Category: pondering

#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.

#857 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

Technology has changed every aspect  of my life in millions of different ways for millions of years.

How has technology changed your job?

Any job I do only exists because of technology and is easier than it was last year or even last week because of evolving technology. But as someone who writes or draws I could take a trip to Lake Turkana and use a sharp flake of stone and write or draw on a rock surface just as I would have done 3.3 million years ago. My tech gadget, though is letting me down on this one.

Painting from home, it will have to be.

Hamoaze ,©theoldmortuary

Hamoaze is part of an ongoing Print exhibition at the Royal William Yard.

#848 theoldmortuary pondered

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, pondering1 Comment

This is what happened just after I pondered yesterday. A real life ponder, not a blog ponder, although now it is a blog ponder.

After a fairly normal morning routine. Tea, Coffee,blog,Shower,  I hit a conundrum, 45 minutes between shower and a morning dip in the sea. What to wear in that 45 minutes?

While I sorted out my after-swim attire Hugo took himself into the folds of the unmade bed. My indecision gave him those moments that he needed to catch up on sleep. Normally we would be out walking but the plan was for his walk to combine with my walk to the beach.

He effortlessly goes from pyjamas to daywear without pondering.

I opted for half putting on my wetsuit,  legs and bum only. Letting the arms and body hang down. A dressing gown completed the ensemble. Of course, someone knocked on the door and of course, as I accepted a parcel my two dangling wetsuit arms pushed themselves out from beneath the dressing gown. Nobody deserves that image etched into their morning routines. Which is why I am just sharing pictures of Hugo. The swim was also completely non-photogenic, wild and wet, rough and bouncy. We congratulated ourselves on how brave we are on these wilder days . Not, I might add, dangerously brave, just cautiously brave. Freshwater rain and seasalty fingers do not combine to take good seascapes.

A cheeky dog in the unmade bed is much more appealing.

#835 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

Yesterday bought me face to face with a very old ponder. When I was 16, in rural Essex, I discovered the joy of gathering in a pub on a Friday night with my friends. For a natter and a catch-up, before we headed off to the giddy excitement of rural or semi-rural nightclubs or live music events at the local college. Alcohol was not involved because public transport didn’t exist much beyond 8pm. We gathered at a pub called the Green Man. Sometimes we discussed men,mostly the real-world sort but occasionally and without Google or a vast library of reference books we pondered where all the Green Women were.

© WhatPub

Yesterday I started singing, with a community choir, a contemporary collection of songs called The Green Man. Composed not five minutes from my current home and inspired by the same landscape that inspired my Green Androdgyny

I have spent an extremely  small percentage of my life pondering the folklore of the Green Man. Puzzled that the human face of the arrival of spring is male. Last year I created an androdgynous Green person for a Spring exhibition. I have been down a green- man -google- rabbit- hole researching the whole Green Man tradition and am both older and wiser and yet not wiser. If there is a female version of the green man she is less well known, has a more awkward name and not surprisingly has a more active role in creating Spring. Sheela Na Gig is represented as a woman with disproportionately large genitals. Almost essential given that in other portrayals she is actually giving birth to trees and bushes that already have a full compliment of leaves and fruit. Splayed branches out first. Deeply uncomfortable with a high risk of tears, either meaning of the words and probably both at the same time.

I will leave this ponder right here…

The singing was fun. I may concentrate on that.

#826 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity, Words1 Comment

This time next week we will all be waking up in March. If January was all about recharging and recovering from the pleasures of the Festive Season it also brought some unexpectedly lovely sunny days. Bright shafts of sunlight kick-started early Spring Cleaning and redecorating during February.

No bad thing as February has been relentlessly wet and drear. Global warming in the far south-west of Britain reveals itself damply. Growing up in the Cold War years (1947-1985) nobody talked much about the climate until they did.

BBC News – A brief history of climate change
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15874560

As a lover of words it seems interesting that almost with a flick of a switch the media swapped one temperature based threat with another.

I first heard the term ‘ Global Warming’ in about 1984 just as the ‘Cold war’ was limping to a conclusion of sorts. My ponder today is a really naive one. Does the world not take Global Warming seriously because the word warming is one that suggests comfort and cosiness.

Which leads me to today’s random question/prompt.

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

I took far too much advice as a teenager, so overburdening my younger self with more unsolicited advice might be unwelcome. But here I go.

Nobody gets it all right, all of the time. But getting things wrong is often the more interesting path but not the most comfortable.

Study Global Warming.

Plum Beautiful lipstick, Levi’s and Doc Martin boots will still be with you when you are sixty.

Keep reading and listening.

©theoldmortuary

#824 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity2 Comments

What is your favorite drink?

Life changed and took me along with it. My favourite drinks are time specific. The first caffeinated cup of tea of the day followed swiftly by the first black coffee. Since Covid stole or altered almost all of my sense of taste and smell, my favourite drinks are the ones with many layers of flavour. I am at my flavoursome best in the morning.

After midday I only drink modified water really. This is not a hardship. A whole new world of fruit tea is out there for me to explore. Sadly they are mostly just a few moments of flavour before they just become hot water. Mostly I just drink hot water.

©theoldmortuary

Barszcz, clear Polish Borscht, served in a cup on Christmas Eve was a revelation.  Exactly the mix of flavours I need to kick my tastebuds into afternoon action.

By the evening there is no point trying to kick the tastebuds, they are tucked up in bed long before I am. Alcohol has more or less abandoned me.

And this is the point when a prompted blog finds the true path to a ponder. Humans, or at least the ones I mix with are gorgeous hospitable people. They want me and my taste buds to have a good time. Only asking for a cup of hot water or a non-alcoholic drink upsets the balance of hospitality and generosity for most people. I realise now the struggle that it must be to be a non-drinker, by choice or need.

Generous humans abhor a clear fluid.

#823 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Books, pondering, SerendipityLeave a comment

I’m not entirely sure where this blog is going today. After a morning of rather dull admin I gave myself a little break and did some test printing and gave some new watercolours a bit of a run out as a reward for tasks achieved.  A little digital tweaking and I created this header post. Big thanks to everyone who responded so positively to yesterday’s blog, I love feedback, you all make my pondering a positive experience.

#822 theoldmortuary ponders.

I suppose yesterday’s blog was loosely about books and today’s mild ponder is also about a book, one that I have not read.

A quote from this book was shared with my book group and I felt that I disagreed with the writer to some degree.

It didn’t exactly keep me up all night but now I am going to have to read the book and see why the author felt the need to take such a cavalier attitude to her past. It is my safe past experiences that give me the confidence to press on into the cloud, as she puts it, of the future. Like many people not everything in my past was fabulous, but all past experience is useful. I suppose what shocks me is that she considers past experience to be ‘ dead’. It is unalterable, but surely it is as alive and vivid as I allow it to be.

And this is exactly why I have a book pile problem. This quote will piss me off until I have read the whole book. Pondering. Is it ever possible to turn it off?

And this is why my book piles are out of control…

#810 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

I am not the only family member that ponders. Hugo finds pondering easiest on a comfy bed. He is pondering the quality of the biscuits he was given in a pub in Penzance. I was at the same pub but not given a biscuit, a tickle or photographed by a stranger, looking cute near a ship’s wheel or staring masterfully at a sextant. For me the pub itself became a massive ponder.

The Admiral Benbow is one of the oldest pubs in Penzance. It has elevated itself from an illegal drinking den in the sixteenth century to a regular pub with an irregular clientele in later centuries. All safely in the past. Famed for being the meeting place of pirates, smugglers, wreckers and all other forms of seafaring miscreants. The pub would also have been a great place for all varieties of prostitution to thrive.  My ponder on the subject of the Admiral Benbow is really about the whitewashing of crime and criminals, illegal activity in all its many forms by the passing of time and the ‘ romance of the sea’

I cannot imagine choosing to spend an evening in a pub or club associated with 21st Century criminals. Drug dealers, handlers of stolen goods, people traffickers, or perpetrators of modern slavery.

But centuries passing and a whiff of the sea makes sharing a time-hop space with the imagining of rogues acceptable, fascinating and enjoyable.

Romance and fantasy stick themselves to the sea and seafarers in a way that seems disproportionate and mystifying. The whites of tropical uniforms are a ‘thing’ in both heterosexual and queer culture. Sailors have a word for a temporary madness that hits them in the tropics.

Calenture a sort of giddiness that brings a heightened state of excitement in hot weather. Throwing themselves into the sea for fun and feeling sexually aroused.

Seafarers really do get some of the best words.

As I sat in the Admiral Benbow enjoying a rum,while Hugo enjoyed a good sea dog biscuit it was easy to imagine the bar boasts of olden times. I really hope Calenture cropped up.

Prof.Google helped me out on this one.

Are Sailors romantic because they were the first profession to really see the world and bring us unimaginable things from foreign destinations.

Which brings me, rather circuitously, to today’s random question

What’s your favorite candy?

Chocolate. Just chocolate. Not chocolate cake or puddings. Nothing too fancy.

Ponderings, in the Admiral Benbow on Monday night. Plenty of space for historical visitors from all centuries. Some nibs of chocolate in a leather pouch and tales of Calenture. Just fascinating.

Lola, meanwhile, thinks such pondering is overated. She could be right.