Category: Serendipity

#138 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Coffee Hunters, Devils Point, Serendipity2 Comments

A blustery weekend and some cancelled plans gave me some more time to catch up with my art course homework. This was a colour note for a blustery walk on Sunday. Storm Franklin was an altogether more blustery affair than Eunice. Franklin had blustered into the local Primary school and set off the burglar alarm. Crashing waves and the cries of Oyster catchers with a side serving of persistent electronic noise was not quite the coastal idyll I was planning to record and paint, but it is the combination I was gifted. The mellow dark notes were provided by a deeply, fruity, cup of black coffee. Black coffee is my drink of choice, now, for coastal walks, after two separate incidents of having the frothy top of a flat white splattered onto my face. I’m not a fan of drinking good coffee through a plastic lid. Thus the weekend map of my walking experience has two man made colour memories and four natural ones all combined to suggest the booming of a storm, the sound of Oyster Catchers and the irritating pulse of a triggered alarm system all interacting with a swirling seascape. This image just represents a tiny moment of time, all senses disturbed by powerful gusts of wind.

#130 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

February weather was as colourful yesterday as my art life is all day, currently.

Juggling the needs of life, dogs, blogs and an on-line colour course.

Artist / educator

Immersion technique is vital in both sea swimming and working through the exercises set by Tansy on the course.

I am pretty much on target with life, but the colour course not so much. A daily lesson is uploaded and there are weekend projects.

Here we are on Tuesday already and the paint is only just drying on Fridays tasks. I’m using watercolour which dries in seconds so I am substantially behind.

So, for me, Tuesday is the new Saturday. Tomorrow is of course Wednesday, a day I have high hopes of catching up. I have one of those 8-8 time slots for a booked gas boiler service. 12 hours in which to wait for an engineer to arrive when in theory I can whip out my paint brushes and fill my time with colour.

In truth I have four months to get all the colour course tasks completed. This is not good news for a recidivist procrastinator.

The End

#129 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach Life, SerendipityLeave a comment

Our second Sunday in a row when the weather determined our location. Without dogs there is often the option of spending a stormy, wet Sunday, hunkered down in front of a fire with a good book or a jigsaw puzzle. With dogs that option is not available. Another option is to just put on the right clothes and get on with the day. We took a different option and headed for the North Coast of Cornwall. Weather forecasts suggested, correctly as it turned out, that there would be an improvement of the weather on the north coast for a couple of hours after lunch. Let’s not pretend swapping coasts gave us a balmy carefree walk in sunshine. It gave us blustery, stormy weather with a side serving of weak sunshine but most importantly there was no icy, horizontal rain capable of penetrating any tiny failing of our waterproof garments.

Hugo and Lola had a blast finding friends and seaweed. The humans skimmed stones and took in the vast expanse of crashing waves as their mental and physical cobwebs were blown out into spume of the incoming tide. We also did our bit and collected waste plastics and other man made detritus from the beach. The odd shell might also have been collected.

Mussel shells were vivid as they were tossed around on the edge of the crashing waves, inviting us to pick them up, but the minute they dried out they lost their glossy intensity. Flipping them over gives a whole spectrum of softer but long lasting colour. Every bit as lovely but different. Just like swapping coasts can be.

#127 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Birthdays, Bobbing, SerendipityLeave a comment

A birthday bob yesterday with some of the usual surprise guests. A warship sailing past as we are waiting to get in. We love a busy swim. However it may appear, we were not lined up to wave to homecoming sailors but were waiting for Spearmint the seal to swim away from our bay so we could start our swim. We love her but she is not invited to our Gatherings because there are restrictions and responsibilities that protect her. There was far more action in the next bay and attracted by the noise she swam off. We jumped in but probably had only ten minutes in the water before she returned. Current advice is to get out of the water and give her 100 metres space.

Clearly she was going nowhere this time, so we retreated to eat birthday cake. Some of us had hardly got our shoulders wet. There was great disappointment but copious amounts of cake cheered everyone up and nature provided the perfect birthday card.

©Debs Bobber

#125 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Colour, SerendipityLeave a comment

Not a muddy puddle, yet. Tasked by my on-line art course to take 3-4 hours creating a medatitive painting. Using only red, yellow and blue watercolour with colour mixing and just painting shapes. With the washing machine and dishwasher taking the load I set up the radio. Set to talk shows so my synesthesia was shut out of the process. My synesthesia bends and blends music and colours together and often informs my art, but not today. Watercolours are tricksy things and quickly turn to mud even when you least expect it. Who knew 3 hours could pass so fast.

Then just a minute on digital manipulation and something lively appeared.

Time to return to to the domestic machines and do some meditative domestic. No amount of digital tweaking makes that any more thrilling.

#124 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

I’m a bit over commited for this next couple of weeks. I’ve enrolled on an on line colour course and yet I have given myself no protected time in which to do it. Life spluttered along today with two things cancelled one thing added and a regular commitment re instated. Yet I did find time to do a colour mixing experiment and watch a video tutorial. The colour mixing turned out not to be as easy as I had first thought!

But in a positive way.

Yesterday I cracked on with both the exercise and some homework. Tomorrow I just need to catch up on the actual project for today and then being ahead with the homework should have me almost up to date by Friday. Three hours of meditative painting for me tomorrow.

In Wordle news, there was a shock in store today! 5 letter words with American spelling have made themselves a part of the game. I did not see that coming. Something else to think about with this new obsession. Should have realised of course as it is an American game.

#123 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Gardens and gardening, SerendipityLeave a comment

A busy day crowded with different stimuli, but brought to a standstill by a few lovely flowers. Just twenty minutes spent quietly in a garden easily resets a busy mind ready for the next challenge. I’ve never really been a fan of Primroses but today this ethereal specimen stopped me in my tracks, hiding by a tractor shed.

Building up the colour temperature of this blog is an exploding yellow crocus.

Then after all the innocence and quietude of pale whites, creams and yellows this beautiful purple crocus shouts out for attention.

Its insides swirling like a sensual dancer lost in music.

Re- calibrated I leave the garden.

#122 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach Life, Coffee Hunters, Cornwall, SerendipityLeave a comment
Harlyn Bay

Yesterday was all about avoiding a Storm that was battering the south coast of Devon and Cornwall. We had to go to Truro to collect my typewriter from its service and took a chance that the North Coast might not be so badly affected.

Typewriter collected, and that is a whole other blog, we called in at Strong Adolfo on the Atlantic Highway for coffee and some lunch.

©Strong Adolfos

Sartorial and comestible choices had uncanny similarities!

Lola and Hugo looked on, their doggy colour blindness giving them no clue why we thought this was so funny.

All they really wanted was to get to the beach and blow off some energy.

I’m not sure we exactly avoided the storm by travelling South to North, we just altered the direction that the rain hit us. The video below gives you a minute of wave action. We were not tempted to get in for a swim.

All in all a Sunday well spent, now its time to get on with the week.

#118 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

A daily blog is a funny old thing. Sometimes I have a little stash of thing to write about and other times , for no particular reason, there is a bit of an empty cupboard. Today the cupboard is not exactly empty but the ideas on the shelves are not thrilling me. However there is a serendipitous bit of wordplay to share. Very strange atmospheric conditions this morning meant that barely perceptible mist landed on everything making diamond- like droplets on things and humans. The safety bar near our swimming zone twinkled in the weak sunlight. Not quite so attractively an old WW2 building, close by has been unimaginatively embellished with Graffiti. The whole thing being brought together with a witty sentence.

Giving me the chance to natter on about two sorts of bar. Exactly the sort of thing to keep blogging alive on a misty morning.

#117 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home, Moving House, Serendipity1 Comment

Yesterday was a dull thing. So I’ve borrowed some images from last year to jazz up todays blog. Over the weekend I was talking to some friends who have had a protracted house move. Protracted because they inherited a partial share of a house many years ago and were unsure quite what to do with the property. Some years down the line they have bought it completely and are moving this week. Like us they have also lived the South London/ West Country life for many years, until Covid changed everyones way of living.

The topic of our conversation was too many bathroom products. Both cleaning and beautifying.

Our recent move followed several years of changing circumstances all of which seemed to increase our collection of half used bathroom products.

Our actual move and settling into the current house went well and we were tidy in record time. Except the cupboard of shame! A floor to ceiling cupboard that held products that had been inherited and duplicated many times in various changes of life circumstances.

Talking about it made me realise that it was never going to sort itself out.

There was nothing pretty or exciting about a day spent checking pots and bottles. Amalgamating window cleaners and liquid soap. Cleaning hair brushes and make up/ travel bags.

The task, though, has been achieved. Last night the talk was all about what to do with an empty cupboard!

Oh the glamour of a dull February day!