#175 theoldmortuary ponders

This is the most common view for writing a blog. Out of screen are a cup of tea, a notebook, a pile of clean washing, a Filofax ( oh yes I said Filofax ) and a lap top. All fairly normal dining room table flotsam and jetsam in a world that features working from home, Zoom meetings and family that live thousands of miles away. We are in mid April now and ten months into living in a house with a yard and not a garden. Container gardening is our new way of creating a green space. In the dark months of winter the plants in this view are decorated with fairy lights in an attempt to bring light into our lives through the french windows. Container growing has been largely a success, one moving casualty and one new plant that didnt make it through the winter. This morning I was struck by the random colour pairings that container planting creates. I had a bit of a spring move around earlier in the week. We have been much more succesful growing tulips in containers. Purple Sage and fancy tulips are not something we would have planned, but this pairing is lovely.

I can only assume that our yard has less wildlife than our country garden. One of our autumn pumpkins has just about survived the winter, in our garden pumpkins were devoured before firework night most years. A beautiful, almost black tulip bent forward after heavy rain causing this wonderful colour combination. Yardening is going to suit us very well.

#172 theoldmortuary ponders

Serendipity plays a huge part in these daily blogs. Serendipity gave us some free time on Saturday when we were close to our London home villages of Dulwich Village and Crystal Palace. Proper journalists are writing about Crystal Palace this weekend because it has been voted the best place in London to live. We do not disagree, and for us Dulwich Village is a close second. Below are two links to proper writers singing the praises of CP.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/crystal-palace-london-best-place-to-live-uk-pp7pxvcmc#

https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/where-to-live/crystal-palace-area-guide-anna-jacobs-design-influencer-b951887.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1649438147

The funny thing is that the dogs love being back ‘home’ too. So this blog is a little bit about a dogs view and a little bit about things the journalists didn’t mention.

Starting with Dulwich. Morning is not morning without coffee and a cheese straw from Gails.

The cheese straw is a snack for dogs and humans. It gives us all strength and energy for visiting interiors shops.

Before a walk to the Dulwich Picture Gallery where the dogs can really appreciate Contemporary sculpture from Peter Randall-Page, titled Walking the Dog. The dogs and us have a good bit of history with this place the dogs love the sniffs and @theoldmortuary has exhibited here too.

On our way out we found a lovely complicated image.

Painted scaffolding boards behind an over wintering Beech hedge.

Next stop Crystal Palace.

More interiors shopping, Crystal Palace is known for its Independent imaginative shops and a thriving antiques and second hand trading vibe. We found some antique ceramic finger plates and some lovely coat hooks that look like Tom Daley executing a perfect Olympic dive. All for a fraction of the cost if we bought new or from on-line retailers. The pictures below are fancy glass in bright sunshine.

Second interiors shop of the day and both dogs were still enthusiastic.

Crystal Palace shopping was fueled by a Roti Brothers Vegetarian burger and their signature Rosemary Chips. Sitting beneath some fabulous street art.

Hugo and Lola basked while humans refuelled.

Our whistle stop tour of old haunts over, there was just enough time to collect some Portuguese baked goods and continue on with our journey

But not before recognising that the original village still makes a mark in this street names of this South London suburb.

#168, theoldmortuary ponders

For the last few weeks I have been involved in a Wordle Whatsapp group. It involves a group of people connected with a fiftieth birthday party that I went to in Pangbourne. It must be a sign of age that the only significant thing I don’t remember from the party is talking about Wordle. Perhaps even more important is that it appears to be an early morning WordleWhatsapp so I wake up already under pressure from the really early birds.

Now my early mornings have so many possible starts. Dog Walk? Blog? Wordle? Shower? Breakfast? Book? Staying awake beyond midnight gives me the chance to Wordle or Blog before most people are about, but me and midnight are not as well acquainted as we used to be since I swapped NHS life for that of Museums and Art.

All the interiors or fashion magazines mention Wordle Green as a key colour this year.

I’m not convinced, myself, that I could wear Wordle Green or live with too much of it. But some of my favourite colours are greens. When the sun is out in April it makes greens especially vivid. So taking my queue from recent style magazines I’m going to feature some almost Wordle Greens for the end of this pondering

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Plymouth to Gunnislake railway journey. Bright shafts of sunlight hit overgrown hedges along the track . April 2021
Inherited 1970’s coloured glass tumblers sitting in the sun waiting to be packed for a house move. April 2021
Easter painting from our Grandchild in Hong Kong . April 2021
Seaweed in the tidal pool at Firestone Bay. April 2021
Old door near the Cremyl Ferry. Stonehouse Peninsular. April 2021

All the dates on these pictures predate Wordle Green by a year. If only I were published by the New York Times, the hot new colour on the block could have been…

@theoldmortuary Green. There’s a thought!

#165 theoldmortuary ponders.

Quite the command on my early morning walk. Our usual, quiet, morning walk was enlivened by the arrival of many vendors for the monthly food and craft market. This coffee shop got our business later in the day. The sun was super bright, but the temperature was only just above zero. Beyond a dog walk I was also up early to catch some mussels in the sharply angled sunshine.

Mission accomplished.

#161 theoldmortuary ponders

Blogwise it is going to be a quiet patch for the next few days.

Lola has had a hysterectomy and is advised to take life gently for the next two weeks. No walks longer than ten to fifteen minutes. No giddy excitements. This was a planned procedure so I had stored up quite a few non exciting projects to be completed at home.

This morning I bought some mackerel, mackerel models if you like, for a longstanding commission and a portrait exhibition later in the year.

Plymouth Market has an excellent fishmonger with gorgeous fish straight from the fish market.

I had no qualms asking for three of the prettiest mackerel for posing reasons. The mackerel pose, not me.

I also asked for fish heads to paint actual fish face portraits but I need to go back later in the day for that.

Obviously for continuity of dog care it was a very quick nip into the market but even a quick nip created a ponder, one created entirely from my own ignorance.

I love a market, but snobbishly or for whatever reason, foreign or London markets really float my boat. Meanwhile my local market gets barely a thought. Well more fool me. I do know that Plymouth Market is an architectural gem and I do go there reasonably often but I have never noticed these two pieces of wall art before.

The bottom one even features by name one of my favourite London Markets. Spitalfields.

Now of course I need to return to the market and research the artist!

So for my next visit, fish heads and Art History, who knew caring for a post surgery dog could be quite so stimulating!

#160 theoldmortuary ponders.

Three solid days of Spring sunshine and it was time to raise the level of our yardening. The last six months or so have been about moving plants in containers into their most comfortable positions in the new yard. A chance event, the delivery of some free seeds from the local Primary School pushed us into greater action.

Most of our container plants have survived well, despite doing well some of them are not so suited to a blisteringly hot, coastal yard and need rehoming. The free seeds spurred us into action as the plants needing rehoming were in a container that was perfect for a bee corridor.

So far so sensible but somehow things got out of hand when we popped into a garden centre for some anting compost. The tiny project inspired by some free seeds suddenly involved reinstating a 2 metre long raised bed that had been lawned over with artificial grass by the previous owners.

Many plants and hours later we have a beautiful new border and some cute plants.

Which was not the plan at all!

The neighbours, meanwhile, look on in disgust, nothing worth eating at all

#157 theoldmortuary ponders.

Feeling like a fish out of water is a common feeling when considering Social Media. Like most people I was lured and then fell headlong into Facebook and Instagram when they first launched. Then by complete accident I became responsible for the ‘ public’ Social Media face of a large art group in London. In that curious way that humans do I became known as an amateur expert, long before Social Media management became an actual job that people learned. I’ve always thought that in group situations you either chose someone for a job because they put themselves forward for it, their ego emblazoned on their foreheads like an accurate pigeon strike.

Others, like me, get chosen, almost by accident because we have a tiny nugget of experience and no one else really wants to do it. Social Media was never part of my actual day job. In 14 years I’ve done some SM learning but in reality I remain a dabbler while Social Media has marched on  gathering glossy Social Media managers, influencers and all sorts of other job titles that baffle anyone in the real world.

This week I popped my amateur and now Plymouth based Social Media head out into the real world of Social Media and attended courses provided by Cosmic.

https://cosmic.org.uk/cosmic-digital-training

My amateur head feels less amateur now. My digital hand has been held, first in a group and second in a one2one session by a lovely man called Adrian. I know what I’m doing OK at, I also know where I am falling a little short. Adrian has placed his digital hand on my virtual back and pushed me well and truly out of my comfort zone. Personalities need to be revealed, videos need to be created. Tutorials need to be created….

What I learn for an art group might bleed into my blog life. You have been warned! Two tiny videos follow that definately show that I am a dabbler by nature. The unboxing videos of a new set of paints all perfect and glossy and a three month old tin with very clear signs of dabbling.

Have a fabulous dabbling Saturday.

#155 theoldmortuary ponders

I’ve just managed to finish another visual/aural/real world and sensation mind map. This one created at dawn on the Vernal equinox on the Thames at Pangbourne. Since learning this technique on a recent course with Tansy Hargan I am beginning to find this colour mixing, meditative shape creating style really useful for making notes of the 3d experience of outdoor painting.

These were my quick notes.

And here they are together.

Far from being a completely perfect landscape this painting expresses the highlights and my irritation at sharing the early morning peace with a man still drinking from the night before. Almost the highest high point was the dawn chorus, something that accompanied me from the camper van down to the flood meadows on the banks of the Thames. The pinky gold colours are a representation of that sublime early morning sound of birds waking up and singing. Bird song filled the air and enveloped everything I painted. Really the inebriated man takes rather too much of the image, but in truth he really pissed me off.

Not because he was drunk, he was just a bit too much in my face, perching on ‘my’ bench when there were ten others available, asking stupid questions and scuffing his over white trainers in the dust beneath the bench. I’m sure he had no malign intent. The same cannot be said for the swan who approached for snacks, but the inebriated man skipped off on uncertain feet as the hungry chap approached, so a hungry swan became a good thing.

Water colours do not appear on a swans ideal diet so he, just like the drunk, waddled off. Leaving me at last to the pastoral scene that I had got up so early for.

Spring is finally here, it was good to be up early to see it arrive.

#154 theoldmortuary ponders

Early morning wanderings, naked toes for the first time this year and a proper ponder. Dorothea Ltd is a very unusual name for a historic piece of cast iron street furniture. I had a lot of time to ponder some odd things on my walk today. The dogs took the business of sniffing out other dogs peemail messages very seriously, so there was lots of time for pondering the small stuff. Dorothea Ltd turn out to be pondering golddust. Please follow link.

https://www.dorothearestorations.com/about-us/history

Have dogs, will stand still a lot, is the motto of my day. Fortunately I had pre planned some supplies to keep me fortified on the walk.

Sunrise reflected as a Pain au Chocolat

The walk was one I have shared many times on the blog but these highlights are purely generated by prolonged sniffing locations.

Fabulous reflections on The Barbican, Plymouth.
A cafe sign has been removed showing a more nautically focussed business from the past.

What more strange things have my dogs given me to share with you?

A doorway into the sky.
A very complicated image that curiously mimics the random Union Jack on the next building.
Bold Primary Colours in morning sunlight.

So there we are, my visual notes from early morning, prolonged dog stops. I have no idea what information they gathered this morning. Information gathering exhausted them. Both fast asleep for hours on our return.