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.
Time to wrap up our extended, long weekend of camping. In a world of constantly changing plans we decided to stick with our hastily organised camping trip. Regardless of how things turned out it would be a good location to test out our accessory camping kit, stuff that has not been used since before Covid.
Puddles in rocks, above, is a photograph taken on our only trip to Talland Bay. A beautiful beach close to our camp site. We popped there yesterday in a rare moment without torrential rain.
The focus of our trip was our 4 year old granddaughter. She loves the theory and practice of campervanning.
The weekends rain and the lack of beach time failed to dent her pleasure in the simple act of camping. In many ways her experience was enhanced. Book reading and playing was all we could do. We visited her Aunty Shelley in her caravan where we read books and played and sorted through charity shop jewellery. After 24 hours she was returned to her dad and granddad ready for a Sunday Roast. Perfection for a small person has such different goals to adult aspiration and rain really is of no consequence.
In a week of unexpected journeys this one took us to Mounts Bay this morning. Scene of the 2024 Prostate Charity swim. Today the destination where we returned Miss VV to her dad after a day and night of campervanning excitement for a four year old. On that time we learned that a local cutprice megastore was actually a World of Honey and that car journeys are measured by increments known as Penguin Rocks.
Never has Trago Mills been so romantically named and a measure of a Penguin Rock is 7 minutes. These small revelations happen when you only get to see a grandchild once or twice a year. She doesn’t know that we find Trago to be a bit of a chore. We don’t know what Penguin Rock is. We have all gained something today.
A ladybird sought sanctuary from a sea holly, initially from the sun but ultimately from another heavy rain storm.
We sought sanctuary at a cafe called Hoxton Special, promising life changing coffee.
Of course we have no way of knowing if this coffee changed our lives. We drank 1 and a half cups each and left the cafe.
Having avoided the storm, fully caffeinated up we set about the rest of our day. Which decisions were coffee related and which were not is one of lifes great unknowns. But like many good cafes they provided something to consider.
Hope your Sunday was as eventful or not as you required. More next week.
We’ve set up a tent extension to our campervan for the first time since before Covid. Summer plans have been somewhat changed due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. Some things however must be squeezed into the itinerary no matter what. Camping with a small but important granddaughter who has loved our campervan since she was first able to walk. It is the campervan she loves, not the location. Last year she was hugely disappointed that we moved on from a supermarket car park where she had happily started her camping weekend while we shopped for food essentials.
For many reasons we have set up a day before she arrives. Everything apart from the weather is good to go.
We have a corner plot and a beautiful hydrangea next to the van.
No filters, all these blooms on one bush.
So now we await the V I (s) P. Fairy lights are in position. Last night there was a small fairy light crisis. A whole string fell on Lola. Worse things happen.
Spoiler Alert the answer to Friday’s Wordle is included in this blog.
My wordle guesses today made a 4 word poem that inspired two related reminiscences. Perfect ingredients for a ponder.
A long time ago I was at a work Christmas party in a Private Members Club in Poland Street in London.
The club was in a basement and I needed to leave to get a phone signal. On returning I entered the wrong door and ended up in a Bear Bar, the sort of place burly gay men, dressed in plaid go to meet other burly gay men or cubs, who are diminutive or much younger men who are attracted to burly men in plaid. I had a perfectly pleasant half an hour or so talking to an Australian Army Captain who was there to hook up but had no problem entertaining a woman who found herself in the wrong club.
At one of my workplaces I worked with a predatory male colleague. He was a constant pain and often harassed or proposition many of the women he worked with. One Monday at work he was in quite a flap, he had been away in a strange town and had made the exact same mistake as I had done in London. He also favoured the plaid shirt look but when he stepped into a Bear bar in a strange town suddenly the predator became the prey. Karma I feel.
Yesterday we were on top of the chores. There was only a mental list so no exquisite pleasure of ticking items off a paper list, and then the ultimate climactic scrumple of paper with an exaggerated toss into the rubbish bin.
The penultimate chore was some plant buying and a summer treat of two garden chairs to sit in our yard.
This was the inspiration.
I’m not sure when I first fell in Love with Adirondack chairs. They were invented and patented as The Westport Plank Chair in 1904. Our Canadian relations call them the Muskoka Chair. Read the link below for the full history and more names.
My first ‘ bum on seat’ experience was at the age of 3 or 4. My entrepreneurial Nana had them in the small orchard of Walnut trees behind her rural pub. These would almost certainly have come from one of the local American Air Force bases that she ran a limousine taxi service for. Her 17th century home was an eclectic mix of antiques and pub stuff with Contemporary Mid- Century North American furniture. Lucille Ball *meets The Leaky Cauldron**
* American Comedian with family themed comedy in the 60’s
** Pub in Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter novels.
My Nana always rocked the Lucille Ball look. Once turning up wearing Chuck Taylor Converse and jeans to a school sports day with brilliant red lips. Her pub was absolutely the country version of the Leaky Cauldron. Customers included.
Anyway when USAF staff and their families returned to the U.S or were redeployed elsewhere in Europe they would often leave a fair bit of domestic stuff behind. Often gifting it to local people with whom they had built up relationships. My Nan was a happy and stylish recipient.
In complete contrast on the other side of my family there were many men who were talented amateur woodworkers. My other grandparents were the proud owners or Steamer versions of the Adirondack. All painstakingly crafted from the instructions provided by Woodworker magazine by my Uncle who was really very clever and ultimately did cabinet making in Number 10 Downing Street. A fact I only discovered when I read his obituary.
Contemporary version of a Steamer Chair
A day of chores glossed over with natter about chairs. We were very busy bees though.
Pretty much anything can make me lose track of time. My most popular time to lose track of time is between 10 am and 3pm.
There is a standard list of things that are usually completed by 10 am, including writing this daily blog. Then I can lose myself in a task for a solid 5 hours until the need for a cup of tea and a snack pulls me out of concentrating, sometime between 2pm and 3:30pm. After the snack I clear up whatever the task was and begin my regular late afternoon plans. A dog walk tends to book-end my productive phase. What puzzles me about the productive period of the day is how variable my output is. There are days when I am shocked at the level of my achievement and others where I wonder what an earth I achieved in those 5 hours. One of life’s mysteries I suppose.
Another place to lose track is cold water swimming, or bobbing as our group of friends call it. There was nothing glam about last night’s bob but three of us bobbed about in this grey and misty environment for more than half an hour last night. The clocks of mind and body were stopped, recalibrated and refreshed by effortless chatter and some swimming. Dressing was particularly challenging as it was raining. Skin that is coated with seawater just gets really sticky when touched by rainwater. Before I realised I had been out of the house more than a hour and a half. The beach is only a five minute walk away.
In conclusion losing track of time seems to be something I am very good at.
I was in a very normal park today. Imaginatively called Peacock Meadow but squeezed between large industrial estates and some housing. The rain took me by surprise and I took refuge in this bandstand style shelter. It featured entirely teenage style graffiti and some of the comments and images were both timeless and entirely up to date. There was a good selection of cartoon penises and some statements that made me laugh out loud. I was a bit surprised by the amount of homophobia and racism expressed. I would have hoped younger people had greater tolerance and more open minds. But street art wherever I find it fascinates me.
The colours were fabulous, even if the opinions expressed lacked imagination or ambition beyond having sex with other peoples mothers, putting phone numbers out in the public domain, or commenting on school friends erogenous zones. All the same old stuff I experienced in the bus station of the town where I went to school. But one statement was so of it’s time no one would have understood it 20 years ago.
There was also a good bit of peeling paint.
I think I have managed to avoid the more controversial or unpleasant elements. Unfortunately the examples of clever wit that made me laugh came into that category but here are some of the colours and patterns.
I realised that my little village of Gosfield in North East Essex must have been very well behaved. There were loads of teenagers kicking around with not too much to do. I can’t think of anywhere that was given the Graffiti treatment. The only exception was the pews in the church. The back ones were habitually used by boys from a fairly low-grade Independent school, there were a lot of penises and expletives in that church. The funny thing is that history gives graffiti gravitas. If those words and illustrations, either in the church of my home village or the fake bandstand yesterday had been carved by medieval youth the etchings and carvings would be preserved as a tourist hot spot. The subject matter would be virtually the same.
And why the name Peacock Meadow. Google is a wonderful thing.
In 1719 Sidney Strode produced an “Account of the Strode Family” in which he makes reference to duel fought between Richard Strode and Sir Philip Courteney of Loughtor. The duel was fought on the green at the lower end of what was marshmeadow, Colebrook. And what were they fighting over, a family feud, an issue of honour, or a young lady? No, they were arguing over a peacock killed by a servant.
Waking up on a sunny morning in a blue bedroom is always a bit ‘other-worldly’. Soon enough the sun will cast fish shadows all over the floor. This blog was always going to be about blue because I discovered yesterday that Blue Monday by New Order was first released 40 years ago. Ever an optimist my Monday’s have never been particularly ‘blue’. My job was a seven day a week habit so the dreaded returning to work feeling could hit on any day.
In keeping with my usual lyric remembering failure I only ever remember the first two lines.
How does it feel, to treat me how you do?
I’ve worked with a few people where that has been a great puzzlement. People who clearly get up every morning determined to make other people’s lives a misery by their words or actions.
Anyway those sort of people are not welcome in this blog, which is really about where on earth those 40 years went…
Two lovely blue pictures from yesterday to accompany the blog. We sat under the Flagpole in our local dockyard to watch the Wimbledon Tennis Final on a big outdoor screen. I took this multi exposure shot to capture the flag in the breeze.
And as we left the Agapanthas were showing off a bit.
Have a positively Blue Monday with a catchy earworm…
And then, just like that, the blog was written and finished.But Facebook time- hop had other plans and I needed to extend the blog.Time-Hop showed me three paintings, all sea related. They are long gone to their forever homes but were painted at this time of year. I must have a thing about blue in mid- July.
Saturday evening,Hannah and her friend Emily have arrived in Kingsand ready for their sea swim to raise money for the Chestnut Appeal.
They have done this for the last three years. This year they are doing the Cawsand Swim.
An early evening gathering in a pub was required to check out the course.
Not particularly obvious but there are buoys out there marking the course which is horizontal to the beaches of Kingsand and Cawsand.
It is all looking pretty good after a stormy few days.
Tomorrow’s blog will be all about the beach action but this evening our biggest concern was how to get our dogs across the carpark without burning a single kilojoule of energy.
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