Category: pondering

#956 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Greece, pondering1 Comment

How do you waste the most time every day?

At home or abroad I waste the most time pondering. Pondering looks unproductive to the outside observer but the time is never truly wasted. Pondering also occurs when I look gainfully employed. Pondering often gets me out of trouble because pondering sometimes causes a change of direction with human interactions and different endeavours. Mulling things over or reflecting are just other words for pondering.

Holiday pondering is just the same as home pondering but in a better climate. Today I pondered Donkey Milk. Unknown to me it has been a beauty and health product from the beginning of time. Donkey milk is the closest thing to human milk . Which puts a whole different view of the Christian Nativity. When I was young I wondered/ pondered why a nine months pregnant woman would want to ride a donkey. When a mule/pony/horse would have been more comfy for her blessed lady garden and or pregnancy created piles.

But here I am the daft one. Joseph on a last minute shop before they set off was sent for some formula, just in case.  Breast milk substitute and transport all in one cute package.

I’ve just gone for a face cream. Two choices 24 hour, or wrinkle.

The wrinkles arrived a while ago so that seemed like a lost cause but 24 hour cream regularly applied could give me eternal life should I choose. Warding off the grim reaper one day at a time.

#938 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Paintings, pondering2 Comments

A day of transforming a yard from off-white to white turned out to be both extraordinarily colourful and a self-limiting occupation. The colour change can be seen just by the O of off-white. The early morning dog walk set the colour bar high when I noticed that the luminous cows had moved.

To make way for a very fancy shoe, advertising a Theatre show.

Nature also created wild flower paths between cows and shoe

Dog-walk over it was time to flip off the paint pot lid. With just a moment to tweak Pure Brilliant White into something a little more lively, with fingers still clean enough to touch my phone.

Radio at the ready and I was off.

6 hours later, I had not reached the end of the job but  the end of the pot of paint was a most welcome sight.

So much for providing myself with many different audio treats, mucky fingers meant I was stuck with Radio 4 for the day.  My ears and mind were taken to places I might not necessarily have chosen. Other people pondering the concept of unconditional love. Very thought provoking. I had some thoughts to add, but radio isn’t like that unless the show offers a phone-in and I would not have had clean enough hands for that sort of shenanigans. Rolling news reports. And some poetry, who could possibly have predicted gentle tears while painting.

Phillip Larkin

#936 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering1 Comment

I love a complicated image, first thing in the morning. Coffee and a complicated image, which is what this was, is even better.

On reflection, I fear I may have been a bit harsh with May. All my moaning on, about rain and dull days. I blame my genes. I was reading about the wettest and dryest cities in England yesterday. If you were to draw a triangle with each corner being a top 3 driest city. Cambridge, London, Chelmsford. All in the East of England. 75% of my gene pool comes from that geographical area, making me wet-intolerant. The other 25% comes from Wales and Norway. If I was a plant nobody would set my roots in the 3rd wettest city in England , Plymouth, and expect me to thrive. But that is exactly what I have done to myself. So if I am a little droopy in the long, wet, autumn/winter/spring months I have only myself to blame.

On a positive note the roses of Plymouth are just fabulous this year. Our local municipal park has an informal memorial rose garden and after a few days of proper good weather the fragrance and colours are vivid in the late afternoon. I am hoping for a similar transition myself.

I may even do a whole blog about roses, particularly those with their roots in cremated remains.

I am not usually a fan of formal rose gardens but the randomness and slightly scruffy haphazardness of this particular one intrigues me enough to go back.

Somewhere in a cupboard I have a cremated cat called Jasper,I wonder if he fancies going in a pot with rose roots , he might make a wonderful show.

P.s  My parents cremated remains are buried in a dry old spot in the East of England, their choice.

Not for them the gaudy,giddiness of a mish-mash of blowsy multicoloured roses. They have a quiet country churchyard and were dug up by moles. I think I prefer gaudy giddiness as a memorial.

#904 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn ponderingLeave a comment

First , proper sunshine swim of the year yesterday. We thought it would never come. The refreshing end to a day with the normal day to day events all achieved without a raincoat or indeed any coat at all. Even better the stone steps and walls in our swim zone had been warmed by the sun and radiated a little heat out as we changed after the ‘bob’

May the 4th be with you. A late start to Spring.

Thanks to Facebook Timehop I have been able to look at other more Spring-like May 4ths.

A vintage road trip

A Fox on the table.

Both London May 4th’s

Wisteria

And a delightful English Eccentric

Both West Country May 4th’s.

Who knows what today will bring but I am hugely happy that one of my favourite months has finally heralded some Spring Vibes. We have a destination of choice and so far, as I write this the weather of choice and we are off to enjoy a Christmas gift.

For full disclosure, I must admit to getting a little over-hot as I weeded the yard yesterday. The irony was not lost on me as that thought skimmed through my head.

4 days late welcoming May, what kept you?

Even my phone got a little giddy in the sunlight yesterday. This photograph took itself as I threw the phone into my swim bag.

Giddy is one of my favourite words, in my head it means silly exuberance caused by an external force. When I was a small person I was often told to ” Stop playing the giddy goat”

Are goats giddy creatures? My only real experience of them is at Agricultural shows or in Greece. In those environments, they always seem rather doleful animals. 50% of them suffering from over-large and cumbersome testicles.

Goats came to mind and then giddiness because two of our regular ‘bobbers’ were unable to swim with us yesterday . They sent this picture of their walk in Sussex.

© Gill/Marianne Bobber

No idea at all why I went down this particular Goat Path for the blog.

The Goat Path. Topsham.

But it is Saturday and the sun is out and who doesn’t need to know about Giddy Goats?

https://idiomorigins.org/origin/actplay-the-giddy-goat

May the 4th be with you

#899 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, SerendipityLeave a comment
Sheela Na Gigs ©theoldmortuary

When do you feel most productive?

I am erratically productive. Naturally most productive from 7 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. Sunshine helps enormously. At 3 I am ready for lunch sometimes the first meal of the day. Then there is a creative hiatus until about 7 in the evening. 7 pm is my creative planning and thinking phase. Unrecognisable to outside observers who might think I am just being a regular human doing regular human stuff, but outside appearances can be deceiving. Inside my skull, all sorts of schemes are being hatched and discarded. Google Research is my friend at 7, both ends of the day if I get the chance.

Colour was my stimulation yesterday. Some Green Man Choir singing is always a good inspiration for some thinking,usually about the patriarchy and folklore. When I got home there was a lovely, accidental, Primary colour placement of some supermarket lemons.

Actually all the citrus fruits were feeling photogenic yesterday.

Ruby Grapefruit masquerading as an orange.

Only purple was missing from the mornings colour ponderings but as luck would have it Facebook had a timehop from more than 10 years ago in my Cornish garden. Obviously, a better Spring than we are having this year.

Creativity is such a strange phenomenon.  Trapped by being close  to the results/ punishment/rewards cycle of Productivity. Nobody gives credit for creative/productive thinking or experimentation. A huge amount of creativity never  creates a tangible ‘thing’. But sometimes intangible things gather together to become something. Sometimes failure becomes success and sometimes the other way round. Sometimes I creatively ponder around in circles.

#893 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering1 Comment

What makes you nervous?

I am not by nature a nervous sort of person but I suffer from retrospective  nervousness when I hear that something I have been involved with has not gone to plan. I question myself as to whether I had done my best in that situation, done what was required of me and done anything extra that would have smoothed the wheels of a positive outcome. I wonder if that is a normal reaction. I would say I am a fairly confident person but not supremely  confident. As a woman I am without balls, both real and metaphorical. Here lies the pondering part of this ponder. I have often wondered what it would be like to try out some testosterone for about a week. Nothing whatsoever sexual in this,just a week of being in someone elses size 10 boots being male about everyday things . Goodness I know so many absolutely lovely men who are just a pleasure to know. But in life I have met some absolute corkers of bad examples of malehood, men who I really struggle to empathise with or understand at any level. Would a week with testosterone give me any level of understanding or insight?

The reason this question prompted this quite random ponder is that some men would not bother to consider that anything they had done would contribute to a less-than-positive outcome.  Cocksure springs to mind.

There is no female version.

Quim Questioning has a nice ring to it.

” The Marquee blew over the sea wall,   he was somewhat Cocksure that everything had been done correctly”

” The Marquee blew over the sea wall, she immediately Quimquestioned if everything had been secured correctly”

A week of feeling cocksure might be quite revelatory, no retrospective nervousness.

#876 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn ponderingLeave a comment

Shall I start the week with a ring of bright daisies or a daft question from my blog hosts.

Lets put the daft question away.

Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.

Nobody in their right mind would answer this and not expect some trouble. Our family is a supportive force for good with a side order of niggles. Just as a family should be. Having a supportive family is the positive thing. Niggles are normal. But to pick one family member out for doing a positive thing would hugely increase the niggles to an unmanageable level. Everyone would wonder why their positive action has not been mentioned. Can you imagine the flip of this question being helpful.

Tell us something negative a family member has done to you?

Unimaginable in a well functioning family.

How is any of this linked to daisies?

These two pictures of daisies demonstrate that positives and negatives are not always clear cut and that pointing out a positive or a negative is not always good for the bigger picture. I love both these pictures.

These daisies are growing on the edge of a  grimy boatyard. They are a welcome piece of nature in an ugly urban environment.  Hard to pick out the most positive aspect of this picture.

Less than 500 yards away.

Another daisy family, easy to pick out the most positive aspect of the bigger picture

My family is just like these daisy pictures. Impossible to pick out the one positive that deserves a mention. But we thrive.

Here is the nubbin, the crux of my daisy ponderings on the bigger picture. Anyone looking at these two pictures would find it easy to point out the one stand-out positive feature in the two pictures.

The daisy family in the picture with all aspects being largely, equally positive survived untroubled. Nothing too outstanding to see

The daisy picture with the larger-than-life, perfectly placed tennis ball did not survive.*

* At least three committee meetings and many person hours sealed the fate of the tennis club daisy family.

My apologies for a meandering,  not precise blog. I’m not certain I demonstrated my point perfectly.

Praising one individual publicly nearly always diminishes  the others in their team( family) in some way.

Lost? You are in good company, find me in the daisy patch

#875 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering2 Comments

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

The early morning, which is when most blogs are written, is perhaps the most unchanging time of day. So with some confidence I can say that in ten years time I will be performing my early morning ritual. Tea followed by coffee. Where I will be doing it is quite another matter, one that is completely unpredictable. But life is unpredictable even in the short term. Even one minute before seeing these Llamas there was no expectation of a Friday afternoon llama encounter. We were in Tintagel, North Cornwall. Home of Arthurian legend.

The Llamas were accompanied by Knights of the Round Table. The Knights were in the pub. The Llamas patiently waiting outside.

What is unpredictable in life is that in just a few moments it all made perfect sense.Fabulous how the hunan brain retains such utter nonsense.A Monty Python and the Holy Grail Stag Party or similar. Men, probably in their sixties having a themed weekend away. Link below to imdb if I have lost you already.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/?ref_=ext_shr

The next link explains the Llama bit.

15 Facts about Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The link also explains my own Monty Python moment. When I was working in London I had a patient called Reg Larner*. I asked him if people ever got the connection with Reg Llama from Brixton. His face took on a pained but bemused expression as he told me he had lived for a long while in Brixton and regretted moving away, his unintentional comedy name fitting perfectly with his address.

Where will I be in 10 years. Enjoying a coffee and pondering the joy of unpredictability.

*I was also at school with Michael Ellis

Apologies to everyone who does not love the absurdity of Monty Python. 

According to the credits, the movie is directed by 40 Specially Trained Ecuadorian Mountain Llamas, 6 Venezuelan Red Llamas, 142 Mexican Whooping Llamas, 14 North Chilean Guanacos (Closely Related to the Llama), Reg Llama of Brixton, 76000 Battery Llamas From “Llama-Fresh” Farms Ltd. Near Paraguay, and Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones. 

#870 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Coffee Hunters, pondering1 Comment

Yesterday we did one of our regular dog walks with the addition of a small granddaughter, who is new to walking with the dogs rather than being pushed. If the dogs can find a hundred different sniffs to slow our progress down. She added another level of procrastination to the experience. Touching the texture of every one of these bollards. There were 30 of them. Each one had a tiny set of fingers gently explore the rough surface.

Wake up and smell the coffee is one way to savour the moment.

Consider the bollards is a whole different level of mindfullness.

With high regard to safety the adults got plenty of time to ponder the meaning of life. And the dogs were more than happy to sniff and leave doggy messages.

Piss Patination

Humans and dogs got plenty of chance to consider this piece of bronze. A decade of dog pee gently arcing across the surface. Or this centuries old mooring bollard.

Its historically old cast-iron is being turned into a bark-like surface from seawater and dog pee. Maybe the last land bollard that Captain James Cook’s dog, Pugwash, pee’d on before setting off for Newfoundland or Australia and New Zealand.

Bollards can be fascinating things

#865 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

How would you improve your community?

Which of my communities should I improve? Or are they all better off without my tinkering?

All communities are improved with positive engagement. That is what I try to bring to any community I am part of. Sometimes I feel guilt that I am not doing enough but guilt is just fine in manageable doses. Resentment is the worm that destroys things. Now I am semi-retired I give resentment very little time, it is a sign I should step away. Not always possible when you are in the clutches of paid employment. When employed I used resentment as a rocket fuel to move me on, sometimes that move was more of a slow burn but at least I felt in control.

During a WhatsApp exchange this morning I called myself a nonfluencer. The exact opposite of the trendier, more sassy, flashy influencer that is the goal of so many people and communication technology currently.

Sometimes all a community needs is more nonfluencers, who turn up and do. Until they can’t. Joining and leaving can both be good for any community. Staying too long is the problem.

So how would I improve any community I was part of? Stay while I was able to be useful and recognise when the time is right to leave.