#1066 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Marks and Spencer are using the words Big Autumn Energy as their current call to purchase. September rushes in with a frenzy of activity after the languid, sun soaked days of High Summer, but beyond that moment, I never feel Autumn to be a season of high energy. So Big Autumn Energy is not my vibe. I feel it is the consolidation season after the energy of Spring and Summer. But the word  consolidation is never going to sell anything in Marks and Spencer or any other retailer. But it gives me the chance to use my watercolour of harvested apples to good effect.

A slightly darker energy was created when I overlaid a Red Admiral Butterfly who was basking in the sun yesterday.

She was soaking up sunshine and stored heat, on a stone wall while I gently stalked her, quietly consolidating her autumn.

#1065 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Family1 Comment

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

I would be devastated. I know things are just things but I quite like things. To lose all my friends and family would  be so much worse, but either is unthinkable.

Goodness I have been hanging onto these prompts this week.  We have been hiding out in the campervan keeping our germs to ourselves. The weather has been kind. But pondering has been a little on the back foot.

Powered by a morning bun that looks like a comma we geared up for a two year olds birthday party.

The weather was kind. It’s been a good week for the weather.  And today was a good day to be two.

Especially if you love bunnies.

#1064 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Words, Yardening1 Comment
Sunset over Arcadia

A classic ponder for a Friday. Covid has darkened our doors this week with 50% of the human household out of action sequentially. 100% in total. So not a huge amount of out and aboutage for us. I have chosen  not to walk the dogs locally as it is impossible not to meet someone to talk to. I have not been alone, an autobiography of Adrian Edmondson and a biography of Alexander McQueen have kept me occupied. Both creative. interesting and somewhat troubled men at times. On a brighter note the David Austin Rose catalogue popped into my email, this is the inspiration for todays blog.

I chose a climbing rose for the yard and have ordered a bare root to be delivered in November. I chose it on sight and smell. The name in my opinion is rather ugly.

©David Austin

Unknown to me Crepuscule means sunset in French. Living in the west of England I have learned to love a good sunset. Where I grew up in the flat East of England sunsets were something that happened elsewhere.

Sunset over Plymouth Sound.

Just a little googling found an even uglier word for something quite so lovely.

Sunnansetlgong was the term for sunset in Old English while the word sunset meant West.

Both perfectly understandable. In looking this up I got the usual targeted online advert. My answer would be

” I give a crap, words are important”

Sunset over Wembury Bay

#1063 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Daft Questions, Serendipity1 Comment

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

This is an interesting question. I often feel out of place even in the most comfortable of situations. I often feel like I am on the periphery of a group. So much so that I feel that that is my place and I am quite comfortable with that sensation

Like being a white pumpkin in October , I lnow that I am in the group but perhaps not quite of the group. When Orange and ornate pumpkins are the season favourites.

This feeling has never bothered me

Although I understand to most people it could seem quite odd.

I am always an observer of new situations at the beginning , I dont jump in head first hoping to survive.

I always consider before committing. Apparently this is quite normal for ‘only’ children who are not brought up in a large extended family. We are just not exposed to the normal rough and tumble of life that growing up with siblings brings. We lack an innate competitive attitude to all things no matter how small.

For me being ‘out of place’ is exactly the place I am used to. Sometimes being the white pumpkin is no bad thing.

#1062 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

My life without a computer. No blogging, more reference books. An analog life, which I have lived before. A different way of being in every way.

Today had been a non computer day, a bit of domestic sorting out and the joy of finding an old book.

2nd of October, just two entries. An exploding barge in 1874, loaded with gunpowder, must have made a massive bang on the Regents Canal. None of the crew survived and were blown up to such a point that there was no evidence they had ever existed.

On 1915 there was a blackout in London, I didn’t know such a thing had happened in the first world war.

Without a computer that would be the end of my knowledge. That would sadden me but I would still have a fulfilled life. But if I had some time on my hands I would be off to the library for a rifle through their reference library. But I have a computer, here is a link to the exploding barge.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/blog/library-archive/macclesfield-bridge-disaster

And Google tells me that London started Blackouts in 1915 to deter Zeppelin raids. The first of which occured in September  1915 so it was probably a good idea.

In my analogue world, a tidy book corner plus wrapping paper.

#1061 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn YardeningLeave a comment

Here we go October. The Solar festoon lights have been taken down from the yard. Poor attendance by daylight,recently, has powered them up only enough to limply glow for about an hour.

Here they are having their last glow on the floor, while they dry out, before they are boxed up until May. Taking  them down was a much more difficult task than putting them up. The climbing plants had made good use of their wires as supports,

So I had a couple of hours of plant wrangling and weaving shoots into new support networks, while removing the festoon lights.

Many solar powered lights have been replaced by less mains operated bulbs. Just enough to light up the way to our garage.

The other set of lights will permit tomato harvesting in the dark evenings. Our outdoor tomato plants often keep fruiting until December. Careful storage means we can often eat a home grown tomato on C#ris##@s Day.  Apologies for mentioning the C word.

In other news here is a photo that has all the components of a prize winning candid shot and is not a prize winning shot.

Moments before this shot the seagull slid down the small childrens slide. Here he is composing himself after his ‘thrill’ ride. He teased me by returning to the steps a few times but never quite plucked up the courage to give me a photo opportunity.

Leaves however have no choice. Nature imitating  drive-through coffee.

Welcome October, play nicely and I will write good things.

#1060 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Daft QuestionsLeave a comment

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

Sometimes these prompts from my blog hosts are useful and other times not at all. I am a life long gatherer of random knowledge. There is so much in my personal hippocampus/ temporal lobe archive, an archive that is not the tidiest,that it seems to be getting harder to retrieve my idiosyncratic collection of useless trivia. A question like the one above has me flummoxed. I have no idea what details of my life I could pay more attention to. Which of my details is not fully fleshed out   or completely explored and understood. Who is the judge of personal details that have been given proper attention to and those that need a little more work?

Flummoxed I maybe but I rather like the thinking process that makes my mind tingle with trying to create an answer. Right now I am trying to work out if this  is a good or bad prompt. I know it is not fully bad or of no interest because I scroll right past those. It is also not fully good because I don’t have an immediate response to blog about in a negative or positive way.

In conclusion I don’t know which aspect of my life needs closer attention, but I have given the matter some thought.

I have spent a few weeks with an old school friend digging out memories that we have both archived for more than fifty years. I am hugely surprised how quickly we could recall all that old data.  Even more impressive is the way other forgotten trivia continues to surface in my mind. All a bit pointless now as we are once again half a world apart.

#1059 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Van Life2 Comments

Saturday arrived with a nasty twist in its tail. Hannah has Covid

She felt rotten but the sun was out. We do still take Covid seriously in this house and choose not to mingle with people.  But a campervan to lurk in is a perfect plan . A bed on wheels that can be parked anywhere is a great solution. 

Wembury was our destination of choice and by 4pm we were the only people about. A nearly monotone walk occurred.

 

Hiding out in a van with limited phone signal gave me the chance to read a whole print edition Saturday Newspaper. So complete is my reading that I can fully justify buying a Sunday one. Happiness gleaned from adversity.

#1058 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Daft Questions1 Comment

In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

Hard work in itself does not make me fulfilled. Hard work with a positive outcome is very fulfilling. But hard work  that fails to bring a good outcome is not fulfilling in any way. My hard work of the summer, painting an already white, heavily textured wall continues to reward me. I had no idea that a refresh of white paint would make such a difference. Especially now we have lost summer light, the optical brightness of the walls really enhances the more flimsy light of autumn. Hard work seems much harder to recover from when it does not bring the desired positive or pleasing result. I cannot imagine enjoying it for its own sake. I know plenty of people do. Thank goodness I am an optimist or I would never get out of bed without a guarantee of success.

There is a world of hard work for hard work sake that I rarely experience. The Gym for instance, great for physical recovery but once the recovery is achieved I have little interest. Is there any hope for me?

Absolutely, optimism is a superpower that trumps my aversion to pointless hard work.

#1057 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Family, Serendipity2 Comments

27th September 2024, one year since the Sycamore of the Sycamore Gap was cut down by a criminal act and 90 years since my mother was born. The two things are both related and not related. I can’t claim to have a huge relationship with this tree, as others do, but somewhere in the photo albums of my parents there are a few pictures of me at varying heights and ages standing under this tree.  The photos would be horribly aged in the way that mass market photo development from the late sixties and seventies are.  Bleached out colours with a brown tinge. There may be a black and white image of me at age 5 standing under the tree.

Regardless I made the image at the top of this blog of a lone woman under the tree from images I found in a magazine.

Sycamore Gap is the red marker.

Every year we would make the journey from North East Essex, close to Cambridge on this map, to Glasgow to visit my paternal grandfather. Sycamore Gap was where we would stop and have a few hours out of the journey and a late breakfast. My Dad always liked to leave home at 2 a.m for these adventures. The journeys stopped when my Grandfather died and I last visited the tree at about age 15 on a school trip to Hadrian’s wall. That aspect of my family is entirely lost to me apart from their names on my family tree. One stands out.

Why did me and my mum never discuss what a cool name her Grandfather had?

A tree and a family tree are the flimsiest of connections for this blog. Underneath the canopy of both trees is the thought that I never talked enough to my parents while I had them. Do any of us?