Month: Mar 2024

#843 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior Design2 Comments

Yesterday the last piece of our accidental style of interior design arrived. We have lived in this house for nearly 3 years. Having designed every inch of the actual Old Mortuary ourselves, it has been a challenge living in a house designed by someone else with the express purpose of selling the house. Obviously their strategy worked, as we bought it . Most of the house was refurbished very sympathetically to its 150 year old bones. The family bathroom, not so much. The bathroom was an industrial fantasy of communal bathing. A grey homage to the interior design of the Starship Enterprise. If the bridge of the Enterprise had a crew bathroom where the crew could go for off duty fun that was exactly our bathroom. The shower and the bath can comfortably hold 4 people.

It has been a head-scratcher of a project, made all the more complex by every house plant we own choosing to live in the bathroom as a reference to death. The plants obviously softened the look but without ripping out everything and starting again we have been a bit lost.

Reading this book was our lightbulb moment.

Beata says that the secret to living in an old house is to represent every era that the house has lived through when you redecorate and redesign.

We replaced the industrial grey flooring with soft green Victorian Tiles. Bought an Art Deco mirror on Facebook Marketplace.

And yesterday took delivery of a Nathan mid-century modern turntable unit , with a drop-down door and sliding-out shelves. Which makes a perfect bathroom cabinet and plant holder. Thanks to ebay and HookeandTaylor.

https://www.instagram.com/stories/hookeandtaylor/3320946114200509313?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=YXF0ZzU4bWI2OTEx

I’m not certain which of these two retro pieces is the game changer for the room but the turntable cabinet warms my heart more than I imagined. My parents were mid-century modern sort of people and owned a whole room of this Nathan furniture. When they died I was not able to house any of it and gave it all to a distant relation. But their love of this furniture and my Dad’s obsession with his record collection and Hi-fi equipment made me know exactly what was needed as a quirky and safe bathroom cabinet. ( We have three grand-daughters for whom the bathroom is their happy place) Nobody under 10 will work out that the door is a drop-down rather than the usual side opening.

No more head scratching for us. The bathroom has a new personality and the plants are very happy.

#842 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Family, Serendipity4 Comments

My random blogging suits the way I ponder life. Back in January, I followed a challenge to accept a prompt every day and incorporate the prompt into ponderings. Initially, I dreaded the prompts but 31 days of a very dull month, with prompts, taught me a little bit. By using the prompts WordPress shares my blog a little wider than my usual small group of followers. I have since gained a few more.  There are prompts available year-round and I suppose I use about 1 a week in ordinary circumstances. So it is unusual for me to use two in a weekend. I was about to ignore this morning’s prompt but it could work on Mother’s Day.

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Congratulations old thing, you made it to 100. 100 years of being an imperfect human, mother, grandmother and friend. Following a delightful female inheritance of not being a stereotypical perfect woman. Sometimes barely even making the grade of ‘ good enough’ which was exactly the standard you set yourself.

Enjoy 100 and beyond, Perfection is over-rated.

Xx

I have two children and three grandchildren. I have been the oldest woman in their maternal line for nearly 30 years. So not just their mum but the oldest woman in their Matriarchy.

Just like beautiful weeds they did just fine, better than fine as we muddled along with no elder wisdom.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers who just make it up as they go.

#841 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Colour4 Comments

In the nineties, I had a colour assessment. It was a nineties thing. The whole experience was really interesting and very positive Fabric swatches of myriads of colour shades were placed on my shoulders along with metallics from the whitest silver to the warmest bronze.

I was assessed to be a Soft Summer person. The experience pushed me to think about the colours I choose to wear. At the time and until fairly recently I wore a uniform for my work so not so many hours in the week to exercise free will.

There was one problem with my assessment. I didn’t feel like a soft summer person. I felt more vivid than that. I don’t remember the other categories but in my own mind I am High Summer with a splash of black. The other problem is that row of blues. Beyond denim and navy I cannot ‘get’ blue and blue does not ‘get’ me. The nineties moved on and the colour swatches slipped to the back of the draw. Out of sight but not out of mind. Until the menopause when my hormones ebbed away and  being vivid faded to black. Which coincidentally was the unofficial uniform of the academic art world I had slipped into.

The nineties are a while ago. Colour assesments are back, in the hands of brilliant young women, and some men who  want to help women and men feel confident in the clothes they wear. Instagram is the place to go for their wisdom and inspiration.

30 years on and the fashion world and me are in a very different place. I always dabbled in the joy of a charity shop find but now second-hand or pre-loved is the way I go for the good of our planet and because it suits my creativity. Less is more.

Which takes me to the question of the day.

Where would you go on a shopping spree?

After 6 years of being hugely more mindful of the planet when buying clothes or decorating my home. I would almost certainly decline the offer of a shopping spree in traditional box-fresh or brand-new environments. A second-hand furniture warehouse or house clearance depot would be my thing or a different town with the best second-hand  shops. An eBay scroll is as close to a giddy shopper as I get Not so much a spree, more of a meander.

No longer in my early thirties, I have embraced Soft Summer. Apart from the blues. I still can’t get on with the blues. Flashed of vivid and black replace the blue line. Soft Summer in the tropics, perhaps. Funny how something I did on a whim 30 years ago has sat in the back of a drawer and the back of my mind, never really a guiding thought,but always right all along. My many fashion faux pas were always off the chart!

Sprees, they are not for me. But a meander, looking for a preloved gem of gorgeousness. That would do very nicely thank you.

#840 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Stonehouse1 Comment

Yesterday was for the greatest part both busy and effective but my painting and printing were off -the- scale awful. Nature showed me how to be creative with beauty and subtlety. For about ten minutes I was treated to an ever changing milky sunset.

Meanwhile one of our occasional bobbers, and other Plymouth singers were in London making a noise

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/07/no-drilling-climate-choir-sings-truth-power-parliament?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It must have been a fabulous time experience to sing in that massive, Gothic space even for just ten minutes. If you read the article the intent is massively important but was achieved in a very eccentrically English way, with Architecture as the code word.

A quirky achievement  to  preserve evenings like this, when life is better than art.

#839 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Serendipity1 Comment

Playing the parking lotto got me a big win yesterday. But I have to play against my better judgement. Normally I am an early bird shopper, but if I need to park in the old part of the city the parking charges work against me. Arrival before 9 pm and the meters are still on the overnight tariff. Rather expensive. Arrive soon after 9, and everyone is in a parking mood. The best plan is to arrive mid-morning after the first wave of early birds is done. I am an early bird, leaving things until mid-morning is not my thing.

Yesterday at 11 am I got a two hour, FREE, parking space next to the printers who were printing my C*****mas cards. Two hours free for a five minute job is a fabulous achievement. I was giddy with excitement. Even better I had done all the domestic admin prior to my arrival. What a gift.Time on my hands with no ticking meter. The sun was out and the dogs needed a walk.

Which took me to a Plymouth institution for lunch. Cap’n Jasper’s and their famous 1970’s smoked glass mugs.

The mugs disappeared for so long after Covid, I worried that they had been replaced forever by something less iconic. A twenty pence deposit is returned when you take the mug back. Albert gave me a look and the 20 pence was not returned to my pocket.

Tea finished.

And it was time for the main event. A bacon butty with fried onions.

An unexpected lunch out and still an hour of free parking left. I figured I could walk to my next planned destination, an art materials shop and the library. The sun was out, it was a bit of a walk, but both of the destination tasks were quick.

Back to the car with five minutes to spare…

The parking spot was only actually free for an hour. Who’s the idiot now.

But I had not been caught.

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! * I chortled in my joy.

I had saved £3.60 and spent £20, 2 hours of unexpected pleasure in the sun. A lovely bit of old boat on the way.

And still some afternoon printing achieved.

* words of celebration from Jabberwocky by Lewis Carol.

#838 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach Life, Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment
Firestone Bay in the sun at 5 pm.

No late blogging today. Obviously for regular readers there is a clue to the repetitive nature of today’s blog. But as so often happens a ponder has emerged from the repetition that takes me off in an unexpected direction. There was a small pod of dolphins sleeping in the bay, roughly where the sea changes colour. Every now and then a dolphin broke the surface of the water. Sunshine and water, why wouldn’t I share the news with all my swimming friends. I put this image on our Bobbers Whatsapp group. A bobber then replied with this image, of where she is currently dipping her toes.

© Angela Bobber

What an uplifting pair of pictures. A visual call and response.

The minute I typed, call and response I thought I should check my thinking.

This kind of visual call and response happens a lot on the Bobbers WhatsApp group. Tranquility Bay is our ‘home’ but if a bobber dips into other waters and gets a great photo then a picture pops up for everyone to enjoy. Nearly always with a comment that a swim at Tranquillity Bay will be much appreciated when the bobber returns from their glossy holiday bobbing.

Funny that I would use a shanty term to describe photographs of the sea. It must be the ebb and flow, the rhythm of  flisvos*

Meanwhile the sun is rising and I must be up and about and printing.

*

#837 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, SerendipityLeave a comment

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

I failed to write an early blog today, hopefully this apparent failure will set me up for later success, now, as I gather my words. Blogging at a snails pace I believe. There are many reasons I should have got my printing on the go more than a month before the exhibition opens. Today is a case in point. Real life still goes on, cars and vans need servicing and M.O.T’s. Life admin needs attending to and dogs need walking. Then the sun popped up in the studio and printing embellishment needed to be embellished.

Some embellishment is just a bit of type writing and a little bit of twinkle.

My mother would be ashamed,  she was a very accomplished typist. Speed and accuracy. I am slow and inaccurate. Good enough in the digital world of a laptop but truly I have sausage fingers on my old typewriter. Sometimes I forget the gap between words. Either a whole mistress piece goes in the bin or I have to hope that people are charmed by my typos.

#836 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity3 Comments

You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

The sun was shining.

Just about everything in life feels more tolerable if the sun is shining. I was born in mid-November in the north of the Northern Hemisphere, so my first three months were spent being sun-deprived. Since that dreary start in life, I have been a gatherer or snatcher of sunshine moments. Two days ago sunshine at 5 pm was such a huge treat, I celebrated with an ice cream despite an outdoor temperature of 5 degrees. My dad was an enthusiastic gatherer of good weather. On mixed weather days, he was jubilant if he had achieved something in the sunny bits.

” Well” he would say, in a happy way. ” I think we have had the best of the day”

Subconsciously I must have adopted his way of thinking. Using sunshine moments wisely is a bit of an imperative, especially in the Winter months when they are in short supply. My early morning dog walk yesterday featured sunshine and a lifeboat.

The best of the day achieved early.

#835 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

Yesterday bought me face to face with a very old ponder. When I was 16, in rural Essex, I discovered the joy of gathering in a pub on a Friday night with my friends. For a natter and a catch-up, before we headed off to the giddy excitement of rural or semi-rural nightclubs or live music events at the local college. Alcohol was not involved because public transport didn’t exist much beyond 8pm. We gathered at a pub called the Green Man. Sometimes we discussed men,mostly the real-world sort but occasionally and without Google or a vast library of reference books we pondered where all the Green Women were.

© WhatPub

Yesterday I started singing, with a community choir, a contemporary collection of songs called The Green Man. Composed not five minutes from my current home and inspired by the same landscape that inspired my Green Androdgyny

I have spent an extremely  small percentage of my life pondering the folklore of the Green Man. Puzzled that the human face of the arrival of spring is male. Last year I created an androdgynous Green person for a Spring exhibition. I have been down a green- man -google- rabbit- hole researching the whole Green Man tradition and am both older and wiser and yet not wiser. If there is a female version of the green man she is less well known, has a more awkward name and not surprisingly has a more active role in creating Spring. Sheela Na Gig is represented as a woman with disproportionately large genitals. Almost essential given that in other portrayals she is actually giving birth to trees and bushes that already have a full compliment of leaves and fruit. Splayed branches out first. Deeply uncomfortable with a high risk of tears, either meaning of the words and probably both at the same time.

I will leave this ponder right here…

The singing was fun. I may concentrate on that.

#834 theoldmortuary

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment

March the Ist rewarded the Bobbers with a great swim yesterday morning. The sun came up. The water was at 10 degrees and the air temperature was 5 degrees. Nothing significantly different from January and February. But swimming on the first day of meteorological Spring felt buzzy. We were buzzy. As a group we have completed our third winter of regular sea swimming. When we started a photo like this was unthinkable. Each separate household kept themselves about two meters apart and our swim was our half hour of permissible outdoor exercise during a Covid lockdown.  Our group of 12 to 14 swimmers stretched out on the promenade for almost 20 metres depending on who lived with whom. Even sticking to the rules there was always a small element of anxiety about our early bobbing sessions. That anxiety was heightened when we were approached by the police.  We shouldn’t have worried, the police were concerned for our safety.  There was a voyeur on the loose. Hidden in clear sight, or in his case enhanced clear sight. A man was taking his half hour exercise by cycling along the promenade in fluorescent clothing. Fitness was not his goal however. He sought stimulation of an entirely different sort. His gimlet eyes searched for the hidden curves of damp bottoms or boobs as swimmers struggled in or out of their clothes.

Another winter was marked by an Atlantic Seal called Spearmint who joined the swimmers of Firestone Bay rather too enthusiastically for her own good.

She swam with us so often she almost needed her own Bobbers sweatshirt.

Maybe that’s the reason this year’s winter swimming has felt, at times, like a chore.  The only memorable thinge is how much storms have negatively affected our Bobbing plans.

Winter 21/22 Year of the Perv

Winter 22/23 Year of the Seal

Winter 23/24 Year of the Storms

I painted Storm Agnes, the first one of the season. She really whipped into Firestone Bay with a malign fury. The others didn’t inspire me quite so much. No paintings.

Storm Agnes in Tranquility Bay. Private Collection © theoldmirtuary

No more winter swims for 9 months, how fabulous.