Category: Serendipity

Pandemic Pondering #379

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Lambs and Seals, Snow and Sun.

A very curious weather day was had in Cornwall yesterday. A planned walk around a reservoir had to be squeezed into a gap between snow showers. There are no words for how cold the wind was. A very quick 3 mile walk was completed by the early afternoon. Finished just as the second snow shower started. So bad was the weather that hardly anyone else was venturing out. But surprisingly half way round we met some friends. Possibly they are as mad as us which is why we are friends!

Home to warm up and ponder if the weather would allow us to meet some friends for an evening visit to Firestone Bay to enjoy fish and chips. We set off without too much hope for a sunny evening and then just as we walked out of the fish and chip shop the skies cleared and this view welcomed us as we arrived.

Fish and Chips devoured, we set off for the Mediterranean, wind protected bay. On the way we were treated to an audience with the resident seal.

The Mediterranean corner did not dissapoint.

Which brings me nicely onto the last image of the day which appeared on the Stand Up Paddleboard Facebook page yesterday. The link to their website is below.

We watched the drone take this photograph which shows us, as tiny insignificant spots, but it proves the Mediterranean feel.

Home

© http://southwestsup.co.uk/

A day well spent.

Pandemic Pondering #378

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Easter, SerendipityLeave a comment

Lockdown Easter Sunday Number 2, and a surprise, Church bells ringing. At the same time this lovely picture of a friends dog popped into my Whats App .

Ralph © Debs Bobber

The Bells of St Stephens were a welcome sound, my recording was shocking so I thought I would share the bells of a previous, working, Easter Sunday. The bells of St Pauls Cathedral.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000qhhg

Easter morning was bright on the sea.

And the chocolate faces at home were cheery.

Then the second surprise of Easter Sunday after our lovely Roast Dinner. The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Not quite as normal but for two ex rowers always a highlight of Spring.

Sunset happened.

And the festive turkey remains in the freezer until there are enough of us willing to take him on.

Pandemic Pondering #377

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, SerendipityLeave a comment
© Debs Bobber

The weather today was better than expected. We walked a very long way today. All over the Stonehouse Peninsular. George the dog in the picture above with one of his many Nun friends is a regular dog about town in Stonehouse. He is a therapy dog based at Nazareth House, a residential care home for Adults. When not delivering therapy he can be seen on walks with one of the Sisters or occasionally just basking on the Cliffs.

Hoping your Easter is as chilled as Georges.

Pandemic Pondering #376

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Easter, history, Serendipity1 Comment

With a four day weekend in hand and still restricted by Pandemic protocols the only thing to do is start the day with a swim. A good number of ‘bobbers’ today and the added bonus of a government funded wave machine.

© Andy Cole

Which made bobbing bobbier.

©Andy Cole

Fast forward to the end of the day when we were walking on the Hoe and we learned a little bit of history. In 997 Viking long boats sailed past our swimming area , presumably making waves, and on up the Tamar for their habitual rape and pillage. Let me just say that if the bobbers had been bobbing in 997 history may have been very different. Ten women in fluorescent hats with luminous buoys might have been all it took to frighten the Vikings off. We would have looked like fearsome Sea Nereids protecting Britannia and may well have become the source of Viking Myths and legends.

But we weren’t there to frighten off the Vikings and history is as it is. Today we found a stone which marks 1000 years since the Vikings invaded.

And so the sun sets on another day in a peculiar year.

Happy Easter

Pandemic Pondering #374

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, SerendipityLeave a comment

Lovely news this week. Drawn to the Valley will have a Spring Exhibition this year. This time last year we were recycling the leaflets and posters of the 2020 Spring Exhibition after it had been cancelled.

Looking at the #marchinthevalley on Instagram we have some interesting work emerging from the Valley this spring.

Even more exciting is that the working party can meet outside after April 14th to start making plans.

Some of us have met on Zoom meetings and a few of us managed a drawing day in October but beyond that we havent seen each other in over a year.

Positive engagement with social media has increased during this Pandemic year, there is a greater diversity of work being shown by more members than this time a year ago.

The Spring Exhibition traditionally kicks off the artistic year for Drawn to the Valley. Although considerably later than the usual March dates . 2021 promises to be a vivid reflection of our endeavours during a very unusual time.

Pandemic Pondering #373

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Concatenation, Pandemic ponderings, SerendipityLeave a comment

The warmest day, so far, of the year and day 2 of a loosening of restrictions in England and I’m still following the protocol of the last few months and walking the dogs and staying local. Just like this rusty supermarket trolley I am adrift from the social buzz of being amongst my own kind. Thankfully unlike the trolley I have not spent the last few months in a muddy tributary. I have yet to put concatenation into practice.

In theory the rules say I ( we) can meet in groups of six in the great outdoors. What I have failed to do is build the next chain in the series and go significantly further afield or meet other people for a natter . Its not that I’ve lived the life of a recluse but I have grown to love the days of a familiar walk listening to a podcast and watching nature unfurl. Today I downloaded a whole months worth of podcasts. I’m actually unlikely to need them once my social butterfly emerges from my Pandemic induced Chrysalis stage.

Socialising has been restricted to Coffee queues followed by a walk, or swimming followed by shouted socialising while we scramble into clothes,forcing not quite dry skin into garments that feel two sizes too small.

I know that once concatenation takes hold and I embrace the sequential changes as they ease me into normal life, slowly link by link, there will be no stopping me. But I am going to miss having the time to notice the small things.

Pandemic Pondering #372

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Yesterday was bright in our corner of Cornwall/ England. So bright in fact that we largely forgot that there had been some easement in Covid restrictions. We could have met another household in our garden or theirs or any other outdoor space but instead just pottered about in the garden making it ready for Spring. The only loosening of behaviours was on a Zoom meeting where the Bookclub arranged an outdoor real life book club meet up next month. Yesterday we discussed literary connections to foolishness as we are close to April 1st . It was good to see so many readers on screen to discuss nonsense. The day finished with a swim in the sunshine, the water temperature had dropped a bit and the currents were not kind but sunshine on your face makes it easier to cope with these things. The daffodils at the top and bottom of this blog have popped their fancy heads up in the old part of the cemetery near @theoldmortuary. They look like fancy hats ready for a very dressed up occasion.

There is also a fine crop of wild garlic, some of which I will harvest later today if the sun stays out. Yesterday I harvested an image from the Victorian part of the graveyard. An eternal message that has been made abstract by Lichen and illuminated by sunshine.

Pandemic Pondering #370

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Sunshine and a spiky tulip to start the day. A bullet was bitten today. New glasses needed to be chosen. I’ve struggled on with two less than perfect pairs for the whole of the pandemic . Both coated with anti- glare coatings that are slowly wearing or being rubbed off. One pair worse than the other are now unusable and the pair that are in a better state, coating-wise, do not like to be on the same face as a mask and fly off my face at every mask wearing opportunity. The reward for choosing new frames, always arduous when you have poor eyesight, was a trip to a bakery and coffee shop.

https://therisebakery.co.uk/

We took the rather splendid cronuts to Down Thomas and nibbled them while looking at the Plymouth Breakwater from a different angle to our usual viewpoint. There is sometimes an organised swim from the Breakwater back to the Plymouth shore. Link below.

https://racecheck.com/races/plymouth-breakwater-swim/

With Cronut in hand and overlooking the distance and geography of the course it is easy to see why viewing the race from whichever angle is infinitely preferable to doing it.

Have a good Sunday!

In Britain the Clocks have gone forward an hour.

The evenings will be lighter.

Another sign that Spring has arrived.

Pandemic Pondering #368

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Music, Nature, Photographs, Serendipity2 Comments

This is the last photograph I took in March 2020 before the first Covid-19 lockdown in Britain. It was mid afternoon at Cotehele and I was recovering from a nasty virus. My last virus as it happens, a welcome benefit of adhering to Covid restrictions is that @theoldmortuary we’ve been virus free for a year now despite doing public facing/touching jobs.

In colour this picture is nothing much. Reeds on a managed flood plain on a typically greige day in the Tamar Valley. What the colour picture would never have shown was the amazing sound that was produced as the wind blew through the reeds. I took the picture just to remind me of that sound. True Whispering Grasses.

Really the original picture was nothing much, just a diary note to remind me of a lovely serendipitous sound on a walk that was being done more out of a sense of necessity and desperation than for pleasure.

I tinkered about with the image altering the contrast and then converted it into black and white.

Ta Da!!

A dull photo has turned into a sound. Not perhaps the gentle sound of whispering grasses, although I can hear them when I look at this with an imagined low volume. If I switch it up to medium volume I hear the interference on a television in the eighties or nineties when the signal was lost. Up a notch again and it is the feedback on a performers mic ( when ever have I felt nostalgic about that piercing scream ) it could also be, currently, two people having different Zoom meetings with their laptops too close together. My final auditory assault from one picture is this.

Imagine sketching it in chalk on an old school blackboard.

I’m fairly certain that last suggestion was not kind. The link below is a gentle salve to give you a good earworm for Friday. The mellifluous Sandy Denny.

Whispering Grass