Mentions: theoldmortuary

Pandemic Pondering #180

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment
The Mewstone, Wembury.

A vision of the Mewstone means that @theoldmortuary it is dog grooming day. Now we are addicted to sea swimming it no longer means coastal path walks and coffee. It means 2 hours of swimming without dogs waiting not so patiently for us on the beach. Serendipity is a funny thing, when I was doing training at The Box, mentioned in Pandemic Pondering #220 I met a woman who had lived close to us in London, we discovered this when she commented on my tote bag.

East Dulwich Tote Bag

In London we lived 2 miles apart, in Devon/ Cornwall 13 miles divides us.
We met for the first time last Thursday and today by complete co incidence we sat next to each other on the beach at Wembury. Tomorrow despite neither of us wishing to work at The Box on a Tuesday we find ourselves both rota’d to do our first days work, in the new museum and art gallery, as you read this blog. It seems we were destined to meet somehow. Luckily neither of us were hiding behind the ubiquitous British windbreak. Less about protecting from the wind and more about defining territory I often think.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing.

Pandemic Pondering #177

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Devon, Food ( but this is not a food blog), SerendipityLeave a comment

Today was a personal grooming kind of day. The eyebrows that scatter themselves around my supraorbital ridge need corralling into tidy brows every now and again. They also require dyeing to give my ageing face some defining features. It never ceases to amaze me that so much eyebrow is removed with waxing, plucking and threading and yet I leave the calm of the salon with freshly honed eyebrows that look thicker and more verdant than I walked in with.

https://instagram.com/petite_retreat?igshid=1iw6zetl6vird

Both of us @theoldmortuary were freshly and resplendently eyebrowed when we met some friends later at Rust and the Wolf in Ashburton.

Rust and the Wolf is the sort of place that once again makes me wish they there was some way to share a link that could take you to a smell.

The link below takes you to the website.

https://rustandthewolf.co.uk/

It is described as a lifestyle store and cafe, both of these functions are gloriously styled with idiosyncratic lighting, fixtures, merchandise and fittings.

There is an intoxicating smell of good food, coffee and old leather.

The old leather is the smell I wish I could link to. It instantly transported me back to a time when close proximity to leather clad musicians or art students was a thing. The vibe at Rust and the Wolf is more biker really but where a smell takes anyone back to is a personal thing.

How this wonderful place emerged in Ashburton, a town that feels genteel,is slightly puzzling. The coffee , food and the Lifestyle store is a heady mix of sensory pleasure that is a little rougher, in a good way than you might expect from a small market town.

Pandemic Pondering #174

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home TownsLeave a comment

No New Worlds is a new art installation in Plymouth it has a profound message which deserves its own blog. Contrarily @theoldmortuary has discovered new worlds while the installation was being constructed. We first encountered it when we went on the Dockyards and Warships boat trip. A New World, or an old world rediscovered for us. The installation was being constructed on the Mountbatten Break Water, we saw it as we sailed out of Plymouth Sound, at the time we didn’t know it was a significant commissioned Art Work.

Another New World for us is open water or Wild Swimming. We can see the sign from many of our new found bathing spots.

As an aside I had a very strange swim today which was also a bit of a new world. Maybe a little Queen World.

While swimming at Devils Point I was suddenly surprised by HMS Albion steaming towards me, towed by two powerful tugs. It is not every day that I am saluted by an entire ships company as I bob along in the sea. Obviously they were doing the salutations just for me. I so enjoyed the moment I couldn’t take a photo until the ship had passed by. A ship’s backside is an interesting change from the usual dog bottom in this blog.

Apparently this ship is the Swiss Army Knife of the Royal Navy. That’s quite a claim, I wonder where the corkscrew is?

I can say that not only did I experience a moment of Queenliness with the delightfully polite young persons saluting me. I also experienced a bit of Dolphinliness, the ship created quite a vibration in the water and some waves.

Another New World for @theoldmortuary was visiting the Mount Batten Breakwater, a place we had never visited before. We went to be up close to the Artwork to research and photograph for the proper blog tomorrow.

The installation is called Speedwell.

Pandemic Pondering #170

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Rant2 Comments

The Pandemic conundrum that is spitting. @theoldmortuary is opposite a pub, a normal sort of pub , regular clients, occasional live music which attracts non regulars and the passing trade of Church attenders for weddings, funerals and baptisms. A pub that causes no antisocial behaviour of note within the community. However some men attending the pub seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to spit either on the way in or on the way out . This was pretty dire before Covid-19 landed on our shores but now it just seems like the purpetrators of the spit somehow don’t grasp the increased significance of their vulgarity.

I’ve Googled ,so you don’t have to, Deep Throat Saliva still shows traces of active virus after 20 days in laboratory conditions. Obviously our local tarmac is somewhat more rugged than a laboratory but then to be fair some of the Saliva we get deposited locally comes from way further than deep throat. It wouldn’t surprise me to find portions of lung outside the pub or on the approaching pavements. Others chaps hawking echoes around their sinuses as they search for mucous and slime to deposit rancidly in the local landscape.

Rural Cornwall does not suffer in quite the same way as places with bigger concentrations of population or indeed China and other parts of Asia. But surely we should have Zero Tolerance to this filthy habit particularly during the Pandemic.

Rant over…

Illustrations from the archive of droplets of a nicer sort.

Pandemic Pondering #169

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

Life took @theoldmortuary to a cemetery this morning. The weather was shocking for September and a dense fog filled every nook and cranny . Taking the dogs for a scenic walk was pointless so we took a walk in a cemetery that began its existence to accommodate the dead from a different sort of Public Health Crisis

The Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse Cemetery was set up to alleviate overcrowding in church graveyards. 400 victims of the Cholera outbreak of 1848 are buried there.

This morning it was atmospheric to say the least and I did find a grave of the Baskerville family. Probably no coincidence that Stonehouse GP Arthur Conan Doyle used that wonderful surname in the title of his novel The Hound of the Baskerville’s, set in nearby Dartmoor.

Actual or literary Baskerville’s aside the morning had an aura of Victorian drama.

Ford Park Cemetery as it is now known needs continued burials to enable it to stay viable.

Prepaying gets you the sort of receipt that would be hard to tuck into a pocket or wallet.

The fog filled nearly the whole day but by 4pm the sun finally chased it away and by sunset I managed an entirely more cheery photo of a bird, in contrast to the morning bird of gloom.

The Seagull was perched on the perimeter of The Royal William Yard which was completed just 15 years before the Cholera outbreak in Plymouth. Plymouth , in common with many other cities had a growing population in the mid 19th Century and became overcrowded Cholera is caused by water born bacteria. People in overcrowded areas drinking water that is contaminated by a cocktail of filth both biological and industrial are highly susceptible.

Residents and workers at the Royal William Yard would be safer and luckier than other Plymouth inhabitants, because the Royal William Yard had its own reservoir for fresh water. The Western Kings Reservoir.

So in a wonderful coincidence my two pictures of birds taken today demonstrate rather nicely the benefits of safe drinking water.

Which leads me serendipitously to an article in The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/01/cholera-and-coronavirus-why-we-must-not-repeat-the-same-mistakes?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

In contrast to the drear of the morning the evening took vivid to heart. Pessimism to Optimism in 12 hours.

Pandemic Pondering #167

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Photographs, SerendipityLeave a comment

August was a blast. September is the month of holidays @theoldmortuary, but most importantly it’s the month of more interesting light and textures. This year September will be all texture and no holidays. The angle of the sun both in the mornings and evenings makes everything look a little bit more interesting. Trawling through my photo archive some gorgeous textures popped up. Textures are my references for abstract paintings. I stuck to textures photographed in past September’s to illustrate this blog.

The first one is a lovely Palimpsest photographed in Devonport. It is a traditional paper advert posterboard. I drive past it a lot , you have to catch it at the right time. Seemingly one team rips the old posters off and another one follows up and sticks the new one on. I drove past between the two visits and luckily got this lovely piece of serendipity.

The next two are also in Plymouth, one in a hotel and the other in a restaurant. I’ve stuck them together because that is what I do when I’m trying to work out the way forward in a painting.

Textured inspiration also comes from the preparation of food , another two stuck together, one coffee and one gravy.

A couple of years ago we went to a Jazz Festival in Nafplion in Greece.


https://www.fougaro.gr/

The venue is an Art Centre and was also holding an exhibition of wedding dresses. Not normally something that would attract us , but I am so glad not to have missed it . The textures of the wedding dresses were amazing and deserve a blog on their own but there were also this colourful, textural piece that can brighten up this blog first.

I love the juxtaposition of beautifully crafted metal and plastic flowers.

If I wasn’t sticking to the ‘photographed in September’ rule I could share loads of pictures taken in European Cathedrals of ornate gold leaf work , gem encrusted and beautiful, with plastic flowers in a jam jar, close by,somewhat ruining the aesthetic.

Black and white texture comes from a negative image of a blackboard and plastic wrapped rolls of hay, looking other worldly in the sharp sunlight.

Finally a little pink texture, the Dahlias grow in our garden and the Crochet and cracked paint were an installation at Plymouth Art Weekender a couple of years ago.A city wide art festival held every September.

https://plymouthartweekender.com/

Despite Covid-19 the Art Weekender will be held in Plymouth this September.

Pandemic Pondering #164

On By theoldmortuary.designIn history, SerendipityLeave a comment

Layers is the prompt word for the Art Group today. This photo was taken during a Drawing Day at Kelly House, Lifton. A house that has been lived in by the same family for over 900 years has the most exquisite textures. 60% of us live in the same house for 15 years but only 10% for 25 years. 900 years is an astonishing amount of time even though more than one person has had to make that decision to stay. Imagine how interesting the domestic clutter must be at Kelly House, the layers of familial bric-a-brac. Recycle, repurpose and Reuse has a whole new depth when there is 900 years of things that will come in useful, stored away in cupboards.

By comparison our layers @theoldmortuary are miniscule there is nothing here older than three generations. Four generations if you include old photographs.

I’ve recently been digging through a box that holds some of these layers, while looking for a lost spare car key. The digital age and its minimalism side effect will diminish the amount of clutter or stuff that we leave behind. The things I found gave me such pleasure, I’m not sure less layers is a good thing.

Leave some layers.

Braintree Shakespear Players 1947. Keith and Raymond

Pandemic Pondering #88 told a story.

This black and white image is part of it.

Pandemic Pondering #157

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#202 a strange number to write in this Pandemic year of 2020, #202 feels strangely unfinished. Just like the year , four and a bit more months to wonder what will happen next in this seminal year.

Yesterday was a bit of a down day @theoldmortuary and then last night was a down night. Different reasons, one more significant than the other.

The down night was caused by not quite parking our camper van horizontally. Which is lucky because today the Art Group Prompt word is Horizontal.

The van was parked with aesthetic and tea drinking in mind but we failed to notice the tiny slope. Both dogs and humans have awoken with hair pulled skyward by our bodies responding to gravity in our sleep as our feet slither slowly off the end of the bed. No photographs are available

I hadn’t expected to have two reasons to ponder ‘Horizontal’ having already been lucky enough to take a photograph that defied me to find a horizontal line when I came to edit it.

Happy Horizontal Sunday.

Pandemic Pondering #156

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The Art Group prompt word is Collage today.

Collage is a popular activity in art classes at all levels. It has never particularly interested me.

I love Palimpsest though, The layering and changing art form so often seen on urban streets.

Palimpsest in its serendipitous form has inspired me to create collage more often and, rather belatedly, I am beginning to enjoy making them just for pleasure, there are many ways to make a collage, some of them without glue.

Mental collage or Palimpsest has started to fascinate me during the pandemic. As our horizons were abruptly limited with lockdown the way I think about certain things has changed. I’ve realised that experiences at home or locally can be as interesting and thought provoking as those moments we rave about when we are away from our domestic location. Extra thinking time and the inability to leave the familiar has made it more interesting.

The month of August and in particular yesterday are two ways I can illustrate this statement.

I’ve always rushed headlong through August in eager anticipation of a holiday or break in September. With no such treat in store, this is the first August I have given due diligence and attention to. Many of my previous thoughts are entirely true , the weather is unreliable, roads and places are too busy, gardens and parks are slightly tired and not as vibrant as earlier in the summer. All true but not as bigger deal as I have previously thought. Adaptation and a little more time makes all these things more interesting this year.

I’ve started forming local holiday type memories and experiences a month earlier than normal simply because I’m paying August more attention.

Holidays @theoldmortuary require

Sunshine

Relaxation

Good Books

Some culture

Swimming

Serendipity

So far August has delivered all of that and more without us leaving a 10 mile radius of our home.

Yesterday was a day of the most tedious shopping; cleaning product stock up time.

Serendipity delivered us a holiday moment on one of our regular dog walks. Mental collage made us notice it, in part I think because the colours reminded us of Greece.

We ordered a fishy tapas at a local restaurant, enjoyed classical music and talked to the owner.

Mental collage around a plate.

If we had been on holiday it would have been a precious nugget of the holiday. What it actually was was a precious nugget of life.

Researchers in the future will look back to this time of Pandemic. There will be many positive findings amongst the sea of bleakness.

Our positive nugget of life happened here.
https://www.thehookandlineplymouth.co.uk/

Pandemic Pondering #154

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Ponderings have very little planning , just musings about things that come up in daily life. August has been slightly different as I am running the Instagram campaign for an Art Group.Every day for a month a prompt word from a list compiled by someone else is given to members. I just upload an image and remind members what the word of the day is. For ease, despite not being the biggest fan of this kind of themed/prompt style of running social media, I decided to use the same word to inspire my bloggings. It has not been as hard as I imagined. Today is day 20 of the prompts for August and Pandemic Pondering #200. The word is ‘throwback’ . Things could not be any worse. If I dislike prompts I dislike the predictable ones even more. For example Monday Motivation, Throwback Thursday, Friday Feeling.It was with horror I realised that a ‘special number’ pondering #200 would be saddled with one of my least favourite prompts.Crazy really as pondering is an almost constant reflecting back.My relationship with prompt words just reflects a bigger antithesis to being controlled while being creative.I adapt recipes.I dance like noone is watching.I used to reassign colours and numbers with paint by numbers sets.The last one is bonkers 😂. How I wish I had kept them. It was an early manifestation of a curious mind not quite happy to conform.This August prompting experience has taught me to just get on with it. Something I’m more than happy to do in real life but resistant to in my creative space.That’s my pre-pondering over, time to get on with throwing back.Serendipity, a key word in pondering throws me back to last Saturday/Sunday when this crazy arrangement happened @theoldmortuary.Three things with identical colours collided on our coffee table.The first and most permanent one is The Vanity of Small Differences by Grayson Perry.Link to Grayson Perry
https://g.co/kgs/cSpNurAn art/sociological essay style picture book for adults. A lovely book to dip into for lots of reasons. His illustrations are completely engaging, our two year old grand daughter also loves it for the funny stories you can make up using his pictures.The second item creating Serendipity was this unexpected free gift from a coffee roasting company, it had arrived with our coffee bean order and was left on the table.Link to Butterworths
https://butterworthandson.co.uk/The third serendipitous item was this lovely bunch of locally grown fresh flowers, that arrived in the hands of some friends who came for supper on Saturday night.This lovely bunch of flowers pulled the whole crazy colour and pattern match together. They were bought from one of the many road side stalls that can be found in the lanes of the Tamar Valley. Historically the Tamar Valley was one of the very important areas for growing fruit and veg because of its rich soil and gentle, warm and wet, climate. The produce was shipped and later carried by train to London for customers from all over the country. These flowers and the produce stalls they come from are all that is left from a growing region that, relatively, grows no more.Link to Tamar Valley AONB
https://www.tamarvalley.org.uk/about/maps/Pandemic Pondering #200 done. Where will we be by #300.