Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
A recycle, repurpose, reuse and re-home Festival/Holiday weekend, held once a year in the Autumn.
Whole communities could offer their surplus stuff for free or for a charitable donation. Just a pile of stuff on a table outside the front of their homes or at an agreed community space. A whole weekend so everyone gets the chance to both donate and treasure hunt. One person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure hunt.
I am a big second hand shopper. It is the most sustainable way to live, giving stuff that has already had a life some extra years of use. The illustrations for this blog are my latest acquisition. A Gentleman’s Working Kimono Jacket.
The lining
It pairs very nicely with a pair of winter Corduroy trousers that also had a life before me.
The sun rises on my light fitting. Our clocks have gone forward today. Sunrise was at 6:57 GMT, the day will be one of digital accuracy and analogue inaccuracy until we reset various clocks and timers. An hour either way is of no great consequence to us. For one day the dogs are a little discombobulated about meal times, but as they mostly take their cues from us they will soon be back in sync. So today we are all living our best life in 25 hours instead of 24 and sunrise and sunset have shifted by an hour.
Just 3 bobbers , braved a bouncy sea yesterday. 15 degrees in the water and 10 degrees out, made for an enjoyable swim but a very chilly chattering session afterwards. I was unintentionally glam having showered and washed my hair just before the bob.
Glam or not it is not every day that we get to swim with a submarine.
Some people travel thousands of miles to swim with dolphins. Swimming with submarines has less of a cache, but in 2025 we have had both experiences in our little bay.
NRP Tridente
The Portuguese submarine was much easier to catch on camera. No need for arrows to point out the dark shape in this photograph.
Yesterday was a day of planned procrastination. Storm Benjamin was forecast and I needed small jobs on my schedule that could be done anytime so that I could do dry dog walks when there was not a deluge falling from the sky. As a plan it worked two long dog walks with just a jumper and no coat. Summer trousers hemmed, and the sewing machine put away. Two procrastinations dealt with in one go.
Storm Benjamin had taken himself slightly off course and had arrived, at his worst, about 8 hours earlier than anticipated.
He seemed not to have ruffled up the sea too much but there was still enough rainfall to make the day unpleasant and enough sun to make a rainbow.
If the end of a rainbow ever truly existed then this one would have delivered his crock of gold more or less into the tidal pool.
Tidal pool being cleaned.
Excellent planning by our local council as they had cleaned the pool the day before. All that fictional gold delivered into a nice clean receptacle. Too bad I was on the other side of the peninsular I might have been able to pocket a mythical golden doubloon at the end of the rainbow. Except, of course, that had I been there the rainbow would have been somewhere else entirely.
A day of dull procrastinations ticked off. There were numerous others, far too dull to waste words on Excellent walks and mythical gold delivered into a clean concrete swimming pool. A low bar was both set and achieved for the day.
Autumn confetti has no obvious connection to obsequious, but how could I possibly illustrate obsequious.
Obsequiousness makes my flesh creep. Yes, the act of being subjected to obsequious behaviour is uncomfortable but for me it is the physicality of the word. The minute it springs to mind something cold squeals down my spine like a bad chalk move on a blackboard or a dentist drill.
I had always thought the word was onomatopoeic because of the involuntary physical shoulder hunching I feel when I hear it or even think about it.
I am absolutely fine with obsolete.
Obs-o-leet , not a shudder in sight . But the last three syllables of Obs – ee-kwi-us have me wishing to climb 12 feet up a vertical glass wall.
How fabulous is it to be a person of no consequences and not suffer obsequience on a daily basis.
My small word rant is over. Back to Autumnal Confetti. No reason for either really.
When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?
Successful means a positive outcome no matter how large or small the original effort Sometimes success occurs, unplanned and with no effort from the midst of abject failure. No one person represents success without failure and no one person represents failure without some success. We are all a mixture of both.
I am having a bit of a creative experimentation phase using watercolour, weaving and collage. The colours of the sea around us are constantly changing and I photograph and paint them often, mostly as never to be seen ideas on paper.
This image started life as a storm picture, the colours featured are the sea, old military concrete, rust and vivid seaweed all tossed about in the sea . Then I chopped A3 paper down to A4 and used the cut off pre-painted paper to weave into the A4 and made a weaved image to collage onto the A4. Sheet. There is a curious pleasure in destroying an image to create a new and unexpected one. I like the sense of unity that my mark making on the original sheet brings to the new weaved image. I like that there are now 3 or 4 layers all telling the same story but in a very different way.
My original was just swirling wave forms but the woven piece almost tells a more accurate account. This is not an area of gentle sandy beaches and murmuring flisvos.
Waves don’t often hit our shores gently and there is more concrete than sand. This area has been a port for more than 1,000 years. Waves slap hard against cliffs and man-made structures which are built to be resilient. The collision of water and hard surfaces is the soundtrack of a walk by the sea. The sharp angles and abrupt colour changes of the woven areas are a good reflection of the sound and sensations of being at one with the sea in an area that is not completely natural and unspoilt. A little arty, digital tinkering makes me want to try this again.
But for now it is just a fabulous design for a stained glass window.
Most of my current neighbours are unknown to me. They live across a small service lane at the back of the house. I have no neighbours opposite the front of the house. Neighbours to the sides are known just enough to exchange brief pleasantries and take in one another’s parcels. I suggest that this is an ideal situation. My neighbours cats are quite another matter , choosing the planters in my yard as elevated toilet zones. I am almost certainly smiling and polite to their owners, not knowing which house sends their feline occupants my way for their daily ablutions.
Adversity shows up the power of really good neighbours. We were burgled in London some years ago. Sympathy and support from 6 of our neighbours created a friendship that went way beyond the immediate aftermath. The parties that roamed between our 6 dwellings were legendary and had aftermaths of an entirely different nature. The ribbons of those friendships flutter and circle the world now. Markers of a time and a place.
I would choose paragraph two neighbours over paragraph one. But have no need of another burglary to create an alchemy of exquisite neighbourliness. Good neighbours are whatever serendipity provides. I wouldn’t want a bad one, all other sorts are a bonus.
When anyone asks what my favourite or most influential book is I ponder long and hard. It fluctuates, at the moment it is The Count of Monte Cristo.
But in researching the Grandmother Rupert link I realise my most influential books are the Rupert Annuals which I received almost every year for twenty years.
1960
Goodness knows when I last opened this book. But I know every page like the back of my hand. Out of curiosity I sniffed it, out of nowhere, if you ignore my lachrymal glands, small pricking tears appeared in my eyes. Maybe it was the dust…
Mrs Bear appears often wearing a long pinny or a light over-garment with pockets.
I am very much a pocket woman. Since hitting semi-retirement I have relied on pockets rather than a day to day handbag. That has only changed in the last couple of months now I am obliged to carry an Epipen on any outing that might involve food or drink.
I think pockets were my genetic or literary gift from my grandmother/Mrs Bear. A dress or skirt is not a garment for me without pockets. If there are no pockets in a mass produced garment I don’t buy them or I add them. Pockets should be cotton or a natural fabric. Cotton bags from shops work well.
Dress with Aesop pockets.
Less so now that leggings come with pockets. It is easy to hide leggings under longish dresses and skirts.
Whilst cooking quinces or indeed anything I have apron pockets so large that I could carry a litter of squirming puppies.
Maybe more Rupert musings in a future blog and certainly more Quince.
Rules and protocols require a little more consideration and questioning.
Wisdom and my moral compass fill in the gaps. Kindness, good listening and reflection are also good gap fillers.
And the aesthetics of everything colours life, sometimes with little effort and other times with a good deal of thought and experimentation.
Saints are not my cup of tea, so failure on all these principles happens and thank goodness for that. Saints are soooo tedious.
I believe net curtains are the work of the Devil. Especially above ground level. Make them plain and call them Voile. Nobody’s windows need to look like fancy underwear. Another lesser known principal but useful all the same.
theoldmortuary.design 