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.
Back to work. I’m showing work in a month long National Trust exhibition soon. Three paintings of four were completed before the holiday, although not yet framed. This one took shape today, it is not an accurate landscape but is a reflection of the landscape around the National Trust property. The area on the borderlands between Devon and Cornwall. For the most part views are obscured by Cornish/ Devon hedges . Tall hand built dry stone walls that are topped by0p small trees and other hedging plants. But every now and then the walls dip and the landscape falls away towards the sea or the River Tamar. Then drivers or horse riders get a peep of distant views, on this occasion at sunset.
Back in the ( time) zone. A day of homecoming chores. Getting our composite door serviced and a new handle fitted. Prescriptions collected and electricians contacted. Honestly the Tim Horton coffee was an unplanned Canadian throwback. As it happens, Hugo and Lola, who will never visit Canada, rather like a small portion of traditional ‘timbits’
In other throwbacks of the day I visited the trusty Abebooks, secondhand book store to catch up on two book purchases which travelling with only hand luggage had made conpletely impossible during our travels. First up the Chicago Diner Cook Book.
And secondly the book published to accompany the Nick Cave exhibition that we went to at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Our Toronto catch up purchases were supplied by John Lewis who sell the brand Atheleta, even better all items were in the sale. So now we have compression leggings which would have stopped our feet getting plump and puffy on our flights. Back to normal now.
Our first 24 hours in Plymouth and the rain has not stopped. This gives me the chance to stitch together three unrelated rain stories of the last couple of weeks.
Rain Story 1 comes from Chicago. An epic storm heralded our first full day in the city. Since self guided walking tours were the flavour of our city visits, some compromises were required. Let me just say, the worlds largest Starbucks was not on our original itinerary, nor was it somewhere we aspired to visit. But when rain is running down necks and saturating hems, making even the most effective waterproof ineffective, desperate measures must be taken.
As Starbucks go it was huge and as a customer I was somewhat difficult. I am much more of an independent Coffee shop kind of woman. When in the biggest Starbucks in the world I drank iced tea.
Which leads me rather nicely to Rain Story 2, later on the same day. We took ourselves off to a district known, most recently, as ‘Boys Town’ now rebranded as a more inclusive North Halsted,not in search of boys but on a quest to find the Chicago Diner, a strictly vegetarian restaurant established in 1985. The Diner deserves a blog of its own but the rain that fell just after we left the diner was of biblical proportions, so much so it drove us into a ‘Boys’ bar. Not exclusively so but predominantly. The only reason for not letting us in was a lack of ID for age purposes. The barman however allowed us in because we looked every inch of 22, Ice Cocktails were bought and we settled in the window seat. Maybe not our best move for the bar to attract clientele but we were shameless in grabbing the best seat to people watch. It turns out that complicated cocktails including tequila in their blend are awfully good for weary feet and knees. They also set you up remarkably well with the Chutzpah needed to use the gender neutral/inclusive washrooms including both urinals and cubicles. There were very stern words about two persons not using the cubicles at the same time, but for some reason I got no offers to share and could go about my comfort break in solitary confinement with no fear of rule breaking.
In other rule breaking news, we made no attempt to take guns into the bar. May I say that in Toronto we were also well behaved and made no attempt to take cannabis into bars that requested us not to.
Which brings us to Rain Story 3. The return to Plymouth. For the last two weeks the big decision of the day has been where and when to get submerged in water. T-shirt, shorts and flipflops. First full day in Plymouth, DryRobes, socks! DM boots and steamed up spectacles, how to not get submerged in water!
Phew! Back in the right time zone but only just sneaking this out just before midnight…
Leaving Chicago, and then, suddenly, not leaving Chicago. The book planned for my return flight, titled ‘The Paris Wife’starts off in Chicago. Set in the first chapters, somewhat unexpectedly, on the exact streets that my over used feet walked their daily 20,000 steps last week. I bought the book in Toronto because it promised to take me to Jazz Age Paris. 20 pages in and I am in Chicago and in Chicago. Two weeks ago the streets would have just been abstract names but now I have a real feeling for the geography of the early plot. This is the most delightful surprise and, as so often happens will take this blog somewhere entirely different to the planned destination.
The funny thing is that the book was chosen because it is a book written about Ernest Hemingway and his time in Paris, two subjects I am familiar and comfortable with. Already I am hoping the characters will make a visit to the Drake Hotel, a beautiful survivor from the Jazz Age.
And just like that the characters have moved on to Paris and I am in an Uber to Wimbledon.
Flying day. Toronto -Chicago-London. More paperwork and electronic permissions than would be imaginable pre-Covid. No matter how much we have there is always more needed. 3,000 very slow steps in a variety of queues. Once again crossing borders is easy. Curiously getting onto the beach at Crystal Beach on Lake Erie took far more effort and paperwork. This is so not a moan. Lake Erie was our destination of choice we plan to swim in all of the Great Lakes, 4 out of five done, then we start on the Finger Lakes. North America you have been fabulous. Normal blogging will resume very soon.
And just like that, August is over. We saw August out immersed in Canadian family. Having spent our entire North American experience taking daily swims in lakes, today we had a pool day. It would have been a tremendous shock if this had happened at the beginning of our holiday because we have become very used to swimming in the salty water of the sea over the last couple of years. But 8 days of fresh water lake swimming has made us used to not being able to float so easily.
Swimming in a pool is a fabulous place to ponder, I was as immersed in water as we have been in family for the past 5 days.We are very lucky. The cast of individuals has changed every day but there has been chatter, reminiscing and food ever since we arrived on Saturday evening. It will continue until we leave. Just being with people who are kind and generous of their time and homes is so very good for the soul. Soon enough we will be standing on our own two feet again nurturing our own family on the other side of the Atlantic.
Covid robbed us of so much family time on both sides of the Atlantic, and further afield. This summer we have had some wonderful moments, lets hope we never have such big gaps between visits ever again
Getting High in Toronto.The CN Tower Toronto, no we did not go up it. Our Toronto visit was brief and we were very much feet on the ground for the 24 hours we were there. More than 40,000 steps, type of feet on the ground , but you can’t get away from the CN tower, it is iconic and features in art work as above and the Cityscape as shot from Ward’s Island. There is a whole other blog to be written about our adventure to the distillery district and even there the CN tower sneaked into view.
We have nothing against the CN Tower but I dont feel we know the city well enough yet to be thrilled seeing it from 342 metres height. Somehow as tourists we get our kicks from seeing the CN tower in context with other landmarks. Travel is a funny old thing, wherever you travel someone will always tell you that you missed the best bits. Or maybe we didn’t miss the recommended best bits but those ‘best bits’ failed to ignite the same passion as something random does. Being up high in the CN Tower was not on our schedule this year but a very different high took us very much by surprise. Unknown to us Canada has legalised the use of cannabis. Our late Friday evening walk was accompanied by the familiar sweet smell of dope. Not so unusual on a Friday evening and not something we thought was particularly worthy of comment. But our early morning Saturday walk had almost the same ratio of fresh air: dope. Now that did suprise us, how can a city that smells like that on waking get any work done? Is it possible to be doubly high in Toronto?
Back to Chicago, in the blog, for a fabulous blast of unexpected Contemporary Art. The Museum of Contemporary Art was showing a major retrospective of Nick Cave an artist completely unknown to me.
Nick Cave is an American sculptor, dancer, performance artist, and professor. He is best known for his Soundsuit series: wearable assemblage fabric sculptures that are bright, whimsical, and other-worldly, often made with found objects. Born: February 4, 1959 (age 63 years), Fulton, Missouri, United States
His Soundsuits are phenomenal. A garment that disguises everything about a person. Wearing one makes a person larger than life and yet invisible, culturally and ethnically unreadable and genderless.
I need to read loads more about this artist, but a hand luggage holiday does not permit buying the weighty tome that I need to fully digest his work.
The works that really connected with me were his assemblages of domestic objects. My responses were not as complex as his motivations but that is often the point of Contemporary Art. It is made to make you think. I know that once I get home and can give this artist plenty of reading time my reactions will be different but for now I thought I would share my thoughts.
I am not an ornament person, my father was not an ornament person, in consequence my mum chose to moderate her ornament ownership. When they died I kept one ornament as a memento mori. My dad, an entirely liberal person with no special requirements of life could not visit over ornamented homes, they set off something in him which he couldn’t tolerate. I am the same, but living a generation later the problem is not as acute. Nick Cave is the same age as me and creates assemblages of the over ornamentation of his parents generation. My immediate reaction was an almost physical dislike and yet they are things of unsettling beauty.
As an aside one of my recurring dreams is in an ornament shop. Lladro brand. In the dream, I break up everything to virtual powder and feel jolly proud of myself once the ornaments are rendered down. A similar feeling of discomfort settled on me during parts of this exhibition.
Caves other work that hit a nerve with me was his Spinner Forest. Garden Spinners are another personal dislike. Three videos show this form of ornamentation in such vast numbers and out of context. Another form of a nightmare dreamscape.
Beyond his nerve jangling, concsience pricking art there are also some quieter pieces. Still hugely thought provoking.
And that, until I am better read about Nick Cave,is that. Knowing that once I have read deeply I will wish I could walk back and enjoy the whole thing more deeply and with greater understanding.
Here we are in Ontario trying to find our place as numbers 14 and 15 in a family we have not seen for over 3 years because of Covid restrictions/ lack of passports and annual leave constraints. Just like marbles in a jar there has to be a little movement in all directions for us to settle. The walking of many miles on our previous of four days was just a training exercise. Now we are all about the food. You know you have landed in the heart of an Anglo-Indian family when the welcoming meal is a belly bursting curry. Nothing like a curry that is painstakingly recreated from a recipe book or created by a restaurant chef, but one that has evolved over many years at the hands of an Aunt who knows her recipes inside out and creates intuitively and with love.
There are a lot more blogs in the store cupboard from Chicago and there will be an equal number, I’m sure from Toronto. Today we left our days of city visits, we have averaged a little under 20,000 steps a day for four days of city exploration. Thats a lot of walking and a good bit of blogging inspiration too.
Todays blog was inspired by bobbing. Our bobbing friend Gilly suggested Ward’s Island as a fine place to spend an afternoon.
We love an island hop, and this one turned out to be a little piece of paradise. It was so paradisiacal that We got lost in the moment and forgot to take many pictures, blogging fail but sometimes being lost in gorgeousness is overwhelming.
A cute cafe moments from the ferry, and a glorious beach to swim from.
With a very picturesque boat. Ward’s Island was suggested by Gilly because her old school friend lives there. When we wondered the few street of Ward’s we saw somone sitting in the garden of the house where Gilly had last met her friend almost 20 years ago.
It was with such pleasure that we had found the right person, who also is an “Essex Girl”. Immediate Whatsapp messages were shared with Gilly and then we had to hasten off to catch the ferry ready for our next adventure in rural Ontario. The views from the island are spectacular.
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