Category: Serendipity

Pandemic Pondering #383

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, SerendipityLeave a comment

Today is an unusual pondering, not because it comes a day after the death of Prince Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh. Although that fact is in some ways central to this blog. It is unusual because I can mention the great diarist Samuel Pepys for reasons other than his diary.

We did one of our usual dog walks near the coastal part of Plymouth Sound. Plymouth, being a naval city, was one of the locations of the 41 gun salute to mark the passing of the Queens husband. There is always something intriguing about witnessing something that has happened in the same location for many centuries, to mark significant events.

Gun Salutes started in the late Middle ages. Fixed odd number salutes of 21 and 41 were formalised as an economy measure by Samuel Pepys when he was a Naval adminstrator .

Another thing that was different today was that when HMS Westminster sailed out of Plymouth just after the Gun Salute the flag on her Jack Mast, the one at the back, was flying at half-mast.

Gun salutes are a complex old business. The link below will take you to a website with more information should you require it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21-gun_salute

On a brighter note a couple fresh from their teeny tiny Covid Regulation wedding had their photographs taken at the tidal pool in Firestone Bay.

Coffee and tea was, of course, essential to a day of lots of walking, talking and listening to 41 Gun Salutes. Hugo and Lola do not get left out during comestible breaks.

Sun setting on another day of action in Plymouth Sound.

Pandemic Pondering #382

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Pandemic ponderings, Serendipity1 Comment
©Debs Bobber

Another Friday swim day with the Bobbers. A tiny Whats app group of 5 people has expanded to 12 regular swimmers and one land based Andy who keeps an eye on everything on land and in the sea. The swimming is the primary function of Bobbers but also loud natterings on any subject. Some of the natterings would make a nun blush, especially as we base ourselves below the perimeter wall of a convent.

There was a fine show of tugs today.

Tug Spotting

This one sailed out just before we plunged into the somewhat chilly sea. Sometimes if the conditions are right you can feel the resonant thrum of moving tugs when you are in the water. Not the case today. This busy tug sailed out before we got in and then back in again pulling a Royal Navy Survey vessel after we got out.


The reward for swimming yesterday was a tiny chocolate biscuit shaped like a penguin. Another unexpected treat is a visit to the same beach today at extreme low tide to hunt for goggles which were lost during the talking phase of the swim. Not a phase usually shown in swimming events but one in which the ‘ Bobbers’ excel.

Later, on a regular dog walk we chanced upon a new import being brought into Plymouth Fish Market.

If only I had known you could buy this stuff. I’ve had many unavoidable colleagues and huge numbers of equally unavoidable patients who could have done with a big dose of this stuff. Humans with no discernible traces of charisma are all over the place. As soon as this product becomes available on the retail market, I’m getting a pocket spray , the use of which the pandemic has made entirely acceptable. I am assuming it has a similar transmission but without the fatality of Novichok. When I meet those all too frequent people who have no manners or any measurable social graces, a quick squirt, will sort them out, probably only briefly, but for as long as I am forced to endure them.

Once the pandemic is over we could even repurpose all the sanitizer dispensers and make all our lives a little easier when interacting with increasing numbers of other humans. Charisma dispensers would really make emerging into the post pandemic world a little easier.

Pandemic Pondering #381

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

Hugo and Lola went for a walk yesterday with their friend Grace. I tagged along to natter to her mum and drink coffee. Facebook Timehop gave me evidence of a curious coincidence.

Yesterday we walked in Victoria Park , Plymouth. Previously on the same day a few years ago Hannah and I had been walking and drinking coffee in Victoria Park in Hong Kong. A coincidence I am happily exploiting to inject an image of coffee, in a china cup, in a coffee shop, abroad!

Not that Victoria Park in Plymouth needs embellishing with interesting stuff from elsewhere. It has quite a lot of interest of its own.

JMW Turner painted there when the area was still a tidal pool at the head of Stonehouse Creek. At the time it was known as the Dead Pool.

Sometime, not long after Queen Victorias death it was drained and turned into a park. Not always known as the most salubrious of places at night it is the perfect place to walk dogs and coincidentally enjoy art.

©Plymouth Evening Herald

At the far end of the park ‘ Moor’ by Richard Deacon is both obvious and easily missed.

Luckily for me and for different reasons Hugo and Lola, Grace knew the exact location of some new Street art so we took a very sniffy walk up some steps towards North Road West. Goodness knows what creatures scamper up and down those magnificent stairways at night. Hugo and Lola took forever to fully investigate the odours. Sometimes they give me a very dissapointedly specific look as I try to move them on. Particularly in areas of historical interest. Yesterdays ‘ look’ said. ” We don’t need wall plaques to tell us historic facts. Turners dog did a wee here 250 years ago and she had just had sausages and ale for breakfast”

Regardless of their investigative sniffing we eventually moved on to the Street Art. There was so much I am only sharing one location and one artist in this blog.

©https://www.facebook.com/groups/310503822375100/?ref=share

https://www.facebook.com/groups/310503822375100/?ref=share

Isn’t it great to have Street Art and contemporary sculpture all within a few minutes walk of a favourite location of a Royal Academician ‘ Romantic’ painter.

Just to give even more texture to the walk Grace met her swimming coach and I met a fellow ‘Drawn to the Valley’ artist.

A walk worth pondering!

Pandemic Pondering #379

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Lambs and Seals, Snow and Sun.

A very curious weather day was had in Cornwall yesterday. A planned walk around a reservoir had to be squeezed into a gap between snow showers. There are no words for how cold the wind was. A very quick 3 mile walk was completed by the early afternoon. Finished just as the second snow shower started. So bad was the weather that hardly anyone else was venturing out. But surprisingly half way round we met some friends. Possibly they are as mad as us which is why we are friends!

Home to warm up and ponder if the weather would allow us to meet some friends for an evening visit to Firestone Bay to enjoy fish and chips. We set off without too much hope for a sunny evening and then just as we walked out of the fish and chip shop the skies cleared and this view welcomed us as we arrived.

Fish and Chips devoured, we set off for the Mediterranean, wind protected bay. On the way we were treated to an audience with the resident seal.

The Mediterranean corner did not dissapoint.

Which brings me nicely onto the last image of the day which appeared on the Stand Up Paddleboard Facebook page yesterday. The link to their website is below.

We watched the drone take this photograph which shows us, as tiny insignificant spots, but it proves the Mediterranean feel.

Home

© http://southwestsup.co.uk/

A day well spent.

Pandemic Pondering #378

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Easter, SerendipityLeave a comment

Lockdown Easter Sunday Number 2, and a surprise, Church bells ringing. At the same time this lovely picture of a friends dog popped into my Whats App .

Ralph © Debs Bobber

The Bells of St Stephens were a welcome sound, my recording was shocking so I thought I would share the bells of a previous, working, Easter Sunday. The bells of St Pauls Cathedral.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000qhhg

Easter morning was bright on the sea.

And the chocolate faces at home were cheery.

Then the second surprise of Easter Sunday after our lovely Roast Dinner. The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Not quite as normal but for two ex rowers always a highlight of Spring.

Sunset happened.

And the festive turkey remains in the freezer until there are enough of us willing to take him on.

Pandemic Pondering #377

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, SerendipityLeave a comment
© Debs Bobber

The weather today was better than expected. We walked a very long way today. All over the Stonehouse Peninsular. George the dog in the picture above with one of his many Nun friends is a regular dog about town in Stonehouse. He is a therapy dog based at Nazareth House, a residential care home for Adults. When not delivering therapy he can be seen on walks with one of the Sisters or occasionally just basking on the Cliffs.

Hoping your Easter is as chilled as Georges.

Pandemic Pondering #376

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Easter, history, Serendipity1 Comment

With a four day weekend in hand and still restricted by Pandemic protocols the only thing to do is start the day with a swim. A good number of ‘bobbers’ today and the added bonus of a government funded wave machine.

© Andy Cole

Which made bobbing bobbier.

©Andy Cole

Fast forward to the end of the day when we were walking on the Hoe and we learned a little bit of history. In 997 Viking long boats sailed past our swimming area , presumably making waves, and on up the Tamar for their habitual rape and pillage. Let me just say that if the bobbers had been bobbing in 997 history may have been very different. Ten women in fluorescent hats with luminous buoys might have been all it took to frighten the Vikings off. We would have looked like fearsome Sea Nereids protecting Britannia and may well have become the source of Viking Myths and legends.

But we weren’t there to frighten off the Vikings and history is as it is. Today we found a stone which marks 1000 years since the Vikings invaded.

And so the sun sets on another day in a peculiar year.

Happy Easter

Pandemic Pondering #374

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, SerendipityLeave a comment

Lovely news this week. Drawn to the Valley will have a Spring Exhibition this year. This time last year we were recycling the leaflets and posters of the 2020 Spring Exhibition after it had been cancelled.

Looking at the #marchinthevalley on Instagram we have some interesting work emerging from the Valley this spring.

Even more exciting is that the working party can meet outside after April 14th to start making plans.

Some of us have met on Zoom meetings and a few of us managed a drawing day in October but beyond that we havent seen each other in over a year.

Positive engagement with social media has increased during this Pandemic year, there is a greater diversity of work being shown by more members than this time a year ago.

The Spring Exhibition traditionally kicks off the artistic year for Drawn to the Valley. Although considerably later than the usual March dates . 2021 promises to be a vivid reflection of our endeavours during a very unusual time.

Pandemic Pondering #373

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Concatenation, Pandemic ponderings, SerendipityLeave a comment

The warmest day, so far, of the year and day 2 of a loosening of restrictions in England and I’m still following the protocol of the last few months and walking the dogs and staying local. Just like this rusty supermarket trolley I am adrift from the social buzz of being amongst my own kind. Thankfully unlike the trolley I have not spent the last few months in a muddy tributary. I have yet to put concatenation into practice.

In theory the rules say I ( we) can meet in groups of six in the great outdoors. What I have failed to do is build the next chain in the series and go significantly further afield or meet other people for a natter . Its not that I’ve lived the life of a recluse but I have grown to love the days of a familiar walk listening to a podcast and watching nature unfurl. Today I downloaded a whole months worth of podcasts. I’m actually unlikely to need them once my social butterfly emerges from my Pandemic induced Chrysalis stage.

Socialising has been restricted to Coffee queues followed by a walk, or swimming followed by shouted socialising while we scramble into clothes,forcing not quite dry skin into garments that feel two sizes too small.

I know that once concatenation takes hold and I embrace the sequential changes as they ease me into normal life, slowly link by link, there will be no stopping me. But I am going to miss having the time to notice the small things.