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.
We missed Blue Monday by having an entirely normal Monday with a 3 year old. So I just put ‘Blue’ into my photo archive and these 3 grids were reflective of the last 6 weeks.
Rather more bright and beautiful than most December/January grids this set include Singapore/Australia/Hong Kong.
Which may also explain why we had no connection to Blue Monday yesterday.
Having a sun surge in late November and December has made the winter months much more tolerable. And filled my grid with beautiful blues.
The old mortuary ponders. I am one of life’s great ponderers. Not a Great ponderer. A ponderer who does a lot of pondering.
1400 ponders is a moment. Before this collection of ponders there were the Pandemic Ponderings, when the world skipped a beat and my daily ponderings started.
Yesterday’s ponder was about 2016. A year when a Global Pandemic was a historic fact. In 1918 a third of the world was infected with The Great Influenza ( Spanish Flu). Maybe as many as 100 million people died.
Global pandemics were things of the past or theoretical predictions. We were blissfully unaware in 2016 quite what was just over the horizon. In 2026 we are all too well aware that enormous scientific and medical progress did not protect us from another one.
I wonder if I would have started a daily diary about mundane and ordinary life in 1916, inspired by that earlier pandemic.
I think I would have considered it and maybe even started one. But writing a daily diary has never worked for me until blogging came along. Inexplicably a daily writing habit is now second nature. I love it. But I doubt I would have gained the habit without those long pandemic days when life took on a whole new level of mundanity.
Always one for irrelevant details, blogging has only increased my thirst for the minutiae of daily life and a bit of positivity. I suspect every aspect of my life has altered for the better.
#1401 and beyond . More sunflowers and more Silver linings.
There is a current trend of looking back to 2016 as some sort of benchmark year.
Was 2016 a genuine wrinkle in time. I do not look back on it with any great fondness. I had an iphone and took some great photos.
But 2016 was a hard year with tough decisions, sadness, badness and unkindness.
Seria Ludo by Mat Collishaw
For large parts of 2016 I felt like I was hanging on to normal life while it swung me round and round on a crazy carousel.
In 2016 I discovered the Japanese word Setsunasa which means,
A tight feeling in the chest. Longing, love, sadness, nostalgia, all compressed into one sharp pain.
So when I think about 2016 that is my overwhelming recollection. But it was such a busy year and there were many positives. Looking through my 2016 photographs I have made myself aware that 2016 was far from all bad.
Time to reshape my recollections a little. Another useful Japanese word.
Wabi-Sabi.
The acceptance that nothing is permanent, and nothing is perfect, nothing is ever complete and yet finding quiet beauty in that reality rather than fighting it.
My post-Christmas tidy up brought me some joy with the rediscovery of my old portable typewriter’s history.
My Olympus SM was manufactured in Germany in 1939 and sold to its first owner W.H Butterworth while he lived at 28, Chiltern Drive, Braddell Heights, Singapore. The original sales document is still in the ginger coloured carrying case, resting on my sofa.
I was in Singapore in November, had I remembered this fact I would almost certainly have taken myself off on a wild goose chase to see my typewriters first home.
Somewhere in this photo from the Marina Bay swimming pool is Braddell Heights. Very far distant but there nevertheless.
Why such a wild goose chase?
I quite like a wild goose chase. Sometimes a seemingly pointless task brings unexpected experiences. So I regret not chasing that particular goose but Singapore had other wildlife.
But we did not meet Otters in the Botanic Gardens, which was a dissapointment
So perhaps we should have chased the odd wild goose.
I always think winter is best endured if observed and endured in bite sized chunks. Getting to mid-January there is always a natural high point when a friend makes marmalade. Something I very much enjoy on a bite sized chunk of bread. A glowing pot of freshly created 2026 marmalade is lurking in my cupboard from today. The pot arrived on the same day as another sign that Winter is loosening her cold boney fingers from our vital parts. My first bunch of Daffodils. Really my favourite flower of all time. Just dont tell the Sunflowers, Roses or Tulips. Dahlias, peonies or Leucospermum.
Winter may have loosened her fingers a bit but there is at least another 6 weeks of mood boosting required . Marmalade , Daffodils and December Leucospermum. Are todays little sunshine coloured pick-me-ups.
December Leucospermum, Mornington Peninsular
Never forgetting another December treat.
Hong Kong Fruit stall. December.
Seeing so much sunshine and vivid colour in December has propelled me through the first half of winter . Marmalade and Daffodils will carry on the good work. I have been so lucky.
I believe that yesterday I banished the last of the pine needles from our hallway and sitting room. A real tree is the heart of the festive season’s fragrance profile. Even a dustpan full of dropped needles in January has a fragrance. Not the same as a tree freshly felled and loaded into a warm car. But definitely a recognisable smell of Winter.
The smell of Winter, Melbourne style is the vapour that you can see in this picture.
My sense of smell and taste has been shredded by Covid. I suspect what I am left with is unlikely to change. I mourned my changed sense of smell and taste in the beginning but now I celebrate the flavours and fragrances I have retained. I was never timid about sniffing or eating but now there is a new/old world of things to explore that previously I might not have liked. I also have a newfound certainty about fragrance and taste.
I like it.
I don’t like it.
I have no opinion.
All the liminal areas of taste and smell no longer exist.
So when I walked into The Block Arcade and smelled something wonderful outside Essensorie then I had to have a closer sniff
A bottle of their Christmas Spice Essential Oil came home with me.
Blood Orange and Rose Geranium would have been the two scents that hooked me in. Anything citrusy is my gateway to flavour and smell. Geranium is a new fragrance friend, eating it would be quite a stretch. Previously I just couldn’t wholeheartedly love it. Now I could roll in a field of geraniums like a frolicsome pony in hay or a kitten in Catnip.
I did neither of those things in their stylish and peaceful shop. I just calmly bought a bottle of their potion.
Flipping tradition . 12th night being the ‘right’ time to take down Christmas Decorations. But as ours were barely up by Christmas Eve, I decided to take them down on the 21st night. Or the 14th of January.
When at a Christmas Tree Farm in Australia it would have been foolish not to purchase a Raw Prawn Christmas bauble to hang resplendently in our Northern Hemisphere tree.
Now Mr Prawn is boxed up and ready to be packed away with all the other tree decorations from around the world.
Taking down Christmas so late in January has plunged me straight into a different sort of festival. Mid-Winter Decluttering. As I write this the house looks appalling as I am mid-point of the mid-winter urge to declutter. The clutter is everywhere having been pulled out from all the places clutter gathers. Writing a blog when I should be decluttering is unforgivable. Maybe I am double pondering. Pondering while pondering what on earth to do with all this stuff.
Crepuscule is a bare root rose that I planted last year. I thought the name was clunky and ugly until I learned that Crepuscule was a French word for sunset.
While I was away in December my bare root rose decided to put out her first ever flower.
I was both thrilled and concerned. What is beautifully acceptable in the early summer in Sydney is not the norm in a wintery Stonehouse. She also has a very high standard set by her Australian Cousin.
A new found love of growing roses brings with it some tough decisions. My bare root rose should be concentrating on growing roots not blooms. The secateurs were deployed to Crepuscules first efforts at budding and blooming. A Tragedy, some might say.
Which leads me tortuously to last nights outing to see the film Hamnet. On the day that awards and accolades have started tumbling in from the Red Carpet Film and T.V Awards Season.
I don’t often go to films of books that I have read that don’t seem to naturally lend themselves to a Screenplay. Hamnet was just such a book. Deeply enjoyable and dense but a bit of a tricksy read in parts. I couldn’t quite see how a screenplay could replicate my reading experience.
I shouldn’t have worried, Chloe Zhao the screenwriter and Maggie O’Farrell the original author and now co-screen writer did a brilliant job . Pruning and distilling the original text into something that worked brilliantly for me on screen.
Most times I put books and films of books into different filing systems.
Hamnet joins Perfume by Patrick Suskind as a film that I regard as accomplished as the original Novel. I imagine it works just as well for those who have not read the book.
24 little hours in Seatown. Another blog featuring home grown sunshine in January.
One day the January sun might just have caused a little reddening of the cheeks. And the next our faces were whipped to a pinkish blush by harsh wind, sideways rain and seawater in the air.
Night and Day, that’s who you are.
An unexpected Christmas tree in mid-January.
Lobster pots and Buoys at West Bay.
Brains are funny things . Mine immediately picked out two songs written in the 1930’s to accompany these weekend photos
Night and Day- Cole Porter 1932
What a difference a Day Makes- Dinah Washington 1934.
These songs are absolutely on the periphery of my experience. They have been stored subliminally in some hard to access , dusty warehouse in my Neo Cortex.
Neither were a family favourite. My parents were small children in the mid to late 30’s
Two pieces of music that I have never given a moment of thought to until their titles exactly matched the theme of the blog. Stored subliminally from background music on radio and T.V throughout my lifetime.
Actual English January sunshine captured in the glass of a picture frame. We hopped along the coast to West Bay in Dorset, where the sun gave us a golden glow. There was not a moments temptation to get into the rolling sea however. It was a day for hats gloves and good coats.
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