What’s something you believe everyone should know.
Spending time doing unexpected tasks can be enjoyable.
This morning I did not expect to be making knitted bunting. But an experiment at 8am worked out rather well. I picked out autumnal colours from some donated knitted triangles that had been given to a tennis club I help to run. At 11am myself and a friend were sat overlooking the sea,sewing bunting that could be used in the clubhouse during the late autumn. By midday we had had great quality nattering and had produced 3 strings of colourful bunting. Neither of us had planned to do this but the fruits of our unexpected task looks rather lovely in situ.
I have always struggled with the statement above. How can anyone pass through puberty and genuinely remain a kid at heart. Once we are adults everything is viewed or expressed through the experience of metamorphosing from child to adult in the years of adolescence. Wishing or pretending to be ‘a kid at heart’ is just magical thinking, presumably just cherry picking the wonderful things about being a child. I realise this comes over as a little grumpy so here is a chocolate croissant heart to lighten the mood.
Here is the blog I didn’t feel I could write . It wasn’t quite my story to tell. Early in September two old school friends went to a football match. Nothing unusual about that,except 50 years has passed since we were at school in Essex, and now we live on opposite sides of the world. When I moved to Plymouth 35 years ago, I visited the local museum and noticed a Plymouth Argyle player in a 1928 team line-up with the same name as my school friend. The two men also looked similar Our letters, emails and nattering has taken all that time to come to the point when we were both at the same Plymouth Argyle match. It turned out to be quite the day out. The sun shone, we were treated like V.I.P’s and the team won a spectacular match.
@theoldmortuary guest writer Dai Pullen will take over from here.
My grandfather Jack Pullen played for Argyle a hundred years ago. To some, that might seem like nothing more than ancient history. but for the club, it is a history about which it is both very proud and respectful. I got to experience this first-hand recently when I was invited to visit the Home Park while I was staying in Plymouth on holiday from Melbourne Australia. My visit was hosted by Paul Hart (Forever Green Ambassador), Bob Wright (Greens on Screen official photographer), and Matt Ellacot (curator of the Plymouth Argyle Heritage Archive). It is impossible to imagine any club in the land having a nicer, more enthusiastic and dedicated set of representatives totally committed to collecting, preserving and archiving material which illustrates, the club’s long and distinguished history. They also want to acknowledge and celebrate players who have represented the club throughout its history, by creating a community of former Pilgrims who will continue to be welcomed to and be included as part of the club long after their playing days are over. To quote Paul Hart, “We want to make sure that everyone who has worn the green and white will have access to care, training and support should they need it.”
It is this level of genuine commitment and inclusion which helps set Argyle above and apart from the rest of the pack. My day at the club was absolutely outstanding, I was treated to lunch in Thatcher’s Sports Bar where I was seated with a group of true club legends, Duncan Neale Martin Phillips, Steve Davey and Marc Edworthy. I’m not sure what they put in the water down in Devon, but a nicer, more charming collection of lunch guests would be hard to find. But wait, there was more. Paul escorted me down to the pitch where he presented me with a Forever Green collection of items celebrating my grandfather’s Argyle career and in return I donated a number of precious items of memorabilia to the care of the Plymouth Argyle Heritage Archive. This included the champions medal he won as a member of the team which finally won promotion to the second division in 1930. There was also the shirt he wore when selected to represent Wales in an international against England in 1926, along with the Welsh cap he was awarded for this appearance. These items had been in my possession since I was a boy, and it had been a difficult move to offer to donate them to the club. Having met those charged with managing the Argyle Heritage and its artefacts, however, I was left in no doubt that I’d made the right decision. This is an organisation which honours and respects its past, while simultaneously looking ahead to an even more glorious future.
Even then my day, wasn’t quite over, there was a home game against Sunderland to be played. There were a few things about present day Plymouth which my grandfather would not have recognised. The refurbished stadium, for example., and the bowling green-like pitch. The giant video screen would have blown his mind. The one thing, though, that would have been instantly recognisable was the roar and full-hearted support of the home crowd. What an atmosphere there was in the stadium that afternoon. And when Joe Edwards, scored the winner, in the final minute I swear I felt the spirit of old Jack right there with me in the stand. What an experience, what a club.
Best day at the football, ever!
Giddy with excitement, I then paid a call to the club shop and spent a fortune on merch. But never mind. I was feeling Gert Lush. And impatient to do it all again. A huge thanks to everyone who made my visit to Home Park so memorable. Forever Green? really how could I not be.
My only forms of physical exercise are walking and sea swimming. With such a small, but effective repertoire it seems churlish to choose a favourite. Especially as they go hand in hand. I walk to the sea to swim. Yesterday the offshore wind made the sea so rough I had to swim in a small tidal pool.
Writing a daily blog is a constant evolving habit. Some days I know exactly where the blog is going, other days I respond to a question from my blog hosts. Some days I wait for a nugget of inspiration as the day unfolds. The only rules are that I write something each day and give some thought to my subject matter.
Not particularly blog related but I regularly like to look at my photo archive held on my phone or in the ‘Cloud’ and see what was uploaded on previous 24th Octobers. Or any other date for that matter.
Doing so proves to me that within lifes repetitive cycles there are always significant moments.
The colourful land crab at the top of the blog was actually photographed on the 20th October 2015 in Sai Kung, Hong Kong but on the 24th October I cropped and edited the photograph to use as my screensaver on my phone on the 24th October.
Wembury
Late afternoon in Wembury 2012. 24th October. Wembury is somewhere I take the blog often. On this particular day I was pondering the fairly recent death of my fathers friend who despite coming from Essex was very familiar with this coastline. When I was a child my parents friends were just part of my childish outer circle but knowing my parents friends as an adult was a lovely experience and it is sad when those connections are lost.
Brick wall, City of London 2018
This was a brick wall in an underground car park in the City of London between Smithfield Meat Market and St Bartholomews Hospital. I only ever parked there once despite working at Barts, but was thrilled to find this really old wall and an advert for a long lost coaching inn nearby.
The underground car park had originally been an underground railway station in the 1800’s for the meat market at Smithfield. It was also the location of the MI 5 headquarters in the James Bond film, Skyfall.
Which moves me on, pondering to another wall on 24th October 2017.
I had a new app on my phone that meant I could ‘hang’ any of my pictures on any wall I chose. Giddy times. Finally 24th October 2021.
Cafe Au Lait
My peak moment at Dahlia growing, the last dahlia of our last dahlia season at the actual Old Mortuary. The Dahlias were lovingly moved to our new city home. The Dahlias were not impressed with city living and checked out. Who knew they could be so fastidious.
24th October a routine kind of day but stuff still happens.
It is a grey old day today and yesterday was not much better but there was a gorgeous rainbow yesterday and I think there is very little chance of anything quite so charming today. Going with the grey theme gifted to me by today’s weather I thought I would share a five year old photo.
There was not a chance of good photos this morning. A dense blanket of fog and mist grappled with the landscape and won. Greige is the order of the day. So yesterday’s rainbow and last week’s pumpkins have to enliven todays blog with colour.
And then just like that the sun came out and gave me a vivid fungus to ponder.
Google lens tells me this is the gregarious Redlead Roundhead Mushroom who likes to live on woodchips.
Gregarious is not a word I have ever associated with mushrooms. I’ve always considered gregarious to be a choice. Are lone mushrooms considered anti-social? What a world I have stepped into just because the sun came out.
As the dark mornings stealthily shorten daylight hours I am more and more thrilled by the cloud of crumpled paper that has replaced the ghastly chandelier in the bedroom. The wonder that is IKEA’s imaginative design for a mass produced item.
We are in the midst of our own Octoberfest. No beers or cutesy German themed servers wearing lederhosen and low cut shirts. Our Octoberfest is all about ‘Spring’ cleaning the house and some redecorating.
The studio has also had its chandelier replaced by a paper cloud. So much more conducive to creativity. The parchment-coloured wall is new; the blue one will change to dark teal. We want to reflect the colour of our local sea. Oktoberfesting the studio is a mammoth task. There are still materials left over from my Fine Arts degree 16 years ago. I have moved them around the country in case random things were ever needed. I have promised myself a proper sort out and rationalisation of art materials. My fabric stache took the hit yesterday. I need a full day of recovery before I tackle paints.
This morning October pulled out a fabulous combination of sunshine, good sea temperature and excellent biscuits. 8 bobbers, 3 dogs and a non-bobbing bobber caught an early high tide and filled the bay with chatter and some swimming, before we all departed for almost a whole day of doing stuff elsewhere. There was a bit of bounce to add to the experience, not as much as I created in the picture below but we never look this cheery when the sea is actually this rough. Grim determination is the facial expression on those days , this morning the smiles were genuinely generated. It really sets you up for the day.
It is Plymouth Art Weekender this weekend. Always a fascinating festival of all things art. Missing on our cultural horizons for 4 years.
More of that later in the week but an early installation in one of my local shopping areas had me on the back foot a couple of weeks ago.
A moment when travel broadening the mind has done too good a job.
I have travelled in remote parts of the U.S where a rural supermarket is the social hub for thousands of square miles . Wedding invitations posted by the checkout, open to all who bring a plate of food. Obituaries of regulars stuck on notice boards and with shades of the old Wild West, mugshots of shoplifters or other undesirables.
So it was with some surprise I saw a couple of pictures of people inside the window of my local Co-op.
That’s unusual for here, I thought, while also thinking that the photo of one of the miscreants was quite arty, handsome and maybe familiar. It was very early in the morning.
The gymnastics my mind did in those moments thinking a friend’s Dad had been a bad man. The thought was unimaginable. Then I hoped nothing bad had happened to him. More travel awareness. Obituaries on lampposts and telegraph poles in Greece.
Art was not on my mind at 7 am, not much was. But it woke me up and made me think. Always a sign of good art in my opinion.
Is it a significant day when the first appointment that needs to be written into my paper diary of 2025 occurs?
I am a reluctant accepter of the last quarter of 2024. I think the constant rain of 2024 is to blame. Today is wet and foggy. If I met a person who was wet and foggy I would give them a wide berth. Fog horns and low visibility are not my thing. But in this strange year of weather the yard continues to create growth and produce. My climbing plants are still climbing and the tomatoes still fruiting.
I have had my last haircut of 2024. Mid-October seems extraordinarily early for such a thing and it is the reason to unwrap the diary as my next appointment is January 2025. If this curious weather keeps up I might just about be eating my last outdoor grown tomato at the same time.
I wish I were a better diarist of the mundane things in life, like haircuts and tomatoes. Sometimes it is the little things that are the glue that hold memories together.
2022 home grown tomatoes at Christmas.
2023 no home grown tomatoes at Christmas.
If I kept better written records of the mundane I could predict the likelyhood of tomatoes in 2024.
In my dreams as a ten year old I was going to keep a diary as encyclopaedic as the very best. My parents bought me a five year diary, with a lock.
The lock stayed firmly locked, nothing occured for five years or indeed 50 or so years that I felt the urge to record in a diary. Then daily blogging occured which is as close as I have ever got to keeping a diary of the mundane.
I am ashamed of my paper diaries, they are a curious cross of notebook and reminder.Scrappy notes with underlinings and arrows fill the pages. Every year I look at a new one and vow to do better. What if I suddenly become famous how will I ever write my biography. The diaries will say I had a lot of haircuts and that a lot of different events had some random notes written but there is nothing significant in them. All that stuff is stored in my head. What will happen when my head starts to fail?
October 14th 2024 a pledge to myself to keep a better written diary. Not starting as you might expect on the January 1st 2025 but starting today in the old diary.
October 15th. Haircut.
October 16th. Ate outdoor grown tomatoes. It was foggy.
Riveting stuff, lets hope I don’t get famous any time soon.
I wonder if this ponder on diary keeping has been caused by my misunderstanding of the word ‘Nostalgia’ I had always thought it simply meant remembering the past or indeed retrieving the past by discussing it with other people. I realise now that nostalgia has an element of thinking the past was better or more comfortable, longing is a word often used. I think I see the past more as a foundation for the now. A resource for learning and often a reason to be grateful and a pathway for the future.
Am I allowed to look back without ‘longing’ but just interested.
