Category: Serendipity

#655 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn dog walks, Serendipity1 Comment

Sometimes humans leave things in the way of the dogs usual walking route. Yesterday evening Summer got in the way of their usual sniff highlights. The open space where they like to track hedgehogs and foxes has been taken over by a huge screen for people to watch Wimbledon.

The area near the tunnel had been taken over by live music which in turn had pushed the paddle boards onto the walls where the best doggy news can be sniffed.

We didn’t help matters by stopping to buy a Pimms and talking to people.

The whole walk had slipped from canine planning to doggy dystopia, nothing was quite as it should be.

Our dogs are very urban creatures they didn’t cope well with the 4 years of rural living. The wildness and whimsy of daily walks on a nature reserve never filled them with the joy we imagined it would. Sometimes we would drive the 6 miles to where we currently live to replicate their urban walks in London. Plenty of stone and concrete, parkland and mowed grass open spaces.

They are absolutely city dogs. They like repetition and familiarity. In London their three favourite walks still excite them even though we moved away permanently a couple of years ago. Hugo will always choose to do a poo right in front of Shakespeares Globe Theatre.

Lola however knows exactly where the juiciest squirrels live. The trees that border Dulwich College cricket pitches.

Their choice of favourite places for certain things has always puzzled us. Doing a poo in front of the Globe is quite a performative thing. The photo above was taken in the early morning before tourists were about but normally this area is throbbing with humans. But I know Hugo, if I were to walk past there with him right now. His nose would go in the air and soon enough his geolocating spin would start. Several tourist smartphones would be whipped out and a white dog defecating on Bankside would be a holiday highlight. Similarly Lola and the squirrel spot. If we were ever to lose her on Gallery Road in Dulwich, I would know exactly where to find her. The curious thing is that she might know where the juiciest squirrels live. She has no idea what to do with one. Worryingly she will single-mindedly track them and watch wistfully for twenty minutes as they escape up other trees but face to face with a squirrel she has no idea what to do. One day a squirrel fell from these Dulwich trees. It was as dead as a dead thing, little front paws still clutching at an invisible acorn. It landed at her feet. She gave it a cursory sniff and walked on.

I’m not too sure why I digressed quite so much but I suppose it was to show that our dogs are very much creatures of habit. They were really not impressed with a Summer evening of happy human activity messing with their plans.

Unknown to them it messed with our plans too. We should be somewhere else right now and soon we will be. But summer evenings with lovely stuff on an evening dog walk including Pimms, Tennis, Live music and snatched conversations. All in glorious sunshine is what we will remember when there is no one about and the rain is hitting us sideways on the exact same walk in November. The dogs however apart from being wet will love that things are back as they should be and they can do what they need to do where they plan to.

#654 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, Serendipity3 Comments

On what subject(s) are you an authority?

Today marks 7 years of owning theoldmortuary.design domain. Before that my blog was called the garden painter because that is what I was. A part-time artist who painted in the garden often with a ginger cat as muse.

My blogging in thegardenpainter days was sporadic and not hugely effective. I didn’t know why I was writing a blog but the concept fascinated me in an abstract and unfocussed sort of way. A house move and renovation/repurposing of an actual old mortuary gave me a new title but no greater insight or efficacy at blog writing.

By now I was writing and reviewing for an arts magazine, no closer to actually being an effective blogger. A much younger and replacement editor suggested that I was perhaps too old for a publication that had him as an editor. Exactly the inspiration I needed to create my own publication/blog more effectively. I found a blog writing course by the wonderful Gentle Author who writes a fabulous blog.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/

Between the beginners and the advanced course, Covid 19 stuck and I was caught writing a daily blog for considerably longer than was planned. At some point I did the advanced course. Pandemic Ponderings filled the space between the two courses. theoldmortuary ponders was devised on the last day of the advanced course. Not exactly a diary or journal but just a daily reflection of an ordinary persons life with all the mundane aspects, repetition, chores, dullness set against abstract thoughts inspired by words or pictures. I try to look for the positive or quirky and having that daily need to find something to write about actually makes me observant and better tuned in to each day.

So in answer to the above question.

I am somewhat of an authority on the blogs of my own creation. From pretty useless blogging to daily blogging on the mundane parts of life, via a daily personal record of an International Pandemic.

I can track the development stages that bring me to this point. A little late on a day when I have bobbed, entertained a grandchild, done some Social Media work and right now luxuriating in watching tennis on the TV. Later I will dog walk again, listen to some live music and then tomorrow will be another day. Who knows where that will take us…

What is an authority anyway?

HMS Kent sailing past as we bobbed this morning. Friends and family on the deck. Frigates passing us make the most wonderful artificial waves. A bobbing bonus with thanks to the British tax payers Defence budget.

#653 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment

Last night our evening bob was a little more bumpy than we had anticipated. Getting in and out took more care than usual but swimming in a lively summer sea was invigorating and buzzy. Conversation afterwards was lively and touched on a new exhibition in Manchester by Yayoi Kusama.

https://factoryinternational.org/whats-on/yayoi-kusama-you-me-and-the-balloons/

Sex Obsession © Yayoi Kusama

I’m not sure we can fit a trip to Manchester into our summer plans but we did catch her exhibition in Hong Kong earlier this year. She translates life experiences into distinctive abstracts featuring dots and serpiginous and fascinating shapes. At 92 she is unlikely to take up cold water swimming but I wonder how she would depict an experience like last nights swim.

I might have a go at trying a chilly coloured watercolour. Depicting swimming in a bumpy sea with unexpected icy splashes as waves bump into each other. Showering bobbing swimmers with droplets of salty, very cold water.

Spot the blogger at Yayoi Kusama Hong Kong.

Spot the blogger + last night’s seascape.

Reel with music below.

#651 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn 4th of July, Serendipity1 Comment

4th of July is a big day in the U.S. Independence Day. Not so much in Britain. Independence Days in many former colonies of the British Empire are marked joyously on the Anniversary of the date when the country in question finally broke away from its former colonisers. Many of these independent countries choose to belong to the Commonwealth. Some don’t.

Commonwealth of Nations https://g.co/kgs/oBqHBw

The United States has chosen not to be part of the Commonwealth. Which is I suppose the reason for me disappearing down this particular blogging rabbit hole.

Unknown to many people there is a Commonwealth Day, always on the second Monday in March.

Never heard of it? You are not alone. It seems to me, as a ponderer of topics great and small that more should be made of it. First off make it a public holiday. Make it an inclusive event, Commonwealth and friends. Make it about diversity and difference. Make it about partying. A party in March is a fabulous idea with everyone in every community feeling free to bring their own unique, uniqueness out to mingle. Put the bunting up.

Happy July 4th to all who celebrate. How I wish we had something the same but different. Something to celebrate both escape from the past and celebrate all the serendipitously wonderful richness of the present. Wherever that has evolved from.

#650 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment
Yoga under this tree was sublime. In Devonport Park with Park Yoga.

A day that entered with a whimper and went out with a bang. If yoga under a tree in the morning is a whimper and the 1812 Overture counts as a bang.

In between there was a Garden Party with live music and fabulous food. And a lot of toilet rolls. Overnight I had worried that the four toilet rolls I had left in the clubhouse of the local tennis court would not be enough for a celebratory garden party. An early morning dash to the supermarket ensured that the tennis club was fit for an outbreak of dysentery. There was more food and drink than was necessary and as luck and public health would have it. No dysentery.

The Royal Marines concert was a forgotten pleasure. We had expressed an interest in getting tickets during the dark recesses of winter. But the summer took so long in coming we had forgotten the pre booked evening of music that popped into a WhatsApp message yesterday morning.

Tchaikovsky composed the 1812 in 1880 which means that if builders were whistling contemporary music as they built our house the street would have been filled with snippets of one of the World’s most well known overtures.

#648 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, WordsLeave a comment
©theoldmortuary

This is what procrastination looks like. An unfinished painting on a Friday night. True enough there have been other interruptions to the creative process this week but goodness I give procrastination quite a free hand in my life.

One of the interruptions is still making me laugh. I was running a Social Media series for a local organisation. They are holding an event this weekend and will be serving cake and tea in a garden close to the Ocean. I thought I had found the perfect backing track for a reel.

The title Cake by the Ocean completely suited the event until someone,several hours after the reel had been published, and with wisdom unavailable to me at the time.Pointed out that the whole thing was a euphemism for an adult activity in sand dunes. Live and learn.

While we are living and learning one of the many subjects that popped up at the Bobbing session last night was the Merkin.

Just have a look at the salesman’s beard.

We were discussing the Pubic wig as seen above but a quick research shows that the word is also associated with the Ocean.

Procrastination and Digression, it is a wonder I get anything done some days/weeks.

#647 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog), Serendipity3 Comments

What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?

Hard on the heels of yesterday’s blog this was the prompt today.

3 years into my world of a changed and sometimes absent sense of taste and smell, delicious can mean a whole new world to my faulty olfactory system. Alongside my partial loss of day to day taste and smell. I am losing my memory or recollection of foods I have loved in the past but with that I have developed a liking for things I would have previously avoided. Blueberries are a case in point. I always found blueberries to be a fusty, stale tasting fruit, on the whole I avoided them. Then, in Thailand, I tried this beautiful lemon meringue pie, garnished with blueberries. Normally I would leave them to one side and gift them to whoever I was eating with but curiosity made me eat one. All the embellishments/ blueberries were gone before I even touched the lemon meringue pie. In that moment blueberries were the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. Blueberries in Thailand became my favourite thing.

Mangosteens too, although I had never had a previous opinion.

I wondered if growing in an entirely different climate had changed the flavour of blueberries, but it is me that has changed.

So the most delicious thing I will ever taste may be yet to come…

#646 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog), SerendipityLeave a comment

I am approaching a year since I had my first positive -testing bout of Covid.  Vaccinated to the max, the whole episode was very mild. Prior to that I almost certainly had Covid just before the Pandemic shut the world down, and again, just before vaccinations started. Even though I was negative testing throughout what was a very tiresome and ill-making viral experience.

The legacy of these events is a daily routine of a morning black coffee to start the day. I realise that this is no big thing. But this blog of the mundane and repetitive nature of normal life is often about pondering the small things of life. First thing in the morning really good coffee tastes sublime.

Any gains made in recovering my sense of taste or smell were lost with the final and only positive episode of Covid. Then this morning I wondered if my grip of taste and smell has always been rather precarious.

When I experienced migraines the first sign of one approaching was a hypersensitive experience of smell. This was a distinct handicap when working in the medical world. Painkillers could dull the pain but those smells just kept coming. The next phase was brief visual disturbance, then the skull crushing pain. Once the pain was dealt with or had subsided I was always left with no sense of smell or taste for a few days.

Funny that I should only connect the two symptoms today.

I suppose I consider myself to have the engineers nightmare, an intermittent fault but the positive takeaway is a new love of the depths of flavours in a black coffee as soon as I wake up.

#645 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, Serendipity1 Comment

What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?

The answer is, beyond myself, almost certainly my house.

Built in the late 1890’s. So firmly of the Victorian era but with many Georgian era neighbours.

This week marks 2 years since we moved into this house. It definitely takes a while to settle into new homes.

Things that seemed essential works when we moved in, have faded into insignificance. Other,more pressing, projects have risen to the to-do list.

The yard surprises us every day with its fecundity. We have had strawberries every day for about 6 weeks and the tomato crop are forming beautifully in the outdoor planters. Our gifted courgette/zucchini plant is beating its brothers and sisters who are still in their original home on a farm. Our courgette lives on the garage roof, we learned last year how spiky their stems can be against naked ankles in a yard with limited space.

I have to say that only owning the house for two years makes this answer feel a little like a cheat as it just involved exchanging money for something old that has been looked after by other people.

Old things I have had longer to be responsible for include a Sandalwood Chest of Chinese origin which was owned by family friends of my parents,and was in their possession as employees of the East India Company during the Indian Uprising. Last seen very recently on this blog while we watched Glastonbury on the TV this weekend.

The other daily use of an old thing is a bit tenuous but my Facebook profile picture features a fake fur tiger-print jacket that I wear in the depth of winter. But as this blog is posted daily on Facebook I can probably get away with this. The jacket was made about a decade before I was. So here are two other old things I use every day.

My Facebook profile and myself.

#644 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

Yesterday I went back to the Arts University Plymouth to catch up on two exhibitions that I had missed during the Private View last Friday.  The BA( Hons) in Painting/Drawing/Printing and BA( Hons) in Fine Art. I have a BA ( Hons) in Fine Art. But it was the Painting/Drawing/Printing exhibition that I enjoyed the most and which inspired me to wind back the years and just do a traditional watercolour today. I was also reminded today on Facebook that before we had dogs I had cats as my painting companions.

Harry assisting thegardenpainter
The painting Harry was helping with. Private Collection.

Cats are very different art assistants to dogs. Cats are contemptuous of the creative urge and would not be involved were it not for the soft surgical drapes ( discarded unused from sterile procedures) that I used to protect the lawn and patio. Harry loved the warmth of a surgical drape but really couldn’t care about the art created as long as he remained undisturbed wrapped in plastic backed soft fabric.

The dogs rarely experience the calm of a traditional watercolour painting. I only ever do them on foreign holidays. So today was a complete surprise to them as I sat drawing for a couple of hours and then quietly painted sat in the same position for long parts of the day. Usually they feel actively involved as I move around the studio to find all sorts of different bits and pieces to add to an ongoing painting. Sometimes they can persuade me to cuddle them or find a treat. But me, just statically painting is something they never witness. Unlike Harry they were not prepared to curl up and sleep, involved but not involved. The dogs decided to sleep on my feet, alert to any movement I might make towards the kitchen. Almost unconsciously I then kept my feet very still. Which is fine until I needed to move and then they, the dogs were grumpy and my feet were surprised by the sudden return of blood flow.

We managed to avoid me tripping over a dog or two with feet barely registering my intended movements but it was close at times. The painting and the days chores were achieved. The blog is late, the only casualty of a retro art day.

The painting the dogs were helping with.

Thanks to Facebook reminding me of what a gentle art critic Harry was. And yes King William IV really did pose with a saucy leg position. See official painting below. Floodlighting is a modern addition.