Category: Serendipity

#1458 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity3 Comments

What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?

There are many reasons I write a daily blog. Witnessing is one of them. I have always been fascinated by the day to day lives of  ‘normal’, run-of-the-mill, people , like myself. Not the famous, infamous,grand, important, iconic,good, bad and ugly( beautiful) people who habitually occupy the world’s media.

I just love the observation of people going about their daily lives.

As a British person with a peculiar interest in normality I would love to see how Britain between January 2020, when we left the European Union and May 2023 when the World COVID Pandemic was declared over, is viewed with the retrospective wisdom of 100 years.

British people are a blended island nation, who talk a lot about the weather. Sometimes about Wars. And unlike any other nation, have a couplet of 21st Century woes.

Businesses failed because of the joint enterprise of Brexit and Covid.

Relationships failed.

Communities broke up.

People took the fork in the road that they would never have considered were it not for Brexit/Covid.

It is not in the least unusual to hear 

” Well, of course, there was Brexit and then Covid”

We are a nation whacked by a double whammy.

As an individual, Brexit/Covid galvanised me into  daily blogging/ diarising. Something I had wanted to do all my life but life got in the way.

I used to dream of keeping a five year diary. I never achieved it, despite being nerdy, and at times, an insular child.

Jetpack, the app that supports my WordPress blog page has a new-to-me feature.

Suddenly I have my 6 year diary pages to look back on.

I promise not to share these here too often but I find them fascinating, of course I do.

The great ponder of the day is, will they survive 100 years, and what will my great-grandchildren make of them?

Pandemic Pondering #77

Pandemic Pondering #436

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#937 theoldmortuary ponders

#1310 theoldmortuary ponders

#1454 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Go on a walk today and share a photo of something that catches your eye.

This is a prompt for a suggested blog today, from my blog hosts. Every blog I have ever written features a photo or photo’s of something that has caught my eye, accompanied by random thoughts and some minutiae of daily life.

What will catch my eye today. 1st of June 2026?

Let’s just see shall we?

Marilyn Monroe 100 years old today. Except she only got to live for 36 of her beautiful years.

How lucky am I to have lived 68 of my 100 years. Less beautiful, less troubled. Less dead!

Of all the Marilyn stuff I read today one was particularly troubling.

A businessman, Richard Poncher,bought the tomb above hers and demanded that his coffin was placed in his tomb upside down so that his body could gaze face to face with hers for eternity.  That is just weird, entitled and wrong.

The man’s wife had no qualms at a later date about trying to sell off the tomb and presumably her husband’s corpse  in order to make some extra cash.  There were no bidders. There are some strange people about. Mr and Mrs Poncher clearly deserved each other.

Today is a Monday, nearly always a Nana and Nona day care. It is a day of  Ferry spotting.

Cremyl Ferry at the Royal William Yard.

Hide and Seek.

And Dog walks.

So what caught my eye.

That a ferry travelling backwards actually produces a better photograph than when it goes forward.

Who could ever have guessed?

#1453 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Holidays, Serendipity, Yardening1 Comment

And after the holiday comes the washing pile.

Which I inadvertently added to by having a chocolate croissant dipped in my coffee while writing yesterday’s blog in bed. Coffee and croissant all over me and the bed. If the blog was a paper diary yesterdays page would be the colour of old parchment and the ink would be indistinct. In yesterdays blog I said I shared a birthday with the first use of a lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks. 14th November 1698. If that were really true I would be writing on old parchment.

Anyway back to the holiday plus washing. Thankfully Stonehouse did not get the memo that the heatwave was over. The yard was still capable of drying washing yesterday long after the sun had set.

There has been only one major yardening crisis whilst we were away. Our lavender tree has curled up his fragrant toes and died, draping himself dramatically over a stoic Olive tree. Jobs for next week I think.

#1451 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, Serendipity1 Comment

This day in history. I have been blogging for 9 years. Here are some posts from 28 th May for the last 9 years. Only 7 because blogging wasn’t always a daily habit.

The prettiest site for a music festival

Pandemic Pondering #71

Pandemic Pondering #429

#624 theoldmortuary ponders

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#1303 theoldmortuary ponders

Listed for me just as much as anyone else. This blog is illustrated by the communal yurt at the campsite. I suppose communality is the link word. I write these blogs for my personal pleasure, as a record for my family and to record a normal life in the 21st century. I have chosen to throw them out into the world and a small community has gathered around them.

28th May, not much happened and yet so much happened.

#1446 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Holidays, Serendipity, Van LifeLeave a comment

Quite the unplanned day today. Up early to use a beachside outdoor laundrette. Staggeringly high tech. We loaded our washing and were instructed that a text message would tell us when our washing was done. With a little over an hour to wait we walked to an empty beach, found a bench and read our books.

Not a bad way to get the laundry done and make a plan for the day, hundreds of tourists descended on Quiberon while the washing was doing its thing, we decided to find some calm. We chose the Mediaeval town of Auray for our first destination. High tech to Mediaeval in just over an hour. Auray was virtually empty. Unplanned Auray for tomorrow. Not one but two Saints, one freshly minted in 2025.

#1445 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends, Serendipity1 Comment
Lamore Plage

Where do old friendships go when life creates a wrinkle in time and place?

Old friendships just wait quietly in the head and heart until another wrinkle pulls the whole thing back together. 

Wrinkles, it seems,are quite the thing. We have both collected some along the way. 36 years since Angela and I met in person,and many years with little contact because life happens, but then the internet happened and reconnections and natterings can begin again.

We trained at the same time in London, lived our twenties in Brighton, a city that was as much fun as any city can be and then life washed us both into the port city of Plymouth. Being used to fun we sought it out, or more likely created it until the tides, or wrinkles, of life set us on the path of a 36 year gap.

Finding the fun in Plymouth.

You know nothing has changed when the same daft stuff makes you laugh.

This gorgeous little wooden boat was built by Angela’s Obstetrician. His hands crafted this boat, but she last saw them wielding a pair of forceps between her knees. Both activities with great outcomes and exactly the sort of thing we would find funny. 36 years apart blinked away by laughter.

#1443 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn saints, SerendipityLeave a comment

A holiday with only small things to be achieved, in a timely way can be very liberating . Two catch ups with friends and a midpoint Airbnb are all we have. Except a trip to a fortified city that has featured in an enjoyed Netflix series. It was the anchor to our first week, Concarneau was our tick box. A little tricky as there was a sea mist making everything a little grey but exploring the fortified city was very atmospheric. Not quite as Netflix has depicted it, but hugely enjoyable. Cinematographers can do wonders with lighting and the hard work of scenery professionals. Except the hard work should actually have been done at home because the filming was actually done in  Saint Malo!

Google is a wonderful thing.

So Saint Malo goes on the list for another time and a location, Saint Cado, gets elevated to this current trip. Not only for the Netflix error but also to escape inclement weather.

So far it has worked, better weather and another Saint to ponder. Saint Cado allegedly fought with Satan over the rebuilding of a bridge between two fishing communities and then hoodwinked him by giving him the soul of a cat. The contractual price for the bridge rebuilding was the soul of the first living thing to cross the bridge. Anticipated to be a human it turned out to be a cat. Obviously St Cado’s saints tale has the tissue thin plausibility of many a saints origin story. The bridge however exists and we crossed it today. Nobody lost a soul.

#1441 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Holidays, SerendipityLeave a comment

A day of textures, travels with LeClerc  and consolidation.

Brittany is fish, I love everything about fish. But fish does not love me and that breaks my heart because even fish in a supermarket here screams eat me, cook me simply and enjoy. So rather than eat fish I must devour with my eyes.

The weather was not with us today and the towns we visited were quiet. Fortunately we could reprovision using a Hypermarket.

Sleepy towns and inclement weather could be a recipe for disaster but slow  walks in unknown places are one of the great pleasures of life.

A cottage garden in Loctudy

A bit of street art and the real thing.

Phare La Perdrix at Loctudy

We wandered in old graveyards and found moss like a world map and barely there inscriptions.

And the sadness of a World War 1 military graveyard where young men gave their lives for France. Not something we ever read on  British War graves as we are not a Republic. In Britain lives were given for King and Country. I prefer the directness of the French wording.

Young men who would have done useful jobs like transporting wine if they had not been fighting in a pointless war

Women were represented on our little texture hunt by cast iron fixings for shutters.

A Breton flag and Breton jumpers.

And just look at this, freshly caught crabs at our destination of three days time.

Gauthier’s Haul

Life is full of texture today. Especially lovely when we found a tea shop open.

#1439 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment
Brittany Poppies

How do you stay motivated when learning something new?

I am lucky that being semi-retired and having stepped away from a full time career, learning something new is pretty much my choice, so I learn with great enthusiasm. But what I have realised is that having to learn things that may not have fully engaged my happy head spaces in the past has given me a bit of a super power of just diligently getting on with it. Recently I had to learn, at speed, the rules and advice for communal space vegetable plot gardening. Not exactly allotments but definitely strip horticulture, something medieval people knew about. I found it fascinating and like a lot of things it is a lot less about the fruit and vegetables and a great deal more about managing people.

So I would say finding fascination is the motivation for learning new things and just being diligent.