Category: Stonehouse

#1283 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Stonehouse1 Comment
©The VOT

When I moved to the Plymouth area for the first time from Brighton, in the late eighties, I was not so sure it had been a wise move. The cultural and societal differences between a liberal and multicultural seaside city and a post industrial port were vast and uncomfortable for a long while. I quickly found my tribe by joining an art class.

Plymouth artists liked to drink in out of the way places. One such place was the Victualing Office Tavern, a grubby pub in one of the roughest parts of Plymouth. We went there to enjoy live jazz , rock and folk. Just as the quote says, we were a very broad gathering of people from all works of life. People creating art in council flats and some in homes that were mentioned in the Doomsday Book. There is a theory that artists are the first sign of gentrification….

Now I live in the exact same area  as my 1980’s art excursions, after a ten year return to London. The VOT has gone up in the world, as has the area. Queen Victoria should have swapped the word dangerous for interesting.

Visionary rather than vituperative  is a better way forward even for a Queen

Just a blog to use one of my favourite words that rarely gets an outing.

Queen Victoria was a Vituperative Old Trout.

The VOT best bar in Devon!

#1229 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Stonehouse1 Comment

Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?

For the last two days, a busy bee. Yesterday with fun stuff and creativity. Time spent with a two year old is never dull.

Drakes Island from Stonehouse Lawn Tennis Club

Drakes Island, in the rain from West Hoe.

This morning’s busy bee stuff is far less interesting. Trips to two industrial estates and the dullest of shopping lists done in my least favourite supermarket. The afternoon will not have to work too hard to liven things up. I will let you know how it goes.

And then nust like that the day perked up.  My wallet, missing for a week turned up. Misplaced and overlooked not, as secretly feared, lost forever.

#1225 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Spring, StonehouseLeave a comment
Drakes Island, Firestone Bay. © theoldmortuary

We said farewell to some neighbours yesterday. The weather was kind for their last day of having a home near Firestone Bay. They are headed for Yorkshire. A place with a very different sort of beauty.

Meanwhile we have discovered that we have some foxy neighbours who have taken to visiting our yard at nighttime. Leaving a pungent calling card of foxy odour.

Foxy neighbours and their fragrances are not unknown to us. The picture below was a regular occurrence in our London garden .

Some neighbours are more welcome than others.

#1223 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Hugo and Lola, Stonehouse4 Comments
Sunset on the favourite Beach.

Not my favourite beach and not Lola’s but definitely Hugo’s. A dog who was born in Bedford and raised in London is obsessed with collecting seaweed. He learnt this habit on the pebbles of Whitstable and the Thames Estuary.Perfected his art on the expansive beaches of Cornwall and currently operates on the city beaches near our home.

Wonder and Joy

This beach would win no prizes for human pleasures beyond exquisite sunsets over the Cornish bank of the Tamar. But for Hugo at mid-tide, it is a pleasure-dome of seaweed research and reconnaissance and, ultimately, rescue and retrieval. He is at his happiest when he can create a pile of seaweed. Obviously, he works along the water’s edge and creates his pile a little distance from the tide’s reach. All well and good on a lowering tide, the distance walked just gets greater, but on an incoming tide,he just rescues the same ten or so strands of seaweed as his pile is gently washed back into the sea as the tide  laps at the foundations and then destroys the evidence of his endeavours. On a good weather day he would choose to be there for hours. The only thing stopping him is me. I am not always his best friend.

#1117 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Stonehouse1 Comment
Storm Bert messing with festive lights.

Storm Bert, is not living up to his rather jovial name. His 24 hours of big seas, gusting winds, heavy rain and some structural damage have been more dispiriting than disruptive.

Dick Van Dyke as Bert in Mary Poppins 1964 © Disney

The Bert Gold Standard,  including his cockney accent which never bothered the British says the actor.

“I still get kidded about it. But it didn’t seem to harm anybody’s enjoyment of the movie. But I do get kidded about it. The people who don’t kid me are the British. They never mentioned it — and they’re the ones who should be making fun of me and don’t.”

Anyway Dismal Bert, has inspired a painting/drawing I will crack on with him later next week.

I feel the urge to drench this blog with colour, we filled our day with it by going to a local craft festival and nattering with vivid, colourful artists.

The Studio walls were painted with an Oat colour.

And I carried on with my Autumn challenge, set by a friend when I was disparaging about another artist. I still stand by my comments, the challenge has become curiously enjoyable.

Not the bigger picture.

And finally Bert doing his worst yesterday at Tranquility Bay. Not so tranquil.

#1021 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Scrag End of Summer, Serendipity, Stonehouse1 Comment

And so the first truly greige day of the Scrag End of Summer has arrived. By coincidence this colour chart popped up on Facebook yesterday. The first time I have seen the word greige on a colour chart.

I quite like Scrag End of Summer as it softly blends into Autumn.

Autumn leaf on greige.

Not that I am declaring summer over, just being realistic about the arrival of greige while hoping for a heatwave.

This leaf was photographed on just such a day in September, last year. I was just returning from an impromptu swim and this leaf floated down onto a paving slab that had feint orange markings. Serendipity at its arty best.

Accepting greige hoping for better.

Welcome to the Scrag End.

#970 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Colour, Serendipity, Stonehouse1 Comment

It took more than the usual one morning coffee to power me through a day after a night of staying up all night to watch democracy unfold. But at 9 in the morning I had not expected to fuel my day with a sugar rush provided by a free sample of soft scoop Ice Cream.

Pure white Ice Cream to calm a mind that had been watching the differing colours of political parties skid across the T.V screen  all night. I found all the AV special effects fairly baffling as the night wore on. But the, normally serious political journalists seemed to enjoy playing with computer generated building blocks. I’ve recreated my Ice Cream in the style of my overnight T.V politics experience. Baffling , I think you will agree.

In a last mention of the election some surprising news. Overnight Hugo and I had to swap sides.

Sofa slouching and varifocal glasses do not, a comfortable overnighter make. To avoid a nasty crick in my neck we swapped sides on the sofa every hour or so.

He was not always happy to swap.

#968 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Stonehouse1 Comment

Up early this morning to vote, and hopefully change the political colour in this country. I am 66 years old. If this election goes the way it is predicted then for the first time in my voting life I will actually have voted for the party that goes on to form the government.  This is for geographical reasons, I have moved about a bit. I have often had to vote tactically and have on occasions voted for a successful  and effective local M.P. But it shows the weakness of our first past the post system that for nearly 50 years my votes have felt impotent and pointless beyond local results.

Being up with the lark was surprisingly social for me and the dogs.

But, being greeted, on the harbourside by this enthusiastic, swimming-sheepdog slightly dampened my early morning joie de vivre. In her defence she was spooked by a drone powered camera. Presumably getting picturesque shots for news bulletins.

I hope that is the only dampening of my political spirits that occurs over the next 24 hours.

#840 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Stonehouse1 Comment

Yesterday was for the greatest part both busy and effective but my painting and printing were off -the- scale awful. Nature showed me how to be creative with beauty and subtlety. For about ten minutes I was treated to an ever changing milky sunset.

Meanwhile one of our occasional bobbers, and other Plymouth singers were in London making a noise

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/07/no-drilling-climate-choir-sings-truth-power-parliament?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It must have been a fabulous time experience to sing in that massive, Gothic space even for just ten minutes. If you read the article the intent is massively important but was achieved in a very eccentrically English way, with Architecture as the code word.

A quirky achievement  to  preserve evenings like this, when life is better than art.

#760 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn StonehouseLeave a comment

Storm Pia arrived on the longest night of the year in Stonehouse . She wasn’t particularly expected in this neck of the woods but must have had a change of heart and blew up trouble for Cornwall and the Tamar Valley. She had a powerful strength about her.

20 mile an hour winds with gusts of 48mph made our chimneys and fire- places scream like banshees. There is a lovely security in living in a house that is 150 years old and has seen many a storm and survived a very close brush with German World War ll bombs. Pia was able to do her psychedelic worst and we could just feel snug indoors.

I always feel a huge sense of relief once the longest night has passed. However grim the winter gets we are heading towards the light and that can only be a good thing.