Good morning 2021. 2022 liqueur coffee, throwback to start the day and the year. So far, so good.
Category: Serendipity
#83 theoldmortuary ponders
As the Turkey leaves the building for 2021 we celebrated with a traditional curry. There is enough for a pie in the freezer but the curry is always the big send off.
Henry VIII was the first English king to serve Turkey at Christmas feasts.I feel a lot like Henry VIII right now. Rotund and somewhat over feasted.
Over feasted yet I wake up hungry in the morning. Deep December is a funny place to live. Mince Pie for breakfast anyone?
#81 theoldmortuary ponders
We took ourselves off for a coffee date this morning with friends and then took a walk around the old Elizabethan Port of Plymouth. An area that still roughly conforms to the pink area on this map of 1620. We walk it so often we quite take it for granted and I took very few photographs today.
Just as the Pandemic took hold of the world, Plymouth was gearing up to celebrate its part in the founding of the New World with the Mayflower 400 celebrations. Plymouth was being primped for many visitors and events. All that preparation and anticipation came to nothing as the world shut down. One of our favourite, tiny corners of Plymouth has been shut ever since. To our surprise the Elizabethan gardens were open today on our walk and we popped in.
December is not a great time to admire a garden but it was really nice just to be back in a favourite space.
I think I was so surprised to be in there at all I only took a couple of pictures, but all around there were signs of the refurbishment of historic buildings which would have been so central to the 400 year anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower to what we now know as the United States of America.
I am disappointed in myself photographically but sometimes ot is just good to lose yourself in the moment which is exactly what I did. A perfect reason to go back, very soon when Spring starts to make an appearance.
In other news, we had a sporting day yesterday with golf and Ten Pin Bowling.
Both venues were totally artificial but we had a great time being competitive indoors away from the somewhat murky weather .
We have been lucky in our new home, and totally grateful,that none of our Christmas visitors have involved grumpy old farts like this chap on the golf course.
My commiserations to any of you who have suffered a friend or family member who has cast shade on your festivities, there is nothing worse. If this Pandemic has taught me anything it is that life is too short to share extended moments with people whose habitual attitude to life tends towards the negative.
We have been extraordinarily lucky this festive season. Smiles and happiness overload.
#79 theoldmortuary ponders
Christmas in a new home is always a voyage of discovery. Past Christmases have sometimes involved up to 24 family members and friends joining us in previous homes. Our last Christmas 2020 drew our lowest numbers ever with just the two of us @theoldmortuary , due to Covid restrictions. This first year in our new home has hardly ramped the numbers up. We are 3.5 rising to 5.5 people this year. Curiously our new house is just a tiny bit older than Christmas reinvented. Reinvented meaning the Victorian mass introduction of imported or invented Festive Tradition . The new house has made a welcome and comfortable refuge for us all from the norma, not normal life of 2021. Time to just hang out together after a highly unusual couple of years. We are very comfortable here.
The award for the most useful room, at Christmas, in the new house goes to the utility room pictured above. This picture has been published in a blog before and inspired the most unusual and unexpected Christmas gift of 2021.
3 boxes of Thompsons Tea arrived from a blog reader who noticed we favoured Yorkshire Tea. She reccomended Thompsons as a good alternative to our favourite brew. We had never heard of Thompsons and thought no more about it until Christmas morning when we unwrapped a parcel from her. Suddenly the uncertain future of 2021 has a purpose! 3 new flavours of tea to try while we wait for Covid to pass. Contemplating boxes of tea on Boxing Day.
#77 theoldmortuary ponders
Here we are. Christmas Eve. Time to reflect perhaps, or time to hit domestic admin with gusto and efficacy. Gusto and efficiency for the last 36 hours was going to be rewarded with some cheesy chips from a local seaside cafe. Imagine my disappointment when they were closed. A disappointment compounded by Miss Lola delivering her lunchtime poo into the heart of a teenage thistle. Teenage thistles are a lot like regular teenagers. They look quite cute, a mix of the child you loved and the adult you will come to love. But whoa! Looks can be deceiving those cute slightly downy leaves carry quite a spiky message. How Lola delivered a whole poo quite so deeply into this moody spikey plant is beyond my imagination. She appeared to deliver it with ease. I did not retrieve it with anything like ease, to be frank, I yelped, as she certainly deserved to. For my troubles I have a nasty and unusual Christmas scar, not the traditional forearm one from retrieving baked goods from the oven. A thistle scratch, slight but jagged and ridiculously sore.
To get over my trauma I devised a new reward for my Gusto and Efficiency. An hour or two of dabbling with watercolour, typing and paper. I had success and hit on a happy accident of a paper that responds really well to typing and water colour. Have a Happy Christmas.
#76 theoldmortuary ponders
Yesterdays dawn was quite spectacular in the Tamar Valley. As Omicron cancels or compromises so many peoples festive plans it is necessary to reflect on the serendipity of life. Sometimes we just need to leap out of bed and grab the moment.
#73 theoldmortuary ponders
I was pondering early this morning, on my dog walk, the sort of pondering that can only end badly. Pandemically and politically Britain is a bit f**ked. We are a week away from Christmas and none of us really know if it will be possible to do what we usually do to mark this time of year with our friends and families. The dogs, of course, played no part in my actual, dismal, pondering. Too busy following their noses to a street food van who was prepping something tasty.
Just like that I was catapulted out of my morose frame of mind by these amazing colours of the pre prepped veg. The dogs were there for the sizzling chicken.
The vivid veg quite cheered me up and gave me a direction for this blog. It was then easy enough to trawl through my archive of photographs taken in past Decembers. The best match for this veg was this tinsel, also found at a street market, in East Dulwich, 4 years ago.
This tinsel is one of lifes regrets. I didn’t buy it at the time I saw it. I probably thought it was too garish and not easy to integrate with my existing Christmas decorations. But this mornings colour jolt, when bright pinks and oranges, greens and purples spiked me out of pondering grumpiness, has made me re-evaluate its charms. As soon as I can freely visit East Dulwich and the glorious North Cross Road Market I will buy myself a swag or two of vibrant, unorthodox tinsel and make a little shrine to happiness in difficult times, and a reminder that when life doesn’t take the route I would choose it is still possible to find something bright and memorable.
#72 theoldmortuary ponders
This Christmas Decoration represents blog perfection. Just after midnight there should be a blog ready to be automatically dropped into inboxes around the world. I”m not saying it never happens but it is mostly an aspiration rather than an actuality.
72 days ago when the blog changed its title, while I was on a blogging course. The course leader suggested being a little kinder to myself and give myself more freedom to deliver blogs less often. While not, as yet, feeling the need to abandon whole days I do, on occasion cut myself a bit of slack and a later blog goes out.
Yesterday I thought laying about would give me time to be on time with the blog, in fact all I did really is be a bit unfocused.
Yesterday not much happened following a bout of food poisoning. Me and the Christmas tree were together a bit as I dozed between bouts of activity which is when I noticed the time on the Christmas decoration. In truth I was just a bit less of myself, low energy and a bit achy after my digestive tsunami.
24 hours of abstinence, apart from two bowls of rice crispies with oat milk, has created a fine dining monster in me but at low cost. The first cups of real tea were revelatory.
All the flavours of the Asia, blended in Yorkshire, dancing around my mouth like there was a post pandemic party going on. Who knew tea could taste quite so good!
The afore mentioned rice crispies embellished by oat milk were a comfort food, tweaked by my newly over sensitive taste buds they have become fine dining. Their vanilla notes enrobed in oaty richness.
Goodness knows what gustatory delights await me this morning. Toast perhaps masquerading as something far more significant. Today I will be more focussed.
#71 theoldmortuary ponders
Oh these silky waters were a fabulous swim on Friday morning. Miss Spearmint, the seal, was away swimming near the Hoe so there were no sudden departures,from the sea, required of swimmers to give her space. Today was a birthday swim so there was cake and conversations to follow once we were dressed. The richness of the aquatic wildlife in Plymouth Sound was one such conversation.I managed to find this picture of a specimen jar to illustrate the conversation in a festive way.
And then later in the day we found some more underwater creatures all gussied up ready for the festive season.
I wish this was the last thing I could discuss about wildlife but sadly a bout of food poisoning has wracked my body and mind. The physical aspects do not need to be elaborated on but the mental ones were quite daunting. I must stress that, beyond food, only tap water and tea was ingested all day. After my personal eruption and once I was well enough to return to my bed I was straight off to sleep only to be dumped into a hideous nightmare. Large birds that under normal circumstances adorn our wallpaper started to fly off the wall and wrap themselves wetly around my body. They were warm and wet, as if freshly dipped in hot wallpaper paste and alive but as flat as any wallpaper bird would be. Try as I might I could not stick them back on the wall in the right places. Waking up was the only way to save the situation. A lurid way to welcome the weekend. Of course this morning they are all perched calmly in the right places, catching the first of the morning light.
#66 theoldmortuary ponders
Sunday evening found us going out, out! Just like the backdrop on the stage, going out, out is a tortuous path of Covid regulations now we have entered the age of Omicron.
Two pieces of Covid data.
Gave us access to the auditorium and bar. The bar had no seats but in these hygienic times there is no problem sitting on the floor as everything is cleaned to perfection.
Almost perfection, ordering at the bar had its humorous Omicron twist. You can buy bottled drinks but they can only be served with the lid removed. Nothing says hygiene more than a busy bartender twisting off the hygienically sealed lid with their hands and passing it to you to drink directly from the bottle.
Enough of Omicron, we were out, out to see National Treasure and multi talented musician, actor and comedian Bill Bailey.
We had a fabulously entertaining evening out, how wonderful to laugh with hundreds of others rather than at home.
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