theoldmortuary has been a blog for about five years. It has evolved into an almost daily event. Pondering on the things that are inspired by my daily life. Often mundane, sometimes repetitive I swerve from hyperlocal activity to big and small thoughts without blinking an eye. I am an artist and writer. My hometown is Plymouth in South West England, part of me will always be connected to London and another part loves to travel.
Yesterday was one of those days when our lives exactly matched a meme on Facebook.
A day of replanting pot bound trees and plants rewarded us with aching bones and a need for sleep. While all around us something magical was happening in the sky.
Predicted to be happening again last night we headed for Dartmoor.
We were not the only ones and the phenomena was not obvious to us or the hundreds of others who took to the dark skies of West Devon.
Our Northern Lights.
The dogs got a very late walk in Yelverton and with some digital tweakery I can repurpose the image of brake lights and headlights into something we were hoping to see.
And I can cut and paste and superimpose it on a very nice tree from our journey, to give an utterly false but funky memory of the night we were stuck in a traffic jam on Dartmoor.
The 3rd party prompt today needs this shot from my high-tide evening swim.
I think I am largely oblivious to what freedom means to me, because I have always had it, and I am lucky enough to have never got close to losing freedom because of my individual life choices or those of World Powers.
There were very differing opinions on Britain’s place as a Nuclear Power among the swimmers and bobbers at Tranquillity Bay last night.
Freedom to have differing opinions is a wonderful thing.
My dog walking habits started in the streets and parks of South London 11 years ago. The parks and streets of South London are a riot of colour in May as urban trees and bushes burst with fresh green leaves and blossom in the tightly packed, built environment. A couple of days ago I was a little home-sick for my London meanderings so did the best I could,in an area of outstanding natural beauty to recreate an urban city walk. I wanted grungy and beautiful all in the same walk.
Home sickness turned out to be the theme of the walk. The city bit of the walk was easy enough to achieve . I wanted to throw in some specific graffiti that I had heard of in an old fuel store on the Cornish side of the Tamar. With my trusty O.S map I found my way over the river by ferry to Camp Bedrock.
I had no idea I was heading to a camp site. I approached using a footpath running along the river. To me I was a lone adventurer with two canine friends finding a rural anomaly. Good Street Art in the countryside. So set was I on the graffiti that I barely photographed the outside.
Mt Edgecumbe Old Fuel Depot.
The inside after an autumn, winter and spring of near constant rain was a riot of colour and reflections.
Rural GraffitiThe roof.
The accoustics of the building are amazing . I couldn’t actually get too far in. Not only was the floor a bible-black puddle. It was also a quagmire of bovine excressences. More than my feet could endure., A deeply fragrant gallery, deep in the countryside. It was the smell of cow poo that gave me another jolt of home sickness. Suddenly I was engulfed in the fragrances of the Dairy farms of my childhood
The old fuel store had been used to overwinter some cows. The farmyard smell was rich and clean and earthy, not at all the sort of smell that the word manure conjures up. It really was quite intoxicating. Not many art galleries would be brave enough to replicate this as an installation. It was only as I left the fuel dump that I found a small Camp Bedrock sign. Dr Google showed me the error of my ways. Not a rural secret at all. A camp site!
Enough of cow poo my next fragrance high point was the Wisteria Pergola in the Formal Gardens of Mount Edgecumbe House
Two hours and a few miles of walking had rewarded me with some fabulous sights and smells. All done in the early morning when my sense of smell is at its most reliable and no one else is about.
One last treat of the day , a different ferry back. This time to the Royal William Yard. I was the only passenger. I felt like a Queen*on a Royal Barge.
* It still feels a little odd to say ‘a’ Queen rather than ‘the’ Queen.
Yesterdays painting was , in part, inspired by my wanderings.
If I ever had a career plan, I almost certainly didn’t stick to it effectively. Now I am officially post-career I could retrospectively chart my career in a linear way that might, quite falsely suggest that I had followed a plan or pathway. This morning I had a blogging plan, which did not involve using a 3rd party prompt. But that blog proved to be a little unwieldy. Instead of blogging, I set out to do an early dog walk, ponder my pondering and hopefully return home with a blog in the bag, so to speak.
A chance encounter with a friend, who was talking on his phone inspired both this blog and my 3 hours of mindful painting that was planned for this morning. And I could use the 3rd party prompt which burnishes my algorithms. What woman would not want enhanced algorithms.
A five second conversation.
” Juliet, you’ve inspired me to start writing again”
8 words.
He inspired me with that lovely comment.
What was inspiring me in that moment.
I wanted to explore the 3 colours + white of the Wisteria I had walked a few miles to see yesterday.
Blue,pink,green +white.
Why mindful painting? Just 3 colours mixed any way filling predrawn spheres. Easy to do while my mind and nattering were certain to be running away with me.
One Thursday a month I meet up with a group of creative makers and artists. We create, chatter and drink coffee. I try to always take something to do that I can do, while fully participating in the swirling conversations that fill the airspace over our creative table.
The subjects of conversation today were-
1. An upcoming exhibition
2. A Tree Festival ( hot💥 topic in Plymouth, for all the wrong reasons.)
3. The history of the Merkin.
4. An alpha male in an art group that most of us belong to.
5. To have,or not to have, a second coffee.
6. Spanish rescued dogs.
7 Brixton SW9 ( London).
8. The pleasure of seeing foreign servicemen in uniform.
9. How much free parking do people have left.
10. When will we next meet.
Looks nothing like the Wisteria that inspired the colour choices.
But playing around with the colours will certainly help when I do the actual painting. Below, tweaking saturation and black point, making the whole thing a bit zingier.
Overlaying these 3 pictures.
Gives me this interesting piece.
My career plan was, pretty much, to not plan. Just like this colour exercise this morning. Lets just see where we end up, and if I inspired anyone along the way that was a bonus.
Careers like life should be a journey not a destination.
Early morning twinkle, I was almost tempted to go home and get my swimmers on. Skinny dipping is only for dusk not broad daylight.
A full day of sun followed on from my early morning dog walk. Coffee and a bite sized Portuguese Custard Tart. Beer traps that had actually protected my precious herbs and vegetable plants from slugs. All before 11 am made for a very satisfying morning. A bit of work through to 4pm and then a walk on the Hoe and an ice-cream with a small person completed my Tuesday in a most satisfactory way.
Sunshine really is a most marvelous thing. I’m slightly lost for words. I’m all out of pondering except of course that I am not. Sunshine makes everything feel in a better place. Especially the not particularly hot sunshine of May. Unless you happen to be working hard in a white painted yard at midday when churlish as it seems even the May Sunshine can be a little over-warm. Some people are just never happy!
I think it is not what I do in my community but why that is important.
For the record, despite not playing competitive tennis for fifty years I do some admin and Social Media for my local tennis club and host, with others, a regular artists meet up.
I do it because both my mum and her mum were active in their communities. They did far more significant things than I will ever do. Where that sense of community kindness came from I will never know. They both worked to earn an income but also did unpaid work that benefitted their communities.
My grandmother ran a rural pub with her husband and a rural taxi service with her lover. The two businesses and relationships seemed to co-exist and compliment each other peacefully. Who better to drive the inebriated customers home than the landlords wife. Doubling their money.
Being both the publicans wife and the local taxi service gave her an insight into the gaps in her community. She filled those gaps where she could with kindness and help. Lonely or isolated people knew that on a Sunday if they nursed a single pint until closing time at 2 PM they would be invited to join the large family roast dinner that my grandad always cooked and served in their farmhouse kitchen. On Christmas Day so many people lingered that trestle tables were set up in the Public Bar.
My mum was a legal and medical secretary. In her spare time in the early sixties she set up clinics that provided women with contraception and sexual health care. Like her mum she saw the gaps in her community, domestic violence and child poverty and did what she could to help. Ultimately her voluntary role became her career but that was never the plan.
A little bit of kindness is always useful in any community. You just have to spot the gap that suits your abilities and your community.
Inadvertently we chose the first Sunday of May to banish mould and grot from the yard. If mould and grot are works of the devil with slugs and snails as devilish familiars then we did a good job. The yard is ready to welcome summer just as soon as Spring takes things seriously. In an entirely pragmatic way some beer traps have been set to encourage slugs and snails not to eat the new growth on our awakening plants.
We found this extraordinarily dense spider web in an unused plant pot.
A bit of digital tweaking and it becomes very beautiful.
And, as we live in the West Country I can pick out the face of the Devil/Winter retreating as the pot is cleaned and ready for planting up.
There was a little bit of Christmas in our Brunch outing yesterday. We had a voucher for a restaurant in Tavistock for Christmas. We love both the restaurant and the town but not its weather. So the minute predictable good weather was forecast we took a trip to Tavistock and had a great brunch seated outside on a Mediterranean/ West Devon Balcony.
The sun was shining and birds singing. Christmas-red shoes and nails were a nod to the occasion.
The dogs were welcome and approved of the quality of the sausages. Remarkably the sun kept shining so an adventure further out to Brentor was planned.
On good weather days Brentor church can be seen from miles and miles away.
Dinky red shoes and a maxi dress are not normal attire for climbing the Tors. I ditched the dinky shoes and put on something a little more rugged.
The maxidress, while not particularly suitable gave me a fabulous perspective to how women before 1920 would have felt clambering their way to worship, celebrate marriages and births or to mourn at funerals.
Billowing fabric and winds are great as sails at sea but not so useful climbing a hill.
The views were worth every gusty moment.
The church itself is small and simple.
The memorial to Percival Cocks shows that getting married at the later than average age of 43 , in a church on top of a Tor was not the bravest thing he did that year.
Bluebells filled the tiny church with their scent.
A sunny morning filled perfectly. Sensation at every turn.
First , proper sunshine swim of the year yesterday. We thought it would never come. The refreshing end to a day with the normal day to day events all achieved without a raincoat or indeed any coat at all. Even better the stone steps and walls in our swim zone had been warmed by the sun and radiated a little heat out as we changed after the ‘bob’
May the 4th be with you. A late start to Spring.
Thanks to Facebook Timehop I have been able to look at other more Spring-like May 4ths.
A vintage road trip
A Fox on the table.
Both London May 4th’s
Wisteria
And a delightful English Eccentric
Both West Country May 4th’s.
Who knows what today will bring but I am hugely happy that one of my favourite months has finally heralded some Spring Vibes. We have a destination of choice and so far, as I write this the weather of choice and we are off to enjoy a Christmas gift.
For full disclosure, I must admit to getting a little over-hot as I weeded the yard yesterday. The irony was not lost on me as that thought skimmed through my head.
4 days late welcoming May, what kept you?
Even my phone got a little giddy in the sunlight yesterday. This photograph took itself as I threw the phone into my swim bag.
Giddy is one of my favourite words, in my head it means silly exuberance caused by an external force. When I was a small person I was often told to ” Stop playing the giddy goat”
Are goats giddy creatures? My only real experience of them is at Agricultural shows or in Greece. In those environments, they always seem rather doleful animals. 50% of them suffering from over-large and cumbersome testicles.
Goats came to mind and then giddiness because two of our regular ‘bobbers’ were unable to swim with us yesterday . They sent this picture of their walk in Sussex.
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