What is your favorite form of physical exercise?
My only forms of physical exercise are walking and sea swimming. With such a small, but effective repertoire it seems churlish to choose a favourite. Especially as they go hand in hand. I walk to the sea to swim. Yesterday the offshore wind made the sea so rough I had to swim in a small tidal pool.
Writing a daily blog is a constant evolving habit. Some days I know exactly where the blog is going, other days I respond to a question from my blog hosts. Some days I wait for a nugget of inspiration as the day unfolds. The only rules are that I write something each day and give some thought to my subject matter.
Not particularly blog related but I regularly like to look at my photo archive held on my phone or in the ‘Cloud’ and see what was uploaded on previous 24th Octobers. Or any other date for that matter.
Doing so proves to me that within lifes repetitive cycles there are always significant moments.
The colourful land crab at the top of the blog was actually photographed on the 20th October 2015 in Sai Kung, Hong Kong but on the 24th October I cropped and edited the photograph to use as my screensaver on my phone on the 24th October.
Late afternoon in Wembury 2012. 24th October. Wembury is somewhere I take the blog often. On this particular day I was pondering the fairly recent death of my fathers friend who despite coming from Essex was very familiar with this coastline. When I was a child my parents friends were just part of my childish outer circle but knowing my parents friends as an adult was a lovely experience and it is sad when those connections are lost.
This was a brick wall in an underground car park in the City of London between Smithfield Meat Market and St Bartholomews Hospital. I only ever parked there once despite working at Barts, but was thrilled to find this really old wall and an advert for a long lost coaching inn nearby.
The underground car park had originally been an underground railway station in the 1800’s for the meat market at Smithfield. It was also the location of the MI 5 headquarters in the James Bond film, Skyfall.
Which moves me on, pondering to another wall on 24th October 2017.
I had a new app on my phone that meant I could ‘hang’ any of my pictures on any wall I chose. Giddy times. Finally 24th October 2021.
My peak moment at Dahlia growing, the last dahlia of our last dahlia season at the actual Old Mortuary. The Dahlias were lovingly moved to our new city home. The Dahlias were not impressed with city living and checked out. Who knew they could be so fastidious.
24th October a routine kind of day but stuff still happens.
This morning I set a winged unicorn off on her return migratory journey. If this sounds like the opening sentence of a fantasy novel, that is a coincidence, it was my lived experience this morning.
Last weekend my Hong Kong located granddaughter asked for a cuddly unicorn for her 6th birthday. An easy gift, I thought. I could easily have transferred money to her parents and they could have bought one locally. But that never seems quite right to me. A birthday gift should not, in my opinion, just be a transaction. She should receive a unicorn that I have chosen for her and it should be accompanied by a card with messages written by her Nana and Nona. Which is exactly what she will unpack in 6 days time.
It was impossible to find a British-made unicorn. Which begins the migratory story. The unicorn I settled on was made of soft plush fabric with a rose gold horn. Oh, the choice of unicorns is extensive but her request was for a cuddly one so I ruled out glitter, sparkle and sequins. Those materials make for a very itchy and ultimately unsuccessful cuddle. My unicorn of choice was made in China just a few miles North of the border with Hong Kong. She was then shipped to a prestige toymaker in Britain who posted her to me after an electronic exchange of money.
Just one brief day in Devon and she was boxed up, with a card and posted off to Hong Kong. Her first journey from China would almost certainly have been by sea in a container and that would have taken roughly 30 days. Today she will travel by lorry and aircraft and that journey is predicted to be about 6 days. If she becomes a favourite cuddly friend she may travel back to visit us with VV in less than 24 hours, which is why I consider her to be migratory Unicorn. I was told that a horn was essential but wings not so much. This is the exact point of me choosing our unicorn because she has wings. It makes the whole migratory fantasy more believable and in turn more magical. Grandparents who live at a distance from their grandchildren already live in a fantasy magical realm. We are not a daily reality or any practical use to our grandchildren. We inhabit a sort of untouchable imagined world for the majority of time. A similar place to the fantasy of Unicorns. So why wouldn’t I max up the capabilities of a gifted Unicorn and make sure she has wings to travel. Sometimes I wish I had wings of my own to visit more easily, or a winged Unicorn to carry me.
P.S 6 years ago most of the thinking adults in our family poo-pooed the very idea of unicorns. Our small people who are 6 and under have taken no notice. It seems we must follow suit.
It is a grey old day today and yesterday was not much better but there was a gorgeous rainbow yesterday and I think there is very little chance of anything quite so charming today. Going with the grey theme gifted to me by today’s weather I thought I would share a five year old photo.
There was not a chance of good photos this morning. A dense blanket of fog and mist grappled with the landscape and won. Greige is the order of the day. So yesterday’s rainbow and last week’s pumpkins have to enliven todays blog with colour.
And then just like that the sun came out and gave me a vivid fungus to ponder.
Google lens tells me this is the gregarious Redlead Roundhead Mushroom who likes to live on woodchips.
Gregarious is not a word I have ever associated with mushrooms. I’ve always considered gregarious to be a choice. Are lone mushrooms considered anti-social? What a world I have stepped into just because the sun came out.
As the dark mornings stealthily shorten daylight hours I am more and more thrilled by the cloud of crumpled paper that has replaced the ghastly chandelier in the bedroom. The wonder that is IKEA’s imaginative design for a mass produced item.
We are in the midst of our own Octoberfest. No beers or cutesy German themed servers wearing lederhosen and low cut shirts. Our Octoberfest is all about ‘Spring’ cleaning the house and some redecorating.
The studio has also had its chandelier replaced by a paper cloud. So much more conducive to creativity. The parchment-coloured wall is new; the blue one will change to dark teal. We want to reflect the colour of our local sea. Oktoberfesting the studio is a mammoth task. There are still materials left over from my Fine Arts degree 16 years ago. I have moved them around the country in case random things were ever needed. I have promised myself a proper sort out and rationalisation of art materials. My fabric stache took the hit yesterday. I need a full day of recovery before I tackle paints.
What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?
I am absolutely a risk-averse, risk taker. I would never plan a big risk but am happy to allow risk to happen. I believe that creativity absolutely grows in an environment of risk and that firmly held planning is the antithesis of a creative mind. My science, child rearing ,or health and safety head is a much less risk taking beast but even those worlds benefit sometimes from happy accidents.
To answer the question, I have no idea how big a risk I would like to take, maybe I already did it or maybe that choice is in the future.
On an illustrative note the photos accompanying this blog were taken in a friend/ bobbers/ neighbours garden. I have learned to my cost that taking a risk with planting in our yard does not work. What is needed is acute observation of what survives in close-by gardens as our locality is very much a micro climate. I spotted this rose while doing a tour of my friend’s garden.
Her yard is east-facing and mine is west but for a rose this beautiful in October I feel the risk is worth it.
One last little risk, throw the rose picture into a photo editing app that has a random algorithm and see what happens.
What are you most proud of in your life?
I think pride is a very hard thing to define and also quite transitory. Sometimes a cup of tea is so perfect that there is a moment of self-congratulation. Is that pride?
If I had clambered onto these rocks yesterday as these men did I would have been very proud. These rocks are covered in razor-sharp barnacles, climbing up is likely to have been very perilous for them and yet it looks almost effortless.
Pride in myself is not really in my skillset. Like most parents I am proud of my children, of course, they are wonderful people. But I can be proud of the most random of things, an observed kindness, wonderful acting, a beautiful garden.
I like my version of pride, it is easy to manage. The simple things that make life more gorgeous are worthy of gentle, transitory pride and I have loads of it to spare.
We accidentally went to a farmshop yesterday. Mid to late October is peak pumpkin spotting season. Pumpkins are at the top of my list of vegetable photography but I was encouraged not to linger as we were on a mission to buy paint for the house.
So I have had a digital linger, admiring and changing my one shot of the day.
I am fairly certain a watercolour will emerge from these colour observations.
It’s been a while since there was a bobbing blog, or should I say Bobbing Blogue.
This morning October pulled out a fabulous combination of sunshine, good sea temperature and excellent biscuits. 8 bobbers, 3 dogs and a non-bobbing bobber caught an early high tide and filled the bay with chatter and some swimming, before we all departed for almost a whole day of doing stuff elsewhere. There was a bit of bounce to add to the experience, not as much as I created in the picture below but we never look this cheery when the sea is actually this rough. Grim determination is the facial expression on those days , this morning the smiles were genuinely generated. It really sets you up for the day.
It is Plymouth Art Weekender this weekend. Always a fascinating festival of all things art. Missing on our cultural horizons for 4 years.
More of that later in the week but an early installation in one of my local shopping areas had me on the back foot a couple of weeks ago.
A moment when travel broadening the mind has done too good a job.
I have travelled in remote parts of the U.S where a rural supermarket is the social hub for thousands of square miles . Wedding invitations posted by the checkout, open to all who bring a plate of food. Obituaries of regulars stuck on notice boards and with shades of the old Wild West, mugshots of shoplifters or other undesirables.
So it was with some surprise I saw a couple of pictures of people inside the window of my local Co-op.
That’s unusual for here, I thought, while also thinking that the photo of one of the miscreants was quite arty, handsome and maybe familiar. It was very early in the morning.
The gymnastics my mind did in those moments thinking a friend’s Dad had been a bad man. The thought was unimaginable. Then I hoped nothing bad had happened to him. More travel awareness. Obituaries on lampposts and telegraph poles in Greece.
Art was not on my mind at 7 am, not much was. But it woke me up and made me think. Always a sign of good art in my opinion.
To view the project follow the link.
Photographic Census
To view the Plymouth Art Weekender follow link below.
theoldmortuary.design 