Category: Serendipity

#677 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth, Serendipity1 Comment

Psychogeography and Pirates. Monday found us mingling with Pirates at a childrens book day and wandering with other peoples memories in a park. The success of a book day/ meet the author event is easily measured in our house. We have our own, newly designed Pirate Flag in the kitchen and as a family we are encouraged to greet one another with a single word salutation delivered in the gruffest of voices.

” Hearties”

We spent the morning with Childrens Author Claire Helen Walsh. The location, next to the sea at Stonehouse Lawn Tennis Club was the perfect setting for her two chosen books that took Piracy to new levels of surreal.

We played tennis with biscuits to test their relative aerodynamic qualities and then built a rocket.

Planks were walked and survival was rewarded with eye glasses and dubloons. Unicorns, dragons and aliens arrived and our glorious sequined, pink Jolly Roger Flag was designed and created and now hangs in the kitchen.

Later in the day we went to Devonport Park where the adventures of the mind continued in an adventure playground full of cargo nets and timber. The timber, of course, would have previously been ‘Shivered’

Devonport Park is hugely popular but has only recently become a regular location for us. But historically Hannahs grandparents met there, the park was known as a place for chance encounters of the old fashioned sort. For Hannah it was always a family favourite location. The many memorial plaques found in the flower beds record the many other people whose lives and loves were touched by the peace and tranquility of the park. I suspect the cargo nets and timbers will call us back more often now.

Surely the sign of a good book event, we are still living in the imaginative world of Surreal Pirates who briefly took over a tennis club.

#675 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, Drawn To The Valley Artists, SerendipityLeave a comment

What are you curious about?

This is the very best sort of reading to start the day with, curiosity in book form. Since leaving the committee of Drawn to the Valley last year, I have had very little to do with the nuts and bolts of organizing the current programme of events. For local readers there are two more days to visit the Summer Exhibition in Tavistock.

This book is a joy to read and shows exactly how far Drawn to the Valley has come from those dark years of the Covid and post-Covid complexities of running a fairly large arts organisation in a geographically widespread location.

After 5 years as a member of the organisation these pages are now filled with the work of artists that I have met and shared creative journeys with. Many of them are my friends and teachers.

The page below shows how successful one of my projects has become.

Creative Tables has spread over the length and breadth of the Tamar Valley. Started to bring artists back together after the isolation of the Covid Lock-down in Plymouth. Creative Tables now operates monthly meetings in several different locations.

This book also shows how one life feeds into another as some of the people in the exhibition photographs are also bobbers and one artist has painted gig rowing the only team sport I have ever loved.

I was never quite so glam in my rowing days. Another curiosity for me is which piece of art will tempt me at Open studios.  There are many walls in my house with work by Drawn to the Valley artists.

Curiosity is a superpower, it can take you to the most fabulous places even when sat in bed with a cup of tea and a fabulous brochure.

#674  theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

Write about a random act of kindness you’ve done for someone.

I find this to be rather a curious prompt for Jetpack to set. A random act of kindness, in my opinion, is an anonymous and unheralded event. I absolutely believe that kindness is a super power and that a little bit can go a long way. People who are inherently kind,are my kind of people, the other, opposite sort of people are best avoided or treated with caution. I also believe in kindness to myself, and that perhaps is the only random act of kindness I am prepared to go public about.

Toxic people with their own agendas are a sad fact of life. No amount of kindness can dent their self-belief or carapace of malevolence. Often they wear a cloak of charm or even generosity. The older I get the more I give myself the permission to mitigate their behaviour by simply disengaging. This is one of the absolute bonuses of being a self-employed artist rather than a salaried person in a big organization.

As a kindness to myself avoidance becomes a positive.

#673 theoldmortuary ponders.

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Here I am on my regular, dog grooming day, spot. Wembley Beach on a day with sunshine, the first day of good weather for weeks. To celebrate I bought an unusual but gorgeous snack to accompany my habitual cup of tea.

This product is an unctuous flavour bomb. I may start making them at home. It went down very well with a cup of tea.

The tide was out so rock pooling was the activity of choice. The trouble with rock pooling is that discovering creatures hidden under rocks is not the most photographic experience, as any right-minded sea creature quickly shuttles under a different rock very quickly. Sunbeams, however, can easily be trapped for photography.

Photography was on other peoples minds too, as a wedding party arrived to take some memorable images on this beautiful stretch of coast.

But first a more pressing problem, where could the bride and bridesmaids have a wee? The public toilets were a quagmire of sand and other detritus from a busy beach day.

Plans were made, there was a significant delay and then photographs were posed.

And finally a lovely long distance shot that looks like a figurative abstract.

Not a single page of my book was read.

#659 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

This is a sign of a good Saturday. The Saturday newspaper is still virtually unread on Sunday morning.  My only print copy of the week when it remains unread until Sunday. If, by chance, it has been read fully on Saturday then a Sunday paper is purchased. I probably am a typical Guardian reader and am as comfortable with that as any other stereotype. Sometimes people I know personally are written about or contribute to the Guardian. In recent months two colleagues have been featured. One was Maggie Jenkin who does invaluable work solving human mysteries.

ttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/27/the-wembley-point-mystery-who-was-the-woman-who-jumped-to-her-death

Today another colleague is in the spot light. Naming herself as Dr Biscuit.

I have had long letters to the letters page and had them published and art exhibitions reviewed in the pages of The Guardian.

The guardian also has an alternative Obituary service called Other Lives.

The obituaries are of notable but normal people. The Obituaries are written by friends, colleagues and family members. Far from sadness these essays on a life are life affirming. The power of being under the radar of celebrity and yet contributing massively to the positive aspects of society and culture.

I can’t link directly but should the lives of normal people inspire you just google – Other Lives The Guardian.

Let me be honest, the Sports pages get recycled with the pages unmoved in this house but Feast often feeds us for a week.

Other newspapers get read occasionally. Last week the Guardian was sold out so I slipped to the Dark- side and read a Rupert Murdoch product. The Times, it is no bad thing to sometimes go for change but the behaviour of News International Journalists and management makes the Times only a real emergency read. Not because it isn’t good because it is but my moral compass spins uncomfortably as I read it. Also the quality of their paper for their cooking pages is glossy and fragile, barely surviving one cooking moment in my kitchen. Feast goes on for years.

As could I on a Sunday…

#658 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn history, SerendipityLeave a comment

Just a little Saturday extra. I always treat myself to a print copy of a Saturday newspaper, The Guardian. My most regular shop is a Co-op in Devonport. I am blown away that humans have crossed this threshold for the last 233 years. Originally it was a Unitarian Chapel and the fashion for men and women of the time was as below.

My clothing today, while collecting the newspaper, more closely resembles the male style of dress, a pair of exercise leggings, a tight fitting under vest and a loose swinging top.

By 1801 the Chapel had fallen out of use, mostly because Unitarianism was considered disloyal in a town that was primarily a military and thus Royalist town. Unitarians were enthusiastic supporters of the French Revolution. In a Spiritual switch around the Chapel became a Wine Merchants and may possibly have been a short-lived pub called The George.

The building was previously considered to be in  George Street Devonport. And now it is a convenience store without actually moving an inch,in Duke street which conveniently sells newspapers on a Saturday. One other shop related ponder. I bought a sequin top to make a mermaid outfit from a charity shop. The young, male, shop assistant looked at my purchase and said. ” We should all try to sparkle every day”

Bonus ponders…

#656 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth, SerendipityLeave a comment

An early morning gem on a rainy day.

The day turned out to have two longer than planned walks and one of the scheduled activities fell off the days achievement list. This lovely feather greeted me after I had had a hair cut. Despite the drizzle we walked a local circuit  and were rewarded with the beautiful scent of woodsmoke held close to the ground by morning mist.

Then after the second primping session of the day, a manicure,there were no busses to take me back into the City so I walked in and found some locally themed Street Art.

I had planned to meet some family members in The Box Gallery and Museum but the closest I got was to see The Box depicted in the Street Art.

I missed all the fun of the gallery.

But we met up just in time to explore Sainsbury with all the excitement of a four year old. Not a moment of the day wasted.

#655 theoldmortuary ponders

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With the return of sharp summer sunshine my morning dog walks are illuminated by sharp shadows. Scaffolding is set up against many of the local houses. Casting abstract shapes on old walls. The air is full of the metallic sound of bolts being tightened by electric spanners and ratchets mixed with music from high up radios, the age and ethnicity of the builder/painter/roofer identified by their choice of music. Sometimes the men working highest up play the oldest music. Surely a reflection of skilled, artisanal roofers being nearer to their pensions than their youth. Even the local church has a mantle of boards and scaffolding poles. The accoustics of the bell tower reverberating with heavy metal and dance tracks. Possibly the most fun the tower has had in a long time as I have never heard a peep from a bell or anything else in the tower since moving here two years ago.

But back to the sharp shadows of early morning and an agapathas against a grey wall.  Just fabulous.

#648 theoldmortuary ponders

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Which activities make you lose track of time?

Pretty much anything can make me lose track of time. My most popular time to lose track of time is between 10 am and 3pm.

There is a standard list of things that are usually completed by 10 am, including writing this daily blog. Then I can lose myself in a task for a solid 5 hours until the need for a cup of tea and a snack pulls me out of concentrating, sometime between 2pm and 3:30pm. After the snack I clear up whatever the task was and begin my regular late afternoon plans. A dog walk tends to book-end my productive phase. What puzzles me about the productive period of the day is how variable my output is. There are days when I am shocked at the level of my achievement and others where I wonder what an earth I achieved in those 5 hours. One of life’s mysteries I suppose.

Another place to lose track is cold water swimming, or bobbing as our group of friends call it. There was nothing glam about last night’s bob but three of us bobbed about in this grey and misty environment for more than half an hour last night. The clocks of mind and body were stopped, recalibrated and refreshed by effortless chatter and some swimming. Dressing was particularly challenging as it was raining. Skin that is coated with seawater just gets really sticky when touched by rainwater. Before I realised I had been out of the house more than a hour and a half. The beach is only a five minute walk away.

In conclusion losing track of time seems to be something I am very good at.

#647 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Street Art1 Comment

I was in a very normal park today. Imaginatively called Peacock Meadow but squeezed between large industrial estates and some housing. The rain took me by surprise and I took refuge in this bandstand style shelter. It featured entirely teenage style graffiti and some of the comments and images were both timeless and entirely up to date. There was a good selection of cartoon penises and some statements that made me laugh out loud. I was a bit surprised by the amount of homophobia and racism expressed. I would have hoped younger people had greater tolerance and more open minds. But street art wherever I find it fascinates me.

The colours were fabulous, even if the opinions expressed lacked imagination or ambition beyond having sex with other peoples mothers, putting phone numbers out in the public domain, or commenting on school friends erogenous zones. All the same old stuff I experienced in the bus station of the town where I went to school. But one statement was so of it’s time no one would have understood it 20 years ago.

There was also a good bit of peeling paint.

I think I have managed to avoid the more controversial or unpleasant elements. Unfortunately the examples of clever wit that made me laugh came into that category but here are some of the colours and patterns.

I realised that my little village of Gosfield in North East Essex must have been very well behaved. There were loads of teenagers kicking around with not too much to do. I can’t think of anywhere that was given the Graffiti treatment. The only exception was the pews in the church. The back ones were habitually used by boys from a fairly low-grade Independent school, there were a lot of penises and expletives in that church. The funny thing is that history gives graffiti gravitas. If those words and illustrations, either in the church of my home village or the fake bandstand yesterday had been carved by medieval youth the etchings and carvings would be preserved as a tourist hot spot. The subject matter would be virtually the same.

And why the name Peacock Meadow. Google is a wonderful thing.

In 1719 Sidney Strode produced an “Account of the Strode Family” in which he makes reference to duel fought between Richard Strode and Sir Philip Courteney of Loughtor. The duel was fought on the green at the lower end of what was marshmeadow, Colebrook. And what were they fighting over, a family feud, an issue of honour, or a young lady? No, they were arguing over a peacock killed by a servant.