Category: Advent+2022

#414 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, Serendipity1 Comment

This morning is sharply cold and crisp -1 outside as I write this, under a winter weight duvet and with the first cup of caffeinated tea working it’s warming magic. The picture above was a jumble of Christmas decorations waiting to go up in a shop last year. I love the crisp cleanness of them which is my excuse to use the image in Advent+2022. The big excitement with a -1 temperature is that my Elephants Garlic needs some really cold weather to give it the best possible start in it’s growing life. Good news for the garlic is almost certainly bad news for the tomato plants which are still producing red tomatoes. From the perspective of a warm duvet a morning spent clearing out the frosted tomato plants does not excite me too much especially as I need to do it as soon as some daylight appears because the rest of the day is busy.

Duvet shrugged off and the cold embraced. Sunrise was spectacular.Nothing more needs to be said. Tomatoes gone Advent+ 2022

#413 theoldmortuary ponders

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This year Christmas feels squishy. For the first time in a couple of years it feels normal for me to hug people when we meet at festive events. I realise that not everyone feels like that, but I am, by nature, a hugger and now I feel free to go about my hugging business. Maybe with a more watchful eye to be sure I am not being inappropriate with someone who remains fearful, or who never liked hugs in the first place. Some people found Covid restrictions to be some sort of personal space Nirvana. Yesterday I met a friend at a musical event, our hug was warm fragrant and comfortable. The music was fabulous too.

In other news, that very conveniently leads me to the Advent+22 image, one of my granddaughters was in a school nativity play as one of the seven Kings. Possibly Snow Christ and the Seven Kings, who could begin to guess.

Thankfully being a woman of Essex heritage from the East I know that 7 Kings is not implausible. A picture that would never in any other circumstance appear in a pondering.

Seven Kings Station, Ilford, Essex

#412 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, BobbingLeave a comment

We have entered the twilight zone of bobbing. Tide times and light are now the two main factors that control when we plan a bob. 4 pm was particularly kind to us yesterday. The water was a balmy 10 degrees and the outside temperature was 6. My personal dip was brief but effective. I think it took longer to drink my restorative cup of tea than my actual immersion time. Over tea the chat turned to Christmas Day. It has taken two years of Covid affected Christmases to establish a new tradition. A brief dip on Christmas morning with the ‘bobbers’ before we plunge headlong into whatever we would normally do with families and friends over the festive season. I can’t even remember what the restrictions were for Christmas 2020. I think we kept big distances between our ‘bubbles’ * and shouted happily to one another, marvelling at the madness of new friendships and the urge to swim in the sea in winter, when many of us had lived locally for many years and not bothered to swim much at all until a pandemic hit. 2021 we were cautiously closer to one another, wary of passing on Omicron but sharing individually wrapped snacks of chocolate and Christmas snacks, while we damply struggled into dry clothes. 2022 is likely to be giddy, there will be bubbles and huggles and maybe kisses on chilly cheeks. Thank goodness for Bubbles! In the spirit of Advent +2022 here is a previously unseen picture of bubbles over our swimming zone.

* Bubbles were legally acceptable indoor gatherings of no more than 6 adults during the lockdowns of 2020. This rule applied to everyone unless you were serving in the Conservative government who set the rules.For them bubbles were what they always were, a pleasant fizzy drink to be enjoyed while working, partying or indeed groping colleagues in the corridors of power.

#411 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, SerendipityLeave a comment

Having stumbled on a theme for Advent+2022 ( I am sharing random photographs that have never found their place in a pondering before) I find them easy to weave into the action or inaction of a ponder. The image above is the title of one of the chapters in the Book of Kells at Trinity College Dublin. If only Mulling was a verb, and not the name of the saint who is reputed to be responsible for this gospel pocket book, I could have written something witty about a book of pondering.

As it is I have to say that the Alexa moment mentioned in pondering #409 was just a day too early.

#409 theoldmortuary ponders

I had thought that being woken up with House music was not quite my early morning vibe, but I was wrong.

We have been sharing the care of our nine week old granddaughter. At 8-9 weeks she has added a new behaviour to her limited repertoire. Boredom! So when all the usual measures to make her happy and compliant failed, yesterday morning, Alexa stepped in and played House music at 8am. It worked an absolute dream. Swirling around the kitchen as if in the middle of summer in a Dance tent was exactly what a small person needed. Dublin again comes up with a picture to illustrate the exact scene in our kitchen. A stained glass window at Bewleys Oriental Cafe, a place that certainly deserves it own ponder one day. But for now in Advent+2022 the stained glass window exactly illustrates how I was feeling yesterday morning while loading the dishwasher with a small person happily gurgling on one shoulder and the Ministry of Sound remixing Iggy Pop on Alexa

#410 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, Serendipity, YardeningLeave a comment

Today is almost certainly the last day I will be able to harvest a red tomato 🍅 grown outside in the backyard. This is hugely significant for two reasons, I have never before achieved growing even one red tomato outdoors in any garden during my lifetime. This year our new location and probably the warmest year on record are the factors that have made this possible. Not newly sprouted green fingers on my own fair hands. The warm year had made our yard positively Mediterranean until late October. Since then the yard has grown a velvety carpet of mould. Like the set of Tolkiens’ ‘Middle Earth’ in the Lord of the Rings film franchise, everything is cloaked in green flock. The spring clear-up is almost certainly going to involve a pressure washer but maybe nature or the predicted cold snap will remove the green tinge in the next month or two. Today’s tomato is not a thing of beauty, I already know that, but in the spirit of Advent+2022 I can share a very pretty tomato from November, never before the subject of a pondering.

#409 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, Serendipity1 Comment

This picture was shared to me by a friend yesterday. By one of life great coincidences, I received someone else parcel yesterday. I don’t need to open it to know what is inside. A wrought iron garden ornament depicting a cat climbing into the garden. Whatever was the purchaser thinking. No one wants strange cats in their garden. I suppose the only possible positive to be taken from this surprise package, is that wrought iron cats do not shit in other peoples borders. Trying to get this wrong parcel out of my house is going to involve some thought. The address is correct but the name is completely unfamiliar.

In another coincidence my Alexa device had a funny five minutes this morning. Instead of the usual early morning list of things I might need to buy. She suggested that maybe tomorrow she would wake me up with Dance Anthems. That is certainly not my usual Sunday vibe. It does however allow me to share a never before-seen image of Plymouths’ Tinside. Taken through a 1930’s glass brick and gives quite a trippy image.

Advent +2022 images never pondered before.

#408 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, SerendipityLeave a comment

Context is everything and without context this is just a rather lovely goat picture. Last night, in my dreams I had a rather out of context experience. Not unusual for a dream to be out of context, of course, but this one was unusual for me. My parents were in my kitchen waiting to see their great-grandchild. I hugged them and they were insubstantial and anxious to be on their way. They have been dead nearly 30 years and I have moved home 4 times since then. They have never before appeared, out of context, in my dreams, always appearing somewhere that they would have been familiar with. The subconscious mind is a glorious thing.

The context of the very lucky goat in the top picture is that he lives above one of the worlds most beautiful beaches. These two photographs were taken within moments of each other without me moving more than a couple of steps.

Myrtos Beach, Kephalonia

Advent +2022. Sharing pictures that have never before made it to the pondering a.

#407, theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, Serendipity1 Comment

It was a shock, this morning, to look at a December calendar and realise how the days actually fall. I have been putting in our commitments without looking at the names of the days they fall on. Christmas day falls on a Saturday which means there are only three effective weekends in December and one of them is in two days time. I am not a festive catastrophist, nor a perfectionist, so this is not a worry, more an observation. Those of us, who can, will gather together and have a good time. I think this feeling of unease is just about the sensation. A month of normal, mundane weekend activities must be squeezed into three rather than the usual four. Months that give me five weekends equally give me concern. May is a good one to give me the jitters of over-commitment when it provides 5 weekends. That is usually 5 weekends of visits or visitors that are planned and never go wrong but nonetheless give me waking nights of cold chills when I imagine that I have overbooked myself. I think it is safe to say I am a four weekends to the month kind of person. You know where you are with four weekends. Three is definitely too few and five just makes me giddy .

Welcome December, here is some sea glass and fishing net picked off our local beach, and with that a theme for Advent+2022. A bit of a daily pondering including photographs that have never made it into the blog before. A sort of Advent+ Calendar of surprises.

Sea glass and fishing net from Stonehouse beaches.