The Last Dahlia- a pondering.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, pondering

Yesterday was a day of garden clearing and tidying ready for winter. The last Dahlia was picked.

Google is a wonderful thing, we needed to know how to overwinter the dahlia plants. The trouble is, with Google, it doesn’t just stop there. Once I had discovered that a thick mulch of bark would do the trick, I set off on other Dahlia related adventures. Goodness there was a lot of sadness. The National Trust property, Baddesley has reluctantly decided to give up having a Dahlia border due to an infiltration of pests. 20 years of gardening tradition gone only moments after I had first discovered it.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/baddesley-clinton/features/the-dahlia-border-at-baddesley?campid=SocialShare_Central_MainSite_Email_1431758463791

Worse was to follow, Black Dahlia was the name ascribed to a murder victim in Los Angeles in 1947. Elizabeth ( Bette) Short was found dead in a parking lot. Her body dismembered and eviscerated and her face disfigured by something described as a ‘Glasgow Smile’, her mouth was cut from ear to ear.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38513320

Away from Google and still pondering Dahlias I remembered that while we were in Hong Kong ,in June, the very early style of the protesters was not only black clothing but also each protester carried a white flower, very often a Dahlia. Why did I not take photos? There was ample chance, peaceful protesters with flowers filled our trips to the city .Sadly things have escalated and the flowers have a different purpose now.

Photo from Sydney Morning Herald

Dahlia pondering, sadder than you might expect.

Saturday Walking at Kingsand and Cawsand

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Food ( but this is not a food blog), Home Towns, Travels4 Comments

Kingsand and Cawsand are coastal villages in the ‘forgotten’ corner of South East Cornwall. Every bit as beautiful as other, more famous, villages in Cornwall they remain largely undiscovered . They were a big part of our lives when we rowed for the local gig racing team. Our walk on Saturday took on a familiar pattern. The beaches are available for dog walking now the summer season is over. This was our primary reason for going as well as a birthday lunch. Gig rowing reared its head, or more accurately its bum almost the minute we arrived in the village. We stopped just by the Rame Gig sheds and a familiar voice shouted out. ” Look who it is, we were only talking about you a week or two ago when we were at Port Isaac ” We stopped gig rowing ten years ago so it must have been something memorable. ” We were at Port Isaac and talked about the time you had terrible trouble with your bum” Not for us the glamour of a memorable race, cleaving through heaving surf, oh no, memorable because a nasty blister gained in a 23 mile London River Race had impacted, in all senses of the word, on a performance more than ten years ago at Port Isaac. Obviously this was all said with love and humour. After hugging sweaty rowers fresh from a training session we moved on to the first of the days beaches.

http://www.ramegigclub.com/

Cawsand beach, where the Rame gigs are launched.

Hugo and Lola love this beach, twenty minutes of scampering and eliminating and they are ready for a walk. Quickly up The Bound past the gig shed with no further mention of bottoms.

Rame Gig shed

We followed Garrett Street keeping the Sea to our right. Beautiful coastal cottages line the street as we climbed a gentle hill.

This lovely gateway gives the perfect opportunity to look back over Cawsand.

Our destination today is The Devonport Inn on The Cleave , Kingsand. This portion of the Cornish coast overlooks Plymouth Sound. Devonport is the location of Plymouths Naval Dockyard it is also the name of one of the original towns that were merged to create modern Plymouth.

http://visitrame.org.uk/

We were a little early for our booked table so the dogs got another scampering session on the second beach of the day.

Now this is not a food blog but today’s destination was chosen because the food served at The Devonport Inn is fabulous. We had Skate Wings and mussels both served with super chunky chips deep fried in beef dripping. All properly lovely. The Devonport Inn is an unfussy but really comfy place to enjoy food and drink.

http://www.devonportinn.com

A cosy corner

Replete with good food and conversation we retraced our steps towards Cawsand, one more beautiful sunshine shot to complete our afternoon.

My November Love Affair with London

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity

November has always meant London. I was the only child of an entirely ordinary Essex couple. My November birthday was always marked by a trip to London, sometime around my birthday (14th) The date is significant because around this time both Remembrance Day and the Lord Mayors Day are marked. Depending on scheduling my birthday trips were either coloured vividly as if in party mood or more sombrely in quiet reflection. Occasioally, like this year both occur in the same weekend, a cultural salt caramel or sweet and sour sensation. The exact reason for this regular pilgrimage to London is unknown and unknowable as both my parents are long dead. My recollection is that they felt it was really important for me to know and relate to the capital city, a sentiment and experience I have passed on to my own children.

If I’m honest I fell a little out of love with London in the 1970’s . Years as a student , being poor and in grotty accommodation was not enhanced by the turbulent times. I had also inexplicably chosen a Science subject when my real interests were art and writing. Not London’s fault at all but sometimes the location gets the blame for the daftest of personal decisions. East London and the City, the locations of my work and life environment were pretty raw and grim around the edges. Out of love I might have been but I still gave London it’s due diligence in the seventies and in the barely improved eighties. Wherever I lived November nearly always found me doing something Londonish.

November is a good time to visit regardless of the length of your journey. Tourism is at a low point and the frenetic pre Christmas pace doesn’t pick up until the end of the month. Long walks are easier if pavements are clearer. I like to take the same walks that I did in the seventies, back then ancient footpaths avoided busy roads but sometimes, around Smithfield, took me through slaughter house yards. Not only have the centuries-old slaughter houses gone , with their open rivers of blood hosed into street drains,so have the footpaths. Developers seem to have developed a blind eye to paths that had been used for centuries and maybe no one else cared enough to protest. Maybe history and rights of way were forgotten at a price.

This November, coincidentally I was in a London for a writing course with The Gentle Author, decades of familiarity bit me on the bum. Parked up briefly in a familiar spot we organised ourselves for the longish return drive to Cornwall, smug in our knowledge of such a place. Two days later the parking fine arrived. London always has spare capacity to surprise.

Plymouth, quietly, having a moment.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns

A Plymouth Mackerel- Juliet CornellPlymouth was quietly having a bit of a moment in the National Media this week. Firstly the Eddystone Lighthouse was a google doodle. Strangely to mark its 321st anniversary of the first time it was lit.https://www.google.com/doodles/321st-anniversary-of-the-first-lighting-of-eddystone-lighthouseThen The Guardian ran an article about the city centre being designated as a conservation area.https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/16/plymouth-city-centre-designated-conservation-area?CMP=share_btn_linkThis could be a coincidence or a sign that the City PR team are ramping up the pressure now Mayflower 400 is just edging into view. Commemorating a 400 year shared history with what is now the USA and the sailing of the Mayflower , Mayflower 400 is a multi location celebration. Plymouth was the port the Mayflower successfully set sail from to reach America.https://www.mayflower400uk.org/2020 also sees the opening of The Box, a long awaited reincarnation of the Museum and Art gallery. Reimagined and re-engineered to bring contemporary, world class exhibition space to the West Country.A Hard-Hat tour of The Boxhttps://plymhearts.org/thebox/An earlier article in the Guardian puts into perspective the struggle the city is overcoming to grab some headlines. The actual amount of war time damage was so shrouded in secrecy that it is rarely mentioned in the way London or Coventry are. Without proper mention of the damage it is difficult to then applaud the regeneration.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/11/post-industrial-plymouth-business-social-enterprise?CMP=share_btn_linkIt’s good to see Plymouth getting some well deserved positive press.Time Out , the London listings magazine is even getting in on the Plymouth Love, featuring Illuminate as a ” Great Escape”

Friday

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

This stretch of mud is one of my favourite sights. It appears on the banks of the Tamar. Pill Creek feeds into the main River at Saltmill; at low tide its serpiginous track into the main body of water is clear to see. There are many others that can be seen from the road bridge but this one is easy to get close to on foot. I never plan my walks to deliberately to see it but serendipity is kind several times a year. Time stops still for a bit when I catch it at perfection. It recalibrates me until the next time.

Quickie- #3

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Gustatory, Hugo and Lola, QuickiesLeave a comment

Hugo and Lola + ghost writer

Today started well in dogland. There was mention of birthdays and beaches. All sounding good from our large warm bed.

Random stuff was loaded into the car to be delivered to Sam the only human son in this family. He’s only just reappeared in our lives , I thought he was an adult human but for some reason a massive box of Lego was being delivered to his new house. Is this normal for a 33 year old? Books and university clutter competed with other stuff all labeled John Lewis . Who is that for, for pity sake we thought Sam lived with a woman!

The mums seemed really pleased to have empty storage under the stairs, they can be really strange some times. We’ve seen Harry Potter, lets hope they are not thinking of downgrading us fur babies to the ” so much space” area.

Harry Potter is a human they can move in there if anybody does.

Breakfast done and everything seems ready for an outing . Towels are packed and coats . We try to eat the old cats food but the mums catch us and the cat swears, a lot. She really is a foul mouthed creature, you’d think at 22 she would be a little more polite in front of impressionable pups.

The drive to the beach was lovely, warm air blowing and Radio 4 mellifluously in the background . Woman’s hour, thankfully Jenny et al were not discussing orgasms or sour dough. We get twitchy listening to that kind of talk when the mums are around. They are a little outspoken at times and crazily rant at the radio. We don’t think they know Jenny is not really in the next room.

And so to the beach, someone so got the planning wrong, the tide was high and the wind and rain was wicked. Our ears were blown near inside out and not getting wee on our fur was virtually impossible. In our world the perfect poo requires 3 rotations and a look of quiet concentration . No chance of that today there was so much buffering and blustering. We had to give up on the rotations and just scamper to opposite ends of the beach just to keep the mums occupied, bless them they did look chilly. Poos done we frolicked with the foam and chased sea gulls. It’s always so much more light-hearted once the poos are out. We know the mums really love us because they even treasure our poo by keeping it in fragrant green bags. We would not do the same for them, the very thought makes us queasy, luckily we never catch them doing one on a walk.

The mums decide coffee is needed, they really do have a problem. We are always having to find independent coffee shops to keep them in the happy zone. That in itself is difficult to work out, no tails is such a design fault in a human. Fortunately there is a parking space and we all squeeze into The Sorting House. St Agnes, Cornwall.

Coffee is not our cup of tea but cake most definitely is. All too soon the mums decide to take us on another walk . I’m never sure quite what the point is but it keeps them happy. We ended up in a graveyard, they do take this ghost writing thing seriously.

St Agnes has a very pretty churchyard but one of the road names just makes us wonder if humans really are the superior race.

Thankfully the wind and rain persuaded them to return to the car, sleep, as ever, was our happy ending, once we’d sorted out the imaginary rats in the footwell.

Great coffee and cake, rubbish weather.

H and L

PS We’ve been here before. Here is theoldmortuary Instagram feed from July 2017.

Terry Conway

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Memorial Benches4 Comments
My first bench story comes to me from a new friend. We met at a writing course organised by The Gentle Author at The Town House, Spitalfields. Liz heard me talking about wanting to write about memorial Benches and emailed me the next day.Terry Conway was a friend of hers, and goodness me does he have a lovely bench. It is situated just outside Allendale and overlooks a spectacular view. The location for Terry’s bench using what3words is beyond.envy.beauty. “These words are somehow very appropriate for Terry who wrote lyrical songs about the beauty of Northumberland”mused Liz. Luckily for this blog Terry was the subject of a Guardian Other Lives Obituary. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/01 You can also hear Terry on this YouTube clip. https://youtu.be/fcCLmqUIM9w


For anyone not interested in following links. Terry was a council roadman for 30 years and a hugely respected singer and songwriter in the Folk tradition. His day job inspiring his songwriting. Fittingly the
commemoration of Terry’s bench was a folk music moment.

I am so lucky to have met Liz. What a rewarding way to start writing about memorial benches.

Quickie- #2

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Exhibitions, Quickies

I popped into this local visitor attraction this morning.

When I asked Brian, the Centre volunteer for today, why he joined this tiny new museum as a guide. His answer was simple.

” Because I’ve been in construction all my life.I just love seeing something that has been designed by engineers, fulfilling its purpose effectively” he explained

Enthusiasts are so great to talk to, alongside his extensive knowledge of both bridges I also learnt that Brian had started life in a drawing office. His technical drawing skills were way more advanced than my meagre ‘O’ level. He explained that final, finished-build,technical drawings were done on waxed linen and that the fabric was amazing quality, if there was any spare you could take it home and wash the wax off to reveal beautiful fabric to sew with.

It must be a fabulous experience to draw on waxed linen, I find it hard to imagine the process. The smells and textures would be so different from the usual paper. Perfect though if a tea spillage occurred..

Amazing fact, and the excuse for this picture. The workers on the bridge wore normal every day clothes and used no safety gear. There are photographs of men at work in flat caps and suits. Maybe not as visually pleasing as this shot ; which I chose because it could be a contemporary fashion shoot and yet it is more than 50 years old.

Memorial Benches

On By theoldmortuary.designIn TravelsLeave a comment

I’ve been mulling over Memorial benches for some time. Where appropriate or acceptable I would love to tell the stories behind the plaques on so many benches around the world.
The what3words app makes things a little easier.
For continuity I would like
1. A picture of the plaque or inscription.
2. A picture of the bench
3. A picture of the view it overlooks
4. A bio of the people whose lives are being commemorated.
5 The exact location. Better still using what3words code.

https://what3words.com

Please send me your bench stories to include them on this page.

theoldmortuary.design@yahoo.com