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.
The sun got to me yesterday. The shadows on the moss made me think of a lateral skull X-ray. Overnight my silly head kept thinking about it. I even dug out my old Grays Anatomy. The book, not the TV series. Just to satisfy my poor insomniac head that wanted to sleep.
” What keeps you up at night”
“Just random nonsense”
Some of the proportions are a bit wrong and the stick to the back of the neck is rather a lethal look. But a bit of superimposition shows why it was a hard thought to shift.
January 2nd started in much the same way as it usually does.
Buying a birthday cake for my daughter that has no essence of Christmas or New Year. A very, very normal Colin the Caterpillar . No glitter no sparkle, no Festive Colin.
Normal Colin. Colin was created 35 years ago by Marks and Spencer. A birthday without Colin is unforgivable.
After buying Colin the day could have gone one of two ways.
If the weather had been poor I would have bobbed with the bobbers.
The weather was wonderful.
But with the weather, wonderful I walked in the woods with my daughter and her family to celebrate 33 years of life and laughter.
The sun came out for the first time in 10 days.
A small person enjoyed puddles.
And all was right with our world.
Dismonds in the moss.
More woody stories tomorrow. Today is better late than never.
And so as the first page of a 2025 diary turns. I must return my twinkle garments to the wardrobe. No more sequins or clever play on words.
2 t shirts like this one blue one black.
I have promised my green sequin skirt a possible summer outing but for now they are off for a well earned rest.
I talked to a friend about our shared love for twinkle garments for the festive season. She said the only problem is that all our festive photos look similar no matter what the year.
A point well made but of no consequence to my simplistic thinking.
Talking of observing time passing, I have had an awful shock. A 10 X magnification, illuminated mirror arrived with Santa. We have a 5x travel mirror, which I last looked at in September. Let’s just say the shock of 10X v 5X was not a gift. The wrinkles are im-pres-ive in the new mirror. 5X has been telling lies on my holidays or the last four months have been particularly harsh. My face looks like a geography contours project. Waterless fjords have appeared on my face. Smiling makes things worse. I may spend 2025 being enigmatic.
We were out early for New Years Day on the Barbican. Earlier than the street cleaners.The Barbican is the hub of nightlife and revelry in Plymouth and has been for centuries. New Years Eves are vivid, giddy, lustful and excessive. This morning saw plastic glasses and fast food wrappers skittering round in the wind, small brightly coloured pools of sick were easily avoided on the historic cobbles.
Detail Night Out on the Barbican
Maybe not to everyone’s taste but I captured the sensation of a Barbican Night Out on a painting a few years ago. It doesn’t reproduce well as it is a glossy resin piece,but to me it represents the hedonism and joy of a great night out. Uniquely, in Plymouth, it is done with high heels and cobbles. What could possibly go wrong.
The last day of twixtmas. I thought I would have a little jog through my creative notes from this year when there was a lot of experimentation behind the scenes and there will be more in 2025.
January 2024
Tasting, feeling, painting synesthesia. Eating a frozen rhubarb crumble. The taste of high summer in the middle of winter.
February 2024
Another sensation painting/print. I needed to be ready for a print exhibition. This reflects my own experience of being a year round sea swimmer using an outdoor shower.
March 2024.
Singing rehearsals for a Green Man Festival. I wanted to create a contemporary Green Man.
April 2024
Green Man backlash. The awkward story of Green Woman birthing a fully grown, in-leaf tree.
May 2024
An old painting. The Nearly Home Trees on the A30. The original was lost for ages .It turned up in May.
June 2024.
Still a work in progress
I started experimenting with combining quick sketches and a location photograph. A book group on a quiet Greek beach.
July 2024
Another work in progress. Redesigning and reconfiguring my studio has caused some sketch notes to be found and others to be lost.
This one is currently missing in action.
August 2024
A photoshopped sketch note. Who knows where this one is going.
September 2024
Gilding apples.Finally the apples in a string bag are finished.
October 2024
Learning a new (old) skill. Printing a daffodil using the potato printing technique.
November 2024
Just using up, by weaving, scraps of watercolour and typewritten quotes.
December 2024.
Photoshop combination of two photographs of a December weekend. Firestone Bay at dawn and Glass Bricks at Battersea Power Station.
I always think my sketches are a bit random but this annual review makes me think that they are all linked in some way.
The extra blog. Twixtmas has run away with me, more ponders than time. Our usual busy family Christmas has certain traditions, special foods and things to be done. On a smaller scale than usual we have hit most of the festive briefs
With one glaring error.
A big Christmas requires planning and early shopping starting in October. A smaller Christmas requires less planning and no early shopping. Or so I thought, but starting the shopping one week before Christmas was foolish. All supermarkets were out of stock of an essential festive snack.
My usual October haul.My December haul.
Some things cannot be scaled back.
Me and cheese footballs go way back to a small Essex pub called The Red Cow.
It was my grandparents pub and stocked cheese footballs year round. Best enjoyed with Vimto in my past. And enjoyed now because of the past. ( I do know they are a bit of an acquired taste) I won’t miss out on them next year. Nobody from the pub years are alive anymore. Just me and Cheese footballs.
I suspect these ghosts of Christmas past, my mother and grandmother, standing here on the pub steps might think I was a little mad to continue to eat Cheese footballs . Not mad this year!
If we are lucky twixtmas is a lull with a little more thinking time than the hurly burly of Christmas and the optimism or trepidation of moving gently into a new numerical year. Perhaps a time to appraise relationships both past and present. My blog hosts posed this question overnight. As we gather people close to us this is a hugely significant question.
What relationships have a positive impact on you?
I would say there are three quality stages of relationships.
Close / Loving.
Intermediate with affection, respect or a combination of the two.
Fleeting.
Of the three I would say only the last can be purely positive, or indeed purely negative.
All other relationships are a balance of positive and negative impacts. Hugely positive relationships come with some inevitable negatives when people close to you break your heart in some way, not always intentionally. Intermediate relationships can be surprisingly lovely with less impactful negatives.Fleeting relationships can be amazingly positive, the negative aspects more easily brushed off.
Some relationships are negative all the way but circumstances force you to carry them around like a piece of pointless heavy luggage.
Twixtmas is a time to reflect on the texture of our relationships. Some regrets but a good balance of loveliness would seem to me to be the optimum choice for a positive impact. We all have to take the rough with the smooth to a certain degree because nobody is perfect or right for us all the time. Or us for them.
Sometimes dumping the pointless heavy luggage is just the absolute right decision and brings the joy of a negative action creating a positive outcome. Not always easy to do.
That is a good old waffle as I stare into the Christmas tree but the festive season often makes us confront some difficult thoughts alongside all the lovely positive ones, about people we share or have shared Christmas/ Life with. The luxury of the time to be able to consider relationships past and present, close or fleeting has a positive impact in itself.
P.s this blog was not written to be downbeat or forlorn. I may have struck a wrong note. I was simply observing that even the most lovely experience will have a piquancy of sadness if you are fully invested. When it ends for instance. And when a dreadful experience stops there is an uptick because the dreadful is gone.
Is this peak twixtmas? Christmas has started to ebb away and the usual Sunday feelings of a new week ahead has the added frisson of a New Year to consider. My Saturday newspaper looked back. The Sunday newspaper, should I choose to buy one may well look forward. Meanwhile the mist/low cloud/ greige continues to cover our days. Which are also enhanced by the cold viruses we picked up from Merry Mingling over the festive season.
Happiness is knowing where the dry tissues are and making sure the soggy ones are not left in the pockets of garments destined for the washing machine.
Twixtmas comes but once a year, I love the informality and shape shifting of days that never quite know who or what they are. Punctuated at any moment by a snack or drink, sometimes normal year round fodder other times a giddy combination of festive left overs.
Boxing Day dawned with grey and grumpy weather but we made our way to Harlyn Bay with Turkey sandwiches and a flask of tea. The parking gods gave us this remarkable view from the back of our van. A trip to this beach is always on our festive tick list, this year the tradition had a special significance. Hugo, and by default Lola too, were going to be allowed off the lead to scamper about freely for the first time since Hugo was attacked in late October.
They were both giddy with freedom.
And more than happy to mingle with other dogs also off their leads/leashes.
They also managed excellent recall which is not always their finest moment when on this beach.
Twixtmas, a magical week of slight discombobulation when no day is quite as it should be and the question on most peoples tongues is.
“What day is it actually today”
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
With that in mind my perfect space for reading and writing is any space I find myself in. I just allow myself to dwell there a little longer during Twixtmas. I like Twixtmas with the extra ‘T’ after the X it gives the word a little more gravitas.
A vital time to recharge our winter batteries before 2025 gallops into view. Not that Christmas 2024 has left me depleted in any way. But Twixtmas is definitely a time to indulge whims and ponders.
The digital age has altered everything about reading and writing at home.
This box bureau in a 1960’s Ladderax unit holds everything I need for actually writing and my laptop for the digital stuff.
Rather trendily I perch on the sofa arm to replicate a standing desk.
But this blog, almost exclusively goes out from my smartphone. That makes my reading and writing space anywhere I choose it to be or where I find myself. Perfect in my opinion. I rarely have exclusive use, wherever I am and that suits me just fine.
Boxing Day. Stillness after the flurries of festive activity and the incremental excitement of the build up to Christmas Day.
I took this picture at 9pm at the end of a lovely Christmas Day with our family. These road and rail bridges carry people into and out of Cornwall. I love it when a great picture of them presents itself. Looking west to east always makes my heart sing, the thought of journeys from the county of Cornwall, across to Devon and on to the rest of the world always fills me with optimism. Big thoughts.
By contrast some of my seasonal small thoughts, ponders if you prefer, can be shared on this last ponder of the festive season.
The big, small one for me this year is the Sellotape question. How many human hours are lost around the world trying to find the end of the sellotape?
How do presents get mislocated by people like myself, who think they have a foolproof system. Obviously my system is not foolproof, but it is a matter of some bafflement that gifts simply disappear or end up with the wrong recipient.
Alcohol before breakfast, how is that ever acceptable? But yet an early morning Mojito was just the thing for Christmas morning. Surprisingly it was a crisp, bright reminder of high Summer . Zings of mint and lime dancing across my tongue on a day that always brings more weighty unctuous osensations.
Last day of 26 Days to Boxing Day. Z is for Christmas Books.
Thanks to author C Pam Zang neatly filling the Z space with her surname.
Reading is the best thing about Boxing Day… and the chocolates of course. Happy Christmas one and all
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