Category: Serendipity

#476 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Peninsular Life, Serendipity1 Comment
Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach- W. Stanhope-Fores 1885. The Box, Plymouth

The Museum where I work has had a spring refresh, lovely new exhibitions for people to enjoy in early 2023. I have loved this painting since I was a young and not because I lived anywhere near the West Country. I must have seen it when a Newlyn School Exhibition came to London in the seventies. This painting is part of the Plymouth Permanent Collection. Obviously it goes off on its travels around the world, but for now it is hanging on the wall of its home gallery. Home is the link to the other picture in this blog. Unlike Fish Sale this one is completely unknown to me and the artist who painted it is not credited. The painting is of the Sir John Hawkins Boatyard in about 1830 The boatyard was demolished in 1962 and I walk on the same location most days. The boats are much smaller and somewhere in the background is the plot of land our house would be built on later in the same century.

The church in the picture was damaged and later demolished in the second world war but the grey building on the horizon still exists. I don’t think I have ever lived in the background of an oil painting before. I buy coffee and bread from behind the boat with the flags. The boats I look out while enjoying my coffee are not quite so fancy. The built environment is hugely changed, but the winter sunsets for all who worked in those dockyards would have been a lot like this.

#470 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Today’s late blog is late because the planned blog did not go to plan. I had an early start this morning and a lazy evening last night so there was no back up plan. The 3rd of February is an insignificant date @theoldmortuary but a trawl through past photos taken on the 3rd of February have a strange coincidence. In recent years the footpaths and fields of our Cornish lives had become quite difficult to navigate as winter rains make the ground underfoot muddy and slippery. By February I was pretty intolerant of me and the dogs being grubby after every walk. Sometimes I would seek a more urban environment with tarmac paths in parkland. Devils Point in Plymouth was often my choice because there was also good coffee at Hutong.

Hutong 2018

And fabulous views.

Devils Point 2021

Of course between these two photos Covid struck and that changed everyone’s lives. By February 2021 we had evolved into the sort of people who loved to swim, year round in the sea. Not something we could achieve safely near to our home in Cornwall. By late 2021 we were living in Stonehouse, a quick walk to the coffee shop, the swimming area and the beautiful views. The beautiful flowers, Cafe Au Lait dahlias, were left in Cornwall.

#468 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog), Serendipity1 Comment

Good morning February, two pretty pictures from the last day of January a couple of years ago at Watergate Bay in North Cornwall.

I’m improvising with illustration because the actual ponder is brief and not a pretty sight.

I use a grater fairly often, almost always without injury. But twice now when creating a Vegetarian meal I have grated off a tiny sliver of index finger skin. Honestly you couldn’t make this up, the last meal of Veganuary and I add some inadvertent flesh. Is it cheating if I eat my own flesh?

Thank goodness for dogs on beaches.

#466 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

I was struggling a little bit to ponder on this Monday morning. Caused, in part by failing to drink the first cup of tea of the morning in a timely manner. The chill in the air had caused it to cool quickly and I had missed the perfection point. The first cup of the day is important and today I have missed that moment. Thankfully the first coffee has no such temperature requirements.

I missed the moment because I was trying to get my head round the privelidged shenanigans of our current government.For those not in this particular loop a minister who was once responsible for the countries tax affairs has been found to have been avoiding tax paying himself.

I would have been better off concentrating on my tea. After my early morning disappointment I took a little look at 30th of January photos of the past and found to my delight one of my favourite pictures. Sunflowers simply wrapped in newspaper, placed as a memorial in a church in Havana..

This is very fortutuitous as my only photo of yesterday was very loosely also a newspaper story. On my Sunday wanderings, the dogs took a pee on a copper noticeboard. The sort of place that must be sniffed and investigated before being anointed with another small squirt of Hugo pee. Lola prefers to leave her news at the base.

The angle of sunlight perfectly illuminated dog news. Rarely visible to humans this is a chance encounter with canine communication. I had no idea how to weave this image into a blog, but as is often the case, serendipity did my work very conveniently.

Digital Media

Print Media

Canine Media

#465 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

I feel I have been a little harsh with January. I am not alone, an early morning conversation drifted over to me from above the dogs heads.

” When exactly does January finish, it does seem to have dragged on and on this year, bloody hell not until Wednesday”

Are we all all still affected by the lag of Covid years when January’s have been uncertain. This January has definitely felt more like a liminal space than an actual flesh and blood, lived in Calendar month.

Like all months January has its own distinctive personality. If it was a person I would not be drawn to it, we would not be going out for coffee or hooking up for a dog walk.

There are, though some lovely, unique positives about my most unloved month.

1. Left over Christmas Cake- ours left the building last Thursday. Small squares of it have accompanied our evenings of binge watching T. V.

2. The pile of Christmas books. Always a satisfyingly reassuring interior design feature. Enough reading matter should we ever get snowed in with power cuts. With enough candle power boredom can be banished.

3. Christmas toiletries. Morning ablutions become foamy fantasies of far away places with coconut and jojoba. Personally I avoid mintiness. It does not remind me of Alpine meadows. It could just be me, but mintiness on one’s soft parts is torture. Nothing Swiss about it. Pure Spanish inquisition of the red hot poker sort.

I think 3 January positives is enough. I need to discuss the header image. One of three pure white tulips that were in a Christmas bouquet. Strangely they were supplied still attached to their bulbs.

One month after their arrival they are languishing floppily in the kitchen. Their stems are weak but the flower is still willing. Willing for what, I have to ask. Their flower friends have long ago joined the compost gang. My hope is that the bulbs will dry out from nearly a months immersion in water. I just couldn’t bare to keep them in a vase any longer, being all droopy and gloomy. They were a plant reflection of my own pathetic seasonal ennui. Wednesday is a deadline for both bulbs and humans in this house

#462 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Firestone Bay, Serendipity, The BoxLeave a comment

8:15 am on a January morning in Firestone Bay. I know I share this sort of image often but yesterday I did a little research on the area as it was in 1895. Because the tide is high the tidal pool is invisible apart from the three swimmers walking out on the slipway that forms one of the pool walls. In 1895 the pool did not exist. Next week’s research will be to find out the pools history.

I was able to spend a few minutes looking at old planning maps while I was working at The Box yesterday.

The orange arrow points out the place the Bobbers nearly always swim. We know our bay as Tranquility Bay but on this map it is marked as Ladies Bathing Place.

Here it is this morning. 5 minutes with an old map makes more questions than answers. When were the steps and walkways built that make this such a gorgeous and practical swimming location. Sadly the map also shows the more than thirty houses and a school that were lost in my own area during German bombing raids during World War II. Just looking out on my street I can roughly outline how many homes were lost. How many people and their beloved pets lost their lives?

5 minutes with an old map, so thought provoking, where will this Pondering end? Sunshine+ An old map= gratitude and the need to know more.

#458 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach Life, blogging, Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment

Some blogs are slow burning, ripening slowly over many days, weeks or months. Others present themselves in a moment. This one is a hybrid, the Pondering has been bubbling away for a couple of months, the moment today, was perhaps 60 seconds of decision making. That moment is the top picture. After a small amount of walking, the coastal path at St Ives, we came upon this idyllic beach. After a moments paddling the decision was made to throw caution to the wind and strip off completely for a swim. Confident that my weekly sea swims, or bobs, as they are known, have equipped me with the ability to quickly submerge in any chilly sea temperature.

It would not do to fanny about, frightening fellow walkers, with my nakedness. The long, slow, ponderous part of this blog has its inspiration from a comment made by a fellow course member at a blogging course.

” Your blog would be better with more of you in it”

Since November I have tried putting a little more of me into the blog. In truth I have always been there, peeping from behind words or hiding in pictures. Trying to find my voice, or style, while nattering on about not very much. I wonder, sometimes, if anyone has noticed the slight changes since November.

Ten or so minutes of swimming in a cold sea, off the North Cornwall coast was just fabulous this morning. I could be evangelical about the benefits of cold water immersion, likewise the buzz of not giving a moments thought to just taking my clothes off in a public space. Put the two together and the skills of fully clothed camera- wielding friends and the blog gets all of me for one time only.

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I got a life boosting, energy creating, moment. Fizzy as a firework, giddy as the giddiest goat, happy as a human hippo. Naked, cold and loving life. All time stood still, the sun was out and I was feeling elemental.

#456 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, SerendipityLeave a comment
Haberdashery Shop
https://g.co/kgs/aAQJah

Last weekend I collected some lovely textures from Marylebone High Street. Possibly my favourite High Street in England. I know it like the back of my hand and after a three year absence it felt as familiar as ever. It is decidedly upmarket and glam but holds all the shops you should expect from a normal English High Street. Supermarkets, charity shops, butchers, bakers, cafes and chemists.

Hardware Store

I’ve walked Marylebone High Street with so many friends,family and colleagues. Attended summer fetes and Christmas Markets, all with a little more twinkle and pizzazz than normal. I have left a little part of my heart in Marylebone.

Charity Shop

It is always good to step back into a place that has so many happy memories. A place to give thanks, to absent friends and fabulous moments.

Greengrocer

#452 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends, SerendipityLeave a comment

City walks in January need plenty of stop offs. The last time I was in this glorious Tom Dixon interiors shop was in February 2020. I was feeling as ill as it is possible to feel and still be more or less functioning. In reality I very probably had Covid and could barely appreciate the joy of his designs or the fragrances of his beautiful candles. Three years have passed and my personal score of Covid( before testing) Novid ( – test, all the symptoms) Covid (+test minimal symptoms) My pleasure in the visual remains high, but sadly the pleasures of fragrances have all but left me.

The barge, glimpsed through the window says it all. So much has been lost by so many over those three years my sense of smell is a small loss to bare. A January afternoon in the Tom Dixon store is such a feast for the eyes I barely missed the fragrances.

#451 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends, SerendipityLeave a comment

Our day started, as it went on, doing entirely normal things in unusual locations. A visit to our favourite bakery seemed very standard until I decided to use the loo. Only to discover that it was in the strong room, the bakery was in a former bank.

Unfortunately the name of the Strong Room could also be considered a judgement of my years of expertise in enjoying bakery products. No such judgement on the next stop.

Be-oom a Korean tea shop whose outdoor space was very unexpected.

I was particularly thrilled by the nearby what3words location.

After the tea, this silver author wished for somewhere cosy to relax after my rose petal infusion. There was no relaxation, though, in a day of long city walks. The last of the normal things in unusual spaces was a book shop on a canal.

And just to bring this unusual blog to a close is a clever door stop.