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.
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
I’m not sure anyone would describe the road in and out of Stonehouse Peninsular as a freeway. Apart from the boy racers, whose noisy car delight is to speed their high-powered and primped vehicles around the circuit of Georgian houses. Or break off to the coast road to disturb the night-time Doggers of Devils Point car park with their squealing tyres and farting exhausts.
As a Conservation Area, I am fairly certain there will never be a billboard. But were there to be one, it would almost certainly be one of those curiously English ones with a polite passive-aggressive message.
The extra blog. Unusually for me I woke up this morning with my cup less than half empty. 3 days early for Blue Monday my mood was definitely on the blue side of the mental health spectrum. No particular reason, some very small clouds on my horizons but nothing of consequence. The grumpies had arrived overnight. I am never too saddened by feeling glum as the artist in me knows that life and art is a combination of darks and lights. Feast and famine. Good days and less good days.
Blogging absolutely helps me pick out the high spots of daily life. But I am a free spirit and conforming, as I am, to the prompts of Bloganuary is not really my thing. I slightly dread the revelation of the prompt of the day.
But how to perk myself up?
1 Agree to go for a bob with the life affirming bobbers.
2 Write a random blog.
3 Put on my new, warm, fluffy socks.
4 Eat chocolate biscuits after the bob. Notice my cup is already more than half full.
5. Take steps in the sunshine to banish the grumpies.
Swimming in water at 10 degrees with an outside temperature of 6 degrees, blogging, fluffy socks or eating a chocolate digestive might not work for everyone but it is working for me.
Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
This is a great prompt for Bloganuary. I don’t have an answer that I am certain of. The past is concrete it has happened and is unalterable, the future, even the next few minutes is unpredictable. I use the past to learn from, anticipating that the future can be improved or at least enhanced by reflection and better decision making. As an optimist I probably look more to the future but as a history lover I look back. I am probably a thinking equilibriumist.
I took this photo yesterday. It delightfully illustrates my thinking.
The jug is old and reliable. Humans less so.
The tulips were bought during the festive season but nobody thought to check if they had any water.
I should have binned them yesterday but instead I gave them long overdue water because I am an optimist. Despite their past I hoped they had a future.
Their floppy stalks are stiff with rehydration. They have a different beauty than the one predicted for them, the one they would have had in the past. But they are gorgeous in a different way. They still have a future. The equilibriumist with optomist tendencies at work.
Not a physical gift or an experience gift but a word that eloquently replaces ‘pile”.
Over Christmas my Tsundoko grew. This was not intentional. Not only was I gifted some books creating a pleasing Tsunduko of books chosen for me by others. I had a singular book club book that must be read by next week. Two library books borrowed but now extended. There was a third, unplanned Tsunami of books that arrived just before and just after Christmas. My local library has an App where I can order any book I like and join a waiting list. In total 6 books that I would love to read arrived over the festive season. Something had to be done. A prioritise Tsundunku was made and a returns Tsunduku. Some of the waiting list books have been returned and I will rejoin the waiting list for them. Some of them have been 6 months on a waiting list.😭
I piled my newly curated Tsunduku by the sofa. As luck would have it the pile is high enough to comfortably hold a cup of tea within easy reach of a busily reading woman.
Rather late in the day a friend arrived carrying a carrier bag of delayed birthday and Christmas gifts. She viewed my new pile and the cup of tea and said. “Isn’t there a Japanese word for a pile of books”
And just like that the gift of Tsunduko was given. Possibly the greatest and most useful gift of all time.
I knew the day would come when signing up to Bloganuary would bite me on the bum and a topic would come up that I would not wish to answer. I just don’t think that the colleges I have attended are particularly interesting. I have studied an Arts and a Science subject to degree and beyond. I could throw in a prestigious college or two. I have never studied abroad and I have never academically studied at any of the Oxford ‘Dreaming Spires’.
Coffee and cake has been studied in that beautiful city. Great coffee and cake in memorable locations. The places that I am most grateful to are the institutions that gave me the tools and qualifications to access tertiary level education.
1. Manor Street Primary School, Braintree. My mum and dad also attended this school.
2. Margaret Tabor Secondary Modern. My dad attended this school.
3. Tabor High Comprehensive School.
4. Braintree College of Further Education.
These run-of -the-mill, free, educational establishments gave me the basic educational building blocks of my life. Essential knowledge for the under 18 me.
Each of these places was walking distance from my home until I was 10 and then just a bus ride from my 10-18 home. Each of those places projected my mind to different horizons and to different paths.
I didn’t start to walk on all the paths exposed to me. Nobody could. But I did take the first step on some fascinating paths that started in a small, rural, market town in Essex.
P.S. for added interest my old Primary School is now a museum.
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
Having just stepped out of the Festive Season I can answer this slightly awkward question from Bloganuary. Playing is not built into my daily life. Far too much White Anglo-Saxon Work ethic has leached into my core. The Festive season is a rich and embellished few weeks, where hard work and the gathering of family and friends allows time out to play board games or read books. To go on real and imaginary adventures with small or large people. Playtime perfection some might say.
Having semi-retired from a serious and sensible career to take up a second career as an artist, could be construed as being pretty playful all the time.
How is playful defined or calibrated. Who sets the protocols or parameters on play?
The truth is that I struggle with the words play and playful. But if I could replace the word play with fun then fun is a daily activity both the planned and the serendipitous. Fun appears in the darkest of moments or the least expected places. It can be scheduled or awkward. Bubbling up out of the fun gland when seriousness or professionalism are expected and the correct response. I am an exploder of mirth, sometimes inappropriately. Is that playful or just bad?
I struggle so much with the word I looked it up. At last I could feel some comfort with this topic. The hook-in for me is light-hearted.
I can actually sign up for light hearted, so much easier to live with. Unless of course it is the Festive Season when anything goes.
Sometimes the biggest challenges are the little ones. The one’s that trip you up or arrive unannounced. January the first 2024 arrived and at only 3 hours in, my challenge was to stay asleep. So the first cup of tea of the year was at 3:30 am. Festive season insomnia is like no other. Tasty snacks welcome me into the kitchen world and there is much to fill a mind that just needs to be tricked back to sleep. Sometimes, like today, I can barely stay awake to finish the tea, or indeed this early blog. But nobody needs a lot of pondering on the first day of the year. The picture in this blog was a surprising find on a regular dog walk. We must just have crossed the cobbles in a slightly different place and my first name initial appeared at my feet.
It also works rather well for January.
Happy New Year 2024. My pondering is done and I am off to bed. Again.
My favourite, yet random, images give me nostalgia and great joy. For this last blog of the year I gave myself fifteen minutes to find favourite photos from my phone archive. Some of them are serendipitous and conform to the December theme of #celebrating serendipity. Many of them have appeared in older blogs and some have never seen the light of day before. Some give me hope when I hit artists/writers block.
Here they are in no particular order.
Beach huts are a huge inspiration to me. I have actually only ever been in one once. I am an admirer not an inhabiter.
I love a sunbeam, this one landed on my mother-in-law when we were having afternoon tea.
Firestone Bay in purple mood. One normal photo and one editing error which I love because I don’t understand it.
The picture below has possibly never seen the light of day before but there is a link to my most significant art moment.
Using mixed media I tried to depict my mother and her friends in the 1960’s when they were busy young women setting up clinics to provide women with Contraceptives and specific women’s health needs.
I depicted their story on a pillow that was exhibited at Tate Modern in London.
It would not be @theoldmortuary blog without Hugo and Lola. Hugo looking every inch the smoking matinee idol with a dog chew and Lola in her dark chocolate puppy phase before she faded to beige.
Another perennial blog subject is coffee and this homage to stove top coffee was found in Cuba.
I love a complicated image and this glass and concrete shot is a favourite.
Words too give me inspiration. The seasonal cuteness of an alley near my workplace in Marylebone.
P.s I just found a link to the history of Grotto Passage.
The one that got away. This house was in a fund raising Lottery recently. We didn’t win it, but we could have made ourselves very comfortable overlooking our favourite riverside town of Fowey.
We had a wedding party in Fowey 7 years ago. Such fun was had with a dressing up box.
It gives us an excuse to visit Fowey every Twixtmas. Not that excuses are needed for a favourite place.
Oh the serendipity of creating a picture grid when I can follow it with one of my favourite windows in all of the world. Crumpled by age it reflects the small world around it in many different angles. A picture grid created by the serendipity of time.
Other windows were also available.
And a hidden glimpse of daylight.
And a cute door with festive embellishments.
We have been visiting Fowey forever, 3 or 4 times a year, and always out of the busy tourist season. Each visit can be bittersweet as businesses that we love close or go on-line. This visit we mourned the loss of Pinky Murphy’s. A fabulous cafe, that was always our first stop on any visit. These pictures were easily taken more than ten years ago.
A truly eclectic former sail loft. A sail loft that holds so many happy friends and family memories, I could burst with happiness at recollecting moments from every visit. Even the one with a monumental hangover. Honestly it really was something I had eaten!
But change happens and yesterday we visited this new business, in a different location, and had a fabulous coffee.
A restaurant that was previously dog averse has changed their canine policy and we had a seafood lunch, with two sleeping dogs at our feet. Perfection, I would say.
Two seagulls were basking in the winter sun while we ate.
We spent a lot of time browsing and buying in some of our favourite shops. I found this gorgeous, but not for sale, arrangement of dried palm leaves in one.
#celebratingserendipity. Some time ago I was given a topic to weave into a blog. I just had to wait for my moment. Here we are in mid-Twixmas and this prompt just landed in my lap
If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?
If I started a sports team I would adopt the colours of Dulwich Hamlet Football Club, my local team in London.
The beautiful heart of this club changes many of the awkward things that occur around football.
Nobody needs a sausage as a mascot, especially near armistice day. Sports mascots showing a mark of respect with a minute’s silence have become an Instagram and X regular feature around the 11th of November.
So my sports club would have the colours and heart of Dulwich Hamlet.
And my mascot would be the beautiful Bourkes Parakeet.
So much more able to show respect than a giant sausage. And no awkward photographs.
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