The bright sunlight of Sunday turned this blog into a riot of blue and green. Starting at 8 am with vivid seaweed.
From the exact same location I could turn around to show you the sillouettes of the trees that were trimmed last week.
Its not only the trees that got a trim this week. Hannah also got a haircut this week so we are 25% tidy @theoldmortuary as Hugo and Lola can look pretty shaggy after only 4 weeks away from their salon visits.
The post swim dash to breakfast took us past this Ceanothus and this gorgeous door.
After a morning spent on human pursuits the dogos waited patiently for their turn, with a bit of a blue background.
A dog walk on a slightly different part of the coast found one more blue and green image.
Friday night brought us closer to the weekend with a swim from our normal beach and a chance to check on the trees post lockdown hair cut. The trees had a haircut earlier this week,not us, we are still wild haired. I’m not sure we could see a huge difference with the trees. I hope a trip to the hairdressers will be more noticable!
This week has seen us step back a little bit into a more normal life. The high point was probably a trip to a charity shop where the staff were as pleased to see us and the dogs as we were to be there. We’ve also eaten out, out out, a couple of times and realised that in April eating Al Fresco carries with it the risk of stiff limbs and cold food but the pleasure of sitting with and talking to people is something we’ve missed a lot.
There was also a lovely episode of serendipity. When I took the dogs for their late evening walk, one evening, I was forced to cross the road to avoid a small hedgehog, who was going about his business snuffling in fallen leaves. The dogs believe all hedgehogs are their friends as the ones who live in our garden don’t object too much too their intrusive behaviour. On crossing the road, after a few steps,I saw a small dark object on the path. Someone had lost a wallet. There was a driving licence inside so I could find where the owner lived. No one was home when I drove over but on my return drive I found someone out walking with a torch. Owner and wallet were reunited.
There is a strange coincidence of kindness in that location.
The wallet was found very close to a house where @theoldmortuary saved someones life, almost exactly a year ago. Anybody would have done the same in those same circumstances. No one ever thanked us. Doing the right thing is never done for thanks but a well placed thank you really does put a smile on anyone’s face.
Finding a wallet and returning it, a small thing in comparison obviously made a whole family happy and they sent some really lovely thankyou messages the next morning. I may smile all weekend.
Some blogs write themselves. This one started life 80 years ago when 6 volunteer firefighters left the small Cornish town of Saltash to support fire crews, from all over the southwest, working in Plymouth during the Plymouth Blitz. Unfortunately they drove over an unexploded bomb in King Street and were all killed. This morning a service was held in the local church to mark 80 years since their deaths, later a wreath was laid at their graves, which are all in the same place in the church graveyard.
A vintage fire engine and crew attended the ceremony.
For a time the area in front of @theoldmortuary was busy with people attending the service and posing with the fire engine. A World War 2 Air Raid siren and the fire engine bell were strange sounds to hear on a sunny spring morning.
It is probably at least 80 years since a fire engine like this drove past @theoldmortuary. Strange to think that hundreds of mourners would have filled this little village and used the local pub to show respect to 6 local men who set off for Plymouth one night. Taking their fire engine across the Tamar on the ferry and never returning alive.
Tuesday was a proper out day. Not just out, but out out. Out with other artists talking, painting and sketching in the grounds of Pentillie Castle. Such a beautiful place and so many options, so little time to opt.
As usual I was a complete sucker for an empty bench.
Meanwhile at the Bathing Hut I had a huge amount of help with my sketching.
I had taken my Christmas and Birthday ,art material, presents with me to experiment. But the biggest discovery of all was how these materials worked when mixed with an enormous amount of dog slobber.
Dog slobber as it turns out works very well with water colour and acrylic pens. Apparently I can also paint while nattering- on like a person who has only recently been released from a Pandemic Lock down.
Luckily my lovely dog companion was very intent on ball throwing and retrievals as well as adding slobber to the painting. This little fellow landed about a metre behind Stephanie, my fellow painter.
Painting and bat watching ended when I needed to find a loo, nearby I found these two circular things. I have no idea what they are but they make a great photo.
They look like the most amazing biscuits.
Thanks to Anne Crozier for organising our Drawing Days and thanks to to Pentillie Castle for making us so welcome. The link below takes you to their website .
Yesterday England took a partial step out of Covid Lockdown. Among other changes non essential shops opened and food and drink suppliers could serve customers in outdoor seated areas. The media this morning are reporting a Monday like no other, ever, with people queueing to enjoy retail therapy and socialising, after a very long period of restrictions.
Not much changed @theoldmortuary. Our lockdown routine will probably only change with small incremental adaptations. Our swimming, ‘ bobbing’ life changed immediately though . The scone and landscape picture at the top of the blog represents absent friends, who were unable to swim last night because they were free to travel and stay away. Or had work commitments that were no longer screen based or as flexible as they have been during lockdown.
Not only were there less ‘ Bobbers’ last night, there were less swimmers in general. The Firestone Bay seal had huge portions of the sea to himself. He/she is the small dot in line diagonal with the two bouys.
The second scone picture of the day sums this transitional period up. There is some certainty and clarity in the immediate foreground but we can’t clearly see the outline of the future.
Yesterday was bright in our corner of Cornwall/ England. So bright in fact that we largely forgot that there had been some easement in Covid restrictions. We could have met another household in our garden or theirs or any other outdoor space but instead just pottered about in the garden making it ready for Spring. The only loosening of behaviours was on a Zoom meeting where the Bookclub arranged an outdoor real life book club meet up next month. Yesterday we discussed literary connections to foolishness as we are close to April 1st . It was good to see so many readers on screen to discuss nonsense. The day finished with a swim in the sunshine, the water temperature had dropped a bit and the currents were not kind but sunshine on your face makes it easier to cope with these things. The daffodils at the top and bottom of this blog have popped their fancy heads up in the old part of the cemetery near @theoldmortuary. They look like fancy hats ready for a very dressed up occasion.
There is also a fine crop of wild garlic, some of which I will harvest later today if the sun stays out. Yesterday I harvested an image from the Victorian part of the graveyard. An eternal message that has been made abstract by Lichen and illuminated by sunshine.
This is the last photograph I took in March 2020 before the first Covid-19 lockdown in Britain. It was mid afternoon at Cotehele and I was recovering from a nasty virus. My last virus as it happens, a welcome benefit of adhering to Covid restrictions is that @theoldmortuary we’ve been virus free for a year now despite doing public facing/touching jobs.
In colour this picture is nothing much. Reeds on a managed flood plain on a typically greige day in the Tamar Valley. What the colour picture would never have shown was the amazing sound that was produced as the wind blew through the reeds. I took the picture just to remind me of that sound. True Whispering Grasses.
Really the original picture was nothing much, just a diary note to remind me of a lovely serendipitous sound on a walk that was being done more out of a sense of necessity and desperation than for pleasure.
I tinkered about with the image altering the contrast and then converted it into black and white.
Ta Da!!
A dull photo has turned into a sound. Not perhaps the gentle sound of whispering grasses, although I can hear them when I look at this with an imagined low volume. If I switch it up to medium volume I hear the interference on a television in the eighties or nineties when the signal was lost. Up a notch again and it is the feedback on a performers mic ( when ever have I felt nostalgic about that piercing scream ) it could also be, currently, two people having different Zoom meetings with their laptops too close together. My final auditory assault from one picture is this.
Imagine sketching it in chalk on an old school blackboard.
I’m fairly certain that last suggestion was not kind. The link below is a gentle salve to give you a good earworm for Friday. The mellifluous Sandy Denny.
A mini festival of positivity of the past year. I’m not about to load you all with the downsides of the pandemic as it has affected us @theoldmortuary but in common with many we’ve had some dodgy days in this last year . But it has been a year that has been fully lived and many positives have emerged from the negative spaces created by the sad days.
We are much better cooks , not only baking but also healthy vegetable loaded meals. If only I could stop there and mention healthy snacks but we’ve succumbed to pouch chocolate . A packet of Minstrels is not safe in this house.
Covid-safe extended walks on a limited number of routes has curiously provided us with some lovely new friends. We already had some superb ones. Nodding with recognition on a regular walk or queueing for coffee in a pandemic has encouraged us to talk to strangers. If you do that often enough, over a year, people cease to be strangers.
Finally the wonder that is cold water swimming. Originally started because we needed to boost Vitamin D levels and our immune systems. I’m not sure either of us truly believed we would keep on swimming throughout the winter. With the swimming came the little support network we built. A Whatsapp group called Bobbers and a whole informal group of swimmers who swim in Tranquility Bay. Sometimes we share the sea with a seal and sometimes with something bigger.
Sun rising on one whole year of Pandemic Pondering.
The United Kingdom is marking one year since the first Lockdown announced with a minutes silence at noon and a collective act of reflection and rememberance at 8pm, when people are encouraged to leave a candle or other source of light on their doorsteps.
When plans for a UK wide act of reflection was announced last week I had mixed feelings. One year on we are still in the midst of this pandemic with no clear idea of how or when it will end. In the future 23rd of March may well be the day we remember, reflect and count the cost of the Pandemic but at the moment it is still our lived experience and most of us reflect and readjust many times a day. The world may decide to have a different International Day of Mourning once this Pandemic has been brought under an acceptable level of control. The details of the end remain unknown and the only thing we can reflect on is our personal current running total of loss which is accurate. Governments figures will be adjusted up and down as the pandemic is considered over the years and statistical analysis is argued over. Individuals and families know with upsetting accuracy exactly what they have lost in one year.
I would hope not to still be Pandemically Pondering in a years time. An additional P for Post will be added just as soon as it seems appropriate. Thanks for reading along and commenting on various platforms, thanks for stopping me in the street and saying that you read and enjoy Ponderings. Tomorrow will be a festival of Positives sharing the good things that have happened over the past year @theoldmortuary
Yesterday was a strange day topped off by a sunset swim. The water was calm but chilly, it was possible to bask in the setting sun when swimming towards the west.
Nothing was quite as it should be yesterday. @theoldmortuary is close to three graveyards, an older church one that has expanded into fields behind it and more recently, on the opposite side of the lane leading to a nature reserve,a new graveyard in more fields for more recent burials. We are well used to funerals of all sorts and their associated traffic. A neighbour but unknown to us, died recently and was being taken elsewhere for her service and committal yesterday morning. Being at the beginning of a final journey rather than the end felt dystopian with the undertaker performing a slow walk ahead of the hearse as they drove away from the family home.
After a year of behavioural changes it is a little unnerving to always witness the sadness of strangers without the balance of being voyeurs to the joyful church events of Baptism and Weddings. Brightly coloured family dramas played out just steps away from our front door.
These things are the rituals that link us to the past. This is probably the only year in more than 400 where the church and the pub, sentinels either side of a lane have not shared in the celebrations and condolences of church based family events.
The two buildings are linked in these moments. People crossing, sometimes wobbly legged and weepy, between the two in the time before and after the main events. Weeping is not reserved for funerals!
Just having the church and bereavement gatherings seems unbalanced. Life will be better when happy and sad people can seek refuge in the pub, before or after church and turn their legs wobbly if that is what the situation requires.
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