Pandemic Pondering #293

On By theoldmortuary.designIn ponderingLeave a comment

Some days a pondering is burning to get out but perhaps doesn’t quite have the legs to fulfill enough interest. Today is one of those days. A pondering that has been poddling about in my brain for days runs headlong into another pondering and boof!! They find they have something in common and off they run onto the blog taking some nice images with them to expose themselves on a Saturday. The 10 on the header image is the common link and it is superimposed on Seaton Beach where we harvested some more vitamin D.

©googlemaps

This morning Google maps showed me all the locations I visited in 2020. Thank goodness there has been no major crimes on the M4/ M5 corridor last year. I do not have an alibi or a distant location to hide behind. The point of putting this in the blog is that I’ve worked out the last time I had such limited travel was the year I turned 10!

The age of 10 is also the last time I wrote down the word ‘ ornery’ until PP#347

As mentioned in previous blogs my life as an only child was filled with reading. I got ‘ornery’ from Mark Twain and Brer Rabbit. It, the word, lives mainly in my head as a fairly regular descriptive of certain people.

PP#347 was possibly the first time I have written it down since I was 10. I’m not sure if shame, indignation or fury has stopped me using it.

At age 10 I threw it into a composition during an English class at my primary school, soon after I was marched to the headmistresses office. In terms understandable to a child I was told that I must not copy other authors sentences into my essays. Apparently my sentence construction was too good to have come from my own skillset and imagination.

The Headmistress and my form teacher were unmoved by my referencing to the stories of Brer Rabbit and I was warned never to copy again. Ornery has remained a word for private usage until this week. I was seething. So seething that when I read a glowing obituary of that particular Headmistress in Other Lives in the Guardian Newspaper I could not contain my irritation as I remembered that and another misjudgement of my character.

©Claudia Winkleman

Lockdown reading has brought me to this book just this week. In the very first chapter Claudia uses the word ‘ornery’ and boasts that she knows how to use it correctly. No marching off to the headmistress for a published author!

Liberated! The minute I felt slightly dyspeptic, crotchety or even waspish about President Trumps’ shenanigans this week I whipped out ‘ornery’, if Claudia can use it in public without humiliation then so can I!

So there we have it. Pondering around the theme of 10. While taking in Vitamin D on Seaton Beach.


Pandemic Pondering #292

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home TownsLeave a comment

Some winter days start with promise and just keep giving. Today was a day for harvesting vitamin D.

Either end of the day were gloriously golden . The middle bit was filled with a happy Zoom meeting and some packing up and planning for our future fake Christmas. Date currently unknown. The freezer holds all sorts of festive foods and decorations are packed away, not for the usual year but for a shorter period.

As our days begin to stretch slightly at either end the sunshine is a great bonus.

Pandemic Pondering #291

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Devon1 Comment

My apologies for the slightly late publishing of the blog today. The truth is the situation in Washington and the continuing Pandemic had made me an ornery ponderer last night and I woke up in no better frame of mind. Then a set of circumstances dropped me at Firestone Bay in time for a golden dawn.

Its hard to be ornery when the sun warms my face despite the temperature being -1. A pod of dophins are playing in this image, cheekily following the paddle boarders.

More of these images tomorrow once I’ve done some editing.

Pandemic Pondering #290

On By theoldmortuary.designIn dog walksLeave a comment

Day 1, Lockdown III in England ( Cornwall)

I chose to take my one hour exercise on the Cotehele Estate in the late afternoon. I had slightly misjudged things and the sun had already left the valley. Everything was already in shadow and a little bit chilly. But once my walk was done driving out over the rim of the valley I caught the end of a beautiful sunset.

It seems really important to make my one outing of the day count.

In other news Ive started to knit a scarf on really small needles , I anticipate I might just finish it with this latest lockdown set to run and run. It will be a very dull scarf and will only feature in blogs when my mind is an empty echo chamber with dust in the corners and fragments of ponderings caught between thought and keyboard.

Pandemic Pondering #289

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach Life1 Comment

Yesterday started with a despondent dog walk. I was pondering the Pandemic and trying to consider if there had ever been a world event which has directly or indirectly affected every living human in the world before. I couldnt really come up with one. Despondency soon gave way to joy when we saw dolphins breaching in Firestone Bay. Today could also have been despondent because we are clearly heading into another lockdown. Despondent @theoldmortuary not because we are heading into the lockdown but because it has taken the UK so long to make that decision and take appropriate action.

Expecting a Prime Ministerial Address we busied ourselves about this morning getting some new tech to better keep up contact with our nearest and dearest. The reward for taking on a click and collect journey was a trip to the dogs favourite winter beach. Portwrinkle has everything a dog could possibly want all in close proximity.

There is a small problem though. Hugo likes to play alone in the rock pools. Lola is utterly shocked that every time she joins him at a rockpool he switches to a different one. He likes to rescue seaweed from the pools and create a pile on the sand. The task is taken very seriously and cannot be interrupted by Lola or any other passing dog.

He will relent and chase her across the sand to the point of exhaustion but seaweed and rockpools are a solitary pleasure for Mr Hugo.

Rockpools are also a fine thing to contemplate when the future is once again uncertain.

Pandemic Pondering #286

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing1 Comment
Rescued Gerbera see PP#343

Today started earlyish, a dog walk prior to another morning swim. These are ponderings in a pandemic there will be a certain repetitive nature to my ponders. Dog walks, coffee and some wittering- on are the skeleton on which a pondering is built. As luck would have it a new habit of ‘ Bobbing’ started during the first lockdown, something new to bore you with. Often any of these activities occurs within the beautiful landscape that we are lucky enough to live in. Usually any activity can create a photo opportunity but not today. Greige was the state of the weather this morning. My excuse for using a bright Gerbera picture as the header image.

©Andy Cole

By the time we got to the ‘ Bobbing’ part of the day the greige had lifted a little. On the way to our beach we spotted a pod of dolphins cavorting in Firestone Bay. If we had swum a little earlier they would have been playing in our swimming area. Sadly they were attracted away by stand up paddle boarders. SUP’s. One of them captured this amazing picture. Something we would never have managed during our cold, submerged activity.

©South West Sup

Time for this ponder to stop and just appreciate this beautiful creature.

Pandemic Pondering #285

On By theoldmortuary.designIn flowers, Food ( but this is not a food blog)1 Comment
#breakfast

Post New Years Day the festive season starts to get a bit tatty round the edges. @theoldmortuary there is a loose plan to take the Christmas Decorations down . This feeling is complicated by a slow dribble of delayed Christmas parcels arriving in the post and a general inertia to actually fire up 2021 and get it going.

This lovely chap arrived today and needs a moment or two to shine, or more accurately to be matte on the tree.

We still have a small food mountain to pack away either,in reality for ‘Fake Christmas’ date to be announced, or metaphorically for us to eat some time soon. Food Mountain or not we felt obliged to rescue a doughnut from our favourite bakery this morning ,on our regular week end dog walk.

What could possibly cause a doughnut to require rescuing, I hear you all thinking.

Loneliness is the answer. He was the only item left in the window. The queue was long and as each person entered the bakery different baked goods were gently tonged into brown paper bags. It would have been utterly heartless to leave him there with no friends to huddle up with. No Brownies to banter with or Eccles cakes to heckle.What he needed was a compassionate customer to order two flat whites and a solitary doughnut. The doughnut was not the only compassionate rescue of the day. A local supermarket had excess Gerberas at a very silly price so they too jumped into the shopping basket with the Doughnut rather than spend another lonely night in the reduced bucket.

The festive season may be fading fast but it is doing so beautifully.

Pandemic Pondering #284

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing1 Comment
©Melinda Waugh

2021 dawned spectacularly in Saltash this morning. @theoldmortuary was set for less pastoral pleasures though.

The ‘Bobbers’ were booked to swim at Firestone Bay first thing this morning.

© theoldmortuary

Bobbers braved-2 temperatures to swim or gaze , or both, into the New Year.

©Andy Cole
©Andy Cole
©Andy Cole

The morning was beautiful and the sea was 10 degrees . An amazing way to welcome in the New Year. Cold water immersion is good for all sorts of things, we all talk a good bit of jibberish straight after a dip though. Then the endorphins hit and we are ready to take on the world. Although, due to Coronovirus restrictions, the world is not available, I did manage a quick nip into the Co-op for some bread rolls before we strode off for a lovely wintry dog walk. Endorphins though, in a similar way to pride, come before fall. The afternoon was spent attempting to read books but achieving dozing on the sofa. The fall to come.

Our evening took in a local harbour and a few Christmas lights.

©theoldmortuary

But then things took a turn towards the awkward. In my haste to get a perfect shot for this blog I tripped over a curb and the precious camera/phone skidded in slow motion towards the harbour edge. I’m a bit bruised and the camera teetered on the edge but ultimately stayed on land.

All is well but the parking machine which told us it was out of action struck another blow. When we put a card across its reader, it was actually rather over active and charged us twice. Perhaps we should have stopped the day at dozing on the sofa!

©theoldmortuary

But we did find a naturally occurring (ish) heart.

©theoldmortuary

Pandemic Pondering #283

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Cornwall, Devon, Home TownsLeave a comment

The sun shone for the last walk around Sutton Harbour and the Barbican of 2020. It also snowed a little.

Our evening went to plan . This is the photograph for our family and friends distance, thousands of miles and many time zones, social media party.

Television watching for two, oh the dizzy heights!

The plan had actually been to go to bed early and show 2020 the disdain it deserves and sleep through its passing but actually it feels only responsible to not only see the year leave but also to make sure it has actually gone and shut the door behind it. For such a responsible observation a far less frivolous drink is required.

A fine cup of decaffeinated Yorkshire Tea and a Cornish Shortbread. Far less giddy than that party pleasing Snowball. Also guarantees a good nights sleep, essential after a year like 2020!

I can confirm 2020 left the building and the door slammed shut behind it.

Pandemic Pondering #289

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Covid ChristmasLeave a comment

The last day of the old year and the last day of Merryneum. Tomorrow we will have the freshness and promise of a New Year. But first a dissapointment of the Merryneum. Not many gifts found their way to @theoldmortuary this year. Many have been held in a secure location until ‘ Fake Christmas’ being held sometime in the New Year. New Pyjamas though did reveal themselves on Christmas morning.Their patterns are the illustrations of this blog.

You would expect with all the free time created by not entertaining family and friends during the festive season we would have been able to have a designated Pyjama Day.

It has not happened! Dog walking and inclement weather have restricted the ability to have a day not wearing clothes. Dark mornings and afternoons permit pyjama dog walks but only if the weather is not wet and a substantial coat can cover up the evidence.

So to top off any lingering dissapointments that we may all have with 2020 , we need to add general disappointment with the weather over Christmas. A very British way to sign out.