Pandemic Pondering #499

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, Drawn To The Valley Artists, SerendipityLeave a comment
©Lesley Hoffman Detail from Freddy at Sunrise

Unashamedly another Drawn to the Valley Summer Exhibition blog . This one welcoming Saturday with the gorgeous colours of sunrise by Lesley Hoffman.

The colours of sunrise are all over the exhibition. Colour and texture combine in this lovely piece by Lyn Edwards.

©Lyn Edwards Detail from Seed Heads

Another flower head that grabs attention with the colours of a vibrant, stormy sunrise rather than a peaceful one is this.

©Jayne Ashenbury Detail from Seduction

These are the sort of pulsating colours that absolutely suggest seduction, assignations and fecundity. As this blog shifts from sunrise to symbols of fertility I am struggling to think quite how to link the last two pictures. While pondering that, I realise that all these works are by women. This is entirely accidental. Seed heads and passionate colours take me towards the last two pictures of this blog . Serendipitously hung together at the exhibition, these are the works of two Tessa’s

©Tessajane
©Tessa Sulston

Why did the curators of the exhibition hang these two works close together? For me it would be hard now not to see them together. They both take the dark colours of fecundity and also demonstrate the meaning of the word ” the ability to produce many new ideas” so perfectly they both include bright white that fizzes with potential. Together they have given me an earworm and the chance to share a favourite line of a chorus from a lyric.

” Til morning comes lets Tesselate”

The track ” Lets Tesselate” by alt-J is below

https://g.co/kgs/CLokiB

Rather a blogging rabbit hole today, enhanced by art from Drawn to the Valley. The Exhibition runs for two more days at Butchers Hall, Tavistock.

Pandemic Pondering #498

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, Drawn To The Valley Artists, Exhibitions, Serendipity2 Comments
©AlanDax. Detail from Dartmoor’s Timeless Spirit

Life imitating art as I drove through typical Dartmoor weather to get to the Drawn to the Valley Summer Exhibition at Butchers Hall. Alan Dax captures the meh of Dartmoor perfectly. I have had nothing to do with the summer exhibition beyond some Social Media posts. So it was with a fresh pair of eyes that I made my first visit to the exhibition today. There really are some stunning pieces of work to be seen. This blog just contains snippets of some of the work. For people local to Tavistock you can pop along for the next three days to see the full glory for yourselves. For the sake of this blog I collected some images that can tell a story. The one above obviously tells the story of crossing the moor in the rain.

© Peter Davies. Detail from 8 minutes 20 seconds

How I wish this image was an album cover. I’m not sure what leads me to make this statement, but if I had a vinyl collection and this was an album cover this image would always be visible. Truth be told in my Vinyl/Album buying days I did just buy albums for the artwork.

©Sally O’ Neill Detail from Through the gate softly

I love the acidity of this painting It reminds me of home made lemonade on a hot summers day. I might not choose to pass through the gate softly, I could rest a while in the cool shadows, slowing down the day to a complete standstill.

©Simon Young Detail from Still Morning

Still morning is an image so familiar to me,until recently this location was my regular morning dog walk. I’ve seen this stretch of water on the Tamar in so many different moods, always busy and rarely still. Once I thought I saw a porpoise, cleaving the water in a distinctive way, no-one else was around to corroborate or simply tell me I was imagining things. Another time I slipped twenty feet on the slipway nearby( warning in the name that I failed to acknowledge.) I landed in the silky mud that the small orange boat is resting on, a friend who tried to save me toppled in headlong after me and we laughed like mad women because we could and because it was the only sensible response to two grown women doing something daft.

©Charlotte Sainsbury. Detail from Southdown Marina

I’m not yet hugely familiar with Southdown Marina but it is a planned walk in the future with the friend who accompanied me to the exhibition today. We are going to catch the ferry across from Plymouth and explore intriguing places. Helen is known for many admirable qualities and for the flash of turquoise in her hair. She is a Bobber and she loves turquoise, so this picture is particularly apt.

Maybe turquoise is a good place to stop this meandering. More tomorrow.

©Suzy Billing-Mountain. Detail from 1121 Ripples

Pandemic Pondering #497

On By theoldmortuary.designIn The Box, Van Life2 Comments

I’ve changed my museum working day to Wednesdays instead of Thursdays. Perhaps the dullest sentence to appear in the blog! Yesterday was a red letter day as the museum has adopted a near normal working model for the first time since it opened.

Figureheads loom over the entrance and reception area, I happened to look over as a large unruly group of people walked in. I imagined what a shock it might be to the figureheads who have spent the whole time the museum has been open, hanging over strictly ticketed punters, who could legitimately be limited and controlled in the name of Covid regulations.

At last the museum can relax, I’m not sure the figureheads ever will.

Not particularly museum related, this picture popped up on a sea swimming page on Facebook. Our summer swimming ‘friend’ the Compass Jellyfish doubling up as a display cabinet.

©Facebook

Museum time was sandwiched between dog walking and normal domestic chores. A prime donestic chore was to find a supplier of camping gas. Not as easy as you might think. Britain and presumably the rest of the world is in the thrall of a new, allegedly, type of holiday. The Staycation. The strangest things are in short supply. Camping shops ran out of replacable gas tanks weeks ago. @theoldmortuary ran out of gas at last weekends festival. This was a crisis of sorts as no gas= no tea, and @theoldmortuary runs on tea. A proper first world crisis! Thankfully as Plymouth is a seafaring port it has Chandlers. I have only once in my life been into a chandlers in search of a caribineer to hold a poo bag dispenser for dog walks.

Yesterday I went into 3 , they are fantasy destinations. The first two might not have had gas but they did have intrigue. Shelf after shelf of things to do with boats, all of which had names and practical uses that sounded exotic and quite unknown. The 3rd Chandlers had some gas but I may think of other reasons, in the future, to return to these shops just to look around and ponder a whole new world on my doorstep.

These flowers are also on my doorstep. I hope Thursday is good to you…

I will try not to visit a Chandler just for the sake of it.

Pandemic Pondering #496

On By theoldmortuary.designIn dog walksLeave a comment

Back to bobbing in our own bay with some intriguing little sea weeds. At this angle they look a lot like a sorting hat from the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. At a different angle they looked like a cast of a kiss. Either way quite fascinating.

Back to reality with trips to the tip and supermarket. All improved by an afternoon swim and chatter with the Bobbers, and a good long walk with some friends and the fluffs. Just as the swim was rewarded with seaweed kisses, or sorting hats, the evening walk was embellished by chips.

Our friends that we walked with deserved these chips as they had canoed up the Tamar, Im not entirely sure what our excuse was!

Pandemic Pondering #495

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Camp Bestival, Coffee HuntersLeave a comment

It felt pretty good over the weekend to just dump normal life on the curbside and head off to a music festival. Festivals create the perfect bubble away from normality.

Our little family bubble just kept smiling.

Our entry back into the real world was fueled by pastries and coffees at a fabulous roadside bakery and farmshop/ store at Bridport. Following our dawn swim at Lulworth Cove, some munching was essential.

https://www.risebakestore.co.uk/

The welcome home from the fluffs, Hugo and Lola,was loud and excitable. They did not cover themselves in glory during their weekend away with friends. Terrorising chickens and leaving muddy paw prints on the top of an Aga is not advisable if you ever want to be invited back. Fortunately baked goods, from our stop off on the way home, may just about have bought them a pardon.

©Risebakestore

The fluffs seem blissfully unaware there was even a problem.

Thank you Dorset,back to basics pondering now …

Pandemic Pondering #494

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Camp Bestival, SerendipityLeave a comment

Out with a bang, festival over our van was all packed up and ready to go as the fireworks fizzed and twinkled overhead. Just a few hours sleep before we made a swift departure, before dawn, in order to get an early morning swim at Lulworth Cove.

It was lovely to be somewhere quite so beautiful as nature stretched her sleepy limbs to start the day to a soundscape of birdsong.

Pandemic Pondering#493

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Camp Bestival, Concatenation, Serendipity4 Comments

I love this image from a set yesterday. The colours give it the quality of an Old Master. Yesterday the fickle Covid fairy had once again been looking over my shoulder to see which acts I had ticked on my festival running list. And Ping! Just like that some of my selected acts were zapped by the test and trace app and unable to perform.

My location at the main stage last night pretty much sums up the weekend. We use What3words to relocate one another after the inevitable trips to the festival loos or food and drink consessions.

© What3words

Offstage- self explanatory really, our chosen acts were off for Covid safety reasons.

Modifies- there is always something else at a festival. Yesterdays unplanned events included Joe Marler talking rugby and mens mental health and Steve Davis and Kavus Torabi talking Medical Grade Music. Which in turn led us to the Bollywood Stage at Camp Bestival just after midnight where we danced and had the surreal experience of watching drunk men mime a snooker match on a picnic blanket.

Sleep- an essential of Festival life.

Just like attending last Saturdays gorgeous wedding, this weeks festival has had us mingling with strangers, this time at a festival. Listening to people talk with real emotion when they describe their joy at our slow re-emergence into a more normal way of life and yet always reflecting on the losses and sadnesses that we have all experienced, appears to have given me my own version of Long Covid. My emotional carapace is not so tough. My eyes don’t normally ooze at weddings and certainly not at festivals. Every time someone makes a heartfelt soliloquy my newly sensitised and accesible soul makes my eyes sting and my heart feel a little sad. Just like Long Covid, I fear my sensitised carapace may be with me for some time.

Mindful of this feeling I tried to create an image of barely there festival goers to represent the millions for whom mingling with strangers is no longer an option at any venue at the festival of life.

Pandemic Pondering #492

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Camp Bestival, SerendipityLeave a comment

Storm Evert and Covid are shaping this festival. Safety checks following the battering of overnight winds and the continuing winds determine when and if certain things can go ahead

The failure of lateral flow tests and family members with covid affect which bands and entertainers are able to put in an actual performance.

Festivals are not just about the planned events they are also about creating a fertile and fecund space for serendipity to capture the imagination. The next two pictures occured at a Bowie DJ set. The first is a piece of transient floor art. Twinkle from someones festival outfit landed on the floor near a crushed beer can. Momentarily looking like an embelished spume of excressence. Only to be kicked apart moments later.

The second is a moment of musical joy when a bloke on a windbag sofa lost himself in a moment of Bowie nostalgia.

A day of seeing and appreciating the unexpected because Covid still disrupts our lives and expectations.

Pandemic Pondering #492

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Camp BestivalLeave a comment

I’m not entirely sure how this Lion is looking this morning. Overnight both him and us have been blown on by Storm Evert. Gusting winds of up to 68 miles an hour. The canvas roof of our pop top flexing and groaning all night.

The carosel creatures will have fared much better with their painted quiffs and cockscombs.

In contrast to the storm our arrival here was positively pastoral.

Queueing in gently wooded areas with stern road signs.

There was no sudden gunfire which is reassuring for the journey home. So far there have been no musical revelations. Just literary ones, a drag queen reading a bed time story utterly upstaged by a twerking 4 year old boy who artfully pulled on his shorts to enhance the appearance of his tiny buttocks. This being quite a middle class sort of festival I’m fairly certain we witnessed the efficacy of the Montessori Twerking Course, involving him in daily activities to promote and encourage his development.

“Play is the twerk of the child’ Maria Montessori.

Sitting in the front row also gave us eye watering detail of the ‘ packing’ required when a big chap in a short skirt performs in drag. A lot of Spandex.

None of this quite what we anticipated in the literary tent. Something, however, to spice up the next Book Club gathering. Here we are being literary. Still no sign of the pink cardigan!

Pandemic Pondering #491

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Van LifeLeave a comment

On the road. Having tried out our dancing legs at a wedding last week we are off to a festival.

Not quite there but close enough, Dorset artisinal coffee and baked goods on board we are off to search for an old pink cardigan.

This exact pink cardigan, knitted for my summer holiday many moons ago. Here it is being modelled on the beach at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. One week later we were at the top of Lulworth Castle, in Dorset, when I slipped it off to skip about a bit. We were many miles away by the time I realised I hadn’t ever picked it up. Admitting this to my parents was not my most popular moment. Fifty years or so later I’m heading back to collect it. I’m hopeful that my parents will do any ashy, dust to dust, other realm jig when they realise my half a century too-late diligence.

It will be time to put the flags out when we are reunited.

Spot the strutting seagull in one of these images.