Category: Serendipity

#976 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, Serendipity1 Comment
More buttocks

The yard has started to produce a small handful of strawberries. Today’s haul gave us two bums.

This week has been all about gathering things, mostly lovely conversations with friends. And also some stray thoughts because my life is all about gathering virtually useless information.

Strawberries are not called strawberries because they are habitually grown on straw to protect from slugs. The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon language when they had a descriptive name of Stray Berries because they throw off runners to create new plants.

I also learnt a new acronym.          ‘ There we are then’ a really polite phrase that neatly responds to the news that someone has behaved in a particularly vile or unpleasant way.

Another offering from the yard for Friday is sharp evening shadows . White Agapanthas and my newly white painted wall.

Random thoughts for a Friday.

#974 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Life Admin, Serendipity1 Comment

When I found a tree with buttocks last week I used the image to share with a choir who had been singing about the Green Man. I quite enjoyed tinkering with the image at the time but had forgotten about it, a week or so has passed. But then Instagram gave me this little mind twister this morning.

This sort of madness makes me laugh. Just a little bit of a wry smile during such moments is such a private, magical, but life-enhancing thing. If tree bottoms were this morning’s ‘private smile’.Yesterday gave me one for different reasons.

Yesterday there were many early morning jobs to be done but the weather was not encouraging .

A free parking space in the city centre and a cup of tea in a local outdoor cafe were two reasons to celebrate early tasks achieved and success in all areas of the dog walking.

In two of the 4 grey seascapes above, there is actually a cruise ship anchored up in Plymouth Sound.

While I was enjoying my cup of tea and the concept of free parking at 8am. Passengers from the cruise ship were being landed out of sight but straight ahead of me.  Out of the mist rose lively, welcoming Military Band music. Honestly, what a lovely sound to perk up a grey early morning. Another private smile moment.

©Plymouth Waterfront Partnership

#973 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Yardening3 Comments

What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?

This is my strategy.

I have the ugliest pair of crocs to wear in our yard. They live by the French windows and never see action anywhere beyond the yard. They have a much more grippy sole than a regular croc and were only available in two colour ways. This camo green with electric blue was the most  acceptable of the two offerings. They need grip because in winter, parts of the yard can get slippy.

The outdoor mirror is also the only one in the house where it is easy to see how a whole outfit looks.

So the crocs get worn with all our best outfits. Small crocs are provided for small people.

There is a flaw in this strategy.

Sometimes small people or even larger people interrupt the flow of getting ready to go out. On occasions the crocs have made it beyond the front door to the outside world with posh/smart/lovely outfits because they were not taken off. A return home is essential on these occasions.

#972 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Events, Serendipity2 Comments

What are you most excited about for the future?

Writing a daily blog about the repetitions and mundanity of regular life has given me appreciation and fascination with how unplanned moments shape the activities and experiences of most days. Making every day an adventure of sorts. Future ponders that are formed by normal life are very exciting. What will I be thinking about next?

Yesterday we had a Naming Day to attend. So fancy clothes were required.

A small boy was welcomed into his community, with a service by a celebrant, surrounded by his family and friends. A bubble of Love.

We were in a small Devon village  where similar services along with marriages and funerals would have been celebrated in similar ways for centuries.

Food, drinks, lots of hugging and happiness. When the time came to leave we were stuck. Halted by a scene that would have been part of this small villages life for the same amount of centuries

The sheep gave me time to ponder on the importance of marking these life milestones with my friends and family. As many of us shrug off the rituals and commitments dictated by religion we don’t mark becoming a couple or the arrival of a child as much as our forbears did.  The last vestige is perhaps funerals but even those are going the ‘no-fuss’ way. But gathering together to eat and drink with our fellow humans, for a couple of hours to mark a significant event is such a lovely thing to do. We should do it more often perhaps, gathering is good for us. In reference to the first image. Are gatherings the building blocks of family, community and society?

Are we missing out in a non-celebratory world?

#971 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Anecdotes, SerendipityLeave a comment

It is not every day that a tree presents itself as a pair of handstanding buttocks.

Last weekend I was singing a song cycle celebrating The Green Man.

Yesterday I found him, butt naked, cavorting in a local park. A briefly sharp sunbeam  alerted me to his performative bottom. I’ve just digitally tweaked his butt to make him a little more obvious. ( Not a sentence I would normally share on the blog!)

Happy Sunday.

Then I flipped him over.

Green Man buttocks.

#970 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Colour, Serendipity, Stonehouse1 Comment

It took more than the usual one morning coffee to power me through a day after a night of staying up all night to watch democracy unfold. But at 9 in the morning I had not expected to fuel my day with a sugar rush provided by a free sample of soft scoop Ice Cream.

Pure white Ice Cream to calm a mind that had been watching the differing colours of political parties skid across the T.V screen  all night. I found all the AV special effects fairly baffling as the night wore on. But the, normally serious political journalists seemed to enjoy playing with computer generated building blocks. I’ve recreated my Ice Cream in the style of my overnight T.V politics experience. Baffling , I think you will agree.

In a last mention of the election some surprising news. Overnight Hugo and I had to swap sides.

Sofa slouching and varifocal glasses do not, a comfortable overnighter make. To avoid a nasty crick in my neck we swapped sides on the sofa every hour or so.

He was not always happy to swap.

#966 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

How do you express your gratitude?

Positivity and learning are a fabulous way to express gratitude. Even when something seems all bad there must be a tiny nugget that can be a point for learning and some sense of positivity can be found. A deliberately delayed blog as I knew this morning would feature dog walking, doing the laundry and white painting the grubby white outdoor cooking area.

My reward for doing the laundry and the painting was a delayed sit down to write the blog. The dog walk was, as always mostly positive. Laundry is kind of meh. Although the top picture of white washing, white walls and white Agapanthus was my nugget of positivity.

I am very much over, painting white walls white. My own fault for extending the original project but this little rest is the nugget I can be positively grateful for.

I’ve been nattering on about Syneshesia with a new friend. We met, but in the way of the current world, we have not actually met, in the most negative of spaces. The death of someone we had in common and a Zoom Funeral. In nattering on-line we have discovered that we are both synesthesic and have followed very similar career paths. Finding someone to natter about synesthesia is definitely something to be grateful for even if it came  from a sad space. Quite how to formulate a natter  about synesthesia as an interesting blog subject is something to ponder while I return to white painting. Who knows if I will get there. Pondering positively is my daily gratitude for  being here.

Although here is currently a white corner.

#965 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments
Vivid Ruminants Ruminating.

A late blog today. No specific reason. I was pondering on talking about Synesthesia today as it affects me. But goodness that is a big topic, one for another day as it turns out. We’ve had a fab weekend of listening to and watching the Glastonbury festival from the comfort of our house and garden.

The BBC studio at Pilton Farm, where the Glastonbury Festival is held, have exactly the same cow models but they are painted a very traditional black and white. After we watched the fabulous Coldplay set we went out for the evening dog walk and our vivid cows were looking magnificent against the dusk sky.

Our fluorescent cows have only experienced one music festival in the Royal William Yard. I was writing for a local arts magazine so we had some press passes and had the most wonderful time buzzing about. Such a shame it only happened once. A casualty of the hiatus of the Covid years. I suspect having only happened once there just hasn’t been the impetus to get it going again. I do rather like the freedoms that a press pass allows. Imagine having one for Glastonbury. That would be a giddy few days of blogging, apart from the cows of course , which are stultifyingly normal.

#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

#962 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Firestone Bay, Serendipity2 Comments

What are your daily habits?

Anyone who reads my blogs know that blogging is one of my reliable daily habits. Along with dog walking and tea and coffee drinking.

A weekly or often more frequent habit is swimming in cool or cold water. Even at its peak the sea water nearby rarely reaches 16 degrees and International wisdom would suggest that  swimming in those temperatures is not advised. Our coldest ever swim was 6 degrees one winter day.

After a week of balmy swimming in Greece, I had my first cooler dip this morning. Initially it was a bit of a shock,but I quickly acclimatised and enjoyed the fizz and tingle of a colder swim. I love how it resets me. The cold swimming and the company of my bobbing friends sets the day up with positivity.

In Britain we are approaching a General Election. I don’t feel this blog is my place to bang on about politics but this morning a fabulous apolitical quote jumped at me, so here it is . Typed across Firestone Bay. A place where it is my habit to regain positive vibes on a daily basis.

Irvine Welsh