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.
Early morning twinkle, I was almost tempted to go home and get my swimmers on. Skinny dipping is only for dusk not broad daylight.
A full day of sun followed on from my early morning dog walk. Coffee and a bite sized Portuguese Custard Tart. Beer traps that had actually protected my precious herbs and vegetable plants from slugs. All before 11 am made for a very satisfying morning. A bit of work through to 4pm and then a walk on the Hoe and an ice-cream with a small person completed my Tuesday in a most satisfactory way.
Sunshine really is a most marvelous thing. I’m slightly lost for words. I’m all out of pondering except of course that I am not. Sunshine makes everything feel in a better place. Especially the not particularly hot sunshine of May. Unless you happen to be working hard in a white painted yard at midday when churlish as it seems even the May Sunshine can be a little over-warm. Some people are just never happy!
I think it is not what I do in my community but why that is important.
For the record, despite not playing competitive tennis for fifty years I do some admin and Social Media for my local tennis club and host, with others, a regular artists meet up.
I do it because both my mum and her mum were active in their communities. They did far more significant things than I will ever do. Where that sense of community kindness came from I will never know. They both worked to earn an income but also did unpaid work that benefitted their communities.
My grandmother ran a rural pub with her husband and a rural taxi service with her lover. The two businesses and relationships seemed to co-exist and compliment each other peacefully. Who better to drive the inebriated customers home than the landlords wife. Doubling their money.
Being both the publicans wife and the local taxi service gave her an insight into the gaps in her community. She filled those gaps where she could with kindness and help. Lonely or isolated people knew that on a Sunday if they nursed a single pint until closing time at 2 PM they would be invited to join the large family roast dinner that my grandad always cooked and served in their farmhouse kitchen. On Christmas Day so many people lingered that trestle tables were set up in the Public Bar.
My mum was a legal and medical secretary. In her spare time in the early sixties she set up clinics that provided women with contraception and sexual health care. Like her mum she saw the gaps in her community, domestic violence and child poverty and did what she could to help. Ultimately her voluntary role became her career but that was never the plan.
A little bit of kindness is always useful in any community. You just have to spot the gap that suits your abilities and your community.
Inadvertently we chose the first Sunday of May to banish mould and grot from the yard. If mould and grot are works of the devil with slugs and snails as devilish familiars then we did a good job. The yard is ready to welcome summer just as soon as Spring takes things seriously. In an entirely pragmatic way some beer traps have been set to encourage slugs and snails not to eat the new growth on our awakening plants.
We found this extraordinarily dense spider web in an unused plant pot.
A bit of digital tweaking and it becomes very beautiful.
And, as we live in the West Country I can pick out the face of the Devil/Winter retreating as the pot is cleaned and ready for planting up.
There was a little bit of Christmas in our Brunch outing yesterday. We had a voucher for a restaurant in Tavistock for Christmas. We love both the restaurant and the town but not its weather. So the minute predictable good weather was forecast we took a trip to Tavistock and had a great brunch seated outside on a Mediterranean/ West Devon Balcony.
The sun was shining and birds singing. Christmas-red shoes and nails were a nod to the occasion.
The dogs were welcome and approved of the quality of the sausages. Remarkably the sun kept shining so an adventure further out to Brentor was planned.
On good weather days Brentor church can be seen from miles and miles away.
Dinky red shoes and a maxi dress are not normal attire for climbing the Tors. I ditched the dinky shoes and put on something a little more rugged.
The maxidress, while not particularly suitable gave me a fabulous perspective to how women before 1920 would have felt clambering their way to worship, celebrate marriages and births or to mourn at funerals.
Billowing fabric and winds are great as sails at sea but not so useful climbing a hill.
The views were worth every gusty moment.
The church itself is small and simple.
The memorial to Percival Cocks shows that getting married at the later than average age of 43 , in a church on top of a Tor was not the bravest thing he did that year.
Bluebells filled the tiny church with their scent.
A sunny morning filled perfectly. Sensation at every turn.
First , proper sunshine swim of the year yesterday. We thought it would never come. The refreshing end to a day with the normal day to day events all achieved without a raincoat or indeed any coat at all. Even better the stone steps and walls in our swim zone had been warmed by the sun and radiated a little heat out as we changed after the ‘bob’
May the 4th be with you. A late start to Spring.
Thanks to Facebook Timehop I have been able to look at other more Spring-like May 4ths.
A vintage road trip
A Fox on the table.
Both London May 4th’s
Wisteria
And a delightful English Eccentric
Both West Country May 4th’s.
Who knows what today will bring but I am hugely happy that one of my favourite months has finally heralded some Spring Vibes. We have a destination of choice and so far, as I write this the weather of choice and we are off to enjoy a Christmas gift.
For full disclosure, I must admit to getting a little over-hot as I weeded the yard yesterday. The irony was not lost on me as that thought skimmed through my head.
4 days late welcoming May, what kept you?
Even my phone got a little giddy in the sunlight yesterday. This photograph took itself as I threw the phone into my swim bag.
Giddy is one of my favourite words, in my head it means silly exuberance caused by an external force. When I was a small person I was often told to ” Stop playing the giddy goat”
Are goats giddy creatures? My only real experience of them is at Agricultural shows or in Greece. In those environments, they always seem rather doleful animals. 50% of them suffering from over-large and cumbersome testicles.
Goats came to mind and then giddiness because two of our regular ‘bobbers’ were unable to swim with us yesterday . They sent this picture of their walk in Sussex.
Getting our backyard into shape after a long wet winter/spring involves little tweaks of DIY and trips to my favourite hardware store. A store that has been in the city since 1927 when Union Street was very posh. The street is a lot less posh now but as I love a bit of faded glamour it is a good place for an urban dog walk when I need to visit the store.
Not all the faded glamour is all that glamorous. This street was once infamous as the Red Light District and bustling hub of the city’s nightlife. The street art in some of the less-than-salubrious nooks and crannies is wonderful though.
And if I needed any illegal drugs this would be just the sort of place to find them.
I just find street art so fascinating. I love this eye because, reflected in it is another piece of local art. A sculpture by Antony Gormley which is at West Hoe.
Look II by Antony Gormley. (Rusty Reg)
While fact checking this blog I was charmed to see that google maps use the ‘ local’ name rather than the official one
In some interesting digital circularity I created this image.
The Buddha I was refurbing*, hence the trip to the hardware store, got a brief moment of wide- eyed giddiness when I superimposed street art and Rusty Reg over contemplatively closed eyelids.
All this arty pondering and I have not mentioned the really puzzling thing about my city walk. There was deer poo on the grass at the back of Union Street. What on earth was a deer/deers doing in the city centre? So unlikely I am at a loss to even ponder such a thing.
Do deers slip into the city to buy illegal drugs?, Do they attend live music gigs? Do they do DIY ?Do they like Street Art?
May 2nd and it is still raining. We have had this Buddha for some time. A long enough time for a fair amount of wear and tear. In a few moments of dry weather I gave Buddha a quick spray job of rose gold. On close inspection Buddha has become a bug hotel. Spraying Buddha was inspired by a Buddha factory and wholesale Buddha Emporium that we stumbled on in downtown Bangkok, this time last year.
We couldn’t take photos in the factory but Buddhas great and small were being moulded, built and sprayed in a production line and were for sale in wholesale numbers. Some were so big they were created in pieces.
Buddha 10 years ago in South London
My old, blue, tatty Buddha probably started life in such a place.
Tatty no more. Sprayed a bright golden coat and now waxed to give some protection against the relentless rain. The bugs who stay in this unusual bug hotel were unbothered by my renovations. This morning Buddha was adorned with webs of all shapes and sizes each one adorned with twinkling raindrops.
Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
I could quote something really meaningful here, but to my shame, my often thought of quote is rather passive-aggressive. Rarely said aloud but thought of through gritted teeth while smiling.
” You are mistaking my tolerance for indifference”
These 7 words have a whole scale of thoughts behind them. 90% of the time the response is of no consequence outside of my thoughts, just me thinking that I am a bit annoyed or really annoyed but nothing really earth shattering . But the 10% can be an unexpected fierce retort or worse the icy chill of some final invisible line being crossed.
I hear you thinking what relevance to the picture of Kingsand Clock tower is my admission of passive-aggresive thoughts.
Well, when the sun came out on Sunday we were sat at the bottom of the clock tower basking in delicious sunlight. Coffees in hand and calm happy dogs resting on the beach. The beach was big, as the tide was out, and there were very few people about. I was pondering that our exact position on a calm and beautiful day was sometimes under 40 foot waves as the worst of winter storms hit this coastal village. Images and news article below.
My pondering and basking were interrupted by 4 people and a large dog choosing to sit right next to us. They were not basking and pondering sort of people. Noisy, competitive, faffers without a scintilla of calm about them. With a whole beach to choose why sit next to the only other people sitting peacefully pondering?
I had about twenty minutes of tolerance in me. My coffee was done, and my pondering about massive waves was unnerving me slightly. Time to remove my intolerant self from the location with one of those statements that may or may not have been heard.
” Shall we move on?”
“This is about as relaxed as my bum after a hot curry”
Oh dear!
Proof of how empty the beach was.
A clear case of me hiding a case of grumpiness in some beautiful surroundings. In a world of so many wonderful, positive quotes the few negative ones I hold onto are easier to recall.
Moving on, have you ever seen a more gorgeous village hall.
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