Category: Serendipity

#720 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends, Serendipity1 Comment

An early morning trip to a bleak industrial estate on the edge of a damp and bleak Dartmoor had me running into my archives to find some quick colour sketches done on Dartmoor on brighter days. The top one was a crumpled crown from an amateur dramatic store on the far north west boundary of Dartmoor. My subject for today may also seem somewhat bleak so bright illustrations will lighten the mood. Rather sadly I have three friends who are experiencing the deep grief of the recent loss of a loved person. I found this interesting piece of prose that really reflects the grieving experience and life beyond it.

A real nugget of wisdom for bleak times. I have found three bleak paintings which represent Dartmoor as it is today and perhaps reflect something of the prose.

And then finally a little uplift of colour and the knowledge that colour does eventually flood back into a grieving heart. Pumpkins in the sun.

#719 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, Letterpress, pondering, Serendipity1 Comment
War, Peace and Gangnam

What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can?

If something is successfully skipped from a routine, often enough, I would suggest that it is no longer in the routine. I routinely read the daily prompts from Jetpack, via my WordPress Blog platform. But I skip them more often than I respond. I don’t try to skip them. They are mostly of no interest and eminently skippable. Unless like this one I can give it a few moments of ponder. Before I pondered or blogged on a daily basis I already took random photographs The two I am sneaking into this blog were taken 5 years ago in Seoul. They have appeared in blogs before but they are actually 5 years old today, so an anniversary outing and a random ponder with nowhere to go is a useful combination.

Dozing over a book.

#715 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Yesterday was a day of contrasts. One minute congratulating ourselves on getting out in good weather and the next minute being drenched by sudden heavy downpours. Nothing in this picture suggests that our blissful evening walk was about to be interrupted by another drenching. But by the time we had walked the five minutes home we were sodden.

Our day was about tasks in different parts of the city. An early morning appointment at Mount Batten had all the promise of a bright sunrise but we had failed to notice that the wind was rather brisk. The planned dog walk after Mount Batten jobs were done was a very blustery affair. Despite having to drive for half an hour we were fairly close to home if we had had a speed boat.

The arrow more or less points to our usual swimming area. Viewed from a pier on a very cold and windy day the idea of swimming there seemed like utter madness, but we knew that friends of ours would be in the water as we looked across and that we had already been in at that exact spot two days ago. The mind plays funny tricks when we are wrapped up in warm coats and fully dressed. Swimming in November seems unimaginable. But when a swim is planned and we are already slightly chilly nothing seems more normal. And at 4pm intrepid bobbers were dipping just below the arrow. Things could not have looked more different.

#709 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

What are your favorite websites?

32 years ago this was not even a question. The first website went up in 1991.

In 1991 a favourite website looked like this.

In 1991 we would all have been quite used to questions about our favourite music, food or books and any other of millions of experiences. For most of us these questions cause a fair amount of thinking/pondering. Favourite things need placement, timing and circumstance. You could ask me to create a list of my ten favourite things today and I could probably come up with an interesting list. Tomorrow that list might have some different answers. Next year my list may be significantly different. I am fairly certain a favourite website will never feature in my lists. However reliant I am on the World Wide Web I can’t see a time when I would ever bother to have, or even think about having a favourite website. The real world is so much more worthy of being favourited.

#708 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, Serendipity4 Comments

An early or timely blog appears hard on the heels of a late one. Today’s prompt from my blog hosts is a strange one for a whole host of reasons, all of them impractical. But for the sake of a fantasy natter I would choose the ages of 15 and 16 to repeat. In much the same mindset as repeating an exam that I failed or required a higher mark from. Do it again and do it better.

Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

There was much, in my opinion, that I got right. But goodness, some confidence would have made things better. One thing that I wish I had realised I got right was my choice of Lipstick. If only I had known that No. 7 Plum Beautiful, was the Pinnacle Lipstick of choice for me. Life could have been simpler if I had known that my first tentative purchase at a make- up counter was ‘the one.’

It would not be the ages of 15 and 16 if I don’t mention sex. How I wish I had known less about it, my mother ran sexual health clinics. The nuts and bolts. The nitty gritty. The facts plain and simple, felt indelibly etched onto every part of me. I wanted no part of it because I knew too much. I hid myself in books. Lord of the Rings and War and Peace. Books so big and so lacking in any form of romance or lust that I could immerse myself away from the hurly burly of a normal adolescence.

I discovered a love for live music and dancing. Happily attending gigs all over the place, often alone and relying on public transport. That world was not a scary space for me.

If only I could have lived those vivid, vibrant years with wisdom and more friends.

All my own faults of course, nobody forced me to be that way. Thank goodness I got the lipstick right.

Sometimes I wonder if I should read The Lord of the Rings and War and Peace again…

#706 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, weatherLeave a comment
Flood gates ready.

Storm #3 of the storm season has had quite an impact.

Not perhaps in the way I may have thought though. Ciarán reminded a friend that I had painted Storm Agnes and wondered if she was for sale. She is as it happens and now she is off to a new home.

Storm Agnes

Storm Babet didn’t really impact us too much although she did take out the road to one of my regular beaches.

In the eye of the storm at 2am

I know how I would paint Babet, a voluptuous storm, who caused chaos in an unexpected place with less energy than you would think. A storm directed from a chaise long perhaps.

Ciarán though, no clues in the name . Until I looked him up known as ‘ the little dark one’ Keir-on is how the weather forecasters pronounce the name. Ciarán is doing dramatic, theatrical stuff on our coast. Attention grabbing and flamboyant splashing and crashing on the outdoor lido, the sort of thing that gets you noticed. Hyperlocally Ciarán has been less wildly beautiful. More of a truculent bully, pushing over the bins and scattering domestic rubbish on the streets. Here he is just bashing the steps down to the tidal pool.

I have a little idea how he will be painted now. The little dark storm

#700 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Almost every day I ponder on an alternative career choice. Not because I am hugely unhappy in the choices I made but because I am aware that the choices I made at 18 also shaped the person I am now. Insular, bookish me would have chosen to be a librarian at 18 if I had realised that it could be such a rich and varied career path. Arty me really wanted to be arty, but science me, the least authentic of my personas somehow took charge and the rest is history.

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

Has choosing the least exciting path, for me,been a bad thing. I really have no idea. But that path got me to where I am now with my great loves, books and art still exciting and nourishing my soul on a daily basis.

Because I didn’t much like science but was competent enough at it, the path I chose made me work harder to get the results required. I wish I had taken a little time out to learn the skill of teaching. Not because I have ever wanted to teach exactly but because in all jobs there is an element of teaching required, as there is in life generally. I would love to be able to feel confident that I pass on my skills, knowledge and nonsense effectively.

So in answer to the question. What alternative career paths have I considered or am interested in.

Just about every career path I ever meet on a daily basis. I think I am inherently nosy. Doing something I have no idea about intrigues me.

Of course I would be useless at so much. But maybe somewhere out there my, as yet undiscovered, hidden talent is out there waiting for me. Wondering why it took me quite so long to find it.

Yesterday I made Quince Jelly for the first time in my life. The success or not of my endeavours have not yet been tasted, but my early reaction is to suggest that being the Queen of Quinces is a career path that will be short and forgettable.

#699 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

I took this photo yesterday in a church that has been reimagined as a library. In one of life’s strange coincidences a man I knew in London had been responsible for the interior design. I promised I would visit and report back on how his design had worked. I am ashamed to say that I have left 10 years to pass before I popped in. Despite the library now being only a mile from my current home, I certainly would not have predicted that outcome 10 years ago. As it turns out the library and the church share the same building and it all works rather well. But none of that is the point of this blog. As I took the photograph above another one slipped into my phone via Whatsapp as a friend had found a wasps nest.

What are the chances of two photographs taken by friends on opposite side of the the English channel, but at the same time both having the same colour palate. I was very confused for a moment or two.

#696 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Serendipity1 Comment

A weekend of expected and unexpected meet-ups and conversations. All enjoyed in crisp autumn weather with sharp shadows and shades of vivid orange. The last time I sat on these cushions, in a coffee shop near Penryn, the Covid-19 Pandemic was nowhere near anyone’s horizon. At the time Penryn was a regular destination because I was studying at Falmouth University and my son lived nearby. Hard to realise that it is 4 years since we were last here and the had Covid-19 not happened there was a good chance that we would have relocated to live here for work and family reasons.

Yesterday we were here to find some long lost but recently found family members from Vancouver Island.

If I was struggling with the passage of four years our hunt for their airbnb was going to give me a bigger thwack with the memory stick.

The beautiful, but strangely named St Gluvius Church, on the road from Penryn to Mylor Bridge pulled me up sharply. It was such a shock to my system I didn’t even take a photograph to record the moment. 40 years ago I attended the wedding of some good friends there and through knowing them this area of Cornwall became one of my favourite corners of the world.

The friendship has not survived, eroded by changing circumstances and life events but how lovely that Penryn still makes me feel welcome however long I leave it between visits.

Funny how life is just a series of moments in a mosaic, some things planned and some things not. And we can never know, as individuals,when the bigger picture is complete.

And those we leave behind will never fully know our bigger picture because we have forgotten half of it ourselves

#691 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

There is not a lot of pondering, or anything else going on here today. A few days of queasyness has turned into a bout of full-blown Noroviris. Bed to bathroom to sofa is my comfort zone. Briefly interrupted by one of my lovely children calling in to walk the dogs, and the other calling from a holiday in Hoi An, Vietnam. Thankfully the pillows I am languishing on is on a far more comfy sofa. This beautiful pillow and wall was captured in Hoi An and is just about as creative as I can get today.