Category: Bobbing

#618 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn BobbingLeave a comment

6 bobbers and their dogs slipped anchor from Firestone Bay and camped and swam at Talland Bay over the weekend. It feels a bit like a superpower to walk, untroubled into the sea when all other beach visitors are tentatively dipping in their toes and squealing as an incoming wave splashes up their legs.After swimming we basked like reptiles in the afternoon sun.

There was a beach cafe too, that took card payments, which is quite a luxury for us. So cups of tea and a gooseberry ice cream followed our sea immersion.

When it was time to leave the beach we had a lovely late lunch to enjoy, cooked by an apostle of Ottolenghi. Wonderful Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food made with love and flavour. Humous so silky that it could be a beauty treatment.

Fresh lemony cake followed, and with that the most fascinating conversations. Bobbers follow eclectic topics of conversation on a normal day, but fueled by good food and sunshine we were off down more fascinating rabbit holes than the average rabbit explores in a lifetime.

#615 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Firestone Bay, Serendipity1 Comment

Returning from holidays means that normal routines need to be re-established. The dogs have been away at their second home. A rural idyll with more than an acre of beautiful landscape to scamper in.

This morning it was very much back to work for them. Hugo hunting seaweed and Lola wrestling sticks. Yesterday I was back bobbing in 12 degrees of Atlantic sea after 42 degrees in Bangkok. Yesterday was a birthday bob for a friend and ex colleague.

It was a significant birthday, marked as they sometimes are with hair growth in all the wrong places.

It was a fun time with catching up on all sides with old friends and making new ones. Bobbing is a very social activity. There has been a massive development, involving our favoured area to swim, Firestone Bay. It has been incorporated as an Official Swimming Zone. Which means the water has to be tested for quality and safety and that certain amenities must always be available close by.

My morning dog walk started at Firestone Bay this morning and it was as beautiful as normal. A film crew from the BBC were there to report on the successful bid to become a designated swim zone. Below is a video of the news clip that will be on National TV for most of today, unless a big news story bounces it into oblivion. The dogs were unable to keep quiet for the whole 6 minutes. And I fidgeted a bit as I didn’t expect the segment to be quite so long.

Have a good day.

#435 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment

Many months ago we made a plan to decorate the hallway in the Easter holidays. It is a big hall and I could bore the pants off everyone, talking about it but last night we reached a moment when the ground floor spindles were mostly painted and there was a moment when the stairs looked like a clever optical illusion.

We are replacing Nicotine Cream with a dark grey. The hallway links three floors, so getting nearly to the top of the first set is encouraging. Crouching on the stairs to paint is bone aching work but the call of the sea gave us an hour off yesterday.

Not only were we rewarded with a long cool swim but there were many after swim snacks to fuel the rest of the day’s painting.

Our bones felt very happy after an hour or so away from grey paint. The fiddly painting makes me clench my jaw but there were plenty of bobbers yesterday, to chatter to, which gave me all the jaw relaxing exercise I needed.

There is a lot to ponder, in this picture of warmly wrapped up swimmers. Some of us have been doing this together for two and a half years. What started as therapy for one bobber, who had been given a diagnosis of an immune system disease, quickly became exercise for the Covid years. Our numbers peaked at about fifteen for quite a while and are still under twenty. These occasional group photos link the missing bobbers with the active group of the day. The bobbers themselves link up on all sorts of dry land endeavours. Our lives have been enhanced, in unexpected ways, by this regular dip in cold water. All this for an activity which is officially discouraged.

49.1 F is 9.5 C

But who could resist this.

#509 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, flowers, SerendipityLeave a comment
View from the office today.

It’s dog grooming day, normally after getting chores done I return here for a coastal walk or a swim without doggy distractions but the view from the car tells you why I would rather catch-up on on ‘stuff’ on my phone.

Before we left I rescued the garden daffodils from the swirling winds and icy rain of the day

And rescued some figs from a fate of becoming over-ripe.

But the most Important task of the morning was to respond to a Government Consultation Document about the quality of sea water that we swim in at Firestone Bay. The bay has been used for swimming for more than a century but post-Covid the popularity of the area has hugely increased. If the area becomes a designated swimming area the water quality will be closely monitored during the official swimming season of mid-May to mid-September.

As regular readers know we swim year-round and none of our regular bobbers have ever become ill in the two years we have been bobbing. But becoming a Designated Swimming Zone will also ensure that our waterside environment remains safe and with adequate life saving equipment available. The link to the document is below if any bobbers are reading this. It only takes a few minutes to fill in.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/designation-of-4-new-bathing-waters-in-england?fbclid=IwAR3Fb-sn1Urz2TSYwH3n9kgYrgtXOXjdPy7wv9QgzQu7n8HGk1VJoSV5a64

Just to finish with a non-rainy picture my early morning dog walk took me past some peeling paint. There is even a ghost sign being revealed.

#485 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn BobbingLeave a comment
Little Red Corvette ©Bob Kovacs

Yesterday’s earworm revealed. I love it when I get a Prince earworm. The day is going to bounce along just fine. I was very grateful to see this picture a couple of days ago from an old work colleague, Bob Kovacs. I was never a huge Prince Superfan but his music was part of the soundtrack of my life and I loved the aesthetic of his public life. Sequins are magic circles of happiness.

Raspberry Beret is part of our bobbing in-water singing repertoire because one of our Bobbers, Gilly, liked to bob wearing a raspberry Beret and a pair of cocktail length swimming gloves.

Gilly Bobber ©theoldmortuary

Gilly was unaware of the lyrics of Raspberry Beret until she started regular dipping in the sea. Knowing Gilly there is every chance she got her Beret from a second hand store, while bobbing, she didn’t wear much more. Singing while swimming, especially in cold, cold water, is quite a challenge. We are only a truly reliable choir for the chorus but we bring enthusiasm and neoprene glamour to the genre of aquafunk.

©Lyrics. com

After 2 years of being Bobbers, Gilly, is the first to leave us to permanently dip in other waters.

We held a drybob for her, with some singing and she has taken her Raspberry Beret to West Sussex to swim on bigger beaches with different people.

Drybob Farewell

And that my friends is another earworm to start the day.

#471 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing1 Comment
©Debs Bobber

Yesterday was a Turquoise day. It was also a day when the sea and the air were both at 11 degrees. Not that equilibrium of temperature made it any easier to get into the chilly water. Cold tentacles of icy water found their way into swimsuits or around the creases of our necks and knees.

©Debs Bobber

The weather was hugely changeable which may have created these fantastic turquoise pictures. In the picture below you can see a rain shower approaching.

These little weather patches were loaded with drenching powerful rain that devastated us while we fully dressed but were of no consequence while we were bobbing about. Earlier in the day I had stood drippily in a new art installation, learning the influences and historical events that fed the artists creativity. Of the forty or so people there I was the only one who had been under one of those cloud bursts. Excellent preparation for the afternoon Bob.

An afternoon Bob that featured 4 very different shades of Turquoise.

#458 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach Life, blogging, Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment

Some blogs are slow burning, ripening slowly over many days, weeks or months. Others present themselves in a moment. This one is a hybrid, the Pondering has been bubbling away for a couple of months, the moment today, was perhaps 60 seconds of decision making. That moment is the top picture. After a small amount of walking, the coastal path at St Ives, we came upon this idyllic beach. After a moments paddling the decision was made to throw caution to the wind and strip off completely for a swim. Confident that my weekly sea swims, or bobs, as they are known, have equipped me with the ability to quickly submerge in any chilly sea temperature.

It would not do to fanny about, frightening fellow walkers, with my nakedness. The long, slow, ponderous part of this blog has its inspiration from a comment made by a fellow course member at a blogging course.

” Your blog would be better with more of you in it”

Since November I have tried putting a little more of me into the blog. In truth I have always been there, peeping from behind words or hiding in pictures. Trying to find my voice, or style, while nattering on about not very much. I wonder, sometimes, if anyone has noticed the slight changes since November.

Ten or so minutes of swimming in a cold sea, off the North Cornwall coast was just fabulous this morning. I could be evangelical about the benefits of cold water immersion, likewise the buzz of not giving a moments thought to just taking my clothes off in a public space. Put the two together and the skills of fully clothed camera- wielding friends and the blog gets all of me for one time only.

.

I got a life boosting, energy creating, moment. Fizzy as a firework, giddy as the giddiest goat, happy as a human hippo. Naked, cold and loving life. All time stood still, the sun was out and I was feeling elemental.

#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.

#404 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, TravelsLeave a comment

This was quite the morning for a bob. Not that the water was quite like this when we were in. Half an hour before this picture,while we were in the water, it was bumpy and grey, 13 degrees in the water and 9 out.

Rainbows were an added bonus. This is how all winter Mondays should start. Then lunch out and an afternoon spent with a carpet cleaning machine, I’m not sure that necessarily is the way the day should have gone but any artistic endeavours involve a man relieving himself in a back street. So the options are not great.Last Monday we were leaving Dublin and a week on I still haven’t nattered on about The Guinness Storehouse. One of Europes best tourist attractions. It was the only truly tourist haunt that we visited. Not exactly the worlds most hardened drinkers the building was definitely the most intriguing aspect of the visit. The whole point of the building is to turn lime green hops and water.

Into black and white porter, in this case Guinness.

The finer points of brewing passed me by but the magisterial building was wonderful.

People who know a whole lot more than me believe that Guinness tastes better in Dublin. At the end of our tour we got a pint each. That is a lot of something to base an opinion on and yet I remain quite unable to tell anyone if a Dublin Guinness is significantly different from one served anywhere else, but regardless it slipped down very well in a very beautiful building.

#383 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, SerendipityLeave a comment

Farewell Gilly Bobber. The bobbers gathered for a goodbye gathering for a bobber who is moving to West Sussex. Gilly has been a musical addition to our bobbing gang for some time. She wears a raspberry beret and cocktail length swimming gloves. Which always promotes the other bobbers into a Prince tribute act.

A good selection of bobbers gathered today to see her off the premises.

Bobbing and bobbers are one of the great positives to have come out of the Covid years. Time to use a fabulous quote from Mark Twain to send Gilly on her way.

Goodbye Gilly from our home bobbing safe harbour.