#941 theoldmortuary ponders

On Jun 8, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn anniversary, Serendipity4 Comments

A proper ponder on a Saturday. How on earth to link up two different subjects into a blog that makes sense.

Nobody ever tells prospective parents that becoming a parent strips off a few layers of skin that will never grow back. This loss of metaphorical dermis makes your eyes well up more easily, and sadness comes a little more readily because suddenly being a parent/grandparent/care-giver makes risk and loss more relatable.

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/11261615.d-day-70-years-on-sussex-was-a-vital-launch-pad-for-the-d-day-landings/

This ponder doesn’t come from nowhere. In 1987 on the 6th of June my local towns of Shoreham-by- Sea and Worthing were full, as they always were around this date, of Canadian D-Day Veterans. Revisiting their training areas for the planned assault on Juno Beach in 1944.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_Beach

But in 1987 I had a 7 month old baby. As if from nowhere my empathy for the Canadians heroism and loss filled me with sorrow and melancholy. Their smooth balding heads under their regimetal berets were an acute reminder of the vulnerable head of my small son.

That feeling has never left me and I am much more sensitive to these things than I ever was before. But Thursday, watching the Commemoration of 80 years since D-Day seemed like a double layer of loss. There are those who never left those beaches 80 years ago. And those who survived to tell the tales, filling hotels and bars in Sussex with lively chatter, while they were in their fifties and sixties. Proudly wearing their regimental blazers and berets remembering their lost comrades but also revelling in being alive and being able to visit their old haunts with their fellow survivors. Most of those vibrant men are themselves now deceased. The links in this blog are a useful read and explain better than I can why Sussex was so special to them.

The Juno Beach Centre

I will always struggle when I see a bald head, a blazer and a beret. Being a parent has indelibly changed me. The two are linked, tenuously, I agree but linked never the less.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-d-day-veteran-from-abbotsford-bc-to-receive-frances-highest-honour

#940 theoldmortuary ponders.

On Jun 7, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Books, Serendipity1 Comment

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

I am a devourer of books, which is why I anonymised my book pile for this blog. My list of books that have had an impact would be bigger than 3. But in my reading life, 3 is the magic number. I tend to have 3 books on the go at any one time.Sometimes 4.

1. My current fiction book of choice.

2. A non-fiction book . History, Biography or some other subject.

3. A digital book or audio book stored on my smartphone.

(4) My Bookclub book if it doesn’t sit comfortably in 1,2 or 3.

Currently Book Club books are the books most likely to have an impact on me. 1,2 and 3 are self-selected and what I would choose to read, but a book club book often knocks me off my reading orbit. The most enriching thing about a book club book is my book club. Once a month I get to talk in depth or in a flippant way about the book we have all read.

There is something rather marvellous about being able to talk about a book that has been read by a group of people at the same time and then being able to talk about the book, regardless of whether I enjoyed it, with other people.

This month we read ‘Scenes from a Village Life’

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/05/amos-oz-scenes-village-life-review?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

The book was written in 2011 and nicely sums up my point about reading a book at the same time with a group of people.

If we had read this in 2011 the conversations that swirled around our different interpretations of this book would have been significantly different to the conversations that were had this week in June 2024.

The impact that any book has is dependent on when and where it has been read. That makes the word ‘impact’ a much more fluid concept.

Aren’t books wonderful?

An audiobook has had me crying into my white paint pot this week while I have been labouring on my white walls.

The idea of colour blocking outside came from an Interior Design Book.

How could anyone expect me to choose just 3 books?

Huge thanks to my fellow bookworms for opening the doors and windows of books, that I would never have crossed the threshold of without your company and some hand holding

#935 theoldmortuary ponders

On Jun 1, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, YardeningLeave a comment

A milky sunset to say farewell to May. Where did that month go. Normally my favourite month, this year May has felt shorter and less productive than usual. I think my dissatisfaction is just weather-related. First World problems!

The hard graft in our yard is done . Everything is back in place and just tomatoes and courgettes to be planted into their summer positions.

There is an element of both fantasy and fact with our back yard.

Very firmly rooted on the Devon coast, we have learned over three years that Mediterranean planting is the way to be successful in the yard.

Open fencing/ trellis on the walls has given us the height for climbers. In the week since the work was finished stray climbing plants have found their way into our garden from friends and a new Wisteria has been bought. My finger hovers over a Bougainvillea on a nursery website. To be honest my finger hovers over a lot of things. A great big bucket of exterior white paint might actually be the most sensible starting point. Or I could take the fantasy to a whole new level and lose some of the walls.

Which would be a waste of good trellis. So for June, a bucket or two of white paint it is. Welcome June.

#934 theoldmortuary ponders

On May 31, 2024May 31, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Serendipity5 Comments

I don’t paint people much, which is strange as I find people fascinating. I don’t think I have any more planned exhibitions for 2024, so I could set myself a summer project. The few people I can pull out of the digital or even real-world portfolio are all thinking about something.

Maybe that is my thing, I hadn’t realised. Even a pair of dancers are not truly engaged with one another or the viewer. Lost in their individual worlds despite being physically dependent on one another.

Even my recent cold water swimmer is lost within the tiles of the shower.

The more I look the more pensive people I find. Storm Agnes, raging but full of thought.

There is even a portrait of me in our hallway , pondering.

Seems that pondering is a creative theme. I had no idea!

P s In the interests of research I went in search of a painting that has been stored here for many years.

My first portrait from my Foundation degree, hiding in lofts, attics and barns for 25 years or so.

In one of life’s uncanny twists, I discovered recently that my DNA is 10% Viking. But that is not particularly important to this ponder. I seem to have always liked people in my paintings to be deep in thought. A point worth pondering I think

#930 theoldmortuary ponders

On May 28, 2024May 28, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Drawn to the Valley, SerendipityLeave a comment

Last day of the exhibition. 4 days of visitors and memories.

Just enough time to share a few final pictures, before the unsold works are bundled up in bubble wrap and returned to the artists.

Onward now to the next exhibitions of 2024.

#929 theoldmortuary

On May 27, 2024May 27, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Drawn to the Valley, Serendipity1 Comment

All that glistens will lead us through the second to last live blog of the Spring exhibition. Although it may not be obvious in my photos, all these works have a little bit of twinkle about them.

Today is the last day of the exhibition at The Market Hall, Devonport. An exhibition worth driving the extra mile for. Free parking, great architecture, and a cafe to natter in.

The visitors so far, have loved our new choice of venue and for many it is their first time at a Drawn to the Valley event.

The 360 degree, Dome projection room was buzzing during the Private View.

Sometimes a shaft of sunlight catches someones work and the twinkle becomes fascinating.

From the Industrial to the delicate.

And for some final twinkle.

#928 theoldmortuary ponders

On May 26, 2024May 26, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Drawn to the Valley, Serendipity2 Comments

Following a trail of white to a Private View. Drawn To The Valley held their 20th Anniversary Private View, last night at the Devonport Market Hall.

Art featuring white will lead us to the event.

The sun was shining all day before the Private View, Devonport felt almost Mediterranean.

Daytime guests slipped away and snacks unpacked for the evening event.

Huge congratulations must go to the organising team of this fabulous exhibition, the building team, the committee and the artists who are participating.

20 years of supporting and encouraging artists and makers in the Tamar Valley has built a diverse and talented organisation. Ready to move into the next 20 years.

#927 theoldmortuary ponders.

On May 25, 2024May 25, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Drawn to the Valley, Drawn To The Valley Artists, SerendipityLeave a comment

Live blogging/pondering from an art exhibition with a theme of turquoise, inspired by the plaque on Devonport Market Hall. So many artists love turquose this is not a difficult task.

Art lovers also love turquoise. Although I didn’t catch any turquoise wearing visitors today.

But an artist, Anne Blackwell Fox , wearing turquoise,was in the building when I took this picture, entitled Emergence

The last two turquoises are significantly different to one another, but they both feature missing triangular chunks. Perhaps the bigger significance is that they almost mark the top and bottom of the Drawn to the Valley geographical boundary

Shelstone Tor on the Northern boundary of Dartmoor and an abstract representing the sea at the southern end.

#925 theoldmortuary ponders.

On May 24, 2024May 24, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, SerendipityLeave a comment

Live blogging on the theme of Orange.

Drawn to the Valley, Artist and Makers Group has become very plugged-in to the Arts and Making culture of Plymouth, in recent years. The current Spring Exhibition opened this morning in a new-to-us venue. The Market Hall Devonport.

I will be here a few times so I thought choosing a colour theme would keep things spicy and interesting. My apologies to artists whose Orange moments have not been captured. The reflections in this magnificent exhibition space are quite tricksy. Hopefully you will get your colour moment in a different hue.

First up Jayne( Poster Girl) Ashenbury.

Next, Michael Jenkins Satsumas.

Just gorgeous when served with Debra Parkinson’s ducks.

Which in turn might interest a ginger cat.

Or even a leopard.

Now there is a small struggle to find a link from a Leopard to an Opium poppy but Tibet comes to mind, thank goodness.

And the link for the last Orange of the blog is Orange edges.

And just for orange sake. The seat where I wrote this and a visitor serendipitously provided a pop of orange.

#923 theoldmortuary ponders.

On May 23, 2024May 23, 2024 By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Thursday already. It has been a busy week @theoldmortuary. Two days of a man with power tools building a trellis wall extension for us and prepping for an exhibition.

Hugo has been doing a lot of soulful eye work as there has not often been time for a lap to sit on. Also not much time to ponder on ponders and ponderables.

One thing that came and was largely unremarked upon, was the curious 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday when we were suddenly without a signal or any wi-fi. We were camping near Looe and communication was lost locally, nobody could use their phones. There was no problem at all for us, but it is odd how guilty I felt at being inexplicably unreachable without warning.

Something entirely normal only a few years ago.

Clearing and sorting 4 years worth of emails, over the last few days, has also highlighted how much communication we all have with one another now, compared to even our recent past. A nicely sorted and deleted email account is curiously liberating. Spring cleaning of my electronic soul.

A midweek pondering at midnight that has become all about communicating both ancient and modern. Dogs have looked at humans, in the same way that Hugo is looking at me in the first picture, throughout history. Stone Age humans and their dogs, and every other age since would understand what was going on in that picture.

Just as everyone reading this blog understands the joy that the last picture brings me.

But the doleful dog eyes will go on as long as there are humans and dogs. Emails will, soon enough,be consigned to history. Just as parchment scrolls and quills have been. That is quite the ponder.

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