Category: Serendipity

#1046 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn autumn, Serendipity1 Comment

How do you celebrate holidays?

I am not sure that I have a way of celebrating holidays beyond enjoying them in whatever form they take. Our most recent holiday ended yesterday as we eased our Australian friends into their hire car and set them free to explore North Wales and East Anglia without us. It has been a holiday of joyful surprises and beautiful places. Embellished with great conversations around all subjects both ancient and modern, great and small.

The picture above was taken in a small mountain village called Stemnitsa in Arcadia. Early autumn leaves edging a storm drain. I knew, when I saw it, that this image would somehow symbolise the end of summer for me. Here we are now in the middle of September and it seems only sensible to accept that Summer 2024 has slipped away. Accepting that allows me to celebrate autumn.

Not with fat, fresh figs as I could in Arcadia but definitely with the fruits of an English Harvest. I am on the hunt for Quince again and optimistic for autumn sunshine. Both things to celebrate a summer well spent and an acceptance of a change of season.

#1043 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Holidays, Serendipity1 Comment

One week apart, two windows with blinds project sun into a room. This one, this morning heralds a day to be spent in a beautiful harbour and scenic village. Maybe tomorrow’s blog.

This one, last Friday, heralded a day in Spetses. A beautiful harbour and a scenic town.

Sunshine flooding a room in the morning sets the day up well. Last week we had Turquoise sea and water taxis.

Today who knows what we will have?

Both blinds are casting light on holiday clothes.

In Spetses they were contained and orderly, knowing their place in holiday hand luggage. Back home they are scattered on the floor awaiting their turn in the great post- holiday  washing cycle. Sunshine an asset in both endeavours.

#1041 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Greece, Serendipity1 Comment

All the colours of my day. We took a trip to Monomvasia. Two reasons. Someone had said it was ‘Worth a look’. And secondly I remembered reading about the fortress town, in an old edition of National Geographical, such an old edition that the pictures were in black and white.

The understatement of black and white images and a throw away remark had not prepared me for  the vibrancy and beauty of a town hanging on the slopes of a rocky island close to mainland Greece.

Our day started very grey, torrential rainfall and a waterspout accompanied the bitter, but essential phase of coffee in a taverna.

Arrival to Monomvasia brought turquoise sea, free parking and a cheap bus ride up a steep hill.

Every corner of the town was a visual treat. Old houses still awaiting some twenty first century tweakments, or not. I do love a dishevelled building in the right circumstances.

A taverna for sale had a laconic sitting tenant with no expectation of being disturbed any time soon. Monomvasia is in Laconia.

For a touch of blue with both meanings of the word,  I realised yesterday that I really regret getting rid of all my dads old National Geographics when I cleared my old home 30 years ago. There is  something magical about  discovering a fantastic world of colour hinted at in monotone.

#1038 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Waking up on a rainy Monday morning in’the’ village. Not my village but a village nevertheless.

This village is the home village of one of my travelling companions, she has cousins on  every corner in this idyllic Greek mountain village. Her husband and I grew up in a small Essex village, in England 50 years ago. We live half a world apart. Me in Plymouth, England and him in Melbourne, Australia.

For us there has been an anecdote on every corner of this trip. Small inconsequences of our teenage lives are remembered and chuckled over.People who we knew well are fondly recalled. People we barely knew are fleshed out as we share our personal experience of them. We both went to an entirely normal secondary school, not an iota of an enhanced educational experience for us. And yet every day we have marvelled at the people we met and the quality of teaching we received.

A good foundation for lives well lived.

#1031 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

Not a story about the furthest but a story about our current road trip before it even started. The only motorway that links us with our local airport was closed. An easy two hour journey became a tense four hour journey via A and B roads in Devon. Our flight was at 5:15 and we arrived at the airport at 5:05. Never were we so grateful for a delayed flight but regardless of the delay, check-in for luggage was very firmly closed. Thankfully we met some fabulous people and we were processed with kindness and expediency.

We arrived at 2 am and can reveal the start of our roadtrip.

Our first day was an odysea of coffee shops and nattering and a museum of  Greek culture where I met this splendid fellow.

Man in a Fez by an unknown artist.

Goodness how I love this face painted in about 1870.  A face so full of mischief I would be drawn to him at a party.

Has he just eaten the last pie?

Or farted?

Has he just heard the most salacious and delicious piece of gossip?

Is he trying really hard not to giggle?

I have no idea but he has brightened my first day in Athens. I will take his unusual portrait image with me on my road trip.

And this fabulous abstract created in a Sephora beauty product shop. Just nearby to our Airbnb.

#1030 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

What brings a tear of joy to your eye?

The prompt from my blog host ( above ) exactly matched the blog I was planning to write. Yesterday tears of Joy/ mirth were shed as we enjoyed a coffee in a bikers cafe with two other bobbers.

It should be said that none of us have any actual experience of motorbikes. Two of us have, as the wall art suggests, shared the ride

Me at only a few days old when I was brought home from the maternity hospital in the sidecar of my dads motorbike. Rather more unusually Gill Bobber rode in a sidecar made of scaffolding poles when she had a biker boyfriend. This proximity to an actual motorbike allowed her to ride out with a motorcycle club. The name of which brought the actual tears of joy yesterday.

Just to prove I haven’t made this up to add pzazz to my blog, here is the map of the area just north of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire.

The upper part of the road is called Slack Tops . Which has a scintilla of humour for all post-meno women as nature is not kind to older breasts.

The floor of the motorbike cafe.

Which leads me to the epic tears of joy which we shed yesterday. All four of us have substantial knowledge of 3D human anatomy. Sometimes that leads other people to ask us odd questions. Our friends had been asked by a fitness instructor if they could crochet a soft model of a pelvic floor so the instructor could more easily explain the importance and significance of pelvic floor exercises. Another essential for post-meno women.We puzzled over the problem and actually came up with a half decent design of such a thing. Including working parts. The tears of laughter were shed when we realised how long we had taken to seriously design a crochet pelvic floor and the consideration of making such a thing. Quite a different sort of engineering to the usual nattering in a bikers cafe I am sure.

As a cultural note, Slack Bottom, of Gill’s bikers club in Yorkshire, is just a little north of the grave of Sylvia Plath who wrote the best excuse for blogging that I know.

Everything in life is writable about.

And to finish, me, sitting on an actual motorbike. The only time in my life.

#1029 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment
Still Summer.

August 31st and it is still summer, only just, the summer tide is going out. But not before the bobbers managed a historic bob, with P.S Waverley the world’s last working Paddle Steamer coming into the background of their evening swim. A paddle steamer and three choices of cake. It really was an epic bob.

©Angela Bobber
Bobbers stretching all the way from the shore to the buoy.

Our Cornish bobbers got to see the Waverley twice, catching her again on their return across the Tamar.

Still summer, a phrase that uses the word ‘still’ two ways.

It is still summer but summer has also slipped into its still phase. The last summer storm, Lilian, happened a week ago. She was a screamer for a few hours, rattling chimney pots and screeching up our cobbled back lanes  before stirring the sea into a murky stew for a few days.

Since Lilian we have slipped into the still summer phase, no raging heat, gentle rains, crystal clear seas and some really lovely days. Not that I am looking at Summer 2024 with rose tinted glasses. She arrived shockingly late when June had already started and Spring hardly made an appearance. Tomorrow we hit the first day of Autumn/Fall, lets hope summer drags her heels a bit and leaves as late, if not later than she arrived.