The coolest thing I ever found was knowledge and love of our capital city, London. My parents who lived 50 miles away always made sure I visited several times a year. Times were different but I was encouraged to confidently travel there alone and navigate public transport from about the age of 15.
What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?
November was always a favourite time to visit and as I write I am sitting in a hotel room in my former home town of Crystal Palace overlooking the city where I lived and worked for 12 years.
The dogs have already done one of their favourite walks in Dulwich Village where we lived when we first moved to London.
Next one up is a circuit of Crystal Palace Triangle. Another home town we loved living in.
Tomorrow Borough Market for breakfast. But to finish an arty farty image from our London flat. It feels a little odd not to be there, but the new owners might not need two women and two dogs being all nostalgic in their home.
Some of you may notice that 3 blogs have appeared in just over 24 hours. This is because Autumn proper finally arrived in the West Country and with only one planned task of the day we couldn’t give up on a cold crisp day with blue skies, bright sunshine and sharp shadows. We were out for all of the 10 daylight hours that November gave us yesterday.
Our early morning quest was to visit a farm cafe, that we always manage to miss,on our travels into the area known as South Hams. We like to have a small portfolio of places we have visited to take friends to. As I write this I realise we have never even taken our friend whose name is Hams to the South Hams.
Ironic really as his partner’s surname is Curnow the old word for Cornwall and he gets to visit Cornwall every time they visit us. Note to self to resolve this ommision.
Our target cafe of the day was Heron Valley. The orchard and fields overlook Heron Valley. As if to signal the beginning of a perfect visit a Heron rose into the air just in front of us and flew into the trees on the horizon to the right of this picture. Honestly!
Also perfect was the day bed provided for weary travellers. I was a traveller but hardly weary at 10 am. But needs must, for a photo opportunity.
Breakfast was fab. The dogs got chopped up sausage and a roaring fire to gaze at.
The cafe also has a small showroom for homewares made from recycled plastic water bottles. Autumn colours were everywhere.
And sharply defined shapes in the outdoor eating area.
It was at breakfast we decided to extend our day and visit a garden centre.
This week I have taken delivery of two rambling roses. The yard has proved it can grow roses well, it has nurtured an old rose that has been there forever and a cutting that was gifted to me. I bought three rose plants from the London 2012 Olympic sell off . They failed to thrive in our back garden I don’t know if it was me or the clay that killed them off. They were the roses that provided the medal winners bouquets and may just have been exhausted plants. Whatever the reason I have become timid about buying new rose plants until this year.
Going to a garden centre did not alleviate my timidity. Too much information. We retreated to the cafe and I resolved to take advice from the growing advice provided with my two new climbers.
Autumn colour was everywhere. Some of it on my plate.
Some great colour combinations just in the texture of gardening sundries.
Two cafe stops in the first 5 hours of daylight suggest that the next 5 should perhaps be spent doing some exercise. Slapton Sands was our choice of location, just beautiful sea and sand with no tempting cafes. I think the words bracing and beautiful best sum up our beach walk.
There was another plan for our afternoon, more painting of walls at home. By staying out until sunset we quite naturally cancelled this plan.
And to finish, a pretty public washroom. I love a pretty loo.
Hardly had the ink dried on :-https://theoldmortuary.design/2024/11/12/1103-theoldmortuary-ponders/
Where I bemoaned the anticyclonic gloom. Moments later the anticyclonic gloom lifted, revealing the most perfect autumn day. Bright blue sky, sunshine and a temperature 5 degrees cooler than yesterday. We filled all the daylight hours with gadding about in the South Hams.
An unplanned trip to an unusual War Memorial at Slapton Sands.
These two sentences sum me up exactly, my face is the antithesis of ‘Poker Face’.
My moral compass has been a busy old thing these last few days on a scale of this:-
Versus the more manageable and mental, pocket sized version, that one should always carry.
I have been lost in thought and at times my face has given that fact away. No more, the path through my personal moral maze has been cleared until the next time. Which makes for rather a short blog so moving on may I introduce Gorgeous Garlic.
We are in the midst of a rather strange autumn. Warm temperatures and high level greige, or anticyclonic gloom as weather people describe the situation.
Everything in the yard continues to grow and in some cases bloom.
In the kitchen three Garlic bulbs thought they would get in on the growing action. I attempted to chop one but the texture had changed. He went in the bin,but what to do with his two friends. As always Dr. Google has a plan. I popped them in milk bottles and they are growing roots, ready to be planted when the weather does actually get chillier.
Rather like a lamb that escapes the slaughter house they have won a reprieve. Not for them the unctuous warmth and comfort of an autumn casserole. These guys will live another whole growing season. Although rather like the odd escaping slaughter house lamb these two have become rather like pets, will they ever go for the chop.
After all the music, marching and speeches of Remembrance Sunday. We took a quiet morning walk at the Plymouth War Memorials. No crowds and some lovely family flowers just quietly laid among all the vivid redness of the more iconic Poppies.
One statue returned to being the favourite perching place of seaward looking seagulls.
Lets see what the shape of the world will be like in a year’s time. We may well remember but we don’t learn. It’s all a bit shit really.
Our dusk/ dark walks are taking us away from our home streets at the moment. Last night we did a circuit of Sutton Harbour and the Barbican. Just an hour’s walk on the eve of Remembrance Day.
All the bustle of bars opening and cafes and shops closing reflected on still waters.
The Barbican has set its normal illuminations to Red for Remembrance.
Remembrance Day in Britain feels like the last full stop before the run up to Christmas. The beginning of noticeably shortening days, colder weather and rampant consumerism.
At home we are still in a flurry of redecoration and reorganisation. Every trip to a charity shop or scrap store feels like a minor victory against ‘stuff’. I am having to channel my creative energies into tidying and sorting, ignoring the itch to put paint on paper or canvas.
But today our busy domestic schedule will stop for a while to observe and consider the costs of war to the community we currently live in.
In the mid seventies I occasionally took a trip from sleepy North East Essex to Dewsbury in West Yorkshire to experience Northern Soul in the North. A friend’s dad, who was from Dewsbury, would drive us up after his work and our school on a Friday ( 3 hours drive) drop us off at a club, go and visit his mum and then drive us back some hours later in time for our Saturday jobs. It all felt other worldly and exciting. We were extremely fortunate that 70’s Disco was very available to us locally and 60 miles away in London. Northern Soul in the North felt edgy and niche to us.
50 years later I mentioned this to a friend from Yorkshire, who had not experienced Northern Soul, even though it was on her doorstep. Her family probably were aware of the reputation of some of these clubs . Also she was 9 when I was 15 We ‘Essex Girls’ were blissfully unaware, it was just fab music, great dancing and men with exotic accents. Definition of an Essex Girl below. We did not conform to the stereotype in Yorkshire or at home.
Since then the four of us ( 1 Essex, 1 Hong Kong, 1 Oxford and 1 Yorkshire) living in the far South West have all become a little hooked on watching Northern Soul Dancing on Youtube.
Then inexplicably we found a Northern Soul Club night in Plymouth.
There are a couple of links below to show how Northern Soul should be done and what it is. And that perhaps is the best place to stop this blog. It is harder than you think and older knees, not so forgiving.But there were older knees than ours there, giving it their best effort.
10 years ago this was Hugo posing as a louche kind of barfly, making his dog chew look like a gangster smoking at a bar.
Here he is 10 years later posing straight after a trip to the groomers who cleaned him up after his street brawl and consequent facial surgery of last week.
A different sort of barfly this time, the sort that might explain away his lop sided face by a tale of street fighting.
Same sofa, same dog, 10 years of doggy experiences. Percentage wise, most of his life is spent on this sofa gently dozing, often with a favourite human. His dreams are far more vivid than his real life. Just the one bit of drama, last week, and as you can see he has put that behind him now. Unless of course you ever happen to meet him at a bar …
English was my favourite subject by a long way. I went to a very normal State school with an excellent English department. The staff there encouraged my natural love of creativity and communication using language.
In this week of a puzzling, to many, decision by nearly 51% of the American electorate to give Donald Trump a second crack at being U.S President, I was sent a copy of a letter by an old school friend. He is equally obsessed by English. Below is his letter to The Age, an Australian Newspaper.
In the Charles Dickens novel Martin Chuzzlewit, (1843), one of the characters asks,: “f I was called upon to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?” His companion replies,” Paint it like an eagle, I suppose.”
“No that wouldn’t do for me. I should want to draw it like a bat for its short-sightedness,, like a bantam for its bragging, like an ostrich for its putting its head in the mud. And like a phoenix for its power of springing anew from the ashes of its faults and vices and soaring up into the sky.”
While the American electorate were acting like bats and ostriches, Donald Trump somehow managed to transform himself from a bantam into a phoenix. Except as everyone but the American people know, the phoenix isn’t real it’s a myth. Meanwhile the American Eagle’s future is more uncertain than ever.
David Pullen
Martin Chuzzlewitt, fictional character created by Charles Dickens could have made this observation yesterday. From abroad it feels like a cousin ( The U.S) has entered into a relationship that outsiders can see is not healthy.
I had read an enormous amount of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle before I was twenty.My book club has directed me, this month, to read the first novel to feature Sherlock Holmes. I am loving it, particularly because the life I have lived beyond twenty has exposed me to many of Conan Doyles real life locations. Where his fictitious detective operated. I used to regularly catch my bus home from work opposite 221B Baker Street and a different bus home took me on the Brixton Road. The first crime scene where Homes and Watson work together. When I was training at Barts Hospital I was familiar with the laboratories where Holmes and Watson first met in A Study in Scarlet. Wimpole and Harley Street were neighbouring streets to my workplace in Westmoreland Street. Holmes and Watson are frequently in these streets.
So I find myself in a strange place reading a book where, once upon a time, I was free to build my own imaginary locations as a twenty year old with little life experience. Re-reading it I have none of that freedom but with that understood I find the reading of the novel even richer in detail than I did before. Places I love are brought back to life, 150 years before I ever knew them.
In another curious coincidence I currently live very very close to the location of Arthur Conan Doyles G.P practice in Durnford Street in 1882. I know where the actual Baskervilles are buried. They were Conan Doyles patients, he used their name. Who knows if they even had a hound. My house was being built while he worked here. Funny to think that our quirky old lady was just a building site or ‘ New Build Home’ when Conan Doyle was wandering these streets.
Without a Book Club I doubt I would have re-entered the world of Sherlock Holmes, I am finding the experience rather interesting.
theoldmortuary.design 