#410 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, Serendipity, YardeningLeave a comment

Today is almost certainly the last day I will be able to harvest a red tomato 🍅 grown outside in the backyard. This is hugely significant for two reasons, I have never before achieved growing even one red tomato outdoors in any garden during my lifetime. This year our new location and probably the warmest year on record are the factors that have made this possible. Not newly sprouted green fingers on my own fair hands. The warm year had made our yard positively Mediterranean until late October. Since then the yard has grown a velvety carpet of mould. Like the set of Tolkiens’ ‘Middle Earth’ in the Lord of the Rings film franchise, everything is cloaked in green flock. The spring clear-up is almost certainly going to involve a pressure washer but maybe nature or the predicted cold snap will remove the green tinge in the next month or two. Today’s tomato is not a thing of beauty, I already know that, but in the spirit of Advent+2022 I can share a very pretty tomato from November, never before the subject of a pondering.

#409 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, Serendipity1 Comment

This picture was shared to me by a friend yesterday. By one of life great coincidences, I received someone else parcel yesterday. I don’t need to open it to know what is inside. A wrought iron garden ornament depicting a cat climbing into the garden. Whatever was the purchaser thinking. No one wants strange cats in their garden. I suppose the only possible positive to be taken from this surprise package, is that wrought iron cats do not shit in other peoples borders. Trying to get this wrong parcel out of my house is going to involve some thought. The address is correct but the name is completely unfamiliar.

In another coincidence my Alexa device had a funny five minutes this morning. Instead of the usual early morning list of things I might need to buy. She suggested that maybe tomorrow she would wake me up with Dance Anthems. That is certainly not my usual Sunday vibe. It does however allow me to share a never before-seen image of Plymouths’ Tinside. Taken through a 1930’s glass brick and gives quite a trippy image.

Advent +2022 images never pondered before.

#408 theoldmortuary ponders

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

Context is everything and without context this is just a rather lovely goat picture. Last night, in my dreams I had a rather out of context experience. Not unusual for a dream to be out of context, of course, but this one was unusual for me. My parents were in my kitchen waiting to see their great-grandchild. I hugged them and they were insubstantial and anxious to be on their way. They have been dead nearly 30 years and I have moved home 4 times since then. They have never before appeared, out of context, in my dreams, always appearing somewhere that they would have been familiar with. The subconscious mind is a glorious thing.

The context of the very lucky goat in the top picture is that he lives above one of the worlds most beautiful beaches. These two photographs were taken within moments of each other without me moving more than a couple of steps.

Myrtos Beach, Kephalonia

Advent +2022. Sharing pictures that have never before made it to the pondering a.

#407, theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022, Serendipity1 Comment

It was a shock, this morning, to look at a December calendar and realise how the days actually fall. I have been putting in our commitments without looking at the names of the days they fall on. Christmas day falls on a Saturday which means there are only three effective weekends in December and one of them is in two days time. I am not a festive catastrophist, nor a perfectionist, so this is not a worry, more an observation. Those of us, who can, will gather together and have a good time. I think this feeling of unease is just about the sensation. A month of normal, mundane weekend activities must be squeezed into three rather than the usual four. Months that give me five weekends equally give me concern. May is a good one to give me the jitters of over-commitment when it provides 5 weekends. That is usually 5 weekends of visits or visitors that are planned and never go wrong but nonetheless give me waking nights of cold chills when I imagine that I have overbooked myself. I think it is safe to say I am a four weekends to the month kind of person. You know where you are with four weekends. Three is definitely too few and five just makes me giddy .

Welcome December, here is some sea glass and fishing net picked off our local beach, and with that a theme for Advent+2022. A bit of a daily pondering including photographs that have never made it into the blog before. A sort of Advent+ Calendar of surprises.

Sea glass and fishing net from Stonehouse beaches.

#406 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photographyLeave a comment

It was 2:30 today when I completely realised that today was Wednesday and not Thursday. By then I had achieved most of the things that needed to be achieved by Thursday on Wednesday.

So tomorrow stretches ahead with nothing more taxing than a hair cut. By tomorrow November will be over and December will be on it’s glitzy slightly camp match towards Christmas so today’s miscalculation has inspired me to share some old photos. November is a great time to take photos if the weather is good.

If the weather is not good then November can feel like an endurance. So farewell November see you in 2023.

That’s a weight off my mind.

#405 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Royal William YardLeave a comment

I am not entirely sure how @theoldmortuary will mark Advent+ 2022, but as I write this I am below this year’s window dressing. Up somewhat temporarily because today is cold but extraordinarily bright so I have no idea how this looks from outside. Outside looked like this at 8am.

Personally I am on the countdown to the shortest day on the 21st of December. I am not one for short days. I like to maximise my outdoor time in December and January just to prove to myself how utterly useless I would be any further North in the Northern Hemisphere. Last night I delayed my afternoon walk a bit to catch some luxury yachts that were moored up nearby,to facilitate visits by prospective purchasers. An interesting sales drive specific to those who have a Christmas wish list considerably different to mine. But ever the neon-loving human that I am, a walk involving twinkle and glitz,is a walk enhanced. Lola was having no part in me photographing extreme luxury and reduced several million pounds worth of spending,to an abstract light-show by robust ear scratching as I pressed the shutter.

The dogs interest on a walk is always more olfactory than visual. They appear to not notice the short days as long as their regular haunts are visited several times a week. Perhaps I should be more dog about these dark months.

But since my sense of smell has once more deserted me I am spared the lamp post sniffing rituals of my canine friends, which possibly only leaves snuggling on the sofa which is the only other preferred or acceptable winter activity for our dogs. Perhaps ‘Be More Dog’ is not really a great idea for health and productivity.

#404 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, TravelsLeave a comment

This was quite the morning for a bob. Not that the water was quite like this when we were in. Half an hour before this picture,while we were in the water, it was bumpy and grey, 13 degrees in the water and 9 out.

Rainbows were an added bonus. This is how all winter Mondays should start. Then lunch out and an afternoon spent with a carpet cleaning machine, I’m not sure that necessarily is the way the day should have gone but any artistic endeavours involve a man relieving himself in a back street. So the options are not great.Last Monday we were leaving Dublin and a week on I still haven’t nattered on about The Guinness Storehouse. One of Europes best tourist attractions. It was the only truly tourist haunt that we visited. Not exactly the worlds most hardened drinkers the building was definitely the most intriguing aspect of the visit. The whole point of the building is to turn lime green hops and water.

Into black and white porter, in this case Guinness.

The finer points of brewing passed me by but the magisterial building was wonderful.

People who know a whole lot more than me believe that Guinness tastes better in Dublin. At the end of our tour we got a pint each. That is a lot of something to base an opinion on and yet I remain quite unable to tell anyone if a Dublin Guinness is significantly different from one served anywhere else, but regardless it slipped down very well in a very beautiful building.

#403 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, ponderingLeave a comment

It is a misty murky weekend in the Tamar Valley. I’ve been overwhelmed with a virus and have had to watch on as my fellow bobbers took to the water on the one day that our swimming zone was not treacherous.

But out of the gloom came a red dot indicating that I had sold a piece of art at the exhibition where I caught the virus earlier in the week.

I am super pleased as it was one of my experimental pieces with alcohol inks. Alcohol is also involved in other art projects this week. My ongoing urge to draw a Dublin back street complete with inebriated man having a pee. He is not so much the focal point, more a piece of street furniture as nearly every historic back street had at least one man relieving himself in a pool of light. I will spare you the Google images that I will be drawing from but there are days when I am glad my artistic researches are no longer tracked by the NHS IT department. There is a funny old system of on- call where you are only paid for emergency work that you actually do. In theory it can be done from home but often it was just easier to stay on site and do self interest work/ study in between cases. Mostly I did work related study but sometimes when I was doing arts courses. I would knock out a Fine Art essay. Me and IT got particularly close when I was researching ‘ Finding the Erotic in Nature’ . The nature of work in the NHS means that almost nothing except actual porn gets stopped by their filters. But fleshy looking plants really set the IT logarithms on me. Thankfully I had a good relationship with IT mostly because some of my colleagues could not keep their fingers out of the Porn Sweetie Jar that is the Internet, even at work. So they alerted me when my colleagues had transgressed. The quiet ones are the worst!

This plant, which makes beautiful tea was a very awkward search.

#402 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, TravelsLeave a comment
River Liffey in Dublin looking towards Temple Bar.

I suppose the picture above would be fairly typical of a night scene in Dublin. We only visited the infamous Temple Bar once, always preferring less busy options. This was the view from our airbnb. The illuminated Viking ship was quite a draw for ultra late night shenanigans. Friday night was packed with working people celebrating the weekend to the max they were only chased away at dawn by road sweeping vehicles and street cleaners. Saturday night bustled with jubilant Irish rugby supporters celebrating a win over Australia, trumpeters at 4 in the morning was both jubilant and joyful, curiously melodic when leading happy chanting. Sunday night was calm. Every daybreak marked by the sound of road sweepers making the city pristine.

All this is a bit of waffle to make our night tours of back streets more interesting. Dublin has so many historic back streets, untouched by redevelopment that it is like walking in a city 300 years ago. The streets felt safe but there was a recurring theme that I felt compelled to sketch from memory.

Nearly all back streets held the same night time characters. Chefs on their phones, taking a break from cooking with a cigarette and a sit down. An inebriated man taking a piss in a pool of light. I decided to do my first sketch with Charcoal, a messy few hours later. I had the beginning of something that had the flavour of all the back streets we visited. I just need to find a way of getting more colour in.

The chefs face needs to be blue and the peeing man needs to look more drunk and there should be some essence of coloured lights just reflected on the brick work. A project for next week.

#401 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Street Art1 Comment
Stickers add to the palimpsest of Street Art

After two days of Tamar Valley art @theoldmortuary is going to double- back to Dublin for a quick whizz through some street art. Dublin being Dublin there is also some great wordage included. Starting with the Love Wall on Love Lane.

Check out more work from Anna Doran below.

http://www.annadoranart.com/

There was not exactly a plan A or plan B for our trip to Dublin. There was one fixed item on our itinerary but the rest was left to chance and the weather. As things turned out the weather was perfect for just wandering the streets. Our wanderings for Saturday and Sunday were about 20,000 steps each day divided into two sessions, longer daytime adventures and then after a rest an after dark trip out.

Sometimes the quest for good coffee and baked goods brought us an unexpected extra of street art.

Alongside great coffee, cardamom buns, fuel for more walking and a sticker pole.

https://www.properordercoffeeco.com/

Other street art was more commercial and directive.

But street artists also get in on the act.

We found a lot of work by Oriel.

Too much lovely street art to share it all here but this James Joyce quote on Harman Street sums up our two day visit.

http://www.signsofpower.com/info