Month: Jan 2024

#782 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging3 Comments

Come up with a crazy business idea.

Does anyone dream up a crazy business idea? Surely the idea is dreamed up, fetishised and developed; delivered to the public and then slowly reveals itself to be the crazy idea that it always was and fails. Business has never truly tempted me. There is something missing in my brain that wouldn’t put profit ahead of people. Creatively I could dream up all sorts of wonderful ‘ businesses’ but putting my thoughts into productive, profitable action would be my failure point.

From the age of 14 to 20 I worked for an entrepreneur/ shopkeeping family while I was at school and studying. The family ran several shops and a cafe in two local towns. In 6 years I sold everything from maggots to illegal porn. I ran a fast food cafe for 6 weeks when I could barely fry an egg and worked in a boutique and sports shop where the customers were the beautiful people and my acne embellished face made me want to wear the paper bags we wrapped the purchases in.

I learnt more than I ever imagined was possible about the vivid life of small-town retail. The family were a caricature of family business. There was a matriarch. A diminutive Glaswegian woman with a failing bladder. She ran the business in a fog of cigarette smoke and floral perfumes that failed to completely cover the fragrance of a failing bladder. Her only son was pale and busy, constantly moving and doing everything. He had a large and beautiful wife whose place in the business I never quite fathomed. I rather suspect she was the backbone of the whole thing. Between them they had produced two large and less beautiful daughters who considered themselves to be small town princesses. The companies staff were loyal and libidinous. As an observer and competent member of staff my six years were fascinating and varied. I had worked in every corner of their empire. When it was time to leave and move to London they dangled the carrot of a management training scheme. All graduates got that moment in the office. A few succumbed to the fear of leaving small town life coupled with the anxiety that comes with a useless degree. My head knew it was time to leave the giddy excesses of small town retail. I had learned enough to never dream up a crazy business idea ever!

Researching this blog I discovered that the company existed for 70 years and closed in 2008. Well done to them.

#781 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art2 Comments

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

My mum was given an old copper preserving pan by my grandparents when I was very young. They had replaced it with a much lighter aluminium version. The copper pan is very heavy duty and almost impossible to lift when full of jam or marmalade. The pan got more use in my parents house for making mulled wine at Christmas. 

It has been mine for the thirty years since my parents deaths and had a different life as a plant holder or for a while as an artist’s muse. I am not the artist of this fabulous still-life but my pan, kitchen table and a rug  are.

Artist- Stephen Fuller

Yesterday, not realising that I would be writing about it today I moved the pan into the sitting room to hold some of the fragrant candles* that we were gifted over Christmas. What I didn’t do was to give it a good clean. There will be a later image today once I have done that rather grim task.

* On the subject of fragrant candles. Am I alone in enjoying them? I read a list of most unwanted gifts recently and they were listed along with socks and toiletries.   How ungrateful.

Two copper preserving pans and a posing dog.

#780 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn HomeLeave a comment

What is your mission?

Oh Bloganuary if only you had asked this question any time in the last 7 days, I would have had a mission. Clearing up after the festive season. But that mission was completed yesterday, although not the taking down of Christmas lights. The days are still short here and long evenings are enhanced and embellished by left over festive twinkle.

This Christmas Star never gets taken down. He twinks year-round in our dining room.

My clothing twinkle has been tidied away. There was a huge opportunity to add to festive stash of garments. The January sales were awash with sparkle and velvet but I resisted their siren-song call to me to buy more shimmer. Not that I wasn’t tempted. Who wouldn’t want a high necked dress with a floor length skirt, slashed to above the knee, in slippery silver sequins?

A lifestyle choice was made, we were incompatible, for many reasons. None of them about fit. The dress could have been tailored for me. Could I have tailored my life to do such a garment justice? Unlikely.

A mission I chose not to accept.

#779 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach Life1 Comment

What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

As long as there are days like this, the concept of living a very long life sits well with me.

Even on less glorious days I am happy to take whatever life gifts me. The alternative strikes me as unpredictable at best and somewhat dull at the other end of the scale.

Van Morrison sums my thoughts up, good days are to be treasured and if I were to skip off early there would be no more good days. Or days of any calibre for that matter.

Days Like This.

When it’s not always raining there’ll be days like this
When there’s no one complaining there’ll be days like this
When everything falls into place like the flick of a switch
Well my mama told me there’ll be days like this

When you don’t need to worry there’ll be days like this
When no one’s in a hurry there’ll be days like this
When you don’t get betrayed by that old Judas kiss
Oh my mama told me there’ll be days like this

When you don’t need an answer there’ll be days like this
When you don’t meet a chancer there’ll be days like this
When all the parts of the puzzle start to look like they fit it
Then I must remember there’ll be days like this

There’ll be days like this

When everyone is up front and they’re not playing tricks
When you don’t have no freeloaders out to get their kicks
When it’s nobody’s business the way that you want to live
I just have to remember there’ll be days like this

When no one steps on my dreams there’ll be days like this
When people understand what I mean there’ll be days like this
When you ring out the changes of how everything is
Well my mama told me there’ll be days like this

Oh my mama told me
There’ll be days like this
Oh my mama told me
There’ll be days like this
Oh my mama told me
There’ll be days like this
Oh my mama told me
There’ll be days like this

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Van Morrison

Days Like This lyrics © BMG Rights Management,

#777 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, SerendipityLeave a comment

If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?

I’m not sure anyone would describe the road in and out of Stonehouse Peninsular as a freeway. Apart from the boy racers, whose noisy car delight is to speed their high-powered and primped vehicles around the circuit of Georgian houses. Or break off to the coast road to disturb the night-time Doggers of Devils Point car park with their squealing tyres and farting exhausts.

Stonehouse https://g.co/kgs/1PVDthv

As a Conservation Area, I am fairly certain there will never be a billboard. But were there to be one, it would almost certainly be one of those curiously English ones with a polite passive-aggressive message.

#776 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, BobbingLeave a comment

The extra blog. Unusually for me I woke up this morning with my cup less than half empty. 3 days early for Blue Monday my mood was definitely on the blue side of the mental health spectrum. No particular reason, some very small clouds on my horizons but nothing of consequence. The grumpies had arrived overnight. I am never too saddened by feeling glum as the artist in me knows that life and art is a combination of darks and lights. Feast and famine. Good days and less good days.

Blogging absolutely helps me pick out the high spots of daily life. But I am a free spirit and conforming, as I am, to the prompts of Bloganuary is not really my thing. I slightly dread the revelation of the prompt of the day.

But how to perk myself up?

1 Agree to go for a bob with the life affirming bobbers.

2 Write a random blog.

3 Put on my new, warm, fluffy socks.

4 Eat chocolate biscuits after the bob. Notice my cup is already more than half full.

5. Take steps in the sunshine to banish the grumpies.

Swimming in water at 10 degrees with an outside temperature of 6 degrees, blogging, fluffy socks or eating a chocolate digestive might not work for everyone but it is working for me.

#775 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn flowers1 Comment
The Equilibriumist

Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

This is a great prompt for Bloganuary. I don’t have an answer that I am certain of. The past is concrete it has happened and is unalterable, the future, even the next few minutes is unpredictable. I use the past to learn from, anticipating that the future can be improved or at least enhanced by reflection and better decision making. As an optimist I probably look more to the future but as a history lover I look back. I am probably a thinking equilibriumist.

I took this photo yesterday. It delightfully illustrates my thinking.

The jug is old and reliable. Humans less so.

The tulips were bought during the festive season but nobody thought to check if they had any water.

I should have binned them yesterday but instead I gave them long overdue water because I am an optimist. Despite their past I hoped they had a future.

Their floppy stalks are stiff with rehydration. They have a different beauty than the one predicted for them, the one they would have had in the past. But they are gorgeous in a different way. They still have a future. The equilibriumist with optomist tendencies at work.

#774 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Books, Serendipity1 Comment

What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

Not a physical gift or an experience gift but a word that eloquently replaces ‘pile”.

Over Christmas my Tsundoko grew. This was not intentional. Not only was I gifted some books creating a pleasing Tsunduko of books chosen for me by others. I had a singular book club book that must be read by next week. Two library books borrowed but now extended. There was a third, unplanned Tsunami of books that arrived just before and just after Christmas. My local library has an App where I can order any book I like and join a waiting list. In total 6 books that I would love to read arrived over the festive season. Something had to be done. A prioritise Tsundunku was made and a returns Tsunduku. Some of the waiting list books have been returned and I will rejoin the waiting list for them. Some of them have been 6 months on a waiting list.😭

I piled my newly curated Tsunduku by the sofa. As luck would have it the pile is high enough to comfortably hold a cup of tea within easy reach of a busily reading woman.

Rather late in the day a friend arrived carrying a carrier bag of delayed birthday and Christmas gifts. She viewed my new pile and the cup of tea and said. “Isn’t there a Japanese word for a pile of books”

And just like that the gift of Tsunduko was given. Possibly the greatest and most useful gift of all time.

Festive Tsunduko

#773 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns5 Comments

What colleges have you attended?

I knew the day would come when signing up to Bloganuary would bite me on the bum and a topic would come up that I would not wish to answer. I just don’t think that the colleges I have attended are particularly interesting. I have studied an Arts and a Science subject to degree and beyond. I could throw in a prestigious college or two. I have never studied abroad and I have never academically studied at any of the Oxford ‘Dreaming Spires’.

https://www.varsity.co.uk/arts/13640

Coffee and cake has been studied in that beautiful city. Great coffee and cake in memorable locations. The places that I am most grateful to are the institutions that gave me the tools and qualifications to access tertiary level education.

1. Manor Street Primary School, Braintree. My mum and dad also attended this school.

2. Margaret Tabor Secondary Modern. My dad attended this school.

3. Tabor High Comprehensive School.

4. Braintree College of Further Education.

These run-of -the-mill, free, educational establishments gave me the basic educational building blocks of my life. Essential knowledge for the under 18 me.

Each of these places was walking distance from my home until I was 10 and then just a bus ride from my 10-18 home. Each of those places projected my mind to different horizons and to different paths.

I didn’t start to walk on all the paths exposed to me. Nobody could. But I did take the first step on some fascinating paths that started in a small, rural, market town in Essex.

P.S. for added interest my old Primary School is now a museum.

https://braintreemuseum.co.uk