Category: Friends and Family

#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.

#642 theoldmortuary ponders

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

This has been a week of catching up with friends, old, new and concurrent. And cementing a shared life with our middle granddaughter.  I have also, thank goodness finally got some paint effectively on canvas. Which is important. As Sunday approaches I feel like this was a week of effective planning and delightful serendipity.

Dryads Saddle

We found this fungus in an urban street tonight. When we left a friends house. Google lens suggests that it is a Dryads Saddle.

Which begs the question what is a Dryad and why might they need a saddle?

In Greek mythology, dryads, or hamadryads, are a tree-dwelling variety of nymphs believed to inhabit the forests, groves, and countryside of the ancient Greeks. Nymphs is a general term for lesser goddesses in the Greek pantheon, usually associated with the natural world and tied to places like streams, rivers, forests, and fields. As lesser goddesses, they did not wield the power of major goddesses like Artemis or Aphrodite. However, they were often described as influencing human emotions, evoking awe, wonderment, and fear as they looked at the natural world. Physically, they were believed to appear as beautiful young women.

No mention of needing a saddle, but maybe these urban Dryads simply catch a bus.

Mythology seems the way to go with this fungus because further investigation suggests that we could eat it and it would taste of watermelon peel. Which actually just sends me deeper down the rabbit hole. Whoever eats both fungus occurring on trees and watermelon and is able to compare and contrast their taste sensations.

As luck would have it we had eaten very well at our friends house and felt no urge to snack on a random fungus.

A late evening swim was required though. The moon was up and the sun was dipping below the horizon.

There was live music happening not too far away. A swim with the sounds of a Rod Stewart concert drifting in the breeze was an entirely good way to end the day.

Below, woman posing as a Dryad on a Dryads Saddle.

#633 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Serendipity1 Comment

Not the blog that I expected to write today but a fine example of not being able to always plan ahead.

When the weather is good and the tides favourable I often combine my evening dog walk with a quick, solitary dip. This is my favoured location for the evening plunge. Last night my favourite spot was empty as I arrived and I was quick to get in. Only moments later a family followed me down. There was no sun and the water was a little chilly so my plan was for a quick in and out. But at some point I glanced over my shoulder and saw the family were holding an informal memorial celebration and tossing long stemmed red roses into the sea.

I really had no option, despite the chilly ness, but to stay in the water and keep out of their moment of peace and tranquility.

Soon enough they left and the sea was quickly spreading the many roses, placed lovingly in the sea.

If only I had been a little later they could have had the place to themselves. This really is a perfect spot to remember and reflect on other realms and people who are loved.

#610 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Serendipity, Travels1 Comment

‘A city can be many things, it’s people and their stories, urban experiences and how it is represented and seen by others. A place is made up of these qualities and impressions and is larger than the sum of its parts.’

This was the starting point, or inspiration for people leaving an exhibition about architecture and art in Hong Kong in the seventies and eighties. Members of the public were encouraged to use words or pictures to explain their relationship with Hong Kong, and then create a wall of art. It also seemed, to me, a good way to start a blog.

My starting point for Hong Kong was always Victoria Harbour, Chinese Lanterns and The Peak. When I was young I had an Uncle who travelled. Occasionally he would come home with gifts. Notably a night light featuring Victoria Harbour in the 1960’s. 10 years ago when I first travelled here Victoria Harbour was as exciting in real life as it was when I was 5 and the lights on the Pearl River were represented by pinholes in a lampshade.

Victoria Harbour May 2023

Chinese Lanterns because my jewellery box featured a large Pagoda with many doors or lids that had little lanterns as knobs.

The Peak was harder to replicate from my childhood memory. My travelling Uncle gazed wistfully out of a hilltop rainforest, in the black and white photos we had in our house, to remind us of his distant existence on The Peak. I have been to the Peak many times in the past 10 years and failed to quite replicate that feeling. But global warming has changed the weather for May and we found a trail we had not done before, along the Lugard Road. The Rainforest and the rain were suddenly recreated.

Hannah’s story begins with her birth and her parents, who had lived in Hong Kong and Asia for 16 years. Not for them the Peak and its aspirational dwellings but the hourly burly of Sham Shui Po.

And now, for the past 10 years Hong Kong has become the home of our family.

We come here, when there is not a global pandemic as often as we can.

Which ties this blog up as neatly as this aerial root in the Rainforest.

Who could guess how long ago someone tied this root in a knot. Many years ago when it was soft and pliable. Now it is rock hard and helps to hold a high tree on the rocky edge of a precipice.