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.
Four Devon Bobbers and one Cornish Bobber went bobbing at Talland Bay in Cornwall this weekend. I will admit this image is full of digital trickery but memories are a bit like this. The imagination and reality merged in a slightly twinklier version of real life.
Here is the real life.
I just chopped it up a bit, played with scale and enhanced some colour. Which is exactly what most humans do with an anecdote.
There is something a little tingly about being confident cold water swimmers. It turns us into Nyad Ninja’s.
We know that holidaymakers look on at a group of over-fifties women, arriving on the beach, and wonder what we are about. Especially when we slip out of our normal lives and stride confidently into the sea. No timorous squeals when the cold hits. We hear the comments of ‘Mad, brave, bonkers’ and push on.
We were plunged into digital silence yesterday. The O2 mast serving the Talland Bay area provided no service for nearly 12 hours. I thought this Foxglove was much more pretty than a useless signal mast. It is also a reminder that we are heading towards the Chelsea Flower Show Season. When we dream big in our gardening/yardening world. In our yard world, next week sees the arrival of a wall height trellis extension. In our city home our neighbours have cats and chickens who see our yard as an extension of their own. After nearly three years of escalating visits, we have to do something. So trellis and climbing plants are the new deterrents.
So , very soon the yard will be a whole new world. Hopefully a chicken and cat free zone. And hopefully as beautifully styled as a Show Garden.
I found this lone Californian Poppy yesterday. He was growing in an inhospitable space. Caught between Tarmac and an old concrete wall. A brutal, liminal space for something as fragile as a poppy.
My head was in a bit of a liminal space at the time, as I was fresh from attending a London work colleague’s online funeral. Always sad affairs funerals are moments to pause and reflect.
One of my ponderings in that reflective space was when we had last met and last communicated.
I’ve just about nailed down the last meeting which was by accident in a gloriously beautiful old pub in Marylebone in London. Close to where we had worked together.
Our last, long, on-line natter was four years ago when we discussed this cookbook.
Both about 4 years ago.
In that time we have had occasional exchanges on Facebook, but essentially we had lost touch. Which is the nature of work relationships. And a measure of my sorrow yesterday. I’ve not lost a huge relationship, but one of those small complicated mosaic pieces that make up life’s rich pattern.
Obviously, yesterday, so many people in the room at the Crematorium had lost a much bigger piece of their lives.
Although,in truth, a good description of her is, small and complicated.
What was not small or complicated was the massive amount of love in the room. Visible because family and friends ran the whole service. No religion or non-religious celebrant. Just swirling love. Fabulous.
My life in a triangle. The first cup of tea and this blog co-exist in the morning sunshine. I would say that I mostly skip the second stage but when I looked for a photo of a cup of tea there was a biscuit lurking in the corner. Out of the picture is the chair for ‘ a nice sit down’
When I was working, drinking coffee was a much rarer treat. A pleasure when enjoyed in an independent coffee shop and occasionally essential to get me through the working day.
Caffeine is my giddy stimulant of choice. Avoided after noon. A new-to-me, word arrived yesterday more usually associated with the jollity that accompanies alcohol.
What a wonderful new descriptive, these days my bacchian or jovial phase is nearly always fueled by caffeine and sometimes occurs during the nice sit-down phase.
That doesn’t mean I am only jovial or indeed at my most bacchian before noon, the half life of caffeine, in me, is extremely long lived.
This brings the blog to its usual conclusion. My first cup of caffeinated coffee will fire me up to start the day, with every hope of some bacchian moments. No alcohol is required.
Most mornings before I write the blog I have a little canter through various on-line, news-gathering services, check out the 3rd party blog prompt, and consider the blog I was planning to write. One thing jumped out from news gathering that is quite pertinent to todays blog. Also the 3rd party prompt has only a one sentence answer. A gloriously simple answer that I could have used on any of my many days on earth.
What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today? My skin.
Yesterday I did two very small paintings. They are somewhere between abstract and representational, closer to abstract.
One of the articles I read this morning was about, Euphoric recall.
My life, in my old skin, is pretty much one long example of euphoric recall. My two paintings of yesterday are far more euphoric than real life. Maritime Sunburst Lichen is one of my favourite things to see on rocks.
Here it is in its active stage.
But as it ages it flattens out and leaves circular scars.
On sunny winter days it just makes me smile. My abstracts of yesterday were painted from memory with no reference images. I just threw in some dutch gold to brighten them up , they are exactly euphoric recall because some days even Sunburst Lichen can look pretty dull.
But in my head, the lichens are gaudy circles of natural joy.
Which is very much an example of euphoric recall at its finest.
In general my blogs are all about the joyous things in life even if sometimes the inspiration point starts off in a darker place.
Wednesday ‘ hump’ day and a chance to answer a 3rd Party prompt that has been circling my mind since I first read it and decided not to bother with it. But actually circles or going round in circles is appealing as an answer and doesnt knock the planned blog off the page.
Are you a leader or a follower?
As an absolute magpie for information, both necessary and unnecessary, I am an instinctive follower. All the better to learn new stuff from people ahead of me. I have vast pots of information stored in my head.
I call it information and not knowledge because to quote my exasperated Dad, ‘I am a mine of useless information’. Despite being an instinctive follower I am more than capable as a leader, even if that is sometimes accidental. To get back to the proposed blog. I have been pondering the recent death of someone that I had an awkward, or difficult relationship with. I am not alone in finding her difficult but my conundrum was that despite our differences I could see her many good qualities and her death has both surprised and saddened me. It has also galvanised me, as these things often do, to live my life as fully and as engagedly as possible. A sort of mental energy burst. It bothers me when I don’t completely like people and, as I have discovered that becomes harder when they have died.
Luckily for me, a very clever poem to mark the death of someone who had difficult relationships has slightly rescued my circling mind.
If I Had A Voice by Caroline Wilkes
If I had a voice now It would be loving And I would say thank you for all of your care. If I had a voice now I’d want to tell you I’m sorry for not always wanting to be there. My life, it confused you, it did so to me. But I am released now and my heart is free. The heart that was hidden beneath all the pain, It felt so much more than I could explain. And if I had a voice now, I’d say out loud I love you, I wish that I’d made that clear. And in my lifetime I need you to know That I was much more than I did appear. These are things that I’d say through choice… if I had a chance and if I had a voice
I think this nicely demonstrates how learning something from someone else. In this case the admirable Dr Google, can circle a follower into a leader.
You may never have met this poem before. But you almost certainly have had some difficult relationships with people who have since died. Maybe all of this poem works for the conundrum of difficult relationships. Or maybe, like me, just one or two lines do the trick. Maybe just for a moment I have led you to some useful words.
Fantail Fish
So to conclude I believe leading and following are often the same thing from different viewpoints.
Blooming Zemblanity. We held a very select group discussion at Bookworms Book Club yesterday. Just 4 people to discuss The Forest by Edward Rutherfurd, a historical novel charting the people and landscape of the New Forest in Hampshire over many centuries. We all enjoyed the book so much we are going to talk again when we are a bigger number. So no spoilers in the blog.
As usual the conversation, cake and tea flowed freely. Two words took centre stage.
Edward Rutherfurd uses zemblanity, serendipity and ‘sliding door’ moments to move the narrative in unexpected directions and to give readers huge opportunities to ponder the ‘ what if’s’ of his characters lives’
Zemblanity certainly wins for the most exciting word of the session but Estover proved to be the most locally interesting. Estover is a suburb in the north of Plymouth. None of us had realised it was anything more than a location name. But Estover is an ancient word that gives an individual the right to take just enough from another person’s land to sustain but not profit.
Sometimes low attendance at a Book Club feels a little disappointing but yesterday proved that four people can easily fill two hours with book chatter and come away with loads to think about.
The elephant in the room at Bookclub was not our missing members but the return of heavy rain after four days of sunshine. Here we are in the middle of May slipping off dripping raincoats to talk about books when we should be throwing the windows open to cool things down. Rain is a somewhat tenuous link for this blog.
The four days of sunshine made my yard pop with bright greens and pinky/purple flowers.
For no particular reason, I chose to use them as the illustrations for this blog about a book club. The only common theme is the elephant in the room. Rain. After 4 days of sunshine and hard labour in the yard it was so good to see these happy blooms and greens. After one day of rain the slugs and snails, with no need for raincoats, will be out chomping on my precious blooms. Zemblanity in action!
If the Aurora Borealis eluded us this weekend , we were a little more lucky with Poisiden. A new piece of street art has recently been created just below Plymouth Hoe. Coffee, a bacon bap and some basking in the sun were the perfect way to start the day with some friends, freshly returned, from Kent.
Although lost,somewhat, in the foreground of the top picture. We found two Poisidens overlooking the sea. A sea swimmer was just dressing as we arrived. Kilt wearing is not de rigueur for sea swimming around the corner in Stonehouse, clearly, the thrust and fumble of post-swimming zones below the Hoe is a much more sartorial event than we are used to.
A no Lycra zone..
Even without the embellishment of Gods of the Sea, the waterfront was a fabulous place to spend an hour or so basking in sunshine and nattering.
We compared notes and experiences of sea swimming in Kent and Plymouth and decided that Plymouth was the easier of the two.
Basking with Poisiden on a Sunday Morning, nothing better.
Yesterday was one of those days when our lives exactly matched a meme on Facebook.
A day of replanting pot bound trees and plants rewarded us with aching bones and a need for sleep. While all around us something magical was happening in the sky.
Predicted to be happening again last night we headed for Dartmoor.
We were not the only ones and the phenomena was not obvious to us or the hundreds of others who took to the dark skies of West Devon.
Our Northern Lights.
The dogs got a very late walk in Yelverton and with some digital tweakery I can repurpose the image of brake lights and headlights into something we were hoping to see.
And I can cut and paste and superimpose it on a very nice tree from our journey, to give an utterly false but funky memory of the night we were stuck in a traffic jam on Dartmoor.
The 3rd party prompt today needs this shot from my high-tide evening swim.
I think I am largely oblivious to what freedom means to me, because I have always had it, and I am lucky enough to have never got close to losing freedom because of my individual life choices or those of World Powers.
There were very differing opinions on Britain’s place as a Nuclear Power among the swimmers and bobbers at Tranquillity Bay last night.
Freedom to have differing opinions is a wonderful thing.
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