Author: theoldmortuary.design

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.

#708 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, Serendipity4 Comments

An early or timely blog appears hard on the heels of a late one. Today’s prompt from my blog hosts is a strange one for a whole host of reasons, all of them impractical. But for the sake of a fantasy natter I would choose the ages of 15 and 16 to repeat. In much the same mindset as repeating an exam that I failed or required a higher mark from. Do it again and do it better.

Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

There was much, in my opinion, that I got right. But goodness, some confidence would have made things better. One thing that I wish I had realised I got right was my choice of Lipstick. If only I had known that No. 7 Plum Beautiful, was the Pinnacle Lipstick of choice for me. Life could have been simpler if I had known that my first tentative purchase at a make- up counter was ‘the one.’

It would not be the ages of 15 and 16 if I don’t mention sex. How I wish I had known less about it, my mother ran sexual health clinics. The nuts and bolts. The nitty gritty. The facts plain and simple, felt indelibly etched onto every part of me. I wanted no part of it because I knew too much. I hid myself in books. Lord of the Rings and War and Peace. Books so big and so lacking in any form of romance or lust that I could immerse myself away from the hurly burly of a normal adolescence.

I discovered a love for live music and dancing. Happily attending gigs all over the place, often alone and relying on public transport. That world was not a scary space for me.

If only I could have lived those vivid, vibrant years with wisdom and more friends.

All my own faults of course, nobody forced me to be that way. Thank goodness I got the lipstick right.

Sometimes I wonder if I should read The Lord of the Rings and War and Peace again…

#707 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn WordsLeave a comment

It is not often that the days ponder must wait until after the sun has started to set. Today this was always going to be the case. I was up early to buy croissants to fuel a morning of lively conversation with the bobbers. Straight after that a chat with some fellow Bookworms and then deep conversation with a one year old. My day was replete with gorgeous, gregarious women who all talk about anything and everything with wit and wisdom.

A chance encounter with a word perked up my day even more.

Some time ago the bobbers swam in a sea filled with Pilchards and White Bait. The seagulls thought all their Christmases had come at once, with a huge shoal seemingly trapped in Tranquility Bay. They swooped and dived as we bobbed and swam. Their disturbance causing millions of fish scales to be loose in the water. We emerged, twinkling like a troupe of exotic dancers. Fish scales stuck to our skin so tenaciously that even vigorous rubbing could not remove them until we used soap and hot water.

R.Morton Nance revealed a word precisely designed for this phenomenon which afflicts fishermen all the time.

Gollowillians are fish scales incidentally attached to humans.

Now this may be the first time Gollowillians knocks tatterdemalion into second place in a blog. I had planned to natter on about things that are dilapidated but that will have to wait for another day. Because the sun has finally set.

#706 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, weatherLeave a comment
Flood gates ready.

Storm #3 of the storm season has had quite an impact.

Not perhaps in the way I may have thought though. Ciarán reminded a friend that I had painted Storm Agnes and wondered if she was for sale. She is as it happens and now she is off to a new home.

Storm Agnes

Storm Babet didn’t really impact us too much although she did take out the road to one of my regular beaches.

In the eye of the storm at 2am

I know how I would paint Babet, a voluptuous storm, who caused chaos in an unexpected place with less energy than you would think. A storm directed from a chaise long perhaps.

Ciarán though, no clues in the name . Until I looked him up known as ‘ the little dark one’ Keir-on is how the weather forecasters pronounce the name. Ciarán is doing dramatic, theatrical stuff on our coast. Attention grabbing and flamboyant splashing and crashing on the outdoor lido, the sort of thing that gets you noticed. Hyperlocally Ciarán has been less wildly beautiful. More of a truculent bully, pushing over the bins and scattering domestic rubbish on the streets. Here he is just bashing the steps down to the tidal pool.

I have a little idea how he will be painted now. The little dark storm

#705 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn walking, weather1 Comment

November blows in on a storm. Yesterday was dog grooming day. A very recent storm had damaged the road that would normally take me to Wembury beach after I dropped them off for a couple of hours of pampering. The weather was already pretty unpredictable so I had packed a raincoat, a large beach towel and a tin containing greetings cards. I was determined that my dog-free hours were going to be well spent. Weather and the tide, not fate was going to be the deciding factor on how I spent my morning. At the point that the beach access road was closed I took off, up steep valley lanes that were covered in slippery, damp fallen leaves. After two hair raising reversing events I found a car park at a place called Wembury Point.

As I arrived the heavens opened which negated any value my raincoat had, the beach towel was already useless as I was now very many metres up from sea level. The tin of greetings cards it would have to be. So here we have it, confession time.

I am dreadful at sending out Christmas cards in a timely fashion. I have made all the excuses in the world and often opt for the donating to charity option. None of that helps my guilt as the cards from more diligent people drop through our letterbox in December. This year I made a plan. I have bought Charity Christmas cards and some note cards. The note cards can be written at any time, no pressure no deadlines and no excuses. Inside I have popped a small Christmas card bearing the words ‘This may be your 1st Christmas card of 2023’

Creating a specific tin with everything that I need has transformed my task. If I know I am going to be hanging around doing nothing more than scrolling through my phone, I grab the tin and write notes to friends and family. Yesterday 12 cards were written and posted in the time it took for a storm to pass.

I even had one of those moments when a forgotten address just floated into my head when I wasn’t actually thinking about it.

With an hour or so left the rain had cleared enough for me to do a clifftop walk. The area where I was walking was formerly a naval establishment called H.M.S Cambridge. Only a small radar station remains and the land around is being gently returned to nature. The groundworkers making the transformation are not human.

Dartmoor ponies have been moved to Wembury point to gently graze the area back to a more natural state. When I set off on my walk they were all hard at it. But on my return a lunchtime rest had prevailed.

Not only ponies, when I returned to the car park two large refuse collecting lorries had parked up for their crews to enjoy a break with beautiful views. This was absolutely in my favour. As they started their engines to leave I decided to follow them down the narrow lanes. No awkward reversing stand-offs with oncoming drivers on slippery lanes. Nobody expected two refuse lorries to reverse and so, as a convoy of three, we returned to civilisation easily with other people backing up.

Two groomed dogs, 12 notes with cards written and a good walk. Time to get on with real life.

#704 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering1 Comment

Here I am the original Halloween grinch starting a blog with a carved pumpkin on the 31st of October. Needs must. I have 3 granddaughters, something has to give. Hannah, who has lived in North America, feels much warmer towards the event and carved a vomiting pumpkin.

I am going to have to find a way around my long held dislike. Eventually I can introduce the small people to the Mexican Day of the Dead. A festival I very much admire, who wouldn’t want one last party before entering a different realm.

Maybe we will enter a new phase of marking Halloween with pumpkins good food and wholesome autumness. A Harvest Festival/ Halloween mash up. Maybe with some magic wishes from good witches thrown in.

As if by magic, coincidence or me being sneaky the blog host suggestion for today mentions wishes from a genie. Agnostic in the mystical world and the religious I will take my wishes from whatever source is offering them.

You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for?

World Peace and good health for all knocks off two wishes instantly. But the third would have to stay in my pocket. I would need to observe the chaos I had caused by using the first two. No one ever gives parameters or protocols with wishes. The strength or longevity of the wish is never mentioned. Surely wishes should come with a set of instructions or a users guide. Improvising or just hoping for the best seems somewhat irresponsible. Maybe my very first wish should be for some learned guidance, in life and in fantasy.

#703 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art1 Comment

People who work 24 hour shifts should not be allowed into retail spaces after the shift ends. 10 years after this shop was just a short bus ride from my place of work my art materials store still holds weird and wonderful art materials that I bought from this very specialised shop. Their website suggests they sell hard to find items.

Not hard enough to find, for my art material acquiring habit. I knew exactly how to get there. Even when running on zero energy I loved to look at and then purchase some of the amazing things they sell. A little bit of sparkle or deeply pigmented paint brings me deep joy. Some of my supplies are so special I will probably never finish them.

Money well spent I think, madly perhaps, when I wasn’t thinking straight but goodness do they give me pleasure. Sometimes I just look at them , colourful moments of potential creative pleasure.

Cornelisens Gold Gilding wax on canvas.

#702 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Van Life1 Comment

This birthday invite gave us a big shock yesterday. Despite living in London at the time we were there at the beginning of Strong Adolfos. We went to their soft opening. The shock was that they have only been open 10 years. This is definitely a case of the years of Covid-19 restrictions causing a concertina effect on our mid-term memory.

How can it be only 10 years. I would be much more comfortable with 15 years. So much has happened in this last 10 years and we have been to Strong Adolphos with so many different people it seems a little crazy to have squeezed all those happy memories into just 10 years. Especially when we factor in that for almost 2 years we were unable to visit.

https://www.strongadolfos.com/

Strong Adolfos is on the Atlantic Highway on the North coast and roughly the mid point of the county. It has always been a convenient place to meet friends and family who were holidaying or living in Cornwall. For us, as dog walkers, it is close to the Seven Bays. Large sandy beaches where we can walk the dogs and have a swim.

https://freemapsofcornwall.co.uk/our-directory/business-place/the-seven-bays-guide/

There was no swimming yesterday but a couple of hours of dog walking and sun catching in a miraculous break between rain storms. The wind direction and tide was absolutely ripe for surfers.

Swimming would have been a bit bonkers but away from the surf zone we paddled knee deep in the incoming tide and the dogs had two hours of free running and socialising on the beach.

We had two hours of pondering the 10 year conundrum. Hannahs mum has been dead for nearly 8 years and she loved the vibe at Strong Adolphos. She very much loved independent cafe culture and the people watching that goes with it. She used to like perching on the high bar stools at the window bar.

Crazy that she can only have done it for 2 years max. I know my mid term memory is now utterly unreliable how did 10 years feel like 15. There will be pondering beyond this blog today.

#701 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Stonehouse2 Comments

Tonight’s early evening dog walk will be a precious thing. The last one before the clocks go forward and  early evenings get dark. Too dark to sensibly walk beside the sea where there are no street lamps. Last nights walk was enlivened by a particularly high tide. The bay felt full and the song of the sea, as it hit the cliffs was much more powerful than usual. Ordinarily we might have arranged an early evening swim with the bobbers on a high tide. But for some reason we didn’t and that was a good thing, there was nothing safe about the water conditions last night. We all love a bit of bubbling choppy water but the fun needs to be safe. I was anxious to take some photos to share with the bobbers so we could all feel wise and sensible about  not being cold and wet on a Friday evening.

This was the wave that made me cold and wet on a Friday evening. Rather than stop at the pink step as all the recent ones had. This one got an additional power surge and crashed into the stone steps, sending a spray of water 8 feet into the air. What goes up came down and I was drenched from head to foot.  It was unexpected and exhilarating and just made me laugh as I retreated to safety. Now I am a fairly risk averse person but in that moment the unexpected joy of being powerfully splashed reminded me of being a child squealing at the beach. Which brings me neatly to the prompt that my blog hosts offered today.

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

Honestly I have no desire to go to the moon, so there would never be any spending by me to take a trip there. But if I could safely be tossed around in a clear plastic ball/bubble on and in a rough sea just for twenty minutes  I might consider investing a small amount. It would have to be as safe as the wildest ride at a water park and I would like to be plunged down the huge underwater cliff that is just a few metres from our swimming zone to meet the deep sea creatures that are invisible to me on my daily visits. I have always felt this way. 54 years ago the first man on the moon failed to excite me, but give me a library book filled with deep sea creatures and I was lost for hours . Jacques Cousteau a diver and television documentary maker was a far more romantic and heroic figure than Neil Armstrong could ever be.

The sea, for me, is the Final Frontier. Space is for other people.

P S the eagle eyed noticed an error, the clocks go back. Dark evening panic over for a few weeks.

#700 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Almost every day I ponder on an alternative career choice. Not because I am hugely unhappy in the choices I made but because I am aware that the choices I made at 18 also shaped the person I am now. Insular, bookish me would have chosen to be a librarian at 18 if I had realised that it could be such a rich and varied career path. Arty me really wanted to be arty, but science me, the least authentic of my personas somehow took charge and the rest is history.

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

Has choosing the least exciting path, for me,been a bad thing. I really have no idea. But that path got me to where I am now with my great loves, books and art still exciting and nourishing my soul on a daily basis.

Because I didn’t much like science but was competent enough at it, the path I chose made me work harder to get the results required. I wish I had taken a little time out to learn the skill of teaching. Not because I have ever wanted to teach exactly but because in all jobs there is an element of teaching required, as there is in life generally. I would love to be able to feel confident that I pass on my skills, knowledge and nonsense effectively.

So in answer to the question. What alternative career paths have I considered or am interested in.

Just about every career path I ever meet on a daily basis. I think I am inherently nosy. Doing something I have no idea about intrigues me.

Of course I would be useless at so much. But maybe somewhere out there my, as yet undiscovered, hidden talent is out there waiting for me. Wondering why it took me quite so long to find it.

Yesterday I made Quince Jelly for the first time in my life. The success or not of my endeavours have not yet been tasted, but my early reaction is to suggest that being the Queen of Quinces is a career path that will be short and forgettable.

#699 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

I took this photo yesterday in a church that has been reimagined as a library. In one of life’s strange coincidences a man I knew in London had been responsible for the interior design. I promised I would visit and report back on how his design had worked. I am ashamed to say that I have left 10 years to pass before I popped in. Despite the library now being only a mile from my current home, I certainly would not have predicted that outcome 10 years ago. As it turns out the library and the church share the same building and it all works rather well. But none of that is the point of this blog. As I took the photograph above another one slipped into my phone via Whatsapp as a friend had found a wasps nest.

What are the chances of two photographs taken by friends on opposite side of the the English channel, but at the same time both having the same colour palate. I was very confused for a moment or two.