Pandemic Pondering #88

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Love2 Comments

Unrequited love and fuschias.

Social media has been a way for us all to be connected even though we can’t currently be together. I have a friend who has not only had to cancel her wedding but is also shielding . During Lockdown she is experimenting with home grown flowers for her re- arranged wedding arrangements. The results appear on Instagram or Facebook. I commented that as a family we always do our own funeral flowers picked from family gardens or hedgerows nearby.

It is not as difficult as you think in any season.

My shielding friends asked me when this tradition started. This pondering is that story, I hope I have the sensitivity to tell it well.

My dad was an ordinary Essex chap. Educated until the age of fifteen and then apprenticed to become an electrician, after a spell in the RAF, cut short by Tuberculosis, he moved on to medical electrical engineering and then ultimately to medical physics.

What was less ordinary about him was his love of Shakespeare and his membership of a well thought of band of Shakespearean Actors who performed at Stratford upon Avon occasionally, I think he continued this until my birth.

My mum and dad had concurrent terminal illnesses , when he beat her to it she suggested that an old school friend and fellow thespian should do his funeral flowers, as he was also a well respected amateur florist.

The village we lived in had several same sex households and it was not considered anything but normal in all the time my family lived there during the 60’s to early 90’s.

Dad’s old school friend and fellow thespian was half of one of those couples and their garden was a village highlight every summer.

I dutifully popped along to see the gentleman, who was thrilled to be asked to do a families floral tributes. He scrambled around to find some paper and a pencil and asked for my details. His reaction when I gave him my dad’s name was not what I could have anticipated. The horror, on his face, as he wailed ” My Star, oh no, my star. I’ve loved him since we were at school” will live with me forever. He collapsed into a well upholstered chair and started to rock and weep. Unsure really what to do under such circumstances I offered him my condolences and apologies for the shock. Tea seemed appropriate so I made my way to the kitchen and managed to both make us tea and find cups to drink it from.

He was more composed on my return and we talked about my dad and the acting and other stuff. The paper and pencil were never used. The floral tribute would be a tour de force of floristry, created from his own garden and delivered to the undertaker free of charge. His sorrow was intense and he assured me as I left that the flowers would be great, his partner would be both understanding and a reliable assistant.

My Dad attended his own funeral weighed down by the largest, campest wreath imaginable. Made entirely of garden flowers and foliage it was a thing of beauty that trembled with the unexpected and unusual addition of hundreds of fuschia heads.

©https://www.tamarvalleyvibe.uk/

I don’t think my Dad had any idea he was someone’s unrequited love. He did love fuschias though, so it was entirely appropriate.

Garden flowers have been the way we mark someone’s passing ever since.

P.S

Some months later I found this photograph in a trunk.

Pandemic Ponderings #87

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderingsLeave a comment

On Saturdays I buy a real newspaper. The rest of the week I am utterly shameless and read anything and everything newsworthy on the internet. I’m inclined to follow my own natural political, ethical and moral bias on the whole but often read some strange and intriguing things that I don’t always agree with but that make me think a bit harder. Pre Lockdown I read several newspapers on-line content that are published elsewhere in the world. Melbourne’s The Age and Los Angeles Daily Breeze are favourites along with The London Evening Standard. I don’t for a minute consider myself to be well read by doing this I just like reading the local news that sparks interest in other places.

Lockdown has , for some reason stopped that habit , but the Saturday ritual of a print copy of The Guardian has endured. Often by midnight on a Saturday it has not been opened which makes it an even bigger pleasure on Sunday.

Ritual is everything. The paper as purchased has to be stripped down. Supplements taken out of their potato starch bag and annoying loose advertising pamphlets discarded. The starch bag goes into the dog poo disposal pot in the garden . The dog poo disposal pot is in fact a rhubarb forcing jar, which somehow copes with the output of two dogs who only poop in the garden when their owners have not provided a correctly timed walk. This may be too much detail but the poo is picked up with loo paper and popped in the jar alongside the once a week potato starch bag. This cocktail of excrement, tissue and biodegradable packaging is nirvana to a whole host of wee beasties who like to chomp on such stuff.

Saturday night the newspaper, if I have managed to keep my hands off it, is carried upstairs at bedtime ready to be read as soon as I wake up on Sunday. Or overnight if insomnia bites. I prefer a day old paper to Sunday Editions for some reason.

It then accompanies me back downstairs to be read with coffee. Bits of the newspaper hang around all week being read and reread. Most of it is recycled and the cookery section filed . It is rare for us not to use one of the recipes during the week.

The newspaper ritual is undoubtedly irritating for those who share my life or bed on a Saturday or Sunday. Flackering of the newspaper whilst reading it is inevitable . By way of apology I always make cups of tea.

The ritual Saturday paper is a barometer of a weekend. I like to be too busy on a Saturday to read it and to have enough down time on a Sunday to read most of it.

This weekend is shaping up well so far, it’s nearly midnight and not a word has been read from the print edition. Just one or two articles on-line whilst waiting around.

Happy Saturday/Sunday

Pandemic Ponderings #86

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity3 Comments

My grandparents have been much in my mind during this pandemic and its Lockdown . Early on I wished I could tap into their knowledge and wisdom of living through difficult times . Which in truth as a ‘ boomer’ I have not experienced . One set of grandparents were proper Victorians , unusually for the time they had left child rearing until far later and were in their 30’s when they had my dad. My mum’s parents were also unusual in that they divorced in the 1940’s giving me two separate couples. One lot lived in Glasgow and were loving but a long way away. The others were entrepreneurial and quite, 60’s in their thinking and lifestyle.

It is the Victorian set that comes to mind most , because when I knew them they seemed very serene and comfortable in their lives. Not given to great shows of affection but steady and always there. Their generation had seen, and they had suffered personally from, two world wars, the Spanish Flu pandemic 1 and second wave, and the ‘Depression’. They used words not often heard today and quite by chance, or serendipitously for this blog, two of them popped into my head during the heavy rain of earlier this week.

The first one was inspired by this photo, of a geranium petal stuck on the front door.

It is a striking and serendipitous image, but my first thought was. ” You must be maudlin if you need to photograph that”

I have no idea when I last thought or said the word ‘ maudlin’ . I even had to look it up to check I wasn’t being inaccurate in its use.

In truth I was probably being a little harsh with myself, I’m not sure I was being highly sentimental over a petal but who knows, I think my sentimental threshold has been recalibrated down during Lockdown.

The second word is pretty politically incorrect but I’m sure it can be shared on a blog with limited readership and only its own integrity on the line.

I was at Waitrose during a brief sunshiny moment. Considering whether to join the rather long queue.

Queues at supermarkets are great places for people watching. Waitrose perhaps win a prize for the most eclectic version of PPE that I’ve seen Ski goggles and ludicrous face masks worn by people with Marigold washing up gloves on. Middle class trolley wars about social distancing with people who probably spell the expletive they were using with a pH value because they are better educated/richer/posher than those of us that just use the Essential Waitrose ‘F’ version. Theirs also rhymes with Quark.

While I was considering the Waitrose queue over the nearby Lidl queue, there was a massive cloud burst. Trolleys and eccentric PPE wearers scattered in all directions. Expletives with a variety of spellings punctuating the very moist air.

At this point my head dredged up the word ‘ bedlam’ . Clearly the Victorian grandparent file of strange words had been left open after maudlin popped out.

© Wikipedia

I’d always known the origin of this word and had expected that the Bethlem Royal Hospital was a part of history . It was a huge surprise to me when I stumbled upon it when taking a trip to our local Waitrose when living in South London.

There’s a nice little blogging circle to end with.

I’d be willing to bet Waitrose Beckenham has eccentric queues too.

Pandemic Pondering#85

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

South East Cornwall received a month’s worth of rain today. The day’s activities were not planned by a clock but by a weather forecasting App.Most of January, February and March of 2020 were the same and then with Lockdown for the pandemic the weather changed to something resembling the Mediterranean. Some days we’ve had to plan dog walks to avoid the heat. Today was a shock to the system. Puddles where previously we experienced dust bowls.The change in weather gave Lola a massive sense of her own destiny. Authoritarian signs were not going to stop her.She was straight out of the nature reserve and straight into the churchyard.Finding a brown dog in a churchyard is a tricksy thing, it took a while,but I forgave her when I found this grave. It forms the boundary of the graveyard and I walk past the back of it every day. So much information …This gentleman drowned in the Hamoaze on April 10th 1834. Aged63He wasn’t found until 6th May, unsurprisingly his remains were interred the very next day.So much information and completely plays to my nosey, or do I mean interested side. A quick glance to the grave next door added another possible layer to this already sad story.Another gentleman with the same name is also listed as drowned on December 29 th 1803. Aged 54.There has to be a story here, probably very sad and entirely suited to a grey day.I’ve noticed during my weather watching during the pandemic that I am extraordinarily thrilled to know whether my gibbous is waxing or waning.

Pandemic Pondering #84

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior DesignLeave a comment

This is quite the ponder. Yesterday I cleared out the studio for three reasons.

1. It was in a mighty pickle.

2 I needed to find the blackboard.

3 We needed a garden gathering space for inclement weather.

None of these inspired a blog but like all good things, the accidental find is the most interesting. This is the story of my life. My working life would not exist without X-rays, one of histories great accidental finds. The link below explains radiography alongside 9 other valuable accidents. But I digress.

https://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/10-accidental-inventions-that-changed-the-world

My accidental find in the studio was a Disco glitter ball. It’s big and used to live in a cupboard for eleven months of the year and then hang disco style from the decorative finial thingy that hung down from the bottom of a newel post on my landing.

It came into my family life by accident . We walked past Next one Christmas Eve as the shop was closing. Window dressers were stripping the festive window and prepping for the sales. We were gifted this ball straight out of the window.

Since acquiring a studio the glitter ball has given year round pleasure. Twinkling in the sunshine.

I felt like dropping into the Google rabbit hole chasing glitterballs for information for the blog.

A mirror ball hanging over the Louisiana Five in 1919.

The first mention, in literature, of a glitter ball was in Boston in 1897. The first patent was issued to Louis Bernard Woeste. He patented it as the Myriad Reflector , his trade name for it, he did not patent it as the inventor. It was reproduced by his company, and sold to ballrooms, jazz clubs and dance halls. His promotional material claimed.

“The newest novelty is one that will change a hall into a brilliant fairyland of flashing, changing, living colors – a place of a million-colored sparks, darting and dancing, chasing one another into every nook and corner – filling the hall with dancing fireflies of a thousand hues.”

Mirror balls became hugely popular in dancehalls in the 1920’s . I met them in the 70’s starting with the School Disco at Margaret Tabor Secondary Modern School in Braitree, Essex. Then The Viking nightclub in Castle Headingham and then finally the bright lights and dark nights of living and working in London and Brighton. Here in the 21st century the Strictly Come Dancing global franchise brings glitterballs into countless homes worldwide that have no notion of nightclubs.

Glitterball imagery is iconic in the music industry. The Grateful Dead, Yes, Madonna, Pink Floyd have used it extensively.

The Bee Gees soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever crosses the glitterball path between music and film. Film has a similarly iconic love affair with twinkly balls. Velvet Goldmine, Casablanca in 1942, Dirty Dancing all love a twinkly ball.

In the U.S there is one manufacturer who supplies 90% of glitterballs in the US, according to Google.
http://www.omeganationalproducts.com/

But it would seem pretty strange if China hasn’t taken a big part of the market. I don’t know where my glitterball was created I know where it is now. The mortuary part of our house has slightly odd proportions for a domestic property. All the ceilings are very high. We bought a light fitting a few years ago that was sold for large-proportion bars or cafes. with just a little modification to this lightfitting the glitterball has a new home.

Pandemic Pondering #83

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

A quarter of @theoldmortuary have returned to work today. The sort of work where full PPE is required. The other human quarter needs to sort out the art studio. Making it both effective as a studio and usable as a gathering space outside the house now we can gather with a few more people in our garden. I also needed to dig out a blackboard for us to use as a kitchen note board as we navigate cooking a new style diet. Low carb/ no dairy.

It’s all a bit confusing so notes and shopping lists will help.

We did the usual morning dog walk, pre pandemic style. Me the dogs and headphones with Jay Rayner staying in for lunch on his Podcast Out For Lunch.

George Ezra, Ed Balls and Edgar Wright were great company on my walk and on the Studio tidy up.

https://www.somethinelse.com/projects/out-to-lunch-with-jay-rayner/

Regular walks can be a little bit mesmeric. There is a link with yesterday’s blog, Pandemic Pondering# 82 and Advent#15. In Advent #15 I shared the walk with a dear friend whose funeral I mention in Pandemic Pondering #82.

For this reason I thought I would share some of the sights of the walk, some days it’s good to reflect a little. Although too much reflecting and not enough concentrating gave me the first Horse Fly bite of the season.

Looking west from Churchtown Farm Nature Reserve to the River Lynher
Kissing Gate
Up and Over Style
Dog bottoms, my usual view.
Hugo and Lola
Seed heads in a building site.
Rusty elbow and fern on a barn.
Pink roses falling off a wall
Teasel
Poppies coming to the end of their days
Geraniums believing they are in the Mediterranean

Back to the tidy up….

Pandemic Pondering #82

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Serendipity3 Comments

Today @theoldmortuary attended the webcam funeral for a dear friend and regular reader of this blog. I think he would consider himself ordinary but actually he was one of the loveliest people you could hope to meet. There was so much love in St Petrocs Chapel it was easy to feel comfortable with this new way of celebrating and marking the passing of a life well lived.

The celebrant and family created a beautiful service that warmly evoked everything about our friend. Wonderful music had us dabbing at our eyes from almost the first note. Could this be a new way to mark the passing of someone when there are reasons that make actual attending of a funeral difficult.

For the first time ever , we travelled, digitally on this occasion,to the Crematorium at Bodmin. It was a beautiful day and the natural backdrop was perfect.

Is a daily blog, particularly in a pandemic, Social History ? Particularly in the hands of an ordinary person who just ponders and then writes about it.

I wondered about the appropriateness of mentioning a funeral in a blog, but it was an experience that has been altered by the Pandemic and this is our new normal for the foreseeable future. It may shape the future of mourning or it may just be for now.

If nothing else a daily blog is a way of recording the changes we are all experiencing.

Pandemic Pondering #81

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Family4 Comments

A pandemic 1st for @theoldmortuary. A Day Out.

Today we went to the Eden Project in Cornwall to have a socially distanced meet up with some of our family.

The Eden Project opened to the public recently for the first time since Lockdown.
https://www.edenproject.com

The Eden Project has got socially distanced tourism spot on. You have to book a slot, so it can’t be a spontaneous visit but beyond that the amount of control is so deftly handled, once you are in, it is easy to forget the restrictions of the pandemic, without ever flouting them.

On arrival there are ample public toilets, water stations and a take out coffee shop. The hosts who welcome you have the same welcoming charm as London 2012 Olympic Volunteers, and that was considered a Gold Standard of hosting. Hand sanitising gel is available as soon a you reach the welcome concourse and throughout the site.

Only the outside area is open during this pandemic opening. Visitors are guided to wander through areas that can be overlooked by anyone dazzled , quite rightly, by the magnificence of the Tropical and Mediterranean Biomes or the Science of The Core in more normal times. This is a fabulous chance to experience the outside with restricted visitor numbers. The peace is magical.

Instead of biomes we got intimate with bees.

And wandered down Cornish lanes.

Flower meadows and single specimens slowed us down. This was the most tranquil visit we have ever made to Eden

Fragrance is everywhere. Once we had meandered our way down to the Biomes more toilets were available and another take- away coffee stall, again social distancing was imposed with a gentle reminder.

A great time was had by all.

And for Miss VV, her first experience of being, very gently, escorted out of a venue as the last woman standing.

Pandemic Pondering #80

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

#80 … I did not expect to be still going, but here we are, no end in sight. #80 should perhaps be a significant pondering but today, Saturday, has hijacked the blog by revealing something to me ( us) never before seen.

Despite living the biggest portions of our lives very near the sea and a huge river no-one @theoldmortuary has ever had a nautical bone or thought in their bodies . Human or dog it’s just not our thing. Today the coffee/breakfast quest took us unknowingly into a leisure boatyard.
https://www.yachthavens.com/yacht-haven-quay-plymouth/

The coffee was good and the breakfast fine. There was a cute pirate quote on the cafe wall.

‘I wanted to be a pirate but I couldn’t get my ship together’
https://m.facebook.com/TheMessRoomCafe/

But the stand out thing of the morning was not coffee or breakfast, apologies to The Mess Room and thanks for being open to serve take- out deliciousness.

Coffee and breakfast knocked off the pedastal of pleasure by a giant fork lift truck.

Now that IS a fork lift truck to aspire to. I didn’t even know there was such a thing, being used only to warehouse or smaller fork lifts. Multi story boat storage was pretty unexpected too.

Around the Mess Room there were some nautical detritus to catch the eye.

One other Saturday revelation. It’s not only humans who have scatty hair during this pandemic. Have you ever seen such a non iconic palm tree?

Pandemic Pondering #79

On By theoldmortuary.designIn FriendsLeave a comment

Easing out of lockdown. Not so long ago conversations with people other than those that share the same home was a bit random or coincidental. We may have been deprived of hugs or the normal interactions with friends but our local to @theoldmortuary life has had some amazing revelations. We now know all of our near neighbours, and have had time to talk at length with many of them. We’ve made some new friends from distant places, distant in lockdown is not so far as it used to be. Being coincidentally in the same place at the same time made Coronafriendships. Social distance garden meetings have been lovely with our more longstanding friends.Today was a bit of a novelty, we had two meetings with two different pairs of friends . It felt novel and a little bit exciting . Giddy even.The morning started with a summer playlist . The stand out track was Peaches by The Stranglers . Such is my weird pandemic head that without thinking I chose these two garments to wear today, and the curious meandering that is Pandemic Pondering #79 formed itself.Back to The Stranglers. Peaches is one of those pieces of music that everyone is familiar with because bits of it are sampled in TV shows and other music. It was considered to be a seminal punk song in 1977 when it was released.
Listen to Peaches (BBC In Concert 23/04/77) by The Stranglers on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/the-stranglers/peaches-bbc-in-concert-23-04Enough of the Peaches, back to the nattering. This morning’s meeting was with people I’ve known for around 30 years, there have been some gaps, but now we see each other regularly and laugh about ridiculous stuff. The talk is non stop. After three hours we had jaw ache. A brief break and we were off to nattering session 2 this time with someone we met a couple of weeks before lockdown , more nattering and laughing at preposterous things . We completely forgot to mention Book Club which had been the plan. More jaw ache.Laughter is an amazing thing , it jiggles your belly and burnishes your mind.With my mind burnished and my belly jiggled it’s back to peaches. I’ve had a trawl through the photo archive and plucked out some peach images and had a look in the colour theory books. The photo file was a richer source of peachy stuff than the books. Peach seems a little overlooked in colour theory world.Peach represents immortality in Chinese culture. It is named for the interior flesh colour of the white Peach. It is a range of soft colours between pink and orange. It was first mentioned in literature in 1588.Art Deco in the 1920’s and 30’s used a lot of peach.With the randomness of the internet I can also share a code , which I accidentally wore today. In the gay community a ‘ bear’ who wants to hook up with other ‘bears’ wears a peach bandana. Exactly my choice for the new government guidance of face covering for public transport.Peaches from the archive.Last year’s Cafe Au Lait Dahlias.Close ups of a peachy rose.Autumn foliage in the garden.A tiny shell on a beach in Cuba.A peach trumpeted daffodilFriends , peaches and The Stranglers, that was a curious blog, sometimes they just write themselves.Have a peachy weekend.