Author: theoldmortuary.design

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.

#652 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn ponderingLeave a comment

Here I am doing a bit of foreshadowing on my morning dog walk. Literally, foreshadowing which is probably not the world for casting my shadow ahead of me and literarily foreshadowing. If I consider my blog to be low grade literature

This morning’s walk was a whole bunch of anticipatory foreshadowing by proxy. Seeing things and projecting what might happen in the same place or situation for other people.

I have never travelled by ferry from Plymouth to Europe but every time I see a ferry, big or small, it gives my heart a little frisson of the pleasure of travel. Likewise paddle boards resting up before adventures on the high seas.

Brightly coloured swimmers also predict what my day holds at the next high tide.

Yesterday’s morning walk was quite a different experience. I set off in reasonable weather that fairly soon changed into the sort of light summer rain that switches the senses with a light touch and released fragrances. As often happens at the furthest point from home, summer rain transformed itself into a deluge and my summer dress and sandals were overwhelmed. I was a very wet dog walker on the return and I looked quite mad in comparison to all of the proper walkers who had swiftly whipped out rainwear from their rugged and capacious back packs. Their walking shoe clad feet took a very dim view of my inadequate footwear. I excused myself by saying I had been out a long while, there was an element of exaggeration in that statement. But sometimes in the land of extreme long distance coastal path walkers an amateur needs to save face. No such saving face tonight, I will be an adventurous sea swimmer being wet will be the norm.

One other off the wall ponder. Wouldn’t it be fab if moss grew in big enough patches to lounge on.

#651 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn 4th of July, Serendipity1 Comment

4th of July is a big day in the U.S. Independence Day. Not so much in Britain. Independence Days in many former colonies of the British Empire are marked joyously on the Anniversary of the date when the country in question finally broke away from its former colonisers. Many of these independent countries choose to belong to the Commonwealth. Some don’t.

Commonwealth of Nations https://g.co/kgs/oBqHBw

The United States has chosen not to be part of the Commonwealth. Which is I suppose the reason for me disappearing down this particular blogging rabbit hole.

Unknown to many people there is a Commonwealth Day, always on the second Monday in March.

Never heard of it? You are not alone. It seems to me, as a ponderer of topics great and small that more should be made of it. First off make it a public holiday. Make it an inclusive event, Commonwealth and friends. Make it about diversity and difference. Make it about partying. A party in March is a fabulous idea with everyone in every community feeling free to bring their own unique, uniqueness out to mingle. Put the bunting up.

Happy July 4th to all who celebrate. How I wish we had something the same but different. Something to celebrate both escape from the past and celebrate all the serendipitously wonderful richness of the present. Wherever that has evolved from.

#650 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment
Yoga under this tree was sublime. In Devonport Park with Park Yoga.

A day that entered with a whimper and went out with a bang. If yoga under a tree in the morning is a whimper and the 1812 Overture counts as a bang.

In between there was a Garden Party with live music and fabulous food. And a lot of toilet rolls. Overnight I had worried that the four toilet rolls I had left in the clubhouse of the local tennis court would not be enough for a celebratory garden party. An early morning dash to the supermarket ensured that the tennis club was fit for an outbreak of dysentery. There was more food and drink than was necessary and as luck and public health would have it. No dysentery.

The Royal Marines concert was a forgotten pleasure. We had expressed an interest in getting tickets during the dark recesses of winter. But the summer took so long in coming we had forgotten the pre booked evening of music that popped into a WhatsApp message yesterday morning.

Tchaikovsky composed the 1812 in 1880 which means that if builders were whistling contemporary music as they built our house the street would have been filled with snippets of one of the World’s most well known overtures.

#649 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn flowers1 Comment

It was a very west-windy kind of day yesterday. The sort of day where outdoor eating became a dangerous sport. With cans and napkins being whipped off tables, sending responsible diners chasing after their errant table paraphernalia. Outdoor eating is a favourite thing for us to do, because the dogs take a very dim view of being left at home on summer evenings. Earlier in the day I had taken photos of various blooms that were luxurious, because after many weeks of extraordinary sunshine, we had had a couple of days of light but persistent rain. I wonder if they were all so pristine after the winds had had their way with them.

The wind has also stopped any meaningful swimming for the weekend. So blooms it is to illustrate this blog. Have a fabulous Sunday.

#648 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, WordsLeave a comment
©theoldmortuary

This is what procrastination looks like. An unfinished painting on a Friday night. True enough there have been other interruptions to the creative process this week but goodness I give procrastination quite a free hand in my life.

One of the interruptions is still making me laugh. I was running a Social Media series for a local organisation. They are holding an event this weekend and will be serving cake and tea in a garden close to the Ocean. I thought I had found the perfect backing track for a reel.

The title Cake by the Ocean completely suited the event until someone,several hours after the reel had been published, and with wisdom unavailable to me at the time.Pointed out that the whole thing was a euphemism for an adult activity in sand dunes. Live and learn.

While we are living and learning one of the many subjects that popped up at the Bobbing session last night was the Merkin.

Just have a look at the salesman’s beard.

We were discussing the Pubic wig as seen above but a quick research shows that the word is also associated with the Ocean.

Procrastination and Digression, it is a wonder I get anything done some days/weeks.

#647 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog), Serendipity3 Comments

What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?

Hard on the heels of yesterday’s blog this was the prompt today.

3 years into my world of a changed and sometimes absent sense of taste and smell, delicious can mean a whole new world to my faulty olfactory system. Alongside my partial loss of day to day taste and smell. I am losing my memory or recollection of foods I have loved in the past but with that I have developed a liking for things I would have previously avoided. Blueberries are a case in point. I always found blueberries to be a fusty, stale tasting fruit, on the whole I avoided them. Then, in Thailand, I tried this beautiful lemon meringue pie, garnished with blueberries. Normally I would leave them to one side and gift them to whoever I was eating with but curiosity made me eat one. All the embellishments/ blueberries were gone before I even touched the lemon meringue pie. In that moment blueberries were the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. Blueberries in Thailand became my favourite thing.

Mangosteens too, although I had never had a previous opinion.

I wondered if growing in an entirely different climate had changed the flavour of blueberries, but it is me that has changed.

So the most delicious thing I will ever taste may be yet to come…

#646 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog), SerendipityLeave a comment

I am approaching a year since I had my first positive -testing bout of Covid.  Vaccinated to the max, the whole episode was very mild. Prior to that I almost certainly had Covid just before the Pandemic shut the world down, and again, just before vaccinations started. Even though I was negative testing throughout what was a very tiresome and ill-making viral experience.

The legacy of these events is a daily routine of a morning black coffee to start the day. I realise that this is no big thing. But this blog of the mundane and repetitive nature of normal life is often about pondering the small things of life. First thing in the morning really good coffee tastes sublime.

Any gains made in recovering my sense of taste or smell were lost with the final and only positive episode of Covid. Then this morning I wondered if my grip of taste and smell has always been rather precarious.

When I experienced migraines the first sign of one approaching was a hypersensitive experience of smell. This was a distinct handicap when working in the medical world. Painkillers could dull the pain but those smells just kept coming. The next phase was brief visual disturbance, then the skull crushing pain. Once the pain was dealt with or had subsided I was always left with no sense of smell or taste for a few days.

Funny that I should only connect the two symptoms today.

I suppose I consider myself to have the engineers nightmare, an intermittent fault but the positive takeaway is a new love of the depths of flavours in a black coffee as soon as I wake up.

#645 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, Serendipity1 Comment

What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?

The answer is, beyond myself, almost certainly my house.

Built in the late 1890’s. So firmly of the Victorian era but with many Georgian era neighbours.

This week marks 2 years since we moved into this house. It definitely takes a while to settle into new homes.

Things that seemed essential works when we moved in, have faded into insignificance. Other,more pressing, projects have risen to the to-do list.

The yard surprises us every day with its fecundity. We have had strawberries every day for about 6 weeks and the tomato crop are forming beautifully in the outdoor planters. Our gifted courgette/zucchini plant is beating its brothers and sisters who are still in their original home on a farm. Our courgette lives on the garage roof, we learned last year how spiky their stems can be against naked ankles in a yard with limited space.

I have to say that only owning the house for two years makes this answer feel a little like a cheat as it just involved exchanging money for something old that has been looked after by other people.

Old things I have had longer to be responsible for include a Sandalwood Chest of Chinese origin which was owned by family friends of my parents,and was in their possession as employees of the East India Company during the Indian Uprising. Last seen very recently on this blog while we watched Glastonbury on the TV this weekend.

The other daily use of an old thing is a bit tenuous but my Facebook profile picture features a fake fur tiger-print jacket that I wear in the depth of winter. But as this blog is posted daily on Facebook I can probably get away with this. The jacket was made about a decade before I was. So here are two other old things I use every day.

My Facebook profile and myself.

#644 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

Yesterday I went back to the Arts University Plymouth to catch up on two exhibitions that I had missed during the Private View last Friday.  The BA( Hons) in Painting/Drawing/Printing and BA( Hons) in Fine Art. I have a BA ( Hons) in Fine Art. But it was the Painting/Drawing/Printing exhibition that I enjoyed the most and which inspired me to wind back the years and just do a traditional watercolour today. I was also reminded today on Facebook that before we had dogs I had cats as my painting companions.

Harry assisting thegardenpainter
The painting Harry was helping with. Private Collection.

Cats are very different art assistants to dogs. Cats are contemptuous of the creative urge and would not be involved were it not for the soft surgical drapes ( discarded unused from sterile procedures) that I used to protect the lawn and patio. Harry loved the warmth of a surgical drape but really couldn’t care about the art created as long as he remained undisturbed wrapped in plastic backed soft fabric.

The dogs rarely experience the calm of a traditional watercolour painting. I only ever do them on foreign holidays. So today was a complete surprise to them as I sat drawing for a couple of hours and then quietly painted sat in the same position for long parts of the day. Usually they feel actively involved as I move around the studio to find all sorts of different bits and pieces to add to an ongoing painting. Sometimes they can persuade me to cuddle them or find a treat. But me, just statically painting is something they never witness. Unlike Harry they were not prepared to curl up and sleep, involved but not involved. The dogs decided to sleep on my feet, alert to any movement I might make towards the kitchen. Almost unconsciously I then kept my feet very still. Which is fine until I needed to move and then they, the dogs were grumpy and my feet were surprised by the sudden return of blood flow.

We managed to avoid me tripping over a dog or two with feet barely registering my intended movements but it was close at times. The painting and the days chores were achieved. The blog is late, the only casualty of a retro art day.

The painting the dogs were helping with.

Thanks to Facebook reminding me of what a gentle art critic Harry was. And yes King William IV really did pose with a saucy leg position. See official painting below. Floodlighting is a modern addition.

#643 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Music2 Comments

Sunday started on a high note of good weather, good friends and cakes. It ended on many high notes with the televised Glastonbury Festival headline act. Elton John playing his last ever gig in England.

We settled down, still wrapped in towels from our evening swim, with hot tea and fruit crumble. To watch the last set of this year’s festival. At Glastonbury, without the tea and crumble, thousands gathered in front of the Pyramid Stage to enjoy a brilliant setlist.

Watching thousands of people, with beaming smiles, many of them wearing silly specs, singing music from a 52 year career had a proper summer vibe.

Every year at Glastonbury I try to find some new music to explore and enjoy in the summer months. As luck would have it, me and Elton have similar tastes and one of his invited guests was Jacob Lusk from Gabriels whose amazing voice has accompanied me in the kitchen all weekend.

A vision in pink, singing with the London Gospel choir he fulfilled my love of seeing a man in a well- tailored suit. Wouldn’t formal occasions be wonderful if all tail suits were this flamboyant.

One of life’s TV moments.