Category: Words

#679 theoldmortuary ponders

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What’s your favorite word?

I have so many favourite words that it would be too hard to choose one, but I do have a word that my mum loved to use in her frequent work rants.

Audacity.

I love that in my mind it can be both positive and negative.

Willingness to take bold risks is a fabulously empowering thing. Bold is not stupid or dangerous.

In my mums work world women took bold, audacious risks, always for the benefit of other women. Bold risks because they ignored rules and regulations to better improve the services and experience of their exclusively female patients.

Men in senior positions often had the audacity to question and try to control the decisions made by these women for women. This was always the subject of her regular work based rants, always down the phone to people hidden and anonymous to me.

Somehow Audacity is a really precious word, one that I never feel quite able to use in its negative tense with anything like the accuracy of my highly indignant mother. Could I ever be cross, at her near-nuclear levels?

On the positive,though, I love it. Audaciousness is very much something I respect in almost every aspect of my life.

Audaciously I am using a completely unrelated image for this blog. The audacity of it!

#650 theoldmortuary ponders

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Spoiler Alert the answer to Friday’s Wordle is included in this blog.

My wordle guesses today made a 4 word poem that inspired two related reminiscences. Perfect ingredients for a ponder.

A long time ago I was at a work Christmas party in a Private Members Club in Poland Street in London.

The club was in a basement and I needed to leave to get a phone signal. On returning I entered the wrong door and ended up in a Bear Bar, the sort of place burly gay men, dressed in plaid go to meet other burly gay men or cubs, who are diminutive or much younger men who are attracted to burly men in plaid. I had a perfectly pleasant half an hour or so talking to an Australian Army Captain who was there to hook up but had no problem entertaining a woman who found herself in the wrong club.

At one of my workplaces I worked with a predatory male colleague. He was a constant pain and often harassed or proposition many of the women he worked with. One Monday at work he was in quite a flap, he had been away in a strange town and had made the exact same mistake as I had done in London. He also favoured the plaid shirt look but when he stepped into a Bear bar in a strange town suddenly the predator became the prey. Karma I feel.

#648 theoldmortuary ponders

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©theoldmortuary

This is what procrastination looks like. An unfinished painting on a Friday night. True enough there have been other interruptions to the creative process this week but goodness I give procrastination quite a free hand in my life.

One of the interruptions is still making me laugh. I was running a Social Media series for a local organisation. They are holding an event this weekend and will be serving cake and tea in a garden close to the Ocean. I thought I had found the perfect backing track for a reel.

The title Cake by the Ocean completely suited the event until someone,several hours after the reel had been published, and with wisdom unavailable to me at the time.Pointed out that the whole thing was a euphemism for an adult activity in sand dunes. Live and learn.

While we are living and learning one of the many subjects that popped up at the Bobbing session last night was the Merkin.

Just have a look at the salesman’s beard.

We were discussing the Pubic wig as seen above but a quick research shows that the word is also associated with the Ocean.

Procrastination and Digression, it is a wonder I get anything done some days/weeks.

#630 theoldmortuary ponders

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Yesterday I was stopped in my tracks by a piece of prose written by Dame Judi Dench. Not being able to match this in any way. I will just share without pondering at all.


“Don’t prioritise your looks my friend, as they won’t last the journey.
Your sense of humour though, will only get better with age.
Your intuition will grow and expand like a majestic cloak of wisdom.
Your ability to choose your battles, will be fine-tuned to perfection.
Your capacity for stillness, for living in the moment, will blossom.
Your desire to live each and every moment will transcend all other wants.
Your instinct for knowing what (and who) is worth your time, will grow and flourish like ivy on a castle wall.
Don’t prioritise your looks my friend,
they will change forevermore, that pursuit is one of much sadness and disappointment.
Prioritise the uniqueness that makes you you, and the invisible magnet that draws in other like-minded souls to dance in your orbit.
These are the things which will only get better.”

#627 theoldmortuary ponders

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Drinking out of a blue glass in the back yard.

A grey morning has quickly made me realise how wonderful the recent sunshine has been. The beauty of planning to do holiday type stuff, but from home and then getting great weather is that the pressure is off. There is no need to make the most of every moment because you are ‘away’

A forest of Echium at dusk.

Not being away, we gave ourselves permission to watch a couple of dramas over the long weekend. Great dramas for certain but rather too close to home for us.

Maryland on ITV x and Supernova on BBC. Both recommended by friends and coincidentally both about planned suicide by someone in the mid-stages of Dementia.

Both of our mothers died traumatic deaths. My mother had early onset dementia that started in her early 40’s and had her well and truly gripped by 50. Hannah’s mother was killed by a car in her early seventies as she walked her dog. Neither of them planned suicide. But Dramas always use leitmotif to punctuate the air with acid sharp poignancy. They are a stab in our hearts and souls and are seemingly unavoidable but two consecutive dramas using them exhausted us over the long weekend. Hence the blue illustrations, by the end of the second one we were tearful and sad, incapable of cooking or eating supper.

How do these things affect people with no experience of such moments? Do they set the scene and give depth and umami to the drama. A patina of feeling or experiencing something that most people are lucky enough not to experience.

Our list.

The first time your mum does not recognise you.

Identifying a body in a mortuary with a Police Officer.

Being allocated a Social Worker or a family liaison officer.

The sound effects of a car on human collision.

Police officer at the door.

Air ambulance flying over head.

Having to rescue a dementing parent from a difficult or dangerous situation that they have placed themselves in.

I realise this might seem a bit glum, and we were pretty glum having daftly watched two sad dramas with no light intermission. But my point, now I have got to it, is that writers could construct drama that is entertaining and informative without using this ‘bingo-card’of set scenarios. A clear indication that they are simply writing fiction with no depth of empathy or experience. Just ticking off boxes for dramatic and entertaining effect.

All that moaning, I would still recommend them as a good watch. But not back to back.

#602 theoldmortuary ponders

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We had a little lunchtime trip to Mount Edgecumbe on Wednesday. A day off from house moving stuff, exhibition stuff and tennis club stuff. The weather around the Wisteria was deceptive. We were blown about when we later walked on the parkland but none of that is the subject of this blog.

The glorious Wisteria sent me searching in my photo archive for a series of photographs of a special Wisteria spider that I photographed on my own isteria some years ago. My apologies to spider haters but I was really thrilled to get a photo of the spider actually making the silk for her web.

This should have been the focus for the blog, but while searching for the spider I found a cat.

I have been looking for this image in my archive for years and never been able to find it, despite using all the right key words. I took this picture a few years ago in Brixton Market and couldn’t believe my luck in getting such a brilliant piece of visual wordplay. No words can express how happy I am to have finally found this picture again.

I knew this photo had to be somewhere, I am so very pleased to have located it again. Suddenly Thursday has been gingered up!

#533 theoldmortuary ponders

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Alliteration is everywhere in Social Media, blog writing, marketing and life. I believe a little alliteration goes a long way. My heart does not skip a beat at the thought of always having a W thought on a Wednesday or Thursday always being Thrown Back. I know that many people love it as a pattern for creativity. A blog writer that I follow always had a mid-week rest with Wordless Wednesdays. A beautiful or interesting picture is published instead of words. Having said that I only like to use alliteration sparingly, today turns out to be a rare example of a possible alliterative adventure. Wordy Wednesday. But in a twist the illustrations will just be out of my archive and left wordless. And so with all that waffle off we go.

Wordless Wedneday

A school friend and I have a love of all things wordy. Not that we knew that at school because hormones and teenage awkwardness spared us the problem of actually speaking to each other. Despite that we shared geographical proximity, an Oak tree and a friend called Fred.

Wordless Wednesday

Our recent correspondence has included nattering about a Literary Festival, nearish to his home. The Queenscliff Literary Festival. In all respects this festival has become something of a fantasy for me. Particularly because in a lucky past life there were two excellent literary festivals near here that were always fabulous to visit. Port Eliot Literary festival at St Germans and Ways With Words at Dartington. The first closed in 2019 and the latter last year.

Wordless Wednesday

Queenscliffe has a micro fiction competition open only to Australian citizens. A narrative expressed in only 50 words. Of course I had to have a go, what was the point. None really, but sometimes a gauntlet is thrown down and must be picked up. My International entry, not wanted or required follows.

©theoldmortuary

https://www.queenscliffeliteraryfestival.com.au/

P.S the joke is that today is Thursday! In a world where I am only painting staircase spindles the days are beginning to blurry…

#461 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Words1 Comment

Tranquility creeps up on me in surprising places. Our evening dog walk coincided with the exact point when the sea was still. High tide before the tide started to ebb away. There have been a few tranquil moments in recent days. These steps, leading to a soft sandy beach, showed signs of immense human and dog traffic but they were from the day before, preserved by neap tides and calm weather. Looking out at the beach there was no-one to be seen.

Similarly in this very complex photo from the Barbara Hepworth exhibition at Tate St Ives there was not another person in my eyeline.

Tranquility, even the word makes me want to relax. I looked up an on- line Thesaurus to check other similar words and reciting this list would have me nodding off in moments.

Should you feel the same I have one last picture to fit the mood. Glass bricks at Tate St Ives.

#442 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Words2 Comments

Procrastination gets a bad rap. I absolutely am a procrastinator. I have always felt that procrastination, done well, is a force for good. In the exact opposite of current psychological thinking I believe procrastination is a force for good in my life.

Yesterday I definitely procrastinated, deliberately and mindfully. There was a small list of things that needed to be achieved but I delayed starting them. Then a whole new task arrived which required action and the use of old skills. The task was completed in a couple of hours. That squeezed the required tasks into a more compact time-frame, which made me sharper and more effective. Art got done, the washing was done, the dogs were walked and I felt like I had achieved.

There was also a bonus for someone. My delayed dog walk meant that they stopped a little earlier to poo. In a pile of leaves they have never bothered with before. As I rummaged around collecting their morning offerings I found a small gold ring. Someone else’s lucky day.

Positive procrastination, positively powerful!

#350 theoldmortuary ponders

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©Anne Crozier – Golden Hills. This image can be seen at Drawn to Cotehele Art Exhibition.

My early morning walk had gusts of biting wind and brilliant sunshine. This whole blog could have been about the early signs of autumn getting a firmer grip on our daily lives, but between then and now I have attended a committee meeting and one word that I heard there knocked fading summer out of the blog for today.

Salmagundi in the context of our committee meeting was used as a word for a potluck supper. A meal or feast,for many, created by everyone attending bringing a plate of food to share.

Google suggests that the primary meaning of Salmagundi is of a mixed salad. But the words use to suggest a mixture in many different scenarios is also well established.

This, in a funny way also describes the weather between Summer and Autumn arrivng from all directions and a huge variety of textures; and the process of holding committee meetings, the opinions and experiences of a variety of people. In both cases different things come together to create a group experience.

A new word, for me, is a huge excitement, one that I am happy to share.