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.
Is winter ebbing, with spring quietly edging? At the moment. I sense we are entering the scrag end of winter. Daylight hours have increased but temperatures are still challenging. Signs of spring are everywhere, yet the mud of winter pulls at my feet and marks my clothes. Me and mud have never been friends. Even the magical mystery mud of music festivals fails to charm me, the feint aroma of Medieval toilet systems does not enhance my experience. My childhood mud was mostly livestock mud from dairy farms or piggeries. At school we ran through the flat arable fields of the Essex countryside. Probably the purest mud of my experience but I didn’t love it.
And then just like that I remembered that one of my favourite views is actually a mudflat.
From which I must conclude that mud charms me from a distance. I just don’t enjoy being in it. My apologies to mud for being such a grumpy guts.
Our morning walk gave us a familiar surprise in an unfamiliar place. We used to live in London where street stabbings were, not commonplace, but not unheard of. Street memorials sometimes lasted years. Supermarket flowers and mementoes, kept fresh by friends and family.
Although we knew there had been a street stabbing on one of our dog walks it was a bit of a surprise to find an informal flower memorial to the person stabbed last month.
Sometimes the unexpected makes eyes a little blurry. As we returned people were tidying away the dying blooms. What a very sad job for anyone to have to do.
The Crocuses have put their heads above the leaf mulch and mud.
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
Mid-February before I feel the urge to write a prompted blog. But I discussed this matter only yesterday in the real world of random conversations.
I am not particularly patriotic. I love where I live, on an island off the coast of mainland Europe. But equally I love Europe. I was not a Brexiter. I sense I could make a home wherever I washed up and was welcome.
I like the rhythm of my life, because I have a fortunate one. So I am grateful for my English life but not to the point of ever wearing a flag of any sort or getting misty-eyed over our National Anthem or international sport. So I guess I am not a true patriot.
But I am an enthusiast for life, wherever I am and the crocuses yesterday made me feel joy in a muddy place. Yesterday was a two outfit day, caused entirely by damp dog walks in landscape that seemed weary and overwhelmed by the wetness of winter. But the gem like colours of crocuses pushing their heads through mud and leaf mulch were a happy find. Crocuses are flowers of late winter and early spring. Just fabulous news from nature.
Perhaps most regular readers were out loving life rather than reading my words, which is much the better option.
This morning brought me a Wazz baffle from The Londonist. One of my favourite reads.
Wazzbaffles have long intrigued me. I worked in the City of London for a long while and Wazzbaffles were quite the thing as an architectural feature. Similarly, opposite our home in Cornwall, the local church has wazzbaffles in the architectural corners between the church and the local pub.
Wazzbaffles were a large part of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a group of friends who had never realised that historic parts of most old towns and villages have these things.
The point of today’s blog is twofold. I can natter on about a weird little fact and hopefully whoever I was talking to will see this and realise that I wasn’t talking nonsense. Because I have forgotten exactly who I was talking to a few weeks ago.
Low stats and forgetting the exact members of a conversation three weeks ago are linked.
I mever know, exactly, who reads my blogs and that is actually a huge part of the joy. In real life I sometimes forget who I have had which conversation with. I take no joy in this and see forgetfulness as an irritation and a disservice to my friends.
But how lucky am I to have so many conversations in different formats that they get jumbled, misaligned and partially forgotten. Even more lucky because I consider myself to be not the most outgoing person in any room.
Anyway non-outgoing me is dipping my nattering toes into Substack. Every now and then I will ponder my ponders. Nothing much to see there yet but here is the link.
14th of February has been saturated with the colour red and messages of love for centuries. Specifically romantic love. I have always felt a bit uncomfortable with the whole day, specifically anonymous cards which always seemed a bit stalkerish. But recent years have seen the day gently eased from the grip of heteronormative love/lust to a day celebrating Love in many forms.
John Betjeman, a British poet, invented the word Topophilia. The love of place.
I am a Topophile. There are lists in my head of places that I love , places where I have a sense of connection and wonderment about.
The two pictures in this blog are either end of a short lane near where I live. They have visual beauty and the mystery of history coupled with an unpredictability because their appearance is always shaped by tides, weather and human activity.
Spring is on the air. It may be a fake Spring but Sunshine + Daffodils is a hint towards better things.
Posters for a genuine Spring exhibition are another sign that we are on the homeward stretch towards Spring 2024.
1200 Blogs of unfocussed ponderings. A daily pondering pilgrimage, pulling a nugget of nonsense out of my daily life. A few hundred words and some pictures tossed into the abyss of the internet. Landing on the devices of friends, family and strangers. Thank you for taking the time to ponder along with me.
Spring, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere is just in the next room.
Today was the first time I heard the word sunsetting to describe something being cancelled or discontinued.
The context was President Trump ‘sunsetting’ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion legislation and the consequent race by business leaders to ditch EDI to gain favour with the new president.
Even in writing that sentence it was easy for me to write the more common word ‘ditch’ for ending something. I could have used ‘dump’.
By using the word sunsetting are the president, big business and the reporting media polishing a turd.
Sunsets and therefore sunsetting suggest a gentle transition towards the bible-blackness of night. A benign feeling of anticipated change.
Unexpected change doesn’t quite fit the sunsetting phrase either.
No lover scorned is ever going to suggest that they were sunsetted.
Words are a constant source of fascination. I love them and sunsets.
What a difference a week makes. Last week I was happy to have created an image that shows rainfall on a February Day. Yesterday someone was brutally attacked, at night near the bandstand and this location is currently swathed in police tape.
I immediately feel differently about an inanimate object that was created for pleasure, and wished I had represented the bandstand more joyfully. I suppose rain and bad people are inevitable in life. The impact of negativity always seems to leave a disproportionate mark on landscape and our minds. When the police tape is gone I will go and take another photo and make sure I create something that reflects the joy that this structure deserves.
Monday’s blogs are either early or late. Not because I am sleeping on the job like this sloth. Mondays we do childcare and choose not to be on our phones when she is around. So a blog is written early or late.
This is the late variety while our small person sleeps. I love this picture from a friend’s recent holiday in Costa Rica.
I am very fond of sloths and envious of their lifestyle under normal circumstances.
But dozing like a sloth in a tree and proper pondering is not for me today.
Sunday morning and a gift of church bells, should you choose to watch the video above.
Today’s ponder was seeded in my head by the smallest of coincidences. Saturday found us on a back street walk at Ashburton, a market town on the edge of Dartmoor. We were pulled in the direction of the church by the bells ringing. On the way I caught sight of this blue plaque.
When we arrived in the churchyard we saw a small crowd of beautifully dressed wedding guests having a cheeky last minute smoke before going into the church.
Something Sir Walter, despite being entirely responsible, would never have seen during his stay in Ashburton. Smoking tobacco was only an upper class habit in England until the late 19th century and did not become commonly used by all of society until the end of the Industrial Revolution.
And with a delicious coincidence, there is a mural of Sir Walter actually pondering, overlooking the pub where he spent his last night of freedom. Before being locked up for twelve years in the Tower of London.
His ponders must have been far more consequential than mine ever are.
Not pissing off James 1st might have been a good thing to ponder. And after 12 years in jail and 3 years of freedom, not pissing off James 1st a second time would have been a prudent ponder in my humble opinion.
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