Category: Stonehouse

#1263 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Photographs, art, Words, Plymouth Sound, Plymouth, Stonehouse, Hybrid PrintmakingLeave a comment

Does every picture tell a story?

I think most do.

This one tells of the late summer clear up. All family guests have moved on to different holiday destinations and our home has eased back from peak occupation. The crocs belonging to three small girls are gathered in a bucket by the back door while the girls themselves are away on different holiday adventures.

Using a similar colour scheme I am trying to tell the story of a set of swimming steps that are much quieter this week now the heatwave has moved on.

I am at heart a story teller either with words or pictures.

A regular blog reader, who is familiar with these steps, said yesterday that I had made them look very posh. That was not the intention, but I agree. They may have been posh once upon a time but shabby shic is a better description now. Most of the time they are entirely tolerable and are regularly washed by incoming very high tides.

At night they can be a gathering place for  smokers of weed and men who like to do a wee. Not so posh then. Not so great as a swim destination either. Not  so great a picture.

But I don’t need to tell that story about these steps.

Years ago a little pair of discarded crocs by the back door of the actual Old Mortuary used to break my heart.   A small person and her family  had left us to live abroad. That would not have made a great story or a great picture.

3 pairs of crocs in a bucket is a much better story.

However in the interests of story telling I also wanted to show the earlier set of steps at the peak of the August heatwave. I am not interested in the crowds of people who used these steps recently just the steps as a metaphor for extreme atmospheric and radiated heat. Just too much heat.

The heat blistered out of the rocks at night. And the sea languidly lapping the steps, warmer than we have ever known. Not quite cooling enough perhaps. Oleaginous even.

A different colour scheme. A completely different story.

#1349 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, StonehouseLeave a comment
Far from the tidal pool

What’s the funniest misunderstanding you’ve ever been part of?

On reflection and with the clarity of distance one of the funniest misunderstandings was one of my last work place appraisals. It was also one of those excruciating appraisals where I was told why I had missed out on a recent promotion.

I had missed out because I was over 50, had not been given a list of the interview questions by the lead interviewer ( the favoured and ultimately successful candidate got that ) and did not partake of some of the party activities my younger colleagues enjoyed.

I had mellowed enough from my initial furious mindset to enjoy the utter tripe that was coming from my line managers mouth. Then he served me a golden ticket of a comment.

“I think” he said,

“You use kindness to manipulate people”

Now at that point my thought bubble was an expletive filled explosion of great unkindness to him and his successful candidate.

After that I have no recollection of how we passed the time appraising me for the next year of my career.

Middle distance from the tidal pool

I remained fairly incandescent for some time. We never crossed intellects at an appraisal again. Curiously for reasons not unassociated with that meeting I chose to resign and move on without his weasel ways impacting me or my career.

Closer to the tidal pool

I still don’t believe that kindness is a tool for manipulation. I just feel it is a better default than unkindness. But is kindness a bit of a super-power? If people believe it has the power to manipulate in a good way then perhaps it is. It is certainly way more useful than unkindness.

I find my recollection of that appraisal just hugely amusing.

The other gem that my appraiser chucked out, that day ,was that he wanted to rekindle our previously good relationship.

” How do we polish a turd” he asked.

” By being kind ”  I might have said and really wished I had. Of course that comment came to me moments after the appraisal finished. I wasn’t on any stairs, but I might as well have been.

Clarity at the Tidal Pool

#1342 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, StonehouseLeave a comment
©theoldmortuary

Wednesday is hump day. I have the hump, or the grumps with a side order of entitlement. This week has not been kind. What I needed was an early morning walk with Lola and a swim at high tide from any one of the three beaches near my home. Tough weeks require some head clearance and swimming is my place to do that. That is my entitlement in a nutshell.

All three beaches had large black dogs off their leads with no direct supervision from their swimming owners. Not to my taste or Lola’s. Both Lola and Hugo were attacked by the same large black dog on two different occasions. Lola has a long but not specific memory. She takes a very dim view of  all large black dogs, on her behalf I exercise caution around large black dogs off leads. To find one on each of the swimming areas was dispiriting to say the least.

I settled into the arches above the middle swimming spot and tried to enjoy a three day old Pain au Chocolat from Lidl. While they are delightful fresh from the Lidl oven they are like old boots 3 days later. The hump/grumps were not resolved.

Even worse the two women using the middle swim spot took forever to get in the water and their dog was all over the place. There is only a narrow entry way to the sea.

Me in happier, more privileged swim times

So I took my humpy grumpy self off to Tranquilty bay where the large, free- running dog had disappeared. I had a fabulous swim and Lola basked in the sun on my towel. Afterwards, as I walked past the middle swim zone the two women and their dog were just climbing the steps to leave. Without a backward glance Lola and I were down the steps and swim/ basking #2 happened.

Can you believe this? The last beach, as I walked past was completely empty. #3 swim/ bask occured.

The hump/grumps are not completely rinsed out of my system and nothing can rejuvenate a three day old Lidl Pain au Chocolat.

But with patience the black dogs will leave the area both metaphorically and in real life. I just have to give these things some time.

The black dogs were real. It is only as I wrote this that I realised that sadness can also be described as ‘ the black dog’

#1535 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Plymouth Sound, StonehouseLeave a comment

Funny things can spark a creative patch. For me it can be a deadline, a creative itch, or a commission, but this month I am aware that my creativity is directly linked to an ‘artistic difference’

I have been mulling over my comments and the comments of others.  I am in the happy place of being content in agreeing to disagree. Now, my happy place thinking may affect decisions I make about which arts organisations I join in the future, but it may not.

But for now I am glad my painting mojo has returned with some lovely energy.

These two people on the beach are not having an argument. They are inspired by the many memorial benches I pass on my daily dog walks. The combination of names on benches who have enjoyed overlooking Plymouth Sound are  not always traditional couples,sometimes they are friends, neighbours  or colleagues. Names however come and go in fashion. Some pairings may never be popular again. Were my parents to have had a memorial bench it would be dedicated to Joy and Keith. One set of grandparents would be Gladys and Leonard. Or in a different marriage Gladys and Reginald. Not pairings I expect ever to be fashionable again.

This couple sit, overlooking an unchanging seascape. I sat them on wooden deckchairs to enhance the timelessness of the scene. The figures are androgynous and could be any two people of any gender or age or race. Most importantly they could be Edith and Herbert, Sharon and Tracy or Amir and Tulip.  Just two people enjoying the view any time since 1886 when the deck chair was first patented

I needed a bit of space to add the quote. So the painting needed a good gap where not much was happening.

The artistic difference was based on a statement that ‘real artists’ don’t use digital manipulation tools that could be considered to be on the slippery slope towards AI .

As part of my creative process I use digital manipulation on occasions, but also get painty and dirty just like any other real artist.

Here my initial sketch and the subsequent watercolour have been digitally combined.

Firestone Bay at Low Tide © theoldmortuary

Later on I may work into the watercolour with pen and ink to get a similar appearance. 

I do rather love the effect a minor disagreement has had on my creative thinking and more than happy to agree to disagree with’real’ artists. Real or not I have been hard at it today.

Detail of the finished piece. I am undecided about my ultimate presentation. As above with lots of space in landscape format or tighter cropped in Portrait.

#1430 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn StonehouseLeave a comment
Tidal Pool, Firestone Bay

May mornings are a gorgeous wake up. I am always a little obsessed by birdsong in May. If I need to get up early I like a few minutes in the yard just listening to the chitter chatter of birds starting their day. Just hearing the dawn chorus has always been enough but a curious family connection has brought me a new Birdsong Identification App on my phone. It was developed by Cornell University, there is a tissue thin family connection which makes my ears prick up when Cornell pops up when I listen to nerdy things on the radio. The Merlin Bird App was mentioned on the radio a while ago, I downloaded it and now I know who is chattering to me with my cup of tea.

Merlin | Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology https://share.google/DWioV2UHIcqMJgkwP

Of course bird listening is no longer confined to the morning cup of tea ritual. I walked back from the tidal pool 2 days ago and caught 6 birds, all unseen, nattering away.

Any person walking the same path 400 years ago would have heard a similar mix.

The European Herring Gull is the most bombastic. Has to make its conversation the least interesting and loudest. If a European Herring Gull was at a party I would certainly avoid her.

” Oh dear Herring Gull has arrived, nobody else will get a word in edgeways”

” Far too fond of her own voice, and her kids have already swiped all the pasties”

” No wonder her husband spends all his time at sea”

I have no idea if this character assassination is ornithologically correct, and the whole party idea is fairly flawed. But give a woman a new app and who knows where her mind will take her.

#1406 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn StonehouseLeave a comment
Tidal Pool

Lola declared that her personal Spring had Sprung this morning.

She wanted to be out and about early today. For no particular reason, the sun was up and so was she.

Nothing out of the normal in the gastric or intestinal department. She just wanted the sun on her face and the wind in her whiskers.

Not a bad attitude for a sunny morning. It was pretty chilly though.

As it turns out she was every bit as excited by the evening walk. Spring must at last be smelling fabulous for her.

#1397 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Spring, StonehouseLeave a comment

Sticking my neck out I would suggest that Spring has arrived on the Stonehouse Peninsula. Three days of sunshine but the temperature and wind are nothing like Springy enough yet.

The strong breeze certainly took my Giraffe off his feet for every one of his morning poses.

This one had him tumbling into a rockpool. But in clambering down to retrieve him I found a sheltered sun trap, where we could bask and harvest vitamin D for a few minutes.

Sticking my neck out predicting the arrival of actual Spring might come back to bite me on the bum tomorrow. The current ten day forecast  has not a single drop of rain illustrated. So for now that is good enough 

#1390 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Australia, Stonehouse, Storms1 Comment

Storm Goletti.The storm named after an Italian Cockerel was scheduled to strut around our Peninsular from mid-afternoon.

My grandad kept Italian Bantams at his smallholding attached to his pub. They were very opinionated little hens with fancy feet and extravagant plumes of fancy feathers. Tsthe hens very much liked to sit on eggs, not necessarily their own. The pub guard- geese were very much working women who left their over-large eggs in the tender care of  the fussy little bantams. Several bantams sharing the care of one goose egg. The Italian Bantam Cockerel went on guard duty with the geese. He almost certainly thought he was in charge. He just fussed around at their feet, occasionally attempting a more sexual liaison with no chance of success.

Storm Goletti was nothing like a Bantam but everything like an arrogant Cockerel in our neighbourhood. Noisy, all over the place . It knocked down our bins and scattered and picked over our rubbish. We got off lightly.

But I did put the sensation of the storm to good use and painted a stormy version of  my beloved sea pool at Coogee.

Storm over Coogee

I was even giddy enough to use hand made paper. What else could I do when confined to the house after a  government Red Warning for winds and flying debris. But there is nothing quite like painting a storm while in a storm.

#1362 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Serendipity, Stonehouse1 Comment
©Kim Bobber

Just 3 bobbers , braved a bouncy sea yesterday. 15 degrees in the water and 10 degrees out, made for an enjoyable swim but a very chilly chattering session afterwards. I was unintentionally glam having showered and washed my hair just before the bob.

Glam or not it is not every day that we get to swim with a submarine.

Some people travel thousands of miles to swim with dolphins. Swimming with submarines has less of a cache,  but in 2025 we have had both experiences in our little bay.

NRP Tridente

The Portuguese submarine was much easier to catch on camera. No need for arrows to point out the dark shape in this photograph.