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 bobbing in our own bay with some intriguing little sea weeds. At this angle they look a lot like a sorting hat from the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. At a different angle they looked like a cast of a kiss. Either way quite fascinating.
Back to reality with trips to the tip and supermarket. All improved by an afternoon swim and chatter with the Bobbers, and a good long walk with some friends and the fluffs. Just as the swim was rewarded with seaweed kisses, or sorting hats, the evening walk was embellished by chips.
Our friends that we walked with deserved these chips as they had canoed up the Tamar, Im not entirely sure what our excuse was!
It felt pretty good over the weekend to just dump normal life on the curbside and head off to a music festival. Festivals create the perfect bubble away from normality.
Our little family bubble just kept smiling.
Our entry back into the real world was fueled by pastries and coffees at a fabulous roadside bakery and farmshop/ store at Bridport. Following our dawn swim at Lulworth Cove, some munching was essential.
The welcome home from the fluffs, Hugo and Lola,was loud and excitable. They did not cover themselves in glory during their weekend away with friends. Terrorising chickens and leaving muddy paw prints on the top of an Aga is not advisable if you ever want to be invited back. Fortunately baked goods, from our stop off on the way home, may just about have bought them a pardon.
Out with a bang, festival over our van was all packed up and ready to go as the fireworks fizzed and twinkled overhead. Just a few hours sleep before we made a swift departure, before dawn, in order to get an early morning swim at Lulworth Cove.
It was lovely to be somewhere quite so beautiful as nature stretched her sleepy limbs to start the day to a soundscape of birdsong.
I love this image from a set yesterday. The colours give it the quality of an Old Master. Yesterday the fickle Covid fairy had once again been looking over my shoulder to see which acts I had ticked on my festival running list. And Ping! Just like that some of my selected acts were zapped by the test and trace app and unable to perform.
My location at the main stage last night pretty much sums up the weekend. We use What3words to relocate one another after the inevitable trips to the festival loos or food and drink consessions.
Offstage- self explanatory really, our chosen acts were off for Covid safety reasons.
Modifies- there is always something else at a festival. Yesterdays unplanned events included Joe Marler talking rugby and mens mental health and Steve Davis and Kavus Torabi talking Medical Grade Music. Which in turn led us to the Bollywood Stage at Camp Bestival just after midnight where we danced and had the surreal experience of watching drunk men mime a snooker match on a picnic blanket.
Sleep- an essential of Festival life.
Just like attending last Saturdays gorgeous wedding, this weeks festival has had us mingling with strangers, this time at a festival. Listening to people talk with real emotion when they describe their joy at our slow re-emergence into a more normal way of life and yet always reflecting on the losses and sadnesses that we have all experienced, appears to have given me my own version of Long Covid. My emotional carapace is not so tough. My eyes don’t normally ooze at weddings and certainly not at festivals. Every time someone makes a heartfelt soliloquy my newly sensitised and accesible soul makes my eyes sting and my heart feel a little sad. Just like Long Covid, I fear my sensitised carapace may be with me for some time.
Mindful of this feeling I tried to create an image of barely there festival goers to represent the millions for whom mingling with strangers is no longer an option at any venue at the festival of life.
Storm Evert and Covid are shaping this festival. Safety checks following the battering of overnight winds and the continuing winds determine when and if certain things can go ahead
The failure of lateral flow tests and family members with covid affect which bands and entertainers are able to put in an actual performance.
Festivals are not just about the planned events they are also about creating a fertile and fecund space for serendipity to capture the imagination. The next two pictures occured at a Bowie DJ set. The first is a piece of transient floor art. Twinkle from someones festival outfit landed on the floor near a crushed beer can. Momentarily looking like an embelished spume of excressence. Only to be kicked apart moments later.
The second is a moment of musical joy when a bloke on a windbag sofa lost himself in a moment of Bowie nostalgia.
A day of seeing and appreciating the unexpected because Covid still disrupts our lives and expectations.
I’m not entirely sure how this Lion is looking this morning. Overnight both him and us have been blown on by Storm Evert. Gusting winds of up to 68 miles an hour. The canvas roof of our pop top flexing and groaning all night.
The carosel creatures will have fared much better with their painted quiffs and cockscombs.
In contrast to the storm our arrival here was positively pastoral.
Queueing in gently wooded areas with stern road signs.
There was no sudden gunfire which is reassuring for the journey home. So far there have been no musical revelations. Just literary ones, a drag queen reading a bed time story utterly upstaged by a twerking 4 year old boy who artfully pulled on his shorts to enhance the appearance of his tiny buttocks. This being quite a middle class sort of festival I’m fairly certain we witnessed the efficacy of the Montessori Twerking Course, involving him in daily activities to promote and encourage his development.
“Play is the twerk of the child’ Maria Montessori.
Sitting in the front row also gave us eye watering detail of the ‘ packing’ required when a big chap in a short skirt performs in drag. A lot of Spandex.
None of this quite what we anticipated in the literary tent. Something, however, to spice up the next Book Club gathering. Here we are being literary. Still no sign of the pink cardigan!
On the road. Having tried out our dancing legs at a wedding last week we are off to a festival.
Not quite there but close enough, Dorset artisinal coffee and baked goods on board we are off to search for an old pink cardigan.
This exact pink cardigan, knitted for my summer holiday many moons ago. Here it is being modelled on the beach at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. One week later we were at the top of Lulworth Castle, in Dorset, when I slipped it off to skip about a bit. We were many miles away by the time I realised I hadn’t ever picked it up. Admitting this to my parents was not my most popular moment. Fifty years or so later I’m heading back to collect it. I’m hopeful that my parents will do any ashy, dust to dust, other realm jig when they realise my half a century too-late diligence.
It will be time to put the flags out when we are reunited.
Spot the strutting seagull in one of these images.
In the night garden. Late yesterday evening was our first foray into a secret garden close to the new house. The weather was unsure of the exact plan and the evening light was strange. Familiar plants took on slightly surreal shapes as we walked around an unfamiliar place.
I’m unsure how regular our visits will be to this new destination. Sometimes the purpose of a place is not immediately obvious and takes time to reveal itself.
I slightly suspect it will become a place to quietly enjoy plants and books .
But a first visit in a dimpsy, twilight was a good introduction to the future possibilities.
What lies beneath? From personal experience all sorts of bobbing paraphernalia that we somehow manage to lose during a dip. Even if a bobber notices immediately we never seem to be able to recover the missing item. We joke that there is a cave where the seal keeps all the human trinkets that he finds in the sea that is either lost or caught in the rising tide. Yesterday something caught the eye of a bobber in about 80 cms of water. Someones precious Apple Watch. No one else on the beach and no clue to the owner. We took it home and placed a message on a local lost and found site and a swimmers page.
Nothing happened all day but in the evening a man knocked on our door. He had been tracking his watch and had tried many houses before he got to us. Watch and man were reunited, seemingly very happily.
Yesterday we were on fire and finished building the flatpack furniture. Not something we would normally do on a hot summers day, but essential to the last of the unpacking and sorting out of the recent house move. Fortunately for this blog the energy and enthusiasm for this task was fueled by a great night out at the evening reception of our friends wedding; which is a far more enjoyable thing to write about than the making of two identical chests of drawers.
A day that started with the wedding of Tess and Adrian.
Finished in the walled garden of Uphill Farm with dancing, pizza, cake and wonderful company.
And finished off with nattering around a firepit.
More photos of the wedding can be found on Instagram #tessasmiles. I’ve just got one more to share which sums up my particular interest at weddings. I adore what I think of as wedding litter. The beautiful small details that are always a significant part of the planning, coupled with the detritus of the day. This picture sums things up and not being in focus is a clear sign that a good time was had.
Pictures of the gorgeous venue can be found on Instagram @uphill_farm or on their website.
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