#443 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art1 Comment

Morning dog walks are full of unexpected surprises. Sometimes when we stop for the ritual of the poo, I stare into nothing for the time it takes to sniff out the exact spot, spin to geolocate and then eliminate. Yesterday there was a bright flash of blue. Not an urban Kingfisher but some lovely old wrought iron, showing it’s provenance, over 200 years of being weather beaten. Two dogs equals two stops,the second one on a beach where this tiny piece of old tile was my gem of the moment.

My day was all about tiny gems, the studio needs to be de-Christmassed. It has remnants of twinkle from pre-Christmas gilding left on the work bench.

Having cleared that up I was left with a pristine surface to work on, almost as delicious as clean bedding, I decided to take some time out from tidying and give a new sketch book and latex tools a little try out.

The exhibitions of last year inspired me to explore some different aspects of drawing, painting and printing. The one genre that can be fitted into a small box and just an hour or so of time is charcoal sketching. My new sketchbook is going to be dedicated to drawing in charcoal with a bit of water colour thrown in.

Have a good weekend!

#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!

#441 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn HomeLeave a comment
A bus stop rainbow. 8 a.m

Some days a bus stop rainbow is the best and only option. The run-up to Christmas is all about preparatory domestic admin. The week or so after New Year is about clearing up. Over the festive season, a couple of Gherkins had made their escape from their pickling brine. There was a bitter smell coming from the fridge. It is amazing what gets put back into a fridge over Christmas.

My plan was to de-Christmas the kitchen and dining room but the bitter whiff of escaped gherkin in the fridge made my number one priority clearing out the fridge. Our fridge has an energy-saving function that means when 2 minutes or so have elapsed, with the door open, it squeals like an urban fox in the mating season. It took me 30 minutes to empty the fridge and find the whiffy gherkins. That’s an awful lot of squealing. It is possible to silence the alarm but only by pushing the door-activated button. But that only buys another 2 minutes. OK while I was up close and intimate with the fridge not so great when I was discovering, over at the sink that the salad and vegetable drawers, were not water-tight after I had filled them with warm soapy water. Only a fool would shout expletives at a fridge, I was that fool.

So an hour or more into the big post-Christmas clear-up, Christmas was still untroubled by my plans for domestic order, I had an unplanned clean, twinkly, and most importantly silent fridge. Half a lemon that never got to dive into the fizzing abyss of a Gin and Tonic and two nearly empty jars of mayonnaise.

The lemon

There was also a bin with out-of-date stuff dating back 18 months. An archive of unrepeated recipe ingredients stretching back to the day we moved in.

Sidetracked by the mayonnaise jars I decided to move everything off the mid-century modern, solid wood furniture and nourish the wood with the leftover mayonnaise. Once that was done I moved some plants into a window to refresh their light-starved leaves.

And then at 4 pm as the light started fading, I took the Christmas tree down, packed up his baubles and lights, folded the tree into his cardboard box, and posted him up into the roof space. At 5 pm the bus stop rainbow had gone. Where exactly had my day gone?

#440 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn 2023Leave a comment
http://quicktide.co.uk/

Farewell, old friend. Not having a nautical bone in my body, it is a surprise to me to love something so clever as a cardboard tide time calculator. In the big January clear up this friend of the past two years moved into the recycling pile. Having only a two-year life cycle it has moved into obsolescence during the festive season. Apart from informing me about the safest time to call a ‘bob’ for our group of hardy, year-round swimmers; I think I loved it because it reminded me of a Gestational calculator. An essential tool for anyone who works in obstetric medicine.

A quick whizz of this in a clinic gives an estimated date of delivery as long as a woman knew the date of her last period. Most of us who have used this calculator professionally have been asked to spin the wheel inaccurately by patients, anxious to make an acceptable man believe he was the father of their child, rather than the likely, but not necessarily acceptable, man that the true date indicated. We never did as they asked.

My mastery of these two sorts of calculators is miraculous to me given that a slide rule and logarithmic calculator books brought me to my knees in mathematics lessons .

© Ebay

Predicting the future my dad even bought me a round slide rule. It didn’t help.

The slide rule in any shape was just a method of torture to my poor dysnumeric brain. I wonder if learning maths is any easier in the 21st century. To be clear slide rules were not part of my formal education. My dad loved a slide rule, to him they were a miraculous magic wand into a world of mathematical calculations, a world that he entered for both work and pleasure. Despite his best efforts it is a world that I stand on the threshold of. I know enough to get by both in life and professionally but Maths is definitely the kind of party that I avoid wherever possible. A lovely man called Dan told me a maths joke last week. I was both fearful and mesmerised. Impressed by his ability to use the two words maths and joke in the same sentence.

So goodbye old friend, you gave me some brief credibility as someone who could use charts effectively. 2023 will not be the same without you.

P.S Straight after writing this I went to a news website. Our current Prime Minister wants to make studying maths compulsory up to age 18.

BBC News – Rishi Sunak wants all pupils to study maths to age 18
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64158179

#439 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn The Box, Van Life5 Comments

This was the view from the van at Harlyn yesterday. We have been waiting for the whole festive season for the weather to improve enough for us to spend a day by the beach. One of our regular winter treats, usually on Christmas or Boxing Day. Harlyn has been much on my mind since my work at The Box last week. My poor insomniac head was pondering the inclusion of a human skeleton, from about 2000 BC, in an exhibition at the museum.The skeleton and it’s Cist style slate coffin had been exhumed from an Iron Age cemetery just beyond the beach at Harlyn. In the circular and always inconclusive thinking of an occasional insomniac I felt so sorry for those bones, that ex human, that loved one ,who had been moved from somewhere so beautiful to be gawped at in a museum, even a very splendid museum. I would so prefer my own bones or those of the people I love to lie close to where the waves break over a beach. Left alone where they had been interred in the place where they lived and died.

I realise far more learned heads than mine have debated the rights and wrongs of showing skeletons in museums. But the curious workings of my night-time brain are never restricted by my lack of qualifications or experience in any subject. Now I’ve got my nighttime pondering off my chest I can waffle on about what a gorgeous day it was today. This is not as random as it seems, when my childhood home was built a terracotta pot and some bones were found and put on a show in Colchester Castle. I always felt sad that that person had been moved too. My parents always thought I had an overactive imagination.

Strong Adolfo’s

Our real world day started with coffee at Strong Adolfo’s and one of my favourite complicated images created by sharp bright sunlight. Soon enough we were on the beach, scampering in the waves.

Since we were last at Harlyn a sauna has been built in the sand dunes.

The sea provides the cold plunge for scarlet and over-heated Sauna lovers. Hugo and Lola liked to join them for the plunge once they realised it was a leisure activity that involved squealing.

Two long beach walks and an hour or so of van time, enjoying tea and magazines that had been gifted to us, as subscriptions for Christmas gifts, was as arduous as our day got. The temperature dropped once the sun started to set so, putting coats on for the first time of the day, we took a final walk on a much quieter beach.

The last of our festive season traditions completed.

#438 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn FilmLeave a comment

We have used the New Year wisely so far. The kitchen has piles of clean bed linen and towels following our Christmas of friends and family.

We’ve also used these last few days to catch-up with all the TV we missed while we were eating, walking and playing games .

One catch up was more than 75 years old. It’s a Wonderful Life, voted the best Christmas Movie often and until yesterday completely unknown to us. Christmas Movies is not a genre that has a huge amount of quality to compete with. Quantity certainly, but Hollywood producers scrape the bottom of many barrels to assemble their teams for festive film making. Then throw in some snow and romance and hope nobody notices the shortcomings. It’s a Wonderful Life is an accidental success having been a commercial failure when it was made. The copyright lapsed in 1974 and was able to be shown on TV with no fees needing to be paid. Broadcasters all over the Western world showed it multiple times each Christmas after that and it became ‘the’ classic, black and white movie to watch at Christmas. Using similar magic realism and fantasy to Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol it sets a tale of personal/human woe in the heart of the festive season. At 75 years old it becomes a history lesson too.

There is comfort in doing the same things every Christmas. Watching or reading a Christmas Carol makes me glad to not be poor in Victorian England. It’s a Wonderful Life makes me super-grateful not to be a woman in a pre-war U.S.A. I will probably watch the film every year from now on just to irritate myself. The irony is not lost on me that this pondering started with the sense of pleasure at having clean laundry!

#437 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Welcome 2023, let’s see what you have to offer.

January 1st heralds the end of 2022. The end of Advent+2022 and the end of the cheese footballs. A tasty snack that delights and disgust in equal measure. Savory wafer biscuit wrapped around powdery cheese and shaped like footballs. A Festive staple food for most of my life. You can take the woman out of Essex but you can’t get Essex out of the woman. Other classier snacks are available @theoldmortuary. Port, Stilton and Christmas cake drags me slightly closer to polite society.

Talking of my Essex roots I am thrilled to say that a fellow Essex artist has been given a Knighthood. At last someone prepared to take his responsibilities seriously.

Sir Grayson Perry

2023 off to an interesting start. No predictions, no resolutions, no expectations. Let’s see how it runs…

#436 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment
©Keith Hide

10 years ago my neighbour in London sent me this picture from his New Year’s Eve location. A holiday chalet on Whitsand Bay. By no stretch of mine or anyone elses imagination did I think that 10 years after this photograph was taken I would be living 25 minutes away from this spot. Exactly 10 years after this picture was taken I was just a little further up the cliff at a family reunion in a different holiday chalet. Celebrating our new grandaughter with her extended family and celebrating 4 generations of one branch of her family being together.

New Years Eve is traditionally a time for predictions, life has taught me not to put too much faith or time into predictions but instead to embrace Serendipity and Happenstance and ride them, like a surfer, onto the beach of reality.

Last blog of Advent+2022, lets see what 2023 delivers.

#435 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, SerendipityLeave a comment

I made myself laugh yesterday on another wet and windy dog walk. I caught a glimpse of myself in the full- length glass doors of a closed cafe. I was completely dressed like the dogs.

The weather was dire so I couldn’t get a photo, but this bathroom shot gives you an idea. Even the architecture of the walk seemed to have got the ‘salted caramel’ dress code.

Long ago this was the entrance to my Fine Art Studio complex.

Then my task for the day was to create gift packs from a Photo Shoot * that my family were involved in at the height of summer.

©rubylightportraits.co.uk

The evening light and our choice of clothes was also Caramel coloured. Once again the dogs were perfectly colour co-ordinated.

Although Hugo could not be trusted to pose. As regular readers will know he is on a one dog mission to rescue every frond of seaweed from the sea. Sorting these pictures was like playing snap with my family. Six packs of selected images were the reward for a couple of hours of checking and checking serial numbers.

It was a Salted Caramel kind of day!

* we are not really a photo shoot kind of family. However meeting Rachel at Ruby Light was a very relaxed experience. I can happily recommend her.

https://g.co/kgs/iAuxrR

#434 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022Leave a comment

In the spirit of Advent +2022 I thought this image of the Rope Bridge at Heligan was a good visual metaphor for this period between Christmas and New Year. The anticipation of stepping into an unkown 2023, which is represented here by sun bleached rope, from the slightly wobbly but verdant certainty that is our lived experience of 2023. Last night I experienced a little bit of my 2023. We were forced into a bar by bad weather during the evening dog walk. It was my third drenching of the day. My drink order rumbled up, from deep within my Christmas archive of things to enjoy over the festive period. Inexplicably I ordered a port and lemon.

The cosiness of my grandparents country pub was the inspiration. Ordinarily the pub was filled with farmers, American servicemen and the passing trade of a not-too-busy road between a market town, a few villages, and an airbase. At Christmas time the pub took on a more glamourous feel, women who were dressed up came into the pub on the arms of the same men or sometimes in large work groups. At this time of year customers became very generous and brought my grandparents a drink when they bought a round of drinks for their companions. My grandmother always chose a Port and Lemon in winter. In summer her tipple was a Booth’s Gin and Tonic. I wonder now if they were buying her silence and discretion. In a small country community all sorts went on, much of it in the pub.

I really have no idea why the words, port and lemon came out of my mouth yesterday evening, perhaps prolonged rainfall has softened my mind. Regardless of the cause the effect was very pleasing, a simple refreshing drink, hopelessly old fashioned and probably rarely requested. I may order one, more often in 2023.