Category: Friends and Family

#1209 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, London, Serendipity2 Comments

I was unsure if I could squeeze another blog out of our midweek trip to London. Not because we didn’t have a great time and the usual laughs with our friends but because our photographs from high up places,The Shard and Battersea Power Station, were, like the weather, somewhat greige.

But first with feet firmly at ground level some serendipity.

While organising ourselves and the Shard security to enable us to execute the ‘surprise’* element of our trip we spent a lot of time in the reception area, watching the moving floral photo opportunity. Countless people had their photos taken against the colourful display.

The mirrors and neon ‘love’ signs were constantly moving, reflecting the flowers and lights so the display was intriguing.

In a rare moment with no humans about I took a picture of the assemblage. This morning I discovered that I had unintentionally created a self portrait.

This gave me the poke I needed to explore our greige aerial cityscapes inspired by the word love, not in the romantic sense.

But I can show you the aerial view of places I love or love to blog about when I am in London. With luck the WordPress algorithm will link this blog to others written about the same places.

Tower Bridge.

I have loved Tower Bridge all my life. Small me could never have imagined her older self driving over this bridge at night for the on-call journey. South London to the City. An extra bit of love because the Dad of a friend used to operate the bridge for his job. How cool is that? Also in this picture the Tower of London. Ten year old me fainted there once when listening to a grizzly tale of public executions. Nothing compares to the fear I felt coming round in a mediaeval building surrounded by concerned men in very fancy uniforms.

Borough Market and Southwark Cathedral

Look for the semi-circular space just above the end of the blue pool. Bustle and serenity. I have shared time at Borough and the cathedral with so many friends and family. A wonderful part of London to love.

Borough Market.

And just like that a 2-year-old arrived !! To be continued…

Watch this space.

#1158 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family1 Comment

January 2nd started in much the same way as it usually does.

Buying a birthday cake for my daughter that has no essence of Christmas or New Year. A very, very normal Colin the Caterpillar . No glitter no sparkle, no Festive Colin.

Normal Colin. Colin was created 35 years ago by Marks and Spencer. A birthday without Colin is unforgivable.

After buying Colin the day could have gone one of two ways.

If the weather had been poor I would have bobbed with the bobbers.

The weather was wonderful.

But with the weather, wonderful I walked in the woods with my daughter and her family to celebrate 33 years of life and laughter.

The sun came out for the first time in 10 days.

A small person enjoyed puddles.

And all was right with our world.

Dismonds in the moss.

More woody stories tomorrow. Today is better late than never.

#989 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Serendipity2 Comments

We’ve just had the most amazing weekend filled with gatherings and joy. Four of our beloved family members arrived safely from the airport, despite the chaos of an I.T. outage. It is the beginning of a golden phase for our family, with everyone finally in the same time zone. We were hoping to spend some quality social time in our yard, but the weather had other plans – nonstop rain filled the weekend. Nevertheless, we made the most of it and created fun and laughter together.

But cousins who normally spend their time half a word apart  are united waiting for the rain to stop.

Or share their lunch offerings.

Friends gathered at our house this weekend too and I was madly British and insisted on cooking in the yard because that has been the plan. The outdoor grill perched on a table in the yard, but near a kitchen window. The food, both grilling and steaming in the rain.

There were also moments when we weren’t in gathering mode and I could read a weekend newspaper, when I discovered that my obsession with weather forecasts and weather Apps is widely shared. A quick look at my home screen on my phone shows that I have 3 apps and I follow two local weather forecasting Facebook pages not so much for the actual weather as neither cover where I live but for their knowledgeable chit chat.

Kernow
Kent

One day I might get a weather station of my own to chit-chat about. I could call it ‘Pondering Precipitation’

We also had a hybrid friends/family gathering. Four grandparents gathered in the same space and not a single small person in sight.

Not the sun-baked July weekend we  anticipated but joyous in many different ways.

#897 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, SerendipityLeave a comment

What topics do you like to discuss?

I love a discussion that takes me somewhere interesting. Either in real life or in an inner monologue journey.  There is a load of stuff that doesn’t interest me, but if someone speaks interestingly about something I have no interest in then it is the style of discussion that becomes the thing of interest.  Sometimes the route I take in discussions is almost inexplicable even to me. But that is a sign that I have not been bored. Boredom in conversation is the worst. Boredom comes in all shapes and sizes, all of them human. Oh, I wish I was better at handling it. I’m never bored in my head so I get no practice. I know it is good manners to listen and I am a very very happy listener but not to boring people. I am in absolute awe of people who can tolerate bores and continue to look and sound interested.

The pictures in this blog come from a frequent family discussion that I was aware of at the age of five and in some ways continues on 60 years later and illustrates the twists of an interesting topic that involves boredom at an early stage. My grandparents had a relation who they kept in good contact with but rarely met. He worked at the Dungeness Power Station and lived somewhere near. He sent post cards of his Kent home. My grandparents who lived in the rolling, beautiful, Essex country side thought his landscape was boring.

In the seventies I loved the work of a punk/ Gothic film maker and Artist Derek Jarman.

In the early 2000’s I moved to South London and my nearest coast was Kent.

Derek Jarman had a home on Dungeness.

Prospect Cottage

I was living a day trip away from somewhere my grandparents thought boring but that fascinated an artist I admired.

*Dungeness* https://g.co/kgs/Nh1bce3

I loved the place instantly and love talking about it.

My dogs love it too

And now some lovely friends are holidaying there and sharing their pictures.

©Marriane Bobber

And so a discussion that I have been part of for 60 years with huge gaps, different people and for a variety of reasons just keeps going and I never know where it is heading.

That is something worthy of discussion.

If only magic realism was a thing. Or Time Travel. I could take my grandparents to Dungeness and show them how fascinating other landscapes are. We could pop in to see Lionel, the relation or Derek the artist or even Marianne and Gill in their campervan.  Or maybe a Dungeness discussion of the future!

#828 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, SerendipityLeave a comment

This weekend has brought me a rich archive of Facebook time hop memories. Some of them were serendipitous. Yesterday we met some London friends at a country park and walked miles in mud and bright sunlight. 11 years ago they had sent us this message. 

Their family now has two dogs but everything else is as it was, we laughed all day.  Below is baby Hugo and baby Monty on the same day.

Another doggy memory features a baby Lola and our friend Steph.

Every picture tells a story, and the story of early 2016 is not one for an upbeat sunny blog. But there is so much love in and around this photo and we all needed it.

February wouldn’t be February if art wasn’t starting to wake up for the year.

The point of this Sunday ponder is to just enjoy these moments. Social Media isn’t for everyone but this weekend I have really enjoyed the reminiscences delivered to my phone over the last two days. The one below was a chilly family outing to Oxford Street.  The gorgeous piece of Street Art perked us right up on a rainy day.

https://mauroperucchetti.com/exhibitions/8-london-marble-arch-jelly-baby-sculptures-displayed-in-london-s-marble-arch/

Maybe the take away from these February memories is that there is always so much to look forward to with ten months of  possibilities to anticipate. Just like a tree waiting to grow leaves in the sunshine.

A little extra from yesterday. An accidental dam in floodwater.

#815 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Serendipity1 Comment

What were your parents doing at your age?

My parents had stopped map making for me at my age. They both died at the age of 63 and had been terminally ill for some time so map making for their adult child had not been at the top of their to-do-lists for a couple of years before that. Their maps stopped .To use a nautical term, I have been on uncharted waters for some time. Cartography -on-the-go for me.

Anything that I’ve done beyond the age of 36 has had no inherited map, lovingly offered from anyone that shared my own gene pool. But life maps are everywhere. If it takes a village to raise a child then an adult child can look to the village for spare maps.

My how-to-be-an older adult maps are tatterdemalion-like. Made up as I go along with bits stolen from people I admire, books, the media. From time to time I  look at large multi- generational families in awe, as they navigate life with shared wisdom. But if I love the way they do things  I can copy and paste.*

How to be an older adult? I have no idea, I am a stranger here myself.

* sometimes when I copy and paste I have a slight sensation of something on my fingertip. Is that a little odd?

P.S Yesterday, while searching for some fabric I found a barrel of pure white feathers for sale. I know that some people like to think of the souls of loved ones when they see a pure white feather caught in a sudden breeze. I thought a barrel of them was magical. A tiny feather also usefully demonstrates the sensation I sometimes get when copy and pasting.

#788 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Good Fortune2 Comments

Well Bloganuary, here it is. The tricksy prompt that I don’t quite know how to answer. Being loved is like Harry Potter’s Cloak of invisibility. Although the cloak is invisible it is a collage of different loves. Some old, some new. Some brief, some long. Some transient or fleeting. Some surprising and some unknown. We go through life with the cloak as a constant and when we die the cloak remains behind. At that point, particles of the cloak settle on other people and become grief, before transitioning back to love and finding a proper place within the cloaks of all who loved us. Cloaks are perpetual and like DNA we carry tiny fragments of our ancestors loves within our own cloaks.

Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?

Wherever we are and whoever we are the cloak is always with us. Sometimes we wrap the cloak tightly around ourselves on other occasions it flows loosely from our shoulders. Now Bloganuary, how to illustrate that whimsical notion.

I tiled images of friends and family and then superimposed that image over an actual cloak hanging on a Hare coat hook. I think the Hare is the closest thing I have to a spirit animal.

See

#786 theoldmortuary ponders

#766 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, SerendipityLeave a comment

Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide (26 December).[1] Though it originated as a holiday to give gifts to people in need, today Boxing Day forms part of Christmas celebrations, with many people choosing to take advantage of Boxing Day sales. It originated in the United Kingdom and is celebrated in several Commonwealth nations. The attached bank holiday or public holiday may take place on 28 December if necessary to ensure it falls on a weekday. Boxing Day is also concurrent with the Christian festival Saint Stephen’s Day.

Our Boxing Day is a day for walking, eating, and relaxing with many of the people that we spent Christmas day with.

The weather was kind and our ferry crossing to Mount Edgecumbe was smooth.

Nature was beginning to show the buds of new beginnings.

After a few hours of rambling we returned home to enjoy the traditional delights of eating left-over food. All the pleasures of the previous day’s food with none of the work. Four of our Christmas guests are beginning their journeys home and those of us that are left, hunker down to play board games and start our Christmas books.

Our evening dog walk has all the twinkle of a December night but the bars and restaurants are no longer thrumming with excited humans. We have the space to ourselves.

Christmas 2023 is slipping away, making space for other celebrations and a New Year.

#696 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Serendipity1 Comment

A weekend of expected and unexpected meet-ups and conversations. All enjoyed in crisp autumn weather with sharp shadows and shades of vivid orange. The last time I sat on these cushions, in a coffee shop near Penryn, the Covid-19 Pandemic was nowhere near anyone’s horizon. At the time Penryn was a regular destination because I was studying at Falmouth University and my son lived nearby. Hard to realise that it is 4 years since we were last here and the had Covid-19 not happened there was a good chance that we would have relocated to live here for work and family reasons.

Yesterday we were here to find some long lost but recently found family members from Vancouver Island.

If I was struggling with the passage of four years our hunt for their airbnb was going to give me a bigger thwack with the memory stick.

The beautiful, but strangely named St Gluvius Church, on the road from Penryn to Mylor Bridge pulled me up sharply. It was such a shock to my system I didn’t even take a photograph to record the moment. 40 years ago I attended the wedding of some good friends there and through knowing them this area of Cornwall became one of my favourite corners of the world.

The friendship has not survived, eroded by changing circumstances and life events but how lovely that Penryn still makes me feel welcome however long I leave it between visits.

Funny how life is just a series of moments in a mosaic, some things planned and some things not. And we can never know, as individuals,when the bigger picture is complete.

And those we leave behind will never fully know our bigger picture because we have forgotten half of it ourselves

#687 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Music, Serendipity1 Comment

Live music in a standing venue is one of the great timeless experiences. Humans have been standing around in semi-circles listening to other humans making music for ever. Dancing in that semicircle can be a messy, sweaty, life affirming experience shared with absolute strangers. Beer, or sometimes worse, on your feet and trampled toes are a tiny part of the experience of moving as part of a human mass to music. Last night we joined the throng of three university’s worth of Freshers on Freshers Friday in the city centre.

We were there to see a friends band, Ushti Baba play.

https://m.soundcloud.com/ushtibaba

We had the best time. Nothing hits the spot quite like live music.

Ordinarily the question below would have had me pretty ponderingly stuck. My music tastes are eclectic, unsophisticated and possibly unpredictable.

What’s your all-time favorite album?

I don’t have enough time or head space to condense my love of music to one album. I love the effort involved in an album. Not for me a couple of highlight tracks or the shuffle option. I want to listen to an album as the musicians wanted it to be published, in the order that was argued over and then decided upon.

Had I not been out to listen to live music last night I would probably have skipped the prompt question. But I feel all topped up with good stuff this morning. Ready to be honest and say that it is beyond me to make such a decision. I may not yet have heard my all time favourite album. I have almost certainly forgotten some absolutely sublime albums. In my head there are many albums poking at my aural grey matter.

“Choose me” they beg, giving me tiny earworm snippets of their favourite tracks.

” Choose me, because you love the artwork”

“Choose me, because you fell in love to my soundtrack”

“Choose me, because I am the best break-up album ever”

“Choose me because you grieved so deeply , my tracks were your slow recovery and salvation”

I am not listening, my mind is made up. I do not have a favourite album. I am aurally polyamorous. No shame.