Month: Aug 2026

#1285 theoldmortuary  ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, fashion, MusicLeave a comment
@theoldmortuary immersed in the art of Yayoi Kusama

It has been quite the week, the deaths were announced of two internationally influential women. First Dolly then Yayoi Kusama.

A different realm will be awash with Polka dots and Rhinestones.

I have never been to Dollywood but I most certainly would have dressed the part. Beneath my normal day to day exterior is a woman who loves sequins, rhinestones and lurex.

Polka dots are a little easier to bring into mainstream life.

Both of my regularly used swimsuits feature Polka Dots.

And I was hiding in plain sight at an immersive Yayoi Kusama exhibition in a Marimekko dress.

EBay or extravagance fuel my passion for these eclectic loves. Thankfully EBay is the richer source as semi-retirement and a more environmental attitude to fashion all but excludes extravagance.

Where did this all start?

My mum was a Charity and later an N.H.S. manager in the Sexual Health world. She was also a very adept seamstress. She made costumes for what became known as the  Braintree Musical Society ( prev Operatic and Musical) and later for my Dancing School.

The floors of our home were scattered with glorious fabrics a few times a year as costumes were required or altered for shows. My Sindy Doll and Trolls had  extensive small wardrobes of the most glorious of garments.

Rhinestone Jacket, Lurex Shirt, Sequin Skirt. Quietly hanging in my wardrobe waiting for their moment to shine.

Of the two women I would say Yayoi had the more comfortable sartorial choice. Polka dots can be a pattern on any fabric. Twinkle, as chosen by Dolly is a texture thing.

Polka Dots do not chafe. Twinkle on anyone’s anatomy tends to chafe a bit, or a lot.

So long and farewell to two brilliant women. You leave the world better embellished than it would have been without you.

#1284 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Books2 Comments

Which fictional world would be the most fun to vacation in?

In my case the fictional world would be double fictionalised. Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind in the Willows set on the Thames near his home in Pangbourne. Every time I read this book I imagined the action taking place in the countryside I was familiar with, the borders of Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.

At age 8 that was my lived  experience. The countryside of John Constable. The Thames as I knew it was a wide and softly muddy estuary  washing into the North Sea near Southend.

In my head Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad mucked about in a river that looked a lot like the Rover Stour, which was close to home.

When I was older and more familiar with the Cotswolds version of the Thames I imagined that Wind in the Willows might be better suited to that location. I only usually visited the Cotswolds in the summer, which is the only season I ever think about when Wind in the Willows crosses my mind.

The double fictional location of the Cotswolds.My choice tacked on erroneously to Kenneth Grahame’s  book,  would most certainly be a fun and fabulous place to vacation/holiday in. It is always summer in my mind but not actually in the book.

The landscape of the Cotswolds would seem very familiar to Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad. Shepherds Huts and Gipsy Caravans dot the landscape, as do very expensive car salesrooms. For me good bookshops and coffee places hide out  in small towns and villages. So do very upmarket garden centres, a particular holiday weakness of mine. I know that Toad would regularly shop at Daylesford or the Burford Garden Centre. Ratty and Mole would express caution at some of the prices.Badger would roll his eyes. They would be helpful shopping companions for me too in such places.

The original 1908 illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard and my  2019 photograph will give you a clue as to why I shifted my own fictional location for these stories to the Cotswolds.

1908 illustrations
Daylesford Garden Centre and Farm Shop May 2019

So, my apologies to Pangbourne. Perhaps I should visit for some authenticity.

P.S in researching this blog I realise my  60 year old paperback is no longer capable of the page turning required for research. Time to get a new copy.

This pink Porsche was also parked near the vintage vehicle on the same day.

#1283 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, YardeningLeave a comment

The outside fireplace/barbque in our yard has only ever been used with an electric grill plate. I have often thought about using a fire log in it, but until this weekend have not put that thought into action.

The fireplace is an impressive erection ,  smoke should rise up a reasonable sized gap at the back and exit via the chimney. The fireplace may be a case of style over substance. Form and function are not quite aligned.

Artistic Impression © theoldmortuary

The reality did not quite match my imagination, my five year old flame log was quite impressive.

But the flames were lively and the smoke did not get drawn up the chimney,  there were some concerns from our yard visitors regarding the use of railway sleepers in the construction.

All was well, but today I took the precaution of lowering the shelving and moving things around to make the whole experience more relaxing.

The whole yard had a bit of a reorganisation at the same time. Definitely a sign that we are well and truly back in a normal British August. I dodged rain showers which was easier than dodging the blistering heat of our heatwaves. But now I really want to see how my changes look in sunshine. A normal British August will keep me guessing on when that will next happen.

#1282 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn 2026, art, Family, Firestone Bay, Scrag End of Summer, Summer1 Comment
© theoldmortuary

One week left of August and I feel the itch and anticipation of the arrival of September. Although I have never formally worked in education I always feel the 1st of September is a far more significant New Years Day than the dreariness of the 1st of January. The summer months, especially the summer months of 2026 have imbued a more relaxed feeling to life in general and to my art based creative life. September 1st will be the time to galvanise and gird my arty loins.

Girding your loins means to prepare yourself physically, mentally, or emotionally for a difficult task, a hard challenge, or a conflict. It functions like saying “brace yourself” or “roll up your sleeves”.

The last of my, summer, arty play dates with granddaughters occurred this week.

She sailed off to France yesterday taking us from 3 arty workshop girls down to none.

I don’t buy any special, inferior, art materials for them . They use what I use. I fret a bit about my  fancy brushes but not much else. I do catch them diving into my store cupboard for stuff I haven’t laid out for them but so far we have not had any arty drama’s beyond the normal drama that 3 girls can create in any situation.

Official Summer 2026 has sailed. We are in the liminal space that I think of as the ‘scrag end of summer’

Scrag end is an inexpensive cut of meat from the neck of a lamb or mutton. It contains a lot of bone and connective tissue, but it is very flavorful and becomes tender when cooked slowly.

I very much enjoy the ‘scrag end’ of summer. It is more tender and a little slower, more relaxed and less pressured. Poignent because it is an end but enjoyable because, for now, the actual end is unknown and unexpected pleasures will occur before that happens.

#1281 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Hybrid Printmaking, Scrag End of Summer, SerendipityLeave a comment

Does bright yellow signify the beginning of the ‘Scrag end of Summer’.

We have had a most unusual summer, 5 heatwaves have rendered our back yard almost unusable because of  excessive heat. Evenings being the only time we could comfortably sit out, or tinker with our plants.

Nearly a week since the last heatwave left the area, the later part of sitting in the yard last evening required rugs.

So heatwaves apart, we are now in an entirely normal late summer pattern. Mentally we extend summer into the whole of September. Optimistic that Autumn will only descend on the 1st of October with a crescendo of pumpkins.

A very interesting question in light of the 5 heatwaves + 1 more scheduled for September, is what will the 2026 Pumpkin season look like? 1st World Problems.

Painting pumpkins is one of my favourite fruit and Vegetable art moments.

Which leads me somewhat circuitously to the the art drama of my past week. Two hybrid prints featuring the moon were sent off for a test print. One came back looking  good the other did not.  So back to the drawing board in the literal and actual sense.

For my image I wanted the moon to look soft and mythical, exactly like cream cheese.

The Moon is made of green cheese” is a statement referring to a fanciful belief that the Moon is composed of cheese. In its original formulation as a proverb and metaphor for credulity with roots in fable, this refers to the perception of a simpleton who sees a reflection of the Moon in water and mistakes it for a round cheese wheel. It is widespread as a folkloric motif among many of the world’s cultures, and the notion has also found its way into children’s folklore and modern popular culture.


Queso fresco (“fresh cheese”), a green cheese, with typical white, round appearance resembling a full moon.
The phrase “green cheese” in the common version of this proverb (sometimes “cream cheese” is used),[1] may refer to a young, unripe cheese[2][3][4][5] or to cheese with a greenish tint.[6]

My first attempt , which I was entirely happy with until the test print, did in fact look very much like a green and slightly misshapen cheese. I wanted gentle swirls of Philadelphia.

Cream Cheese Moon 🎬2

Cream Cheese moon, created by swirling wet Posca pens with my finger has successfully been inserted into my original image and the nasty green moon banished. Another first world problem to ponder on a Sunday evening in a yard which is, for the first time this summer pleasantly warm rather than roasting.

Crossing the Bar 2 ©theoldmortuary

#1280 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog)1 Comment

What’s a cultural tradition from your country that you love?

The need to make or buy a hot drink to smooth, ease or improve any situation. When I was young the drink of choice was almost exclusively tea but in the late sixties coffee took the pressure off tea a bit in Britain. The responsibility for making British people hydrated in nearly all circumstances could be shared a bit. Not that tea or coffee are as good at hydrating as plain water. Water is much more prevalent now but there is virtually no ritual to serving water. The preparation of a hot drink by one person for another adds something intangible to the interaction. Also there can be appreciation or opprobrium thrown in. Hot drinks are commented on in a way that cold or alcoholic ones are not so much.

Speaking ill of the dead, my recently demised mother-in-law was not a good hot drink maker. Her coffee was deplorable and her tea was never more than average. But to her credit she always offered a chocolate digestive biscuit with either. Not complete reputational rehabilitation by any means, but possibly recognition of her shortcomings.

#1279 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Firestone Bay, Stonehouse, Summer, WordsLeave a comment
Firestone Bay

Heatwave 5/2026 has left Firestone Bay. Leaving the Bay and surrounding area with normal, unpredictable  August Summer Weather. This was the scene yesterday and the day before. The crowds of swimmers anxious to cool down have left the area. I had the water to myself for twenty minutes or so. Other bathers had just left and a few arrived as I left.

In a normal English Summer the bay would still be buzzing on a day like this. But 5 Heatwaves have made normal seem mediocre, lacklustre even.

More mediocrity.

Mediocre is not a word that is used often. It is one of those words that my synaesthetic brain loves.

Meaning neither good nor bad. It feels judgmental and not in a good way.

There are many things that I am pretty poor at doing. Doing them to a mediocre standard would be a considerable improvement. But if I were judged to have become mediocre that would not seem like a positive.

Good Enough is a phrase that feels similarly down beat when actually, for a lot of things , good enough is good enough.

Yesterday was  a little lacklustre, mediocre even, but good enough in its own way.

Who wouldn’t want a bay to themselves for a lunchtime swim.

#1278 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Firestone Bay, Hybrid Printmaking, SerendipityLeave a comment
Partial Eclipse 2026, work in progress.© theoldmortuary

It is just over a week since I bobbed during the partial eclipse with 9 other bobbers. At the time the experience was both peculiar and beautiful.  Peculiar because we swam for virtually the whole of the eclipse experience. Quite often with special Eclipse glasses which gave us a completely safe experience to view the eclipse in real time, but our vision  was limited to black and red vision of the black moon obscuring most of an orange sun . While our bodies were experiencing the sensations of the sea and our ears were hearing the happiness and exclamations of a bay, full of happy swimmers.

When we didn’t have the glasses on we were experiencing ever changing highly saturated colours that slowly darkened and changed as the moon crossed the sun. One of my Eclipse glasses visions was of sparks of light like golden diamond twinkles firing off the perimeter of the sun. I think caused by drops of sea water on my eyelashes or on the plastic lens of the eclipse glasses.

I knew I wanted to create an image of the experience, but which one?

Until I decided to throw caution to the wind and put all my recollections into one image. Not as mad as you might think for someone who worked in medical imaging. For example a CT scan image is made of many amalgamated pictures taken from lots of different angles at slightly different times.

My hybrid printmaking technique with photography and painted or mono printed images uses exactly that technique, modified a little.

Yesterday I had to get a bit of a wiggle on to get this image off to a printer for a test run Giclee print. It is still not the finished article but I will need to see how a print looks.

So that’s where the image is currently but what about my personal recollection?

Really one of the loveliest things I have done in a really familiar home environment. I still haven’t quite found the words to describe the experience. But I have found the many layers of a half decent picture.

#1277 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Film, Hugo and Lola1 Comment
First Love

What’s the last movie that made you cry?

Not the last movie that I watched that made me cry, but the most significant.

Purely because the whole cinema experience, done well, rips off a skin layer or two of my stoicism and protective emotional guard. The most insignificant scene in a well made film can make me silently blub at its beauty, musicality, prose, costumes, acting, scene setting or some hidden, to others , personal connection. I am a regular cinema sniffer and silent weeper.

Marley and Me.

I had just left my canine first love, Mr Hugo, with his grandmother on his first holiday with her, and my first time of leaving him.  On the flight the person next to me was watching Marley and Me. I was reading a book but every time I looked up I could see the scenes being played out before me in absolute silence.

My book is unmemorable but often enough when I glanced at the film on my neighbours screen, my eyes pricked with emotion, nothing to do with the book. I knew how the film would end and I didn’t want to witness how the love of a dog plays out  before I experienced it for myself.

Marley and Hugo had the same lifespan.Similar life events happened, Hugo was not exactly expelled from puppy school, but we didn’t stay the course. As with many pets,difficult  life decisions were made, not only the final one. Age is as unkind to dogs as it can be with humans.

I have never actually watched the film with the dialogue. I am almost certain I never will. But if I had watched it an hour ago, a week ago or any time span it would be the film where uncontrollable sobbing would occur, probably the whole way through. Nobody needs that as entertainment.

#1276 theoldmortuary

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, domestica, Serendipity1 Comment
Current work in Progress

26 years ago I started my journey towards taking a degree in Fine Art. Something I actually wanted to do at 18. Suddenly art began to create a bigger need for stuff. Evening classes and short courses prior to this moment tended to provide materials so art stuff had not left a big footprint in my storage. The next 26 years have been significantly different. Two homes have had actual art studio spaces. Two have not, and currently I have a hybrid space that requires me to be more sensible about what I keep and what I don’t. However the garage at our current home housed 26 years of my creative left overs. Like a snail I moved arty stuff around the country physically and in my mind. As an art gear archive the garage was pretty poor, it had been packed by our removers and there was no logic to it.I also never imposed logic on it, choosing to pick bags at random when I needed something For some inexplicable reason on the last day of the fifth heatwave the time had come to sort  and clear 26 years of stuff that might come in useful in a creative way. Sorting and going through it all showed my artistic journey. I can see the same decisions made on something created 8 years ago and in the work in progress illustrating this blog. But the truth is I can make those decisions without filling a space with the odds and ends of 26 years of creating. Time for stuff to be gone.

After the clear out

The garage is clear now, two trips in the camper van did the job. A small amount of materials went into my current workspace.

I had thought a clear garage was just a long overdue project, but it turns out it is not just the garage that is clear. My head is significantly lighter. A good few hours of going through and getting rid of old paintings and the associated materials I gathered on the way has been astonishingly cathartic.

What a puzzling and delightful outcome.