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.
Today there is no morning sunlight for Hugo to bask in. The rain is relentless. Having consulted an early morning weather forecast we were up and about to grab the two daylight hours where no rain was predicted. Our reward for the early start was a chocolate croissant.
The dogs love the soft, doughy underparts. I get the crispy bits and chocolate. We are all happy with this arrangement. I am happy that we missed the rain, which arrived early. The dogs have no idea that the morning plans have been adapted and changed purely to keep us all dry. No compromises for them they are sleeping off their croissant and I have things to be getting on with.
What’s afoot? Not what we had hoped. Our DIY phase has entered a ‘get someone in phase’ This footprint should be on a floor that looks like a Victorian bathroom. But, when the flooring was delivered, there was a flaw and now we await a new delivery. Once again our minor renovation of the house is slowed down. Which turns out to be a thing! Unknown to us we are part of a new trend in home decorating.
Slow Decorating is a ‘thing’
Our slowness is circumstantial, financial and serendipitous. Some of it is unplanned, like the bathroom floor. Other times we are waiting to find the right thing for the right place. Wherever possible we find second hand or recycled items. Very much as this article suggests.
Magazine article homes are all very well but when the photographer and journalist leave, these homes have to be lived in. Stuff needs to move in and find a home.
Part of our bathroom refurbishment is required because nearly all of the houseplants have decided they want to live in the west facing bathroom . The previous owners had wanted an all grey pleasure dome. We just need to be clean human beings. Juggling these three different design needs has taken us some time to puzzle out. Ripping out all of the new fixtures and fittings would have been the easiest but least ethical or affordable solution. The party bath is currently hosting the plants while they wait for the new floor. It will all work out in the end. Which brings me nicely to today’s blogging prompt, daft question.
If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?
My parents had stopped map making for me at my age. They both died at the age of 63 and had been terminally ill for some time so map making for their adult child had not been at the top of their to-do-lists for a couple of years before that. Their maps stopped .To use a nautical term, I have been on uncharted waters for some time. Cartography -on-the-go for me.
Anything that I’ve done beyond the age of 36 has had no inherited map, lovingly offered from anyone that shared my own gene pool. But life maps are everywhere. If it takes a village to raise a child then an adult child can look to the village for spare maps.
My how-to-be-an older adult maps are tatterdemalion-like. Made up as I go along with bits stolen from people I admire, books, the media. From time to time I look at large multi- generational families in awe, as they navigate life with shared wisdom. But if I love the way they do things I can copy and paste.*
How to be an older adult? I have no idea, I am a stranger here myself.
* sometimes when I copy and paste I have a slight sensation of something on my fingertip. Is that a little odd?
P.S Yesterday, while searching for some fabric I found a barrel of pure white feathers for sale. I know that some people like to think of the souls of loved ones when they see a pure white feather caught in a sudden breeze. I thought a barrel of them was magical. A tiny feather also usefully demonstrates the sensation I sometimes get when copy and pasting.
After a weekend of wallpapering and ongoing DIY projects this image seems a funny one to start the week. It is a back staircase in an old cinema built in 1931.
Odeon Plymouth
34-36 Union Street, Plymouth, PL1 3EY
Located in the Stonehouse section in the west of the city centre. Built on the site of the 1,500-seat Andrews New Picture Palace, which had opened in 1910, and was demolished in 1930. The Gaumont Palace was opened on 16th November 1931 with Jack Hulbert in “The Ghost Train” and Sydney Howard in “Almost a Divorce”.
The imposing brick building had a white stone tower feature in the central section above the entrance. Seating inside the auditorium was provided for 1,462 in the stalls and 790 in the circle. The internal decorations were carried out by Clark & Fenn of London. It was re-named Gaumont in 1937.
The Gaumont was closed on 2nd December 1961 for sub-division, with a dance hall occupying the former stalls area, and a 1,043-seat cinema in the former circle area, which had been extended forward. This opened as the Odeon on 10th September 1962, a day after the town’s previous Odeon on Frankfort Street had closed.
The Odeon continued until closing on 9th April 1980, and in December 1980, it was converted into a roller disco in the former stalls area. From 1987, it became a nightclub and rock music venue, last known as ‘The Boulevard’ the building then stood empty and unused. I believe the former circle area containing the Odeon cinema remained closed and unused during this time.
In the summer of 2013, it was converted into a religious broadcast studio.
It is currently on the Buildings at Risk list and is part of the local Conservation Area. In June 2021 it was announced that new owners had taken over the building with plans to convert it into an entertainment centre which will also be programmed as a concert and live performance venue. Renovations began in May 2022.
I have no personal connection with this building beyond frequently walking past . I took the photograph a few years ago when the dark and dank building was used for an art installation and open to the public.
This was a back entrance stairway and it was pretty grotty. Predictably it smelt of pee and mildew. But just tweaking the digital image a bit, brought out both the original colours and the acquired colours of neglect. These secret, neglected corners of previously glamorous places fascinate me.
Not completely unrelated to our redecorating efforts I needed to search out this image to turn into a print for one of our refurbished rooms.
Diving into my digital archive always throws out a photographic nugget or two. This is one of my favourites.
A good weekend for this prompt. We are in the midst of wallpapering. Not exactly to turn our current home into a dream home but maybe to turn our existing spaces into something more beautiful. When we bought the house it had been done up to attract buyers. It is full of original features and the materials used are mostly of very good quality. We have spent two and a half years trying to love an expensive French style wallpaper chosen by the previous owners. Love has not overwhelmed us and the pale blue birds on pale blue twigs on a pale gold background have been replaced. A hugely different, concrete, abstract paper burnished with a soft bronze has silenced the already mute birds. The concrete, just like the birds reflect the morning light from the East.
By this time tomorrow those irritating birds will be gone. One person’s dream eclipsed by another.
Yesterday was one of those repetitive blogging days when I do a regular activity. About once every four or five weeks, our dogs go to the groomers in Wembury and I get three to four hours to do whatever I want. Unhindered by the needs of two dogs. Sometimes I get on with regular life admin but mostly I take myself to Wembury beach which offers a variety of me-shaped entertainments. A Coffee shop, an excellent swimming beach and the South West Coastal path in two directions. Yesterday was a little different as the weather was shocking and I had driven through a flood to get there. There was no phone signal and the rain was drenching. I had one essential task that could be performed in the local Post Office. Beyond that it was just book reading in the campervan with cups of tea from a thermos flask. Hardly the stuff of blogging gold. But the weather and tides had other plans for the day. The header photograph is not black and white but exactly as the coast presented itself on arrival. The wind was a warm, but strong, south westerly and an abnormally high tide was due at 5pm. In no time at all our little brown campervan had many friends in the car park. Campervan’s and regular vans bringing hoards of excited surfers to the beach. Maybe fifty vans being unpacked by rubber clad enthusiasts eager to make the best of the day on their boards. I watched from the comfort of the van and the hours passed, but soon enough the tea had worked its way to my bladder and I decided to walk to the public loo rather than use our onboard facilities. The power of the sea was amazing in a relatively small bay. The surfers or the weather had brought many onlookers who, just like me, stood on the cliffs and watched the spectacle of nature and the little black specs who were riding the waves. The sunset coincided with high-tide and nature threw out a light show to end the afternoon.
Nothing quite went to plan yesterday. Unless a weather forecast is considered a plan. Thursday was predicted to be exceptionally rainy and that really was the overriding sensation of the day. But while my plans changed quickly, in the bad weather, I had a moment in a doorway when this view, of a courtyard reflected in windows, caught my eye. Equally serendipitous was this lovely image of flaking paint right by my shoulder as I took the first photo.
I am not the only family member that ponders. Hugo finds pondering easiest on a comfy bed. He is pondering the quality of the biscuits he was given in a pub in Penzance. I was at the same pub but not given a biscuit, a tickle or photographed by a stranger, looking cute near a ship’s wheel or staring masterfully at a sextant. For me the pub itself became a massive ponder.
The Admiral Benbow is one of the oldest pubs in Penzance. It has elevated itself from an illegal drinking den in the sixteenth century to a regular pub with an irregular clientele in later centuries. All safely in the past. Famed for being the meeting place of pirates, smugglers, wreckers and all other forms of seafaring miscreants. The pub would also have been a great place for all varieties of prostitution to thrive. My ponder on the subject of the Admiral Benbow is really about the whitewashing of crime and criminals, illegal activity in all its many forms by the passing of time and the ‘ romance of the sea’
I cannot imagine choosing to spend an evening in a pub or club associated with 21st Century criminals. Drug dealers, handlers of stolen goods, people traffickers, or perpetrators of modern slavery.
But centuries passing and a whiff of the sea makes sharing a time-hop space with the imagining of rogues acceptable, fascinating and enjoyable.
Romance and fantasy stick themselves to the sea and seafarers in a way that seems disproportionate and mystifying. The whites of tropical uniforms are a ‘thing’ in both heterosexual and queer culture. Sailors have a word for a temporary madness that hits them in the tropics.
Calenture a sort of giddiness that brings a heightened state of excitement in hot weather. Throwing themselves into the sea for fun and feeling sexually aroused.
Seafarers really do get some of the best words.
As I sat in the Admiral Benbow enjoying a rum,while Hugo enjoyed a good sea dog biscuit it was easy to imagine the bar boasts of olden times. I really hope Calenture cropped up.
Prof.Google helped me out on this one.
Are Sailors romantic because they were the first profession to really see the world and bring us unimaginable things from foreign destinations.
Which brings me, rather circuitously, to today’s random question
What’s your favorite candy?
Chocolate. Just chocolate. Not chocolate cake or puddings. Nothing too fancy.
Ponderings, in the Admiral Benbow on Monday night. Plenty of space for historical visitors from all centuries. Some nibs of chocolate in a leather pouch and tales of Calenture. Just fascinating.
Lola, meanwhile, thinks such pondering is overated. She could be right.
The job I am doing needs a break from me, not me from it. I am cleaning the grate in a very old fireplace. When the fireplace was installed this job was performed daily. A waxy potion has been applied to all things grate related and I have retired for two hours for a miraculous transformation to occur.
Attending to the houseplants yesterday was much more pleasurable. But not all Spring Cleaning is about pleasure, and thankfully, not all of it is quite as filthy as cleaning fire grates. Mostly this week I am tinkering between rooms. Filling bags for the charity shop with ‘ stuff’. Stuff that we no longer need and quite possibly never needed. In my two hour gap I have also done domestic admin and eaten lunch. Like my fireplace this blog is unbelievably dull. Recounting the joys of Spring cleaning is like that. Dull, but essential. In two hours time my grate will still be dull, a little less dull apparently with the addition of graphite powder and an enormous amount of rubbing.
Bloggng is a much better daily activity than cleaning a fire grate and never dull. This was a battle, done wearing leggings and an old jumper. The different angles required to buff everything were extraordinary. Unimaginable in a traditional maids outfit. No wonder gentlemen got the wrong idea, there is absolutely no way to clean these things with modest movements.
While January, in the West Country, seems to drag its feet. February definitely skips along a little faster. There were a few photographs that didn’t make it into a January blog. Each of them was taken on a January day when the sunshine was bright. In contrast, so far, February is a little more murky. Today seems like a day to play catch up and give each of these images its own moment in the sun. They also only have tiny stories attached to them so there will be an element of randomness to this blog.
In no particular order. January always starts the Spring cleaning bug, long before Spring is anywhere close. Taking down the Christmas decorations is the trigger point. My copper preserving pan got a new location and a lot of polishing. Thank goodness for podcasts.
Christmas left overs would never normally feature in a blog but my Stilton and Parmesan pastries cooled down in a sunbeam.
Gourds on a window ledge in Totnes made a cosy corner on one of our out of town excursions.
The reason the West Country can be greige is because on the whole the climate is a little milder than the rest of the United Kingdom. Better than normal sunshine brings colder temperatures. Cold, cold dog walks drive us to find convivial spaces to warm up.
These last two pictures were taken at Marazion. The day was very bright, as you can see from this photo of seaweed.
It was also very cold and we were the only people out and about on the promenade. Or so we thought. I stopped to take this ghost image of a swimmer.
Out of nowhere two Northern European men approached us. Sunday morning Evangelists extremely focused on talking to the only people visible to them. With the practised certainty of their faith they smiled, asked questions and countered our answers with smiles and different opinions. We were all battling icy cold gusts of wind that took most of our words out to sea. 10 minutes passed and we had no idea what they were trying to convert us to and similarly they probably had no idea what they were trying to save us from.
I am fairly certain this was not one of their questions. Science not normally being a faith kind of thing.
The most important invention in your lifetime is…
My answer, had they chosen to ask it would have been the perfect hook-in.
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