September is a month in flux. A roadtrip in September is fluxxflux . But some things stay the same. Breakfast and bedsheets. Waking up to a new day to gently observe the summer slipping quietly away.
Category: Serendipity
#1038 theoldmortuary ponders.
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.
#1033 theoldmortuary ponders.
Farewell Athens.
Last Athenian Breakfast.
Good Morning Spetses
The wreck of a breakfast at Spetses.
In-between a smooth ferry crossing and some evening wanderings.
#1031 theoldmortuary ponders.
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.
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.
#1031 theoldmortuary ponders.
What does your ideal home look like?
Our ideal home looked like it should be in a magazine. And it was.
It was planned to be our forever home but the urge to start again was too pressing. So now the name lives on as a blog . And Hugo still has to keep a paw on all the latest interior trends.
#1030 theoldmortuary ponders.
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.
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.
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.
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.
#1026 theoldmortuary ponders.
What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?
The last of my proposed climbers to be planted in the yard in 2024. I checked on-line and most nurseries were out of stock. I was also checking when to plant. Early autumn while the soil is warm was the advice. So basically the time is now. My long term goal is for all the climbers to mingle. Exactly as in the illustration below.
Clematis Avalanche should head towards Wisteria Amethyst Falls. Hopefully they land safely together. Sprawling elegantly across our garage roof. Turning something fairly ugly into something fragrant and beautiful to herald the arrival of spring.
Being a climbing plant in my yard is like accepting an arranged marriage. The chain of mingling stretches from a very happy free gift from a friends garden, a winter jasmine, in the most exposed part of the yard and travels via a semi subterranean garage to a golden fruit producing passion flower that was a gift from Dan, the man who built our boundary extending trellis in May.
In between there are climbing roses, evergreen honeysuckle, more jasmine and a potato vine.
Just like an interfering busy body I am often out in the yard trying to introduce plant tendrils to one another
Sometimes they get the idea of mingling but other times I need to interfere with hairy garden twine.
This morning I decided not to wait for on-line nurseries to restock and called into a local one on the off chance of them having an evergreen clematis. Just one rather sad looking individual was skulking behind much showier climbers. She came home with me and a new ball of hairy twine. My planting of climbers in 2024 is done. Just the mingling to sort out now.
#1025 the old mortuary ponders.
This headline popped up on my newsfeed last night. For us, in the South-West of England we have one more week until we see our last 8pm sunset. Our house lies in a perfect East/West position so sunrises are observed from the main bedroom and sunsets from the kitchen and studio. Both are easily viewed by walking the dogs at the right time of day. The sun rises over the sea and sets as we look up the river.
Yesterday was International Day of the Dog, and it is the dogs that have made me much more aware of sunrises, sunsets and all the natural changes that occur in landscape. Hugo arrived 11 years ago and with his arrival came the daily habit of walking the dog. A three times a day, wander for about twenty minutes minimum, wherever we happen to be. If I had never owned a dog I would never have known the pleasure of small changes and repetition. Before Hugo I would have said I was a keen walker, someone who liked to go for walks when I had the time, was on holiday or some other delightful reason. Before Hugo I probably had specific clothes and shoes that I knew were comfortable/ appropriate for walks. Now I never mention walking as a quasi hobby, I do it in whatever I happen to be wearing and I do it whenever it is needed. In all weathers.
Walking is the beginning and the end of my day. I had no idea what I was missing before I owned a dog.
I realise that I could easily do frequent daily walks without a dog . Just as I could write daily without a blog. But I doubt I would do either without a reason.
#1024 theoldmortuary ponders.
Scrag end of summer in a wildflower meadow. Late August always feels a little worn around the edges but these wild flowers were as fresh as daisies this morning.
The sunflowers were turning their heads to the sun and all felt right with our world.
I enjoy the transition phases of the seasons. Autumn into winter is my least favourite but Christmas and the shortest day pull me through that slump. But right now the joy of sunflowers makes me smile.
