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.

#605 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn TravelsLeave a comment

It was never our plan to escape one Coronation to leap headlong into another country’s Coronation celebrations. And yet that is what we have done and there are similarities. Today in Britain, Camilla a former Royal Mistress was crowned Queen. Here in Bangkok there are a confusing number of women on the celebratory arches built over busy roads.

Royal Purple was a theme in both capital cities.

While this 4 day public holiday in Thailand is celebrating a past Coronation, the city has plenty of extra bling to enhance our visit. We also stumbled upon a Budha wholesale store. More bling.

Trying desperately to stick to the best advice on Jetlag. We adopted the timing of Thailand the minute we arrived. As we faltered in the afternoon we swam, a lot, and then watched the British Coronation live on BBC News channel. Then set off on a random street walk to get supper and found a street food store that first opened in 1939.

https://thipsamai.com/

A day well filled, 8,000 steps and two flights. Time for bed.

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Here we are in a quiet backwater of a city celebrating Coronation Day. There are flags of red, white and blue and brilliant yellow and white drapes adorning important buildings. Coronation Day/ Weekend is held in Bangkok every year to celebrate the coronation of their King in May 2016.

This year the King has taken a trip to London so is missing his own party. We quietly enjoyed pancake rolls and fried noodles after a lengthy journey to get here.

#603 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Travels1 Comment

Giddy times. Our passports are out and about. Last night for the first time we needed photo ID to vote.

Voting in the romantically named, St Peter and The Waterfront Ward

Today we are off, leaving Britain before the big party. Nothing says peak celebratory cuisine any more succinctly than a motorway services stop.

Not that I am completely turning away from Royalty. My travel books are accidentally aligned to the theme of the weekend

This one should be finished in the airport and left for a different life with someone else.

And then out of the blue this ebook dropped onto my virtual library shelf last night, after a considerable time on  a virtual book waiting list.

I am about a chapter in, so for now, I have no strong sense of what I am getting into. Queenie, the actual paperback, is a really good read. Whoever picks it up will get a treat. It is a travelling book. I picked it up on International Womens’ Day at a glorious gathering of interesting women, and one man, who shared stories, laughter, tears, cake and books. The end of a week, tomorrow will be quite a different blog.

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On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, Serendipity, WordsLeave a comment

We had a little lunchtime trip to Mount Edgecumbe on Wednesday. A day off from house moving stuff, exhibition stuff and tennis club stuff. The weather around the Wisteria was deceptive. We were blown about when we later walked on the parkland but none of that is the subject of this blog.

The glorious Wisteria sent me searching in my photo archive for a series of photographs of a special Wisteria spider that I photographed on my own isteria some years ago. My apologies to spider haters but I was really thrilled to get a photo of the spider actually making the silk for her web.

This should have been the focus for the blog, but while searching for the spider I found a cat.

I have been looking for this image in my archive for years and never been able to find it, despite using all the right key words. I took this picture a few years ago in Brixton Market and couldn’t believe my luck in getting such a brilliant piece of visual wordplay. No words can express how happy I am to have finally found this picture again.

I knew this photo had to be somewhere, I am so very pleased to have located it again. Suddenly Thursday has been gingered up!

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A spring morning and the fish are swimming, this is always a good sign to wake up to. Sunshine streaming in through the blind and creating sharp fish shadows. This last week has been busy, but I am winning the tasks v time battle. Some paintings sold at the weekend which is always worth a skip and a jump.

At the risk of repeating myself I also took a photograph yesterday that makes me really happy.

If I were the sort of person to ever go anywhere posh enough to wear an outrageous hat, then this image might be my inspiration. As it is this photograph may end up as one of my art greetings cards later in the year. After a week of toil, today, Wednesday is almost a day of rest.

My fingernails are no longer ravaged by packing and unpacking, decorating, or framing art and took themselves off to a nail bar yesterday. There is a huge flaw in my rest plan though. There has been a large amount of seagull poo deposited on my car. Neighbours had suffered a similar fate over the weekend but we had been lucky, not so yesterday. There are parts of my red car that would be camouflaged and easily hidden in Antarctica. Nobody needs a photograph of that. So here we are, ‘hump’ day, enjoy the slide towards Friday.

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On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, Serendipity1 Comment
Bluebell ‘wood’

An early morning foray into the Stonehouse Lawn Tennis Club to catch the garden waking up.

The birdsong was magnificent this morning.

I’m not sure that I got the best of it but this is a flavour of the morning song.

I was on a quest to get images beyond the clubs boundaries for future social media posting.

I even found a feature on my phone camera that I don’t quite understand. But it does actually count as a glimpse across the boundary.

May is such a gorgeous month for getting up early and doing photography. The daisies were barely awake when I caught them.

And once again while searching for landscapes the Arum lilies forced me to pay attention to their unique beauty.

But I did get some sea views. The whole point of my morning expedition.

But the plants were quite persuasive, dew-drenched and touched by the morning sun.

An early morning well spent.

#559 theoldmortuary ponders

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Hot Pot- Oonagh Glancy

What to ponder on a warm Bank Holiday Monday. This fabulous painting by Oonagh Glancy is the nugget of this ponder. It symbolises a coming together. For the first time since Covid, Drawn to the Valley also threw in mass catering at their Spring Exhibition. Coffee, tea, cakes and other treats were served at a huge communal table. It was the highpoint for visitors, simply sitting down and talking between artists and visitors, old friends, new friends, complete strangers and hungry bowling escapees from the Bowls Club next door. Competition whites smudged with spring-green grass stains.

Sally O’Neill  Asheltor Woods

Everyone was talking about how much they loved the communal snack table. Isn’t that fabulous. The art, of course, covered all the faces of the Tamar Valley and was as glorious as has come to be expected of the first exhibition of the year.

Julia O’Dell
Lynn Saunders

Artists of the Tamar Valley also get further afield.

Michael Jenkins St Ives Harbour
Jane Athron Looking Towards Lancaster Gate.
Julia O’Dell Godrevy Lighthouse

And some of us stick close to home.

Juliet Cornell Tidal Pool

There was so much to contemplate and consider, what a great exhibition.

Tessa Jane Yet It Seemed So To Me

#558 theoldmortuary ponders

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Spring greens

That was a busy weekend and we still have one day to go. Our geraniums found the sunshine to their liking and have begun their spring/summer showoffery. Blissfully unaware that this year we have had a hosepipe ban imposed already. The ban caught us all by surprise and only half of the yard has been power-hosed. The irony is that the ban was announced with four days notice and for those four days it rained so hard, power- hosing the rest of the yard was impossible.We are going to have to hope that prolonged sunshine bleaches out most of the winter mould and mildew, or spend the summer apologetic for our lurid green paving. May 1st already! Where did April go? A whirl of planning in all sorts of directions. A family house move, an exhibition and lots of social media activity for an upcoming Open Gardens event. Not, you will be pleased to note, our green back yard and the Geraniums, but a Tennis Club where we are members. I signed up to be a big part of the planning of the event in the depth of winter knowing full well that I would not be here for the actual event, but that I could continue to support remotely. The opposite of working from home.

Doing Home Work Away, I suppose.

To that end I have gathered loads of gorgeous photographs to share on Social Media. Instagram and Facebook. Here is the QR code for Instagram should you be interested in an English Garden by the Sea.

Everybody is getting a little excited.

This gorgeous old wheelbarrow was super happy to arch his back and pose like a Silver Fox at a fashion shoot and his drooping tulip friend also took little persuading to look winsomely out to sea.

May the first, one of my favourite months off to a good start.

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Suddenly temperatures have shot up. Thank goodness. Yesterday at a Street Food festival I managed to get sunburn and have to wriggle out of my thermal vest while deciding exactly which Street food vendor would get my spends.

Oddly she is from Otley

Publicity for the Festival had failed to attract our attention in Plymouth, but our friends sister who still lives in Otley alerted our Gillian to a brief, burger orientated, Northern migration to our Atlantic City.

Co-incident with the food festival Plymouth Argyle were facing a seriously important match in the same place on the same day.

The sun was out, spirits were up and the atmosphere was buzzing.

We got our first sight of a newish statue.

Jack Leslie https://g.co/kgs/7qC8qd

Should you be interested, Plymouth Argyle won their match and we chose Poutine as our international food of choice.

#556 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, Serendipity1 Comment
From the moors to the sea.

Yesterday afternoon and evening I had the pleasure of receiving and unpacking the work of 42 artists who had submitted work to the Drawn to the Valley Spring exhibition.

On average the artists had submitted 10 pieces of work. That is a lot of glorious creativity to unpack.

Work that beautifully swoops from the moors of the Tamar Valley down to the Atlantic Coast.

Sometimes in minute detail.

I know that I witter on about art a bit but last night was such a delight to see how people are inspired by our local and dramatically changing landscape.

It is also just the loveliest thing to spend some time with the artists themselves. We work away in our studios like solitary bees only coming together infrequently.

For local people a trip to Meavy Lane in Yelverton might be just the thing for a long Bank Holiday Weekend.

I’m going to pop along on Monday to see the exhibition in full show-time mode. More pictures then.