more popular areas. How lovely to wander through beautiful countryside with no other humans about. Not that there is anything wrong with other humans in the general sense. Despite wearing inappropriate footwear for country hiking we made it to the folly.

The reward for such an intrepid adventure in flip flops was not, as you could easily imagine, blisters but coconut ice cream and a pasty.

This was such an abnormal piece of behaviour for the morning dog walk.

This morning, autumn had properly set in with wind and rain. Making yesterday’s impromptu adventure seem like the most inspired decision ever.

#683 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, SerendipityLeave a comment

Pondering and Blogging are curious ways to start the day. Initially I rejected the prompt below because I felt I had nothing to say on the subject.

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

Whilst not exactly a lesson, today’s observation is something I constantly need to cherish. All of my life my limbic system has been a great ally in my judgement of people, places and situations. Below is the complex explanation.

What Is The Limbic System? Definition, Parts, And Functions

Put in my simple terms I should listen better to my instinctive responses. Ignore them at my own peril. If I listened better, life may have been easier in places and I may even have been in different places.

This ponder is about location. When I first moved to the West Country 35 years ago, I immediately sought out the Water-colour painting community. The group I joined had regular demonstrations in a local Quaker Meeting House. After the session people drove off to a rough and ready pub in a dockyard area. I was immediately bewitched. There was often live music and the notes and lyrics bounced off the docks and harbours nearby. In my vivid imagination the wooden ghost ships of the past jostled for space on the already redundant wharves and salty old sailors were listening to the same tunes as a bunch of amateur artists. I immediately felt a sense of belonging.

Two years ago I moved within easy walking distance of that same pub. Both of us have changed, almost unrecognisably in the 35 years. I still imagine wooden ships and salty old seafarers in this location but am surrounded by tech startups and call centres housed in beautiful historic buildings.

Last night I was lucky enough to be able to visit a replica wooden galleon. El Galleon Andalucia. So my imagination has a little more heft. The photos are from my visit. The one below is just a coil of rope but exactly illustrates how life circles around and takes us all, to sometimes unplanned, destinations via interesting routes.

#682 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Van LifeLeave a comment

Bad weather took away plans today, in doing so It freed up time for more plans. Right now I should be in the midst of Pirate Mayhem as the Tennis Club I am involved with was hosting all sorts of wonderful Pirate and Sea themed adventures at its seafront location. Dreadful weather with high winds was forecast and so on Saturday morning the whole thing was cancelled. And so a 24 hour gap appeared in our life schedule and the van was swiftly packed up for a mini adventure. I worked in Devon for a large chunk of my working life and have lived here for two years and have always wanted to explore the nooks and crannies, visit the places only ever seen on patients request forms. Devon being Devon explorations are best done in the tourist off season. The bad weather warning of yesterday heralded the tourists off season so we ticked off three places, never before visited. Noss Mayo, Bere Ferres and Holbeton.

Not a single photo of landscape beauty exists, but we do know where we will and won’t be taking a long wheel base VW in the busier months. We also know exactly how wet it is possible to get when a county gets a severe weather warning.

As luck would have it there was a coffee shop in the quickly created wish list. A coffee shop with three inside tables. Definitely a win win situation.

Home

Pirates 0- Coffee 1

#681 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog)2 Comments

Walking but not running is a huge part of my daily, dog owning, life

But running not so much . However in my vivid dream world last night it was all about running and shouting. I blame the large chocolate eclair I ate closer to bedtime than is usual. . Our evening had been spent enjoying pizza from a home pizza oven.

As an inaugural effort it was both hugely successful and intriguing. Three out of four were visually and flavorfully successful. One was structurally unsound but an epicurean delight. The evening was nearly thwarted by the pizza oven having a european plug. Trusty Waitrose, a rather middle class supermarket, had a travel adapter for all the European holiday makers flooding into Cornwall all summer minus their travel plugs. The consequence of pizza oven plug jeopardy was a delayed start time for eating which then pushed Eclair eating further down the time schedule.

Between eating and sleeping there was just the late night dog walk.

A sleep fueled with pizza and chocolate eclair with no real gap is not a restful event. When I woke up at six I was exhausted by my nocturnal adventures and then easily droppin off again I was plunged into a colourful world of events and activities that required me to run through airports and take part in vintage vehicle parades. When I woke up at eight and checked my phone the question below popped up on my blogging app. Any other day I would have ignored it , feeling embarrassment that running is not really my thing any more.

How often do you walk or run?

But clearly in my nocturnal life things are quite different. In my dream world I run around like a twenty five year old athlete. Parkouring where necessary, nothing gets in my way. Fueled by late night carbohydrates and fats, the world is, apparently, a place to be scampered through at speed. Who knew!

#680 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn FamilyLeave a comment

The 15th of September, a day that I usually allow to pass without too much notice. It is 29 years ago that my father died and it is maths that makes today different. I was 29 when I had my first child so he is now the age I was when I effectively became parentless. My mother was already terminally ill with neurosarcoidosis at the time of my fathers death. This is not in any way a sad ponder. I am blissfully lucky to have two adult children who stand successfully on their own two feet and for whom being actively parented is not essential. They are also fabulous parents themselves. But what exactly, as a fully grown adult did I lose 29 years ago. How has my life map been altered by not having an older generation above me for almost half of my life. No brothers or sisters aunts, uncles or cousins to seek the answer to life’s adult quandaries. In truth I have muddled along with the help of friends and sometimes strangers. By and large muddling along has been fine, there really has been no other option. I am certain that with my parents around some of my adult decisions would have been different and better informed. That in itself is quite life affirming, in that, with a little bit of effort poor decision making can be turned around.

A few years ago I bought this painting of two Hares from a fellow artist. It reminded me of that September day 29 years ago. My Dad has quite a sociable death and he had gathered the people he wanted to see over the few days of his demise. His bedroom overlooked the flat fields of the Essex countryside. The recently harvested fields were the playground of Hares whose antics gave everyone something else, beyond death to think of.

I have never seen a Hare since.

Today I decided to turn this small picture into a much larger print as a celebration of love and loss, and all the complexity of being the young matriarch and growing to be an old one.

https://www.sharihills.co.uk/

#679 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Words1 Comment

What’s your favorite word?

I have so many favourite words that it would be too hard to choose one, but I do have a word that my mum loved to use in her frequent work rants.

Audacity.

I love that in my mind it can be both positive and negative.

Willingness to take bold risks is a fabulously empowering thing. Bold is not stupid or dangerous.

In my mums work world women took bold, audacious risks, always for the benefit of other women. Bold risks because they ignored rules and regulations to better improve the services and experience of their exclusively female patients.

Men in senior positions often had the audacity to question and try to control the decisions made by these women for women. This was always the subject of her regular work based rants, always down the phone to people hidden and anonymous to me.

Somehow Audacity is a really precious word, one that I never feel quite able to use in its negative tense with anything like the accuracy of my highly indignant mother. Could I ever be cross, at her near-nuclear levels?

On the positive,though, I love it. Audaciousness is very much something I respect in almost every aspect of my life.

Audaciously I am using a completely unrelated image for this blog. The audacity of it!

#678 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn CornwallLeave a comment

What are you doing this evening?

Just over half way through my day I have no idea what I might be doing this evening. Apart from delivering art to a gallery my day has been a series of unscheduled events. Trying to photograph this apple core was more of a challenge than you might think. Over the weekend this apple sculpture made of apples has artistically diminished to an apple core. The fragrance in the sunny courtyard is the fragrance of early autumn.

Delivering art to this particular gallery is an enhanced pleasure on a day like today. But the welcome of apples and sunshine made it extra special.

By a great piece of design the poster for the exhibition mirrors the colours of the apples.

What a lovely feeling to just drop some art off and have no responsibility for the curating or organisation. However familiar I am with these surroundings the architecture never fails to charm me.

But today I was surprised by a piece of abstract planting in one of the courtyards. Almost Sci-fi with these purple Aeonium.

So what am I up to this evening, beyond some early bobbing I still have no idea. But if anything fascinating crops up perhaps I will mention it tomorrow. But returning to daytime activities , my fellow artist Debs did get a good shot of the apple core.

#677 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pangolins, ponderingLeave a comment

Another day of prepping for an art exhibition. This time at a local National Trust property. You might think that having prepped recently for an Open Studio event I would be pretty well organised. But every exhibition has different criteria, different commission and often different hanging requirements. Of course this wouldn’t be an arty blog without some procrastination. Today productivity was my procrastinator of choice. Before I could allow myself to get the art organised I felt it to be essential to get all the home chores done. Dipping into my stored works is another form of procrastination, some of them will never see the glitz and glamour of a gallery. I’m not sure my Pangolin painting will ever be one that I can sell, but every time I go through my paintings file, his sleepy eye catches my attention. I’ve always loved Pangolins and painted this sleepy fellow when scientists were trying to find an animal who might have passed Covid-,19 on to humans.

Blogging was the subject of an extraordinarily dull repetitive dream last night. No matter how often I woke myself up I kept slipping back into it. It was such a boring subject, I could never have written such a thing. Better to miss a day than inflict complete tedium onto the blogosphere. On a positive I find myself with all exhibition admin done and all the domestic admin completed half way through the day. That feels like procrastination is a good thing.

#676 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Describe your ideal week.

An ideal week starts slowly, not perhaps as slowly as this inquisitive snail gliding gently over a National Trust scanning machine. Yesterday we witnessed a poignant but inanimate event. A large pebble was tossed onto a bank of pebbles by the rough incoming tide. On impact, at our feet,a crack appeared in the pebble and it immediately divided into two parts. How many thousands of years has that pebble been at the mercy of the powerful waves of North Cornwall. How long has it been one pebble not two?

Now a pebble is a pebble, but seeing the smooth palm sized pebble crack and fall apart in front of us just felt immeasurably sad. The next wave would part them forever. Both halves were quickly popped in my pocket. They will no longer be tossed in Cornish waves but will peacefully rest together in my Devon yard. The week is starting very slowly.