Mentions: theoldmortuary

Pandemic Pondering #153

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

Wet on Wet is the Art Group Prompt.That is quite a challenge for a blog.Wet on Wet is a painting technique, where layers of wet paint are applied onto an already wet surface. I am not an expert at this technique. I’ve never used it with oil paints . I do use it with watercolour, but I’m not the best practitioner. It can turn out dreadfully badly, or with practise you can get lucky. Having a good teacher helps immeasurably.

© theoldmortuary
This is an infinity pond at The Scarlet Hotel, Mawganporth, Cornwall. Mr Mackerel posed for this painting, below, before supper.
©theoldmortuary
I’ve also evolved a Wet on Wet technique for acrylic painting. This method is not taught but comes from an inquisitive mind. For this technique, as yet unpatented, I mix acrylic paint with a variety of clear fluids. There has been no teacher for this technique, many muddy mistakes.Water.Saline.Vodka.Rubbing alcohol.Silicone lube.When the different diluents meet on a pre-prepared canvas or board they react to one another quite differently and can give some fascinating effects. Sometimes great and sometimes shockingly bad. With a little practice I have learnt what works well together but I can always be surprised and not always in a good way.These two went well.Dungeness
©theoldmortuary
Dungeness detail.Forder Creek
© theoldmortuary
Forder Creek Detail.And finally and importantly.A Left Hand Cleaving Water
© theoldmortuary
Detail.This last picture is an important link to non arty wet on wet.P.SA pandemic revelation! @theoldmortuary have become hooked on wild water swimming. Not something that you expect to read in an artyfarty blog. But with a prompt like wet on wet, added to us living in Cornwall that particular prompt lends itself to wild swimming too. It can rain a bit in Cornwall. We are fairly enthusiastic swimmers in warmer climates but swimming outside in Britain has been pretty infrequent until this pandemic. Without access to swimming pools since March and with no holidays on the horizon, swimming was off our radar until about 10 days ago. Some friends invited us to go to a beach for an early morning swim and we haven’t stopped going. Wet on wet refers to us not caring about rain , which is very curious. We’ve taken the plunge a few times in the rain without any worries.We’ve even talked about wet suits to prolong our season.Pandemic Pondering- exploring Wet on Wet two ways.

Pandemic Pondering#152

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

The Art Group prompt word takes @theoldmortuary to some interesting places. Who doesn’t love a landscape?

My thing for years has been abstract landscapes. For this blog I plunged into my ideas and inspiration file.

I am intrigued and galvanized by nature’s ability to always overwhelm the constructs that man creates or just change the way things look. In doing so there is often unexpected beauty.

The dunes suffocating a beach hut at Wells-next-the-sea, Norfolk.

Here is an urban reclamation. Tarmac in Dulwich Park being broken up by tree roots and covered by autumn leaves and other natural detritus.

@theoldmortuary. The Smith Family Collection.

Nature is not exactly reclaiming this wall, but the Landscape Street Art is so famous as a site for Instagrammers that it is being worn away by sweaty hands and carefully posed leaning. This picture was taken some time after it was painted but before it became insanely popular as an Instagram background.

Alex Croft painted this as a commission for Goods of Desire. Countless Instagram photos feature this slowly fading wall.

©Instagram

Closer to home our century plus garden wall looked like a hedge as ivy took control.

It took quite a bit of effort to bring it back to wall status.

Next up 2 beaches slowly consuming man made structures.

And finally some box fresh images taken on Monday evenings combined swim and dog walk adventure.

A landscape shaped by the sea. Even if you visit this beach every day it will always be different.

Harlyn Bay, Cornwall

Pandemic Pondering #151

On By theoldmortuary.designIn PoetryLeave a comment

Wave is the prompt word of the Art Group. It would be easy living, as I do, close to the sea to share pictures of lapping waves. But today the word Wave gives me a direct link with our other home zone, Lambeth, London.

Not Waving but Drowning is a poem I loved as a teenager. Filed in my mind but not actually reread until today. I find it’s exquisite accuracy even more moving with a perspective altered by many years of adulthood, and the growing understanding of the fragility of young male mental health.

It is the most famous of Stevie Smith’s poems,published in 1957, it addresses death, as much of her work does, without sentiment.

And so on to the Lambeth connection.

Not Waving but Drowning is the second album by Loyle Carner a Lambeth born Hip-Hop artist. I’m not sure I’ve worked out why the album shares its name with Smith’s poem but Loyle is an Ambassador for CALM which is a charity working to support mens mental health. Hip Hop might not be your thing but Carners lyrics are as sharply accurate as Smith’s poetry.
https://www.thecalmzone.net/

Both the poetry of Smith and the lyrics of Loyle Carner use words to create a wave of emotion

I am in awe of their ability. I hope you are inspired to read more Smith and listen to Loyle Carner. Follow this link.
https://g.co/kgs/ZS9raZ

Not Waving, but drowning is the inspiration for this painting #mensmentalhealthawarenes

Not all creative ideas go to plan.

I wanted to push this image into a less figurative work. Unlike poetry or music some things are not great when reproduced. This print only really works if you can see it.

Man overwhelmed @theoldmortuary

Loyle Carner on Table Manners Podcast.
https://castbox.fm/x/x4nU

Pandemic Pondering #148

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Coffee HuntersLeave a comment

Blogging and running a series of prompts for #augustinthevalley on Instagram for my art group is challenging me. Yesterdays word Metaphor was great for the wordynerd but more of a challenge for my arty head. Todays prompt for the Art Group is 3D and I had no trouble finding the image I wanted to use as the prompt.So far so good you might think. I love this image for the one Red Coffee Pot in this apparent wall of coffee pots. Loving an image is all well and good but this image is not the whole story.This wall of coffee pots was one side of an art work/ sculpture by Roberto Fabelo a Cuban artist who created Catedral/Cathedral and it is both a Metaphor and a fetish object.@theoldmortuary we are exactly the sort of people who fetishize coffee. Not for us the Cathedrals of the large Coffee retailers. We attend the tiny chapels of independent coffee shops. There is even a little bit of on-line worship, this morning beans arrived, roasted to our idea of deliciousness in Bury St Edmunds.We plan a visit to a local roastery, Owens, very soon, always optimistic of an amazing cup of coffee. Fellow coffee fetishists have nagged us to make this pilgrimage.In place of religious artifacts our house boasts much coffee paraphernalia, including the contemporary version of the red coffee maker that I love so much in the top image of this blog.Roberto Fabelo has summed us up pretty well with his sculpture.Coffee has fueled my creative endeavours today todays prompt is, as you know 3D.I’m still trying to craft in watercolour a 3D image out of swirls of paint. Less obvious than the previous painting my androgynous person only just gains 3 dimensions. Maybe more coffee worship is needed. Thankfully it’s a fairly harmless fetish.

Pandemic Pondering #142

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Fitness1 Comment

The prompt for the Art Group today is Walk.

Today @theoldmortuary has walked 16, 000 steps which is something to celebrate. We have also eaten a similar amount of calories. We are not feeling as wrecked as we could have done.

Possibly because the cafe where we stopped had this useful sign.

Surely an encouragement to go beyond the 10,000 daily steps reccomended.

10,000 steps is significant in the Pandemic particularly but also in life in general, because it is considered to be the right amount of walking exercise to maintain a good fitness level.

10, 000 steps,5 and a half miles, 9k or there about, is significant in another hugely important human endeavour.

Spatial Homogamy

Not a word group that springs to mind when thinking of matters of the 💓 or further down.

Spatial Homogamy- The Geography of Love

Pre 1931 most couples mate-selected from within a 10km geographical location. Between 1931 and 1988 despite the advent of motorised transport the distance didn’t change significantly and even with internet dating a distance of less than 5 miles from home or work is the most popular option.

This is represented in the naming of geographical locations. Dogger Bank should not be considered in this pondering.

Lovers Lane.

Lovers Walk

and the obvious name of a piece of street furniture.

The Kissing Gate.

10,000 steps not just a fitness goal.

Pandemic Pondering #135

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Family, Gardens and gardening, Serendipity2 Comments

August 1st 2020.

For a month Pandemic Ponderings will be slightly controlled by the prompt list that my art group, Drawn to the Valley is using to inspire a response from members on Instagram and Facebook during August.

As you know from PP#133, I am slightly churlish about prompts but am choosing to see this as a creative challenge not only for art but my creative writing/social history Ponderings.

#1 Gardens

About two and a bit years ago garden design @theoldmortuary took on a new angle when we had to make it safe for an anticipated grandchild.

At the time that little family were living in Hong Kong so we had time on our side for alterations to the structure of the garden.

Then with great excitement they returned to Cornwall to live and our garden plans were properly tested and found to be pretty exciting for someone under two.

Then the Pandemic hit and she couldn’t visit. Then the Pandemic hit in a different way and they have had to return to Hong Kong.

Here she is inspecting the garden for herself, from above.

Then she required a meeting with the Head Gardener to discuss changes and improvements required for when she is able to visit again.

By embracing prompts I have been able to explain in a gentle way why we’ve been a little sad for a few months.

In the future the little person will know that she was loved and we were sad to see her go in 2020.

I’m looking at prompts in a new way let’s hope I am not a recidivist and return to my grumpy prompt hating ways.

For completeness sake here is the picture I’m going to pop into Instagram for the Garden prompt.

Dead heading into a turquoise bucket.

Pandemic Pondering #131

On By theoldmortuary.designIn FamilyLeave a comment

The boots have left the building.

For the past year we’ve been hands- on grandparents @theoldmortuary. The period of the pandemic has changed the way we can be grandparents, just as it has disrupted aspects of many peoples lives. As of today we have become Zoomgrandparents. Google has many sites suggesting different ways to be gramdparents when the physical distance and an ongoing pandemic make actual contact impossible.

Eliminating the miles has always been a grandparent thing.

Distance is entirely relative, my dad didn’t get to see his grandparents often. It required my great grandparents to travel the ten miles between Braintree and Great Bardfield with a pony and trap. That’s 20 miles per visit and about 4 hours travelling time at a walking trot. Beyond rare visits the only other method of communication would have been a letter.

I lived closer to one set of my grandparents, a walk by road of maybe 2-3 miles. I was only about 6 when it was entirely acceptable for me to take a short cut, alone, though two dairy farms divided by a river. The other set of granparents lived 12 miles away. Unusually they both had cars. My grandad drove an Austin A40 and being picked up by him often meant sharing the inside of the car with barrels of beer for his pub.

In contrast his wife, my Nan, drove a Zephyr 6. She ran a private taxi company, lifts and visits to them were entirely dictated by their business needs. It was always a surprise as to which of these,now classic, cars would pick me up.

In contrast my children lived 100’s of miles from their grandparents. Visits were often long weekends the journeys to and fro in fairly dull cars on motorways. Contact in between visits would be by phone.

Zooming and googling, Different, but hopefully effective. A talking head.

Pandemic Pondering #123

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

100 WordPress readers for the blog. I know it’s nothing compared to hugely popular blogs, but 100 people who are happy to read along on the pondering journey of someone insignificant, who just enjoys writing and connecting, is thrilling!
I was pondering the longevity of Pandemic Ponderings when I remembered one of my favourite books, ‘The Long Weekend’ by Robert Graves. It is a social history of the interwar years.

I wonder if we are entering a Pandemic ‘Long Weekend’ in Britain. Restrictions of the draconian type are being lifted and bits of life are returning to some form of normal. @theoldmortuary lives a more resticted life than the government suggests whilst still connecting with family and friends. We are mindful of the Second Wave of the pandemic which could start anytime between August or October depending on who you talk to.
So I will ponder on through the Pandemic ‘long weekend’ and into the second wave taking at least 100 of you with me.

On with the Sunday blog.
Two quotes landed in my social media feed today. They are properly robust pieces of secular writing with not a hint of whimsy, new agedness or religion.

I love them both. They need no explanation, but I would say they represent quite accurately my attitude to life.

Time to catch up on 3 regular topics in the blog.

The first dahlia of Pandemic Pondering #120 is the only Dahlia still. This morning he was looking gorgeous but as you can see from the photo, protecting him from slugs and bugs comes at a cost. He cannot live out in the green areas of the garden but has to live on the decking area where domestic life happens. Here he is this morning amongst the drying washing.

This evening he is still wide awake at sunset.

Our fitness regime, at home with Joe Wicks on YouTube continues, and has often had a mention blogwise but after more than 18 weeks of exercising at home we are addicted to having a velvet cushion for our aching knees. Surely all gyms could provide such comfort.

And finally we did our regular walk around Sutton harbour and the Barbican in Plymouth. Our regular haunt of Jacka Bakery was enhanced today by having some of our lovely family in it.

Sunday pondering, a little bit deep, a little bit superficial. Thanks for being 1 in 100 xxx

Pandemic Pondering #120

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Dahlias, Hugo and LolaLeave a comment

Dogs and dahlias take an early nap.

The first Dahlia of the summer @theoldmortuary decided to pop open this morning. It’s a risky life in this garden as the slugs here are super tenacious nibblers and the 22 year old cat thinks sprouting dahlias are the perfect place to do her ablutions. Thankfully both slugs and the cat choose the dull dahlias as their victims and ignore the glamorous ones. By midday this one was trying really hard to be gorgeous.

But it’s tough being the first dahlia in a summer garden and it was soon heading off for an early sleep.

Sleep in daytime was a bit of a theme. An art group committee meeting was scheduled for the afternoon. Hugo was fully ready for some Zoom action this afternoon.

But just like the dahlia he chose early sleep over the excitement of Logo design and postponed exhibitions.

Pandemic Pondering #118

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends, Serendipity3 Comments

Sweet Peas, such a thoughtful gift from a neighbour who we’ve come to know better during the pandemic. Gil and his wife Jen live just down the hill from our renovated Cornish Hedge. Gil is also a South Londoner, by birth rather than adoption like us! I found the perfect vase @theoldmortuary for a gift from a native Londoner.

I also tried another ‘flat-lay’ with the Sweet Peas, the orange painted 🍊 box and inadvertently my foot.

Gifted sweet peas are a happy reminder of Hannah’s mum who always gifted us large bunches of them and my grandfather who always delivered home grown flowers. With him Sweet Peas were always safer than his dahlia deliveries which always came with a side serving of earwigs that nipped small fingers.

Another gift this week of gooseberries has inspired another ‘Flat Lay’, thanks to Mel and Ed for the goozgog inspiration to make Gooseberry Drizzle Cake and Gooseberry Fool.