Category: Saturday

#964 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, Saturday, Serendipity2 Comments

Saturday turned out to be quite the day of textures. Breakfast in a boatyard and Lola took me on a wild Hedgehog tracking adventure. We never found the hedgehog but her tracking led me to an old boat and I love the accidental colours that old wooden boats reveal.

I also had a curious moment with the new photo editor function on my phone. It uses a couple of algorithms to generate different versions of a photograph. Firstly using the information in the picture and secondly using information gathered from  previous edits that I have saved.  As a regular tool to use I would say it is a little unreliable. But as a lover of the serendipitous the function is proving to be very interesting. I download RAW data images from my actual digital camera to give the algorithm more to munch on. What it drags up from my past edits is beyond my control but yesterdays trip to the carwash made a fascinating Greek Seascape.

From this.
To this.

My last textures of the day were aural.  My local community choir sung a Contemporary Pagan Song Cycle on the theme of the Green Man Myths in an old Church of England building. Unusual but then not when you consider that many great churches are built on the sites of Pagan Temples. I love a bit of a sing but am hampered and helped by my synesthesia. I am quite incapable of learning to read music, and I don’t really learn by ear, but by the serendipity of the neurodivergance of Synesthesia, music goes in and I can sing it out. All the right notes, mostly in the right order but not always.

To say I keep a low profile when singing is an understatement. Kind people jab pencils at me and flutter the music sheet at me . Honestly it could be a Cornflake packet but I nod and smile. I am hugely bored by music pedants who bang on about notes. C’s and D’s are just bra cup sizes to me. As for the mystery/ worry of the missing Triangle dinger. I have no idea of the jeopardy involved in that WhatsApp thread. But the percussionists were energised by that predicament.

Fortunately our Community Choir has a composer /conductor who has no time for the  niff naff of  music pedantary so I can keep my head down and not feel like the musical Village Idiot that I am. Our performance was gorgeous,full of crunchy textured soaring notes and unusual harmonies. The Green Man and mid-summer were glorious in the churchyard.

Textures of all sorts throughout the day

#748 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Markets, Saturday, Serendipity1 Comment
Italian meringue, Tavistock

This top image is contrary. Yesterday bad weather and serendipity took us to Tavistock market. A place of colour and bustle, but also these beautiful white meringues.

I had found a Belle Epoque mirror on a second-hand site for a very small amount of money. An early morning drive to Tavistock would give us the chance to collect it and walk the dogs on Dartmoor.

The weather had other ideas, and by the time we hit the moors on our way to Tavistock we were in the worst sort of rainstorm. The dogs still needed walking but as luck would have it Tavistock has an ancient covered market.

Somewhere we could browse and people watch, and the dogs could stretch their legs and enjoy the mixed smells of market life. I am a sucker for the market vibe. I love the juxtaposition of colours, smells and people. Throw Christmas into the mix and things could not get more fancy.

Tavistock is a market town that is traditional in every sense. Country people come into the town to stock up stuff that sustains them in their rural, and often isolated homes out in the wildness of the moor. Tavistock is a town where people wear country clothing because they need to, not because it is a fashion trend. Deerstalkers, the iconic hat of Sherlock Holmes are worn as a matter of course. This is the land of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Tavistock market is the location of Butchers Hall, the roof is one of my favourite complicated photos.

As we are drawing towards the end of 2023, I thought I would just thtow in some other market pictures of the past year.

Only the middle one was taken at Tavistock y.esterday. The top one was in Bangkok and the last one was Hong Kong. All featuring food but I also have hats and slippers to share.

Hats in Tavistock.

And slippers in Venice.

For the serendipitous and fascinating love of markets.

Pandemic Pondering #178

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SaturdayLeave a comment

Another Day, another cafe.

Ashburton again today for coffee. This time Cafe Latino, a themed coffee shop serving very fine coffee with a Latino soundtrack. https://m.facebook.com/cafelatinoshop/about/?ref=page_internal&mt_nav=0

We drove home to Cornwall through Dartmoor to hunt out some overnight stops for a future staycation.

Driving into Widecome was beautiful this morning. I was probably about 10 when I last visited , not much has changed which is as it should be in a National Park.

Home to find the Order of Service for my Uncles funeral had arrived in the post.

The Pandemic has certainly altered our way of marking death. As previously discussed in Pandemic Pondering I wonder how things will be when we have shrugged off the restrictions imposed by Covid-19.

The current restrictions of only 30 mourners means that for many people the receipt of an order of service is the only connection possible to celebrate the life of someone important.

I’m not sure grief in isolation is a good thing, something we are all getting used to but not a practice that will be good for us as a society or as individuals in the long run. Memorial services may help but as the numbers stack up of people we’ve loved and lost in 2020 the unreality of the situation becomes quite abstract.

When life is tough on the mind taking a little time out with a puppy is a lovely treat.