Category: Rituals

#915 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn London, Rituals, Serendipity2 Comments
Dragon Centre, Sham Shui Po. HK

Wednesday ‘ hump’ day and a chance to answer a 3rd Party prompt that has been circling my mind since I first read it and decided not to bother with it. But actually circles or going round in circles is appealing as an answer and doesnt knock the planned blog off the page.

Are you a leader or a follower?

As an absolute magpie for  information, both necessary and unnecessary, I am an instinctive follower. All the better to learn new stuff from people ahead of me. I have vast pots of information stored in my head.

I call it information and not knowledge because to quote my exasperated Dad, ‘I am a mine of useless information’. Despite being an instinctive follower I am more than capable as a leader, even if that is sometimes accidental. To get back to the proposed blog. I have been pondering the recent death of someone that I had an awkward, or difficult relationship with. I am not alone in finding her difficult but my conundrum was that despite our differences I could see her many good qualities and her death has both surprised and saddened me. It has also galvanised me, as these things often do, to live my life as fully and as engagedly as possible. A sort of mental energy burst. It bothers me when I don’t completely like people and, as I have discovered that becomes harder when they have died.

Luckily for me, a very clever poem to mark the death of someone who had difficult relationships has slightly rescued my circling mind.

If I Had A Voice
by Caroline Wilkes

If I had a voice now
It would be loving
And I would say thank you for all of your care.
If I had a voice now
I’d want to tell you
I’m sorry for not always wanting to be there.
My life, it confused you, it did so to me.
But I am released now and my heart is free.
The heart that was hidden beneath all the pain,
It felt so much more than I could explain.
And if I had a voice now,
I’d say out loud
I love you, I wish that I’d made that clear.
And in my lifetime
I need you to know
That I was much more than I did appear.
These are things that I’d say through choice…
if I had a chance and if I had a voice

I think this nicely demonstrates how learning something from someone else. In this case the admirable Dr Google, can circle a follower into a leader.

You may never have met this poem before. But you almost certainly have had some difficult relationships with people who have since died. Maybe all of this poem works for the conundrum of difficult relationships. Or maybe, like me, just one or two lines do the trick. Maybe just for a moment I have led you to some useful words.

Fantail Fish

So to conclude I believe leading and following are often the same thing from different viewpoints.

#800 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Rituals, Serendipity, SportLeave a comment

What are your favorite sports to watch and play?

Sport does not feature on any of my favourites lists. I’ve often done sport and have watched with interest too. But I would say, that sport doesn’t really float my boat. But that would be to dismiss the only sport I have competed in, to a reasonable level. When I moved to Cornwall I discovered gig rowing. My first experience of actually enjoying being in a team. Coincidentally, and really significantly different, the only televised sport I actively choose to watch is the Oxford and Cambridge Boat race. It was the only sporty thing my family were ever interested in watching on the television, when I was young. I still watch it every year. There is no jeopardy, the same two teams compete on the same course every year. One of them wins.

Not being passionate about sport feels unusual. I have really enjoyed any sporting occasion I have attended or taken part in, but I sense that it is the people watching and the sense of occasion that excites me, not the sport itself. The spark of interest has never turned into a flame.

Oh how I wish the prompt for pondering #800 had been a subject I could really ponder about. But we are coming to the end of January/Bloganuary and I have stuck to my commitment. Not subscribing to Dry January has allowed me to enjoy a hot pineapple and rum cocktail while pondering #800. The pictures in this blog are very much about my normal blogging behaviour. A gentle meandering through the thoughts and activities of the day.

Some coastal path walking, at Cape Cornwall and the Penwith Heritage Coast in the far West of Cornwall. Pondering on a sofa by a fire with my dogs.

#716 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Rituals1 Comment

Like many families mine was reshaped by World War 1 and World War 2. Armistice Day was always taken seriously by my family and Remembrance Sunday marked in some way. Not being church goers our observation was always more educational and thoughtful . No prayers or hymn singing unless we were caught off guard at War Memorials. I continue to observe but not be observant.

5 years ago when we lived at the actual Old Mortuary we decided to plant a small poppy field on an abandoned strip of land that ran down the side of  the Chapel of Rest. It seemed like an interesting way to mark 100 years since the end of World War 1 and would provide an appropriate backdrop to the war memorial that was adjacent to our house. Poppies grow on battlefields because damaged churned up soil are the perfect location for field poppies to thrive. Our little strip of land was not a traditional battle field but had been the dumping ground for left over tarmac or rubble from road repairs. Nature had done its very best to reclaim the land with weeds and grasses.

We just added some topsoil and seed. The project was hugely successful.

We didn’t limit ourselves to field poppies. Oriental poppies also loved the scrappy piece of land.

Poppies make the most fascinating subjects for photography and painting.

Unrelated to our gardening poppies I discovered yesterday that other artists celebrate armistice by making poppy art in November. On a windswept trip to Exmouth I discovered this slightly irreverent but beautifully site specific knitting and crochet post box topper marking Armistice Day.

May your thoughts be with you

Pandemic Pondering#454

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Rituals, SwimmingLeave a comment

Summer solstice, the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere has been rather a damp squib. ( A squib is a small firework, a damp one does not go off. Thus a damp squib of a day fails to live up to expectation.) The dawn swim occurred with a backdrop of gently changing greys and raindrops landing on our salty faces. The Bobbers, of course, were a brightly coloured pod of swimmers all there to be in the water at sunrise to support the three Bobbers who were in the water to swim a kilometre for a local charity. Dry land supporters were also there. Visible sunrise, or not, the elite Bobbers raised just over £800 for local charity Barefoot Project.

https://www.barefoot.org.uk/

The gap between sunrise and sunset continued to be a damp and grey day but a solstice is a solstice and Bobbers who could not make the early morning dip commited to swimming at sunset.

The sun turned up just in time to set, like a friend who makes it to an agreed meeting five minutes before everyone else has to leave. Not one to just slip in quietly the sun was spectacular.

Even blessing the Madonna with a large coffee cup with some rainbow bathing, what a difference 16 hours makes!

Eventually only two Bobbers made both a sunrise and sunset swim.

But it was a day well lived.

Pandemic Pondering #360

On By theoldmortuary.designIn RitualsLeave a comment

Yesterday was a strange day topped off by a sunset swim. The water was calm but chilly, it was possible to bask in the setting sun when swimming towards the west.

Nothing was quite as it should be yesterday. @theoldmortuary is close to three graveyards, an older church one that has expanded into fields behind it and more recently, on the opposite side of the lane leading to a nature reserve,a new graveyard in more fields for more recent burials. We are well used to funerals of all sorts and their associated traffic. A neighbour but unknown to us, died recently and was being taken elsewhere for her service and committal yesterday morning. Being at the beginning of a final journey rather than the end felt dystopian with the undertaker performing a slow walk ahead of the hearse as they drove away from the family home.

After a year of behavioural changes it is a little unnerving to always witness the sadness of strangers without the balance of being voyeurs to the joyful church events of Baptism and Weddings. Brightly coloured family dramas played out just steps away from our front door.

These things are the rituals that link us to the past. This is probably the only year in more than 400 where the church and the pub, sentinels either side of a lane have not shared in the celebrations and condolences of church based family events.

The two buildings are linked in these moments. People crossing, sometimes wobbly legged and weepy, between the two in the time before and after the main events. Weeping is not reserved for funerals!

Just having the church and bereavement gatherings seems unbalanced. Life will be better when happy and sad people can seek refuge in the pub, before or after church and turn their legs wobbly if that is what the situation requires.