#1337 theoldmortuary ponders.

Maybe I should forget to write a blog more often. Yesterday’s slightly apologetic blog got more views than usual as you can see from my stats bar.

Somebody must have dropped off to sleep with their finger on the view button!

By way of celebration I have featured a golden horse, just because really, and because horses were the subject of an evening ponder, which was always going to be todays pondering.

We are watching a drama based around the time our house was built and set in a similar location.

A house identical to ours was a very brief twist in the plot. A man rode his horse up to the front door when he needed to visit.*

Obviously horses were the key method of transport. But I had never really visualised one being used in my urban street just as a motorbike would be used to transport a single traveller. My lack of imagination of course but the thought slightly blows my mind.

This would have been an entirely normal view out of our front window. In many ways unimaginable.

A bit like my stats of yesterday.

*

  • I realise that visitors may not have ridden to the front of the property and that riding to the front was a kind of dramatic moment. But honestly riding to the back or the front, who cares! Mindblowing.
  • In a different observation, mine was the sort of house where powerful men kept their illicit lovers, male or female. We have a massive fireplace in one of the bedrooms here. Oh the things it may have seen…

#1018 theoldmortuary ponders.

August the 19th Monday. A grey old day that was always going to be one of chores. With away-from-home jobs done I am about to do the home tasks. Laundry and tidying up. Aided and abetted by podcasts and music.

While pondering about Monday Mundane Monotony I thought I would spend five minutes checking up on previous 19th of August photos .

12 years ago I was escaping a blisteringly hot day post-on call in London. All of London was heading for the coast of Kent. I deliberately chose a rather unlovely part of the coast, Minster-on-Sea on the Isle of Sheppey. Just one photograph all day but I’m sure I had a well earned sleep and some book reading while looking out over a rather unlovely part of the Thames Estuary. 12 years on, my extremely random automatic photo editor turns my close-up beachscape into something rather joyful.

9 years ago packing my art stuff , this time before an on-call but also related to an escape the next  day to the coast for some arty dabbling in Cornwall.

At no point until 3 years ago did I ever imagine that the coast would become a five minute walk from home. I’m not sure I imagined a life where a coastal escape could happen whenever I fancy it. It certainly makes a day of domestic chores much more enjoyable. Not exactly Fireworks all day but definitely something to perk up a dull day with dull chores.

Fireworks five minutes from home 3 years ago.

#780 theoldmortuary ponders

What is your mission?

Oh Bloganuary if only you had asked this question any time in the last 7 days, I would have had a mission. Clearing up after the festive season. But that mission was completed yesterday, although not the taking down of Christmas lights. The days are still short here and long evenings are enhanced and embellished by left over festive twinkle.

This Christmas Star never gets taken down. He twinks year-round in our dining room.

My clothing twinkle has been tidied away. There was a huge opportunity to add to festive stash of garments. The January sales were awash with sparkle and velvet but I resisted their siren-song call to me to buy more shimmer. Not that I wasn’t tempted. Who wouldn’t want a high necked dress with a floor length skirt, slashed to above the knee, in slippery silver sequins?

A lifestyle choice was made, we were incompatible, for many reasons. None of them about fit. The dress could have been tailored for me. Could I have tailored my life to do such a garment justice? Unlikely.

A mission I chose not to accept.

#729 theoldmortuary ponders.

It is not every day that The Guardian writes a holiday review for Hugo and Lola

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/country-diary-ferns-and-ivy-sparkle-in-the-wet-undergrowth?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR0HbbU2gJ1oYdL1cYwM4fGf1dfJNVvgEU7lqWabFSGiybzU3suACFvEvJ0

But as I sit enjoying an early morning coffee on the Grand Canal of Venice . A watery motorway of much beauty. I can read a proper writer’s opinion of a place that was home for many years. And the location of so many Pandemic Ponderings, the forerunner of theoldmortuary ponders. So as I set off for another day of wandering aimlessly please enjoy the landscape that is currently exhausting the dogs.

#689 theoldmortuary ponders

This patch of England has been my home since 1988, it is far from my place of birth and in that time I have not always lived here. But it is where my soul has its feet under the table. This morning for no reason in particular I wondered why Plymouth Sound was a ‘Sound’. Geography had the answer.

© Wikipedia

Yesterday we were at the far west reaches of the Sound, at Kingsand and Cawsand. The furthest point seen through the circle is, I believe, the far west point of Plymouth Sound before it becomes the Atlantic Ocean.

Conversely dog grooming occurs on the furthest easterly point at Wembury.

Yesterday I was able to take a photo of Both the easterly point and the most westerly with a wooden tall ship in the middle.

The Pelican of London had just left Plymouth and was taking quite a buffering from the wind as it sheltered in Cawsand Bay. Madness to think that a tall ship moored here would, in the past, have been ripe, low hanging fruit for the smugglers, pirates and wreckers of  all the places we love to walk our dogs and enjoy gorgeous scenery.

Bigger than a bight and wider than a fjord . Packed with history and landscape. 99% of @theoldmortuary blogs occur from here.

#688 theoldmortuary ponders.

What do you love about where you live?

What do I love about where I live? Where I live gives me my little fix of zen just five minutes walk from my front door. All of my life the coast has been my fixer of woes. I have never lived more than two hours from the coast. So always accessible easily. For two years that accesibility has been a five minute walk.

But I am a picky coast lover. I really dislike seaside tat. Garish shops and arcades, horrible mini fairgrounds, crazy golf, the list is extensive.

What I love about my current location is that for centuries it has been a key maritime military defence area and has been protected from typical coastal development. Only fairly recently completely accessible to the public there are walks and a park that overlooks the sea with not one bit of traditional seaside tackiness.

All of the bright colours in this blog are provided by my early morning dog walk.

It is not just me that loves the peace snd simplicity of our early morning walk.

Hugo and Lola are dogged in their quest for tranquility.

Why do I love where I live? Because this locationion suits me very well.

#670 theoldmortuary ponders

And just like that the rain has stopped. Juggling grandchildren and rain is one of the great unknowns of a British Summer. This slightly explains the erratic nature of blogging over July and August.

Not that rain is completely a bad thing, every morning a small bowl of garden strawberries is served to a happy 4 year old. This lunchtime the first red tomato was cut in half and shared as a snack.

The tomatoes in hanging baskets are behind in the colour stakes but ahead in fecundity.

Other jobs like recycling and rubbish removal into the outside world are infinitely more pleasant without rain.

But what has caused this sudden break in some truly shocking weather? Almost certainly the delivery of a really long Dryrobe for a small person apparently it will fit her from age 5 to 9. That is a really long dry spell if this coat really is the weather charm we hope for.

#609 theoldmortuary ponders

Ten, tired, travelling toes, took a trip to Shueng Wan for some pampering. They went in slightly blistered and care worn and emerged one hour later rather glossier than I had anticipated. My toes are brilliantly embellished with chrome! Like millionaire supercars in London during the summer. Despite being decidedly glam they still have to carry me on my travels. Although last night they went to a glam toe appropriate setting. Hutong, Hong Kong for a belated Mothers Day meal.

A postprandial walk by the Walk of Stars gave the toes their final outing of the day.

Chrome shins, no Chrome toes

#537 theoldmortuary ponders

We are boggle eyed from painting doors, stairs and anaglypta panels a very dark grey. This morning after we made the most of the very early light we went out for an Easter morning walk before most people had thought about breakfast. This fabric hanging from a building, soon to be renovated has a plaintive feel, but the rest of the walk was full of spring colour.

Full disclosure the job was greater than the time we had. We deliberately started with the hardest end of the hallway and it has taken all of the time available to get about half of the ground floor hallway done. Our cut- off deadline was always 4pm on Sunday. Apart from one from one swim and many dog walks we have politely declined social activities all weekend. The work left is, by any measure, much less time consuming and can be achieved over a couple of weekends.

Work in Progress shot.

The under stairs cupboard door will also go grey. It is unimaginable how many hours have gone into this small space. My jaw tells me that I painted spindles through gritted teeth and we both have lower backs that are stretched by the constant crouching to reach hard to reach places. Our minds have been stretched by the music and podcasts we have listened to. YouTube failed me on Spindle painting. Apparently the modern way to achieve the same effect as hours of teeth clenching is to mask everything except the spindles in plastic and use a spray can or gun. After ten such jaunty videos I gave up and did it the Victorian way. When I was a small child living in a house with a much smaller staircase my mum took me away for the weekend while my dad ” Got on with the hallway. “

He arrived triumphantly, at my grandparents pub saying “I’ve boxed it all in”

In the space of 48 hours our between- the-wars semi had been turned into smooth 1960’s minimalism every panelled door or ornate spindle hidden behind sheets of hardboard and painted white.

After this past weekend I understand the sentiment but cannot praise his architectural vandalism. I hope whoever lived there after us was thrilled one day to take off the boxing-in ( thank you Practical Woodworking Magazine) and reveal the real charms of the house.