Category: Words

#826 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity, Words1 Comment

This time next week we will all be waking up in March. If January was all about recharging and recovering from the pleasures of the Festive Season it also brought some unexpectedly lovely sunny days. Bright shafts of sunlight kick-started early Spring Cleaning and redecorating during February.

No bad thing as February has been relentlessly wet and drear. Global warming in the far south-west of Britain reveals itself damply. Growing up in the Cold War years (1947-1985) nobody talked much about the climate until they did.

BBC News – A brief history of climate change
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15874560

As a lover of words it seems interesting that almost with a flick of a switch the media swapped one temperature based threat with another.

I first heard the term ‘ Global Warming’ in about 1984 just as the ‘Cold war’ was limping to a conclusion of sorts. My ponder today is a really naive one. Does the world not take Global Warming seriously because the word warming is one that suggests comfort and cosiness.

Which leads me to today’s random question/prompt.

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

I took far too much advice as a teenager, so overburdening my younger self with more unsolicited advice might be unwelcome. But here I go.

Nobody gets it all right, all of the time. But getting things wrong is often the more interesting path but not the most comfortable.

Study Global Warming.

Plum Beautiful lipstick, Levi’s and Doc Martin boots will still be with you when you are sixty.

Keep reading and listening.

©theoldmortuary

#785 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Words1 Comment

In what ways do you communicate online?

In all the usual ways but oh so much quicker than ever before.

This Victorian clock is on the Cornish side of a local ferry service. I’ve always thought it was quite an inappropriate theme for passengers who had no choice but to squander time in a queue for a ferry.

As long as I get my time differences right I can ask friends in Australia a question and get a message back immediately. This would have taken more than a hundred days when letters travelled by sea. Probably two weeks using airmail and would once have been very expensive by phone.

Communicating online is fast and as effective as the humans that use it. Since communication is one of our most valuable and essential human skills speeding it up must be a good thing. As long as the communication itself is the very best that we can do.

Communicating by writing was always one of my favourite things to do. Blogging is how I reacquaint myself with slow-form writing. Just stringing some words together every day helps me wake my mind up for the day ahead. I think it makes me a better communicator and I better appreciate all that I love about life. The time spent is not squandered.

#772 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Words4 Comments

Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

Having just stepped out of the Festive Season I can answer this slightly awkward question from Bloganuary. Playing is not built into my daily life. Far too much White Anglo-Saxon Work ethic has leached into my core. The Festive season is a rich and embellished few weeks, where hard work and the gathering of family and friends allows time out to play board games or read books. To go on real and imaginary adventures with small or large people. Playtime perfection some might say.

Having semi-retired from a serious and sensible career to take up a second career as an artist, could be construed as being pretty playful all the time.

How is playful defined or calibrated. Who sets the protocols or parameters on play?

The truth is that I struggle with the words play and playful. But if I could replace the word play with fun then fun is a daily activity both the planned and the serendipitous. Fun appears in the darkest of moments or the least expected places. It can be scheduled or awkward. Bubbling up out of the fun gland when seriousness or professionalism are expected and the correct response. I am an exploder of mirth, sometimes inappropriately. Is that playful or just bad?

I struggle so much with the word I looked it up. At last I could feel some comfort with this topic. The hook-in for me is light-hearted.

I can actually sign up for light hearted, so much easier to live with. Unless of course it is the Festive Season when anything goes.

#759 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Words1 Comment
Winter Solstice ©theoldmortuary

Yule is associated with the Winter Solstice, so in the northern hemisphere, this Sabbat is celebrated around December 21st.

©theoldmortuary

Yule Traditions and Symbols

When the days got shorter and colder, candles and bonfires were lit, and everyone gathered to lure the sun back. Everyone brought food and enjoyed the feast during the festival. They danced, sang, and decorated their homes. These traditions are very similar to what we call Christmas.



©theoldmortuary

“…This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go and becomes the future; – Margaret Atwood

#753 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn history, Serendipity, Words1 Comment

How can I share the joy of a plunge in cold, clean, seawater or indeed the joy of plunging generally.

In life I am a plunger. I love the word. It begins with an upbeat feeling and then ends with a soft J-like sound that feels like a cuddle.

I don’t plunge without regard to safety or without a good bit of research. Plunging is an immersive experience.

If plunge was a Danish word I could see it being trendy in the way hygge has.

To plunge is to do something whole heartedly.

This morning I plunged into the sea. It was breathtaking and wonderful.

A long time ago I painted a plunge. The moment a hand cleaves into water.

In the header photograph I took an image of the inside of a plastic water bottle. The small amount of warm colours merging into crisp blues is another way of trying to depict the act or experience of the moment of peak plunge.

At this point serendipity hits. Last night we quickly left a Christmas music event to head to the Barbican in Plymouth for a different event. The Christmas lights were a fabulous likeness to my water bottle image.

As you can see from these two images the Barbican was full of people intent on ‘ making a night of it’ in the run up to Christmas.

No big deal you might think but here is a plunge into history. Southside Street and the even older New Street which runs parallel and slightly higher; both lead to Sutton Harbour and existed in some form from about 700AD. When Anglo-Saxon mariners settled here trading goods and fish. Greatly developed in the Medieval periods, the pubs, alehouses and brothels would have seen festive drinkers and pleasure seekers making merry at this time of year. For pagan festivals initially, and then for the conveniently timed Christian Festival of Christmas from about the 10th century. Any excuse to banish the glumness of extra long dank and dark nights in a Northern Hemisphere winter.

This contemporary image of groups of people moving from pub/bar/alehouse seeking pleasure in late December is so timeless it slightly unnerves me . Oh to be a time traveller in this area, with appropriate vaccinations. Plunging through history…

#744 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, WordsLeave a comment

Yesterdays blog caused quite a stir. It seems that rizz is a word that people really enjoy using instead of the word allure.

#743 theoldmortuary ponders.

I know a blog has gone down well when at some point in the day someone quotes it back to me. Also my stats go up, but that is less pleasurable than meeting someone who wants to talk about the blog.

It was news to me that I have been spelling ‘pizzazz’ wrong all my life.

Maybe I can blame my rural North East Essex youth where people still spoke with a soft accent rather than the better known Estuary English which is now synonymous with Essex.

There was no i in our pizzazz when I was growing up and for all of my life until yesterday. There was a rabbit hole of discovery on line that briefly swallowed me up. You can click on the link or not

https://uselessetymology.com/2019/11/15/where-does-the-word-pizzazz-come-from-etymology-history/

The Etymology of ‘ Pizzazz’- Useless Etmology.

I think I have always enjoyed words that include zeds.

Reliably first on the front row of a Querty keyboard.

Deliciously somnolent when written or typed repetitively. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The funny thing is that I must always have ignored spell check and pressed on with my own abbreviated version as the Whatsapp message at the top of the blog shows.

I was at school with a boy who had a zed in all of his names, Juliusz Bezjak Szpytma, I was very envious.

Imagine my excitement when I discovered that the devices used to light gas hobs had piezoelectric cells!

Enough, time to draw this blog to an end before I pass its Zenith.

#736 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Serendipity, Words2 Comments

One of life’s pleasures, of my sort of aimless wandering in a foreign city, is indulging in capturing the textures, colours and experience of inconsequential but interesting things.

I loved the texture created by the loss of mortar between the bricks of this wall in Venice. Texture and ginger colours was a bit of a thing for me on this particular day. I was able to see the original painting of a mythical bird woman by Max Ernst.

The imperious bird-woman commands our attention with her direct owl’s gaze, and seems alarmingly about to step out of the painting. The robe depicted here may refer to the mystic initiation of Christian Rosenkreuz, founder of Rosicrucianism. It seems also to have autobiographical allusions, with the artist present in the green swan or heron. Much of the highly textured surface has been created by decalcomania, a technique of dabbing at wet paint with rags or paper to create a puckered surface. The comprehensive meaning of this painting eludes us, as is characteristic.

Max Ernst’s paintings often baffle me, but even when reproduced the textures he creates are thrilling. To see one up close and actually see the picture in person was a fabulous treat. But as a word collector I was almost as thrilled with the word ‘decalcomania’

So much to take in, in one walk. Time for refreshment. Which turned out to be just one more moment of inconsequential discovery. My poor old post-covid taste buds long for anything that stimulates them into action, however brief. Ginger is a regular drink of choice and the fierier the better. There was an Italian soft drink that promised great things with its name.

Gingerino offered not a glimmer of ginger but it was one of the bitterest and delicious things I have tasted in a long while. Despite its nuclear colour I was hooked and rather giddily had another. Sadly it seems my discovery was just a very brief holiday romance. Gingerino and I will never be reconnected in the U.K.

A day of remarkable ginger texture is definitely a day well spent.

#714 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, autumn, Words1 Comment

I learned a new word yesterday.

I am shocked that I never thought to question what the counterpart to misogynist is. Both misogyny and misandry are pretty easy to spot but it never occurred to me to give the dislike of men a name. Now I am thinking myself  into a circle of over thinking.

Is it misandrist of me to think that misogyny is more commonly experienced in society.

Thankfully my second new word of the day is much easier to get my head around. 

Goodness I love biomimicry. Yesterday a friend was knitting with variegated knitting wool,which was the exact shade of fallen autumn leaves. At the time she was sitting under this piece of art.

©Yan-Feng

These were exactly the colours of the day yesterday.

Two new words in one day!

#707 theoldmortuary ponders

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It is not often that the days ponder must wait until after the sun has started to set. Today this was always going to be the case. I was up early to buy croissants to fuel a morning of lively conversation with the bobbers. Straight after that a chat with some fellow Bookworms and then deep conversation with a one year old. My day was replete with gorgeous, gregarious women who all talk about anything and everything with wit and wisdom.

A chance encounter with a word perked up my day even more.

Some time ago the bobbers swam in a sea filled with Pilchards and White Bait. The seagulls thought all their Christmases had come at once, with a huge shoal seemingly trapped in Tranquility Bay. They swooped and dived as we bobbed and swam. Their disturbance causing millions of fish scales to be loose in the water. We emerged, twinkling like a troupe of exotic dancers. Fish scales stuck to our skin so tenaciously that even vigorous rubbing could not remove them until we used soap and hot water.

R.Morton Nance revealed a word precisely designed for this phenomenon which afflicts fishermen all the time.

Gollowillians are fish scales incidentally attached to humans.

Now this may be the first time Gollowillians knocks tatterdemalion into second place in a blog. I had planned to natter on about things that are dilapidated but that will have to wait for another day. Because the sun has finally set.

#692 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn WordsLeave a comment

I wonder if nasty viruses are a good way for people with normally robust health to live in the shoes of people who are less fortunate. After 24 hours of exploding insides I was left like a whimsical husk, unable to function in any useful way until my insides decided that they would permit half a can of flat coke and a small amount of plain pasta.

My best descriptive word for my state yesterday was flimsy and the previous few days were definitely queasy.

Goodness I love the word ‘flinsy’. I have not always used it wisely or in a kindly way. In my teenage years I described a friends new boyfriend as flimsy. I thought I was being kind and truthful but maybe finding something good about him would have been what a truly good friend would have done.

The other definition of flimsy is almost certain to be or to become extinct. Hand or type written reports were often created on triple layer stationary. A sandwich of normal paper for the original, ultra thin paper in the middle and thin card on the back. The ultra thin paper was often called the flimsy and most organisations had a special filing system for flimsies. Paper versions of credit card transactions were possibly the last incarnation of the flimsy as a noun.