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.

#1193 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Nature, SerendipityLeave a comment

I have been pondering my digital footprint and to a degree my ultimate digital ghost. Mostly because of articles that I have read or heard in the media. To be honest I am quite baffled by the thinking. The blog is probably the deliberate ,majority of my footprint and ghost, but what do I know. What is done is probably done. Nature put my thoughts into perspective a little.

My digital and real-life shadow appears on the surprisingly small root system of a fallen oak tree. Discovered this morning on a dog walk. Maybe 300 years old, this tree was taken down by a recent storm. The old tree left a surprisingly shallow footprint.

Like me the tree has children.

So close their roots probably touched.

Do trees grieve a brutal loss in a storm? Do they have ghosts or worry about their footprint, real or digital.

Funny things to ponder on a lovely day in February. I sense my digital footprint is actually quite shallow. So no need to overthink things on a sunny day.

Is this timeline random?

I have no intention of creating a similar one , my girth and corresponding contemporary facts will forever  remain a mystery. Or maybe it would be fun to try.

#1192 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photographyLeave a comment
Devonport Park Bandstand.

I’ve finally cracked a small achievement in my creative wishlist for the winter. A bandstand in winter can be a forlorn thing. Useful only to shelter people and dogs from the rain. But bandstands in themselves are quite heart-warming things. Memories are made in and around bandstands. Music is the obvious #1. But they are so much more. A meeting point for friends and lovers. A hang-out for teenagers grappling with hormones and impending adulthood. Parents with buggies trying to form useful, supportive friendships with strangers ; who just happened to conceive a child at a similar time. Somewhere to think about friends and family in other realms.

Essential to me, in this image, is the ever present rain and the complete banishment of greige. Even though that was my reality.

#1191 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Outer Trematonia1 Comment

Yesterday was a fabulous February weather day. Fabulous because the sun was up and greige was banished. I was on a mission to take a bad photograph for my ongoing dabbling at image-manipulating. The day itself was full of other stuff. Shopping, child care and book club. So my moments of image manipulation were snatched in the rare quiet moments of the day.  Time poor is sometimes a good thing. At the early stages I am.  happy with my multilayered image.

Not quite sure that I am where I want to be image wise. But sometimes the enemy of good is better. and multi -layered is the tenuous link for this blog.

I woke myself up this morning to get out of a multi-layered dream. Certain that I did not want to be where my subconscious had dumped me.

Like many people Airbnb is in my travel portfolio.

For reasons unknown my early morning dream had me checking into an Airbnb late at night above a coffee shop. I awoke in the dream ( Probably when the first real life alarm went off) to find my bed in the midst of the coffee shop with people stepping around my bed with coffee and breakfast items. Seemingly oblivious or being discrete about having to step around my bed. It was definitely a contemporary 2025 coffee shop but the disturbing thing for me was not that I was in bed, but that many of the customers were smoking indoors and there was an  unmistakable smoke fug filling the room. Just as used to happen before indoor smoking in public places was banned. I quickly woke myself up.

In my waking life I have never given such a thing a moment’s thought. Where and why on earth do our brains write such bonkers scripts.

I wonder if my creative thinking is all about layers so my dream world is being a bit layered and book club was about parallel lives.

Who could begin to guess.

#1190 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

A greige Sunday with two colourless dog walks at either end of the day. But our evening walk was brightened by still water between the current fish market looking over to the old location which is now a thriving area of bars and nightclubs.

This is one of our favourite circular walks around all the commercial harbours. Almost never in the dark but there are plenty of lights and it is a safe enough area.

Here is another still water shot from November.

Fishing boat on the nightclub side.
Bars on the Nightclub side.

Clearly I love still water and colour beats greige any day.

#1189 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Devon, dog walks, SerendipityLeave a comment
Totnes Castle

Being taken by surprise by February 1st gave us a curious Saturday morning of shuffling things around. The afternoon was rather greige so we set off to a favourite town. We arrived a bit late to visit the castle but by walking there we were propelled towards the back streets which I have not explored for more than 20 years when I worked here. The main streets were bustling with the tail end of a busy Saturday market.

17th or 18th Century Door Knocker

Rusty women became a little bit of a theme.

Encased in an air vent.

Our theme was just to enjoy walking the back streets looking at many centuries worth of lovely cottages on interlinked lanes and passages that spread like cobwebs from the Castle.

The castle dominates the town from its prominent hill as it was designed to do.

All our wandering was at dog pace. The peemails left by centuries of dogs always fascinate them in historic urban areas. But they are small dogs and we had been doing walking jobs with them all morning. The cafes in the High Street were calling the dogs but were all still buzzing at 4:00 or buzzed and already closed. But in a back street, we found this glorious turquoise paradise. Busy but not too busy.

We were on 10,000 human steps. Goodness knows how many dog steps. This cafe was one that Lola was not prepared to pass the door of.  So happy was she to sit down and share a cheese scone that she agreed to a photogenic photograph.

In other news a small bunny came home with us

#1188 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, weather1 Comment
Sunset in Devonport Park.

When I wrote yesterday’s blog I had no idea it was the last one of January. Somehow I missed the anticipation of the end of the longest month.

Which is a sign, I suppose, that taking a more positive attitude to Winter is having some effect.

On a positive note we are 2/3 done with the official winter months.

I know I am not alone with my slightly dismal attitude. People wouldn’t write books and articles about positive winter attitudes if  winter was all ticketty boo for the majority.

A SouthWest English winter does not look like this.

Fictional/Fantasy Devonport Park

What can I say about switching my mindset from endurance to tolerance?

Seasons are a bit like work colleagues or club members or any other group of humans. There is always one that has to be tolerated, made allowances for and most importantly celebrated when they leave.

So good morning February let’s get this winter malarkey over with.

I may even sign your leaving card with a cheery message wishing you well with your future in the Southern Hemisphere. I will watch and make sure you leave.

#1187 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography1 Comment
Forder Creek.

Friday has arrived with bright sunshine.

My day is shaped though by the aftermath of Storm Éowyn.

Monday I needed to contact some old friends to help me solve a problem in another friends garden. A playhouse had been lifted into some trees that bordered on a road.  I couldn’t solve the problem immediately but they were able to sort things out. They have a weakness for buns so it seemed entirely appropriate to reward their efforts with baked goods.

Although I did check out all things tree related in my friends garden in case I needed help again. The weather gods had been kind, so our bun* eating was unfettered by any actual physical labour today.

Buns, tea and immense amounts of chattering were interrupted by my dogs testing their dog-proof fencing. One Bantam and one chicken were quick to alert us that the dog-proof fencing had a design fault. Poodle crosses and poultry are not a peaceful or particularly safe combination but the novelty of the moment kept the chooks just one step ahead of the dogs.

Very exciting times for January.

  • Spell check keeps correcting bun to bum. Why did I not use the word cake?

#1186 theoldmortuary ponders.

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Here I am awaiting a little Pride and Prejudice ( Sort of).

Jane Austen, it has been a while.My reading schedule is impossibly full so revisiting the reading of my youth is unlikely.

I was briefly youthful this afternoon, as I explained to comfortably seated theatregoers that I was 19. My seat number, not my age. But in that moment I identified as 19. At 19 I was much more familiar with the works of dear Jane. I have always wondered why she didn’t write a novel called ‘Judgement’

Review of the play from a proper reviewer below. I was too busy enjoying it. Not that I enjoyed it as much as others. Proper Austenites got every clever joke milliseconds before me.  I am an unashamed laugh out loud kind of woman but I was in the presence of people laughing and whooping to a whole new Tena Lady level of mirth.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/nov/03/pride-and-prejudice-sort-of-review-silliness-and-sensibility?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was hugely entertained. So I am doing what the poster on the stage suggested.

#1185 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Good Fortune, Serendipity1 Comment
Kung Hei Fat Choi

Chinese New Year. The Year of the Snake. The sun is up and I can share fabulous red themed photographs on the blog.

One of my most serendipitous photos was taken a few steps further west from our local tidal pool. One December day I found a man practising his moves overlooking Plymouth Sound.

December 2017

This seems the perfect day to show off his skills and my good fortune on witnessing this.

May your Wednesday be full of colour and not too many actual snakes.

#1184 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering1 Comment

The normal order of things has arrived in our house out of the normal order.

Bunches of daffodils arrived over the weekend. Normally the first cut flowers of January, they were overtaken by beautiful blowsy tulips who arrived en masse for a birthday just over a week ago.

The weather of this curious winter is doubtless to blame. Tulips come from elsewhere and are grown in controlled greenhouses for the early part of the year. Daffodils come from just down the road and suffer the same weather as I do.

The daffodils in our kitchen probably started life as cut flowers a week or so ago in fields near Penzance. Then travelled in  temperature controlled luxury to London, were distributed to Marks and Spencer, where they were purchased and then driven down to us over the weekend.

Normally we can reliably buy daffodils by the roadside from early January . Everything is a little bit late and battered by the storms that keep rolling in. Even snowdrops seem a  bit behind their usual schedule.

These clumps of snowdrops are usually much more open to posing for photographs. The green stripes of their underskirts are one of my favourite shades of green.

Flowers in January bring a twinkle to the listless, slightly unfocussed days of mid-January. Arriving out of order is a discombobulating experience. But now the daffodils are in the kitchen and everything should fall into place. Onward to the second half of winter. Bring it on and let’s get it over with.