Category: pondering

#672 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

Are you holding a grudge? About?

Sometimes one of these Jetpack prompts really is a pause for thought.

Do I hold a grudge?

No. I do, however, have a mental filing system of harms done, both great and pathetic.

I use this filing system to learn by experience.

Anybody, myself especially can cause harm to another inadvertently or unintentionally. If I am made aware I certainly try to not repeat my bad behaviour.

But the sad fact is that there are many people in the world who set out to cause harm to others. These people are best avoided. This is not bearing a grudge but just a sensible precaution.

If I held grudges, specifically compared to my mental filing system, I think I am creative enough to consider revenge as an art form worthy of quite a lot of thought and planning. I suspect my revenge would be malignant,served cold but with deadly accuracy. The drawer just slamming shut is so much easier for me to live with.

The mental filing system permits a much more subtle and less harmful act to all. If someone has more than one harmful item in their drawer of my mental filing system then there is a risk that their drawer may be closed forever. Minor characters with no redeeming features have their drawer shut and locked with relative ease. People who are more important, or are of greater interest to me certainly can keep their drawer open longer, maybe forever, even though, of course, their harms can often cut deeper.Best not depend on that though, nothing in the filing system is guaranteed. I hold the only master key.

rhdr

So Grudges- no thank you

A nice tidy filing system of harms, or learning events. Yes please.

#673 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

What’s your favorite time of day?

Curiously my favourite time of day is around 2am. A time that I usually sleep through, but years of  the madness of 24 hour shifts gave me a huge respect for that hour of quietude when, with luck, the previous days work has been caught up with and the dip of 3am is yet to happen.

Now the only thing that gets my attention at 2 am is a dog or dogs who need to visit the back yard. Even my occasional insomnia never kicks in until 3 am. So favourite time of day, I love you but I really don’t need to be awake to appreciate your merit.

#686 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, SerendipityLeave a comment

Happiness is my commonest positive emotion. It is my default setting. I have recently been made aware that I rarely show ecstatic emotion. I laugh a huge amount and do genuinely take great joy from many things. But I am not sure I know how to express the increased level of joy life brings me when my regular happiness levels get a boost. Misery or worry are also less obvious to other people, for me the indicator is insomnia. If my happiness quota most days were a colour it would be a variety of shades of orange. Extreme happiness would be yellows and crossness, irritation, sadness or anger would be many shades of red. Perhaps I need to show more yellow and some red instead of occupying a mostly orange mindspace.  Always something to learn, always room for improvement. Perhaps a little blue or green should be added into my outwardly projected emotional serving.

What positive emotion do you feel most often?

#657 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Colour, pondering1 Comment

There is nothing set to excite the bobbers than a colour chart and samples of Hoodies for the winter bobbing season. Even in a very dull patch of an English summer the thought of snuggly jumpers in January fires the imagination.

Tranquility Bay was anything but tranquil as we made decisions about the sartorial style of Winter 23/24. We don’t even have to agree on a colour as the only common denominator is the word ‘Bobbers’ on the back. But 74 colours, 2 styles and 15 humans is a heady mix of indecision. Particularly when the endorphins and positive ions of a good cold water dip make us all a bit giddy at the best of times.

This morning there are 40 WhatsApp messages….

#646 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

Waking up on a sunny morning in a blue bedroom is always a bit ‘other-worldly’. Soon enough the sun will cast fish shadows all over the floor. This blog was always going to be about blue because I discovered yesterday that Blue Monday by New Order was first released 40 years ago. Ever an optimist my Monday’s have never been particularly ‘blue’. My job was a seven day a week habit so the dreaded returning to work feeling could hit on any day.

In keeping with my usual lyric remembering failure I only ever remember the first two lines.

How does it feel, to treat me how you do?

I’ve worked with a few people where that has been a great puzzlement. People who clearly get up every morning determined to make other people’s lives a misery by their words or actions.

Anyway those sort of people are not welcome in this blog, which is really about where on earth those 40 years went…

Two lovely blue pictures from yesterday to accompany the blog. We sat under the Flagpole in our local dockyard to watch the Wimbledon Tennis Final on a big outdoor screen. I took this multi exposure shot to capture the flag in the breeze.

And as we left the Agapanthas were showing off a bit.

Have a positively Blue Monday with a catchy earworm…

And then, just like that, the blog was written and finished.But Facebook time- hop had other plans and I needed to extend the blog.Time-Hop showed me three paintings, all sea related. They are long gone to their forever homes but were painted at this time of year. I must have a thing about blue in mid- July.

#641 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, pondering, Serendipity1 Comment
Dandelion at dawn

What do you think gets better with age?

Before deciding to use this prompt I read a few other blogs that had also chosen to go with this particular flow. Wisdom, Sex, God(s) and Acceptance all get a good going over by bloggers with mixed results, in my opinion.

I have no such certainty, in the few hours I have pondered this thought I have been going round in so many ponderous mental circles that I feel even more uncertain as to my definitive answer.

Dandelion at noon

Right now at 08:13 I have settled on being both less conscious and more conscious of being my genuine self. Society moulds us in many ways. Always an introvert I have moved through life being self-effacing* hiding behind so many self-created masks.

* Someone who’s self-effacing is shy and likes to stay out of the spotlight, shunning attention and praise. To efface something is to erase it, so to be self-effacing is to try to remove yourself from various situations, especially ones that draw attention.

David Bowie with his multiple stage personnas or Drag Queens seem to me to have the perfect way of being.

Dandelion at night.

A lovely, big, public personality that can take praise and adoration easily and humbly. A personality that can be slipped off at the end of the show, leaving the real person to slip out of the stage door anonymously without the need for dark glasses and an upturned collar.

Much as I would have liked to go through life in the style of Ziggy Stardust or Lily Savage that was never appropriate. So my characters looked exactly like me but with more Chutzpah*

*The positive aspect of chutzpah, which is more likely to lead to positive outcomes, revolves primarily around being confident, daring, and brazen.

I realise now, with age that self-effacing is a fairly daft way to go about life. But even as I write this I realise that being a brash ‘ out-there’ person was an impossible lifestyle choice for me. I so dislike the aura around Alpha Humans.

What has got better with age is knowing my own worth and finding somewhere in the middle ground. Not so self-effacing, more sequins and twinkle.

Less Dandelion; more Firework, occasionally!

#652 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn ponderingLeave a comment

Here I am doing a bit of foreshadowing on my morning dog walk. Literally, foreshadowing which is probably not the world for casting my shadow ahead of me and literarily foreshadowing. If I consider my blog to be low grade literature

This morning’s walk was a whole bunch of anticipatory foreshadowing by proxy. Seeing things and projecting what might happen in the same place or situation for other people.

I have never travelled by ferry from Plymouth to Europe but every time I see a ferry, big or small, it gives my heart a little frisson of the pleasure of travel. Likewise paddle boards resting up before adventures on the high seas.

Brightly coloured swimmers also predict what my day holds at the next high tide.

Yesterday’s morning walk was quite a different experience. I set off in reasonable weather that fairly soon changed into the sort of light summer rain that switches the senses with a light touch and released fragrances. As often happens at the furthest point from home, summer rain transformed itself into a deluge and my summer dress and sandals were overwhelmed. I was a very wet dog walker on the return and I looked quite mad in comparison to all of the proper walkers who had swiftly whipped out rainwear from their rugged and capacious back packs. Their walking shoe clad feet took a very dim view of my inadequate footwear. I excused myself by saying I had been out a long while, there was an element of exaggeration in that statement. But sometimes in the land of extreme long distance coastal path walkers an amateur needs to save face. No such saving face tonight, I will be an adventurous sea swimmer being wet will be the norm.

One other off the wall ponder. Wouldn’t it be fab if moss grew in big enough patches to lounge on.

#631 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, pondering, Serendipity2 Comments
©theoldmortuary – Wembury WIP

Summer months are often the busiest for artists. I am dedicating these long daylight hours to getting as much actual creating done as possible. But there are also a lot of exhibitions and these require a degree of organisation. The pandemic gave us Zoom which means not every meeting needs to be in person but yesterday despite the heat I was glad to have two meetings in opposite environments, 10 miles apart, in the Tamar Valley. The first one on Dartmoor was at The Garden House. A beautiful garden where I have enjoyed some tranquil drawing days.

Home

©The Garden House

No sketching for me, I was there for a scheduling meeting. It was very hot but I was thrilled to find some very wooly sheep hunkered down in the shade of a stone wall, taking life very easy as I left The Garden House ready for meeting number 2 in Plymouth.

In complete contrast to the rural location of the first meeting the second one was in a city with all the additional heat and bustle of a busy urban environment.

Cooling off came with the familiar sound of an ice cream van, parked up and ready to offer chilled relief in the sunshine.

Texture and context in life is everything. Yesterday was a good example of both. And now back to the brushes.

#625 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, pondering, Serendipity2 Comments

Using a prompt today, not because I was lost for a subject to ponder, but more because there is always something to ponder.

Early morning pondering in the van, waiting for coffee. Two dogs on my lap.

What are you good at?

I’ve always been a ponderer and on the whole pondering is a private occupation, unless a daily blog is written. So with some self judgement I would say that I am a particularly avid and accomplished ponderer. Being good at something carries responsibilities, I have been accused of having too vivid an imagination or being lost in my own world. Well I adore vivid, that’s why some of my images are over-saturated and trust me,I have never been lost in my own world. I know exactly where I am.

So after all that self-justification here is todays ponder which is a little late and ludicrously vivid.

A chance encounter with a patient took us to Buckfast Abbey early this morning.

It was the most peaceful spot for an early morning dog walk with friends.

So peaceful that, beyond the vivid stained glass,I forgot to take photos.

The whole place is rather overwhelming and the Stained Glass is certainly a show stopper.

But coupled with an organ recital of some contemporary music the whole experience was quite other worldly.

Which I suppose is the point of an Abbey.

#624 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, Plymouth, pondering, SerendipityLeave a comment

Yesterday we started a day of dull chores with a free gift of coffee. Just enough for four double espresso. Our gift came from Monmouth Coffee in Borough Market.

And before that it came from Bolivia.

We needed something pretty perky to make a day of chores magical.

As it turns out Finca Floribondio did not do a bad job at all. Our first Industrial Estate of the day, yes, it was ‘that’ kind of a day, turned out to be not what you might expect at all. Commercial Road in Plymouth was an Industrial Estate long before such things were invented. We go there to get our car and van tyres fixed or replaced. That was job number one of the day. Me and the dogs walked while Hannah took the van. The magic or dreamlike powers of Floripondio gave me a great view and water for the dogs to play in.

View of the Citadel from Teats Hill slipway.

Some time had passed since the first dose of coffee so we made a plan to rendezvous at a coffee shop in a Motorbike Dealers. Once again the magic of Floripondo made things a little dreamlike.

A motorbike showroom where bikes are allowed on carpet!

Window view to prove we were in an Industrial Estate.

Now with full disclosure I must say I know nothing about motorbikes beyond an artistic love of sprockets.

©theoldmortuary.design I painted this some years ago as a Memento Mori for a biker whose ashes were scattered on the Thames at Bankside not so very far from Borough Market.

But this motorbike must be quite special.

Motorbike cafes have a dress code which we only just fitted by accidentally wearing dark colours. Leather is de rigour. Fabulously engineered leather to keep its wearers safe in case of incidental or accidental damage. Human skin and tarmac or gravel at high speed is not a good combination, neither is collision good for bones or internal organs. Motorbike leathers are phenomenal. However they can make their wearers look like a cross between a storm trooper and a lizard/insect. As we enjoyed our coffee and a bacon sarnie every one of these beautiful lizard insects stopped to pay homage to this beautiful object.

Now the coffee at this cafe was also wonderful but without the hallucinogenic properties of Finca Floripondio we were returned to normal humans who had chores to do in utterly banal and dull industrial estates. The magic of a freeby wiped out by normal life.

The magic only returned when we started researching actually buying some Finca Floripondio beans.

The first hit on Google was a surprise and took us straight back to one of our favourite Hong Kong coffee shops. Internet cookies are powerful things, no calories though!

However nothing could tempt us to pay HKD 468 for 200g of beans even as a holiday treat.

Our coffee treat will come from London, when we deserve it.

Buy Coffee

https://www.theacademicsgroup.com/

https://g.co/kgs/Eqk8us

And that, my Sunday friends is a ponderous ponder inspired by a day of really dull jobs.