Category: Dartmoor

#1416 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Dartmoor, Serendipity1 Comment

Yesterday was a rare sunny day, at home. Two dog walks achieved with no changing of clothes needed. When a couple of free hours revealed themselves. I decided to do a quick sketch. What did I choose? A rain soaked pasture on Dartmoor. Misty enough to create a halo around the moon.

My only excuse for a rather sombre image, is the political storm that was billowing around me from the radio.

A classic tale of who knew what, when  in the world of powerful men, disposable women and lots of money and influence.

I wanted to use the word turgid to describe the political clusterf**k, that has been emerging for some time from the fall out of the Epstein Files on Britain.

The situation is indeed turgid with both meanings of the word and my picture is a bit turgid, but over the last couple of years turgid+badger is a phrase that reminds me of a happily eccentric holiday spent in Abersoch, Wales.

For no particular reason I think it would be a fabulous name for a rock band or a trendy coffee shop. Or a graphic novel.

We were staying with some friends in a large house. In the early evening I had spotted a badger snuffling on  the edge of a quiet path in a large garden. I mentioned it to our host.

“Ah ” she said.

“I have never seen a live one,but that does explain the turgid badger I found in my water butt”

Not a sentence I would expect to hear ever.

I wonder why it has stuck with me.

Firstly it was a lovely few days with friends that we don’t see often enough.

We were all slightly discombobulated by our surroundings and a way of life that we were unfamiliar with. Champagne at 4pm on an emptyish stomach gave none of us the maturity that matched our chronological ages.

The words themselves are delicious when paired together. So I am a little protective of the word, turgid.

I am not prepared to gift it to dodgy politicians and their even dodgier friends. I might just allow it for a painting.

Difficult times.

If badgers were not such lovely creatures the term could become a massive insult.

“You, Sir are a turgid Badger”

Turgid waters. Dartmoor

#1023 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Dartmoor, Serendipity2 Comments

A day of ambling in a favourite market town. Inspired by using up a Christmas voucher for breakfast out. While at The Annex I had a weird, but unponderable  familiarity with a picture on the wall.

Oh the magic of a good night’s sleep. This was the picture on an album I carried around when I was in the sixth form at school.

© eBay

This is not the subject of today’s ponder, but how strange that my sleeping head pulled this out of the archive. Stranger still that 16 year olds went to school with a mountain of books, and in an effort to look cool, also lugged vinyl records around in the vain hope that the communal record player would be available to play their favoured album, during the precious ‘free’ periods.

Tavistock is one of my favourite towns. I worked there regularly but have never wanted to live there. Every day there is a market and no two days are the same. Tavistock is within the Dartmoor National Park, and because of its location on a moor, the weather in the town turns out a bit wetter than I can tolerate. But visiting is just fine, whatever the weather. The market today was its usual jumble of stuff.

Fabulous locally grown veg.

And country hats for country chaps.

Vinyl

I would have checked for the album if I had remembered.

And as luck would have it some copper.

Copper is significant because Tavistock is an ancient Stannary Town. Mining of tin being the early source of wealth. Copper mining and the wool trade came later but copper  makes a much prettier picture. But this winter picture of sheep shows just how the landscape has looked forever.

Town history below.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavistock

It is the texture of Tavistock that I love. So much history and bustling with civic activity since 961 AD.   Something is very thrilling about being in a market town that has been a market town for so very long. Knowing that apart from my clothing and possibly my lack of body odour, nothing would have stood out about our visit or purchases yesterday, and time travel permitting we could easily have been at the very first market. A loaf of bread  some green vegetables and a coal skuttle. No sheep at the market yesterday but below is a Greyface Dartmoor I met some time ago.

©theoldmortuary

Every time I visit I wonder why I don’r go more often.

#912 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Dartmoor, Devon, Serendipity1 Comment

Yesterday was one of those days when our lives exactly matched a meme on Facebook.

A day of replanting pot bound trees and plants rewarded us with aching bones and a need for sleep. While all around us something magical was happening in the sky.

Predicted to be happening again last night we headed for Dartmoor.

We were not the only ones and the phenomena was not obvious to us or the hundreds of others who took to the dark skies of West Devon.

Our Northern Lights.

The dogs got a very late walk in Yelverton and with some digital tweakery I can repurpose the image of brake lights and headlights into something we were hoping to see.

And I can cut and paste and superimpose it on a very nice tree from our journey, to give an utterly false but funky memory of the night we were stuck in a traffic jam on Dartmoor.