#1398 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

My post-Christmas tidy up brought me some joy with the rediscovery of my old portable typewriter’s history.

My Olympus SM was manufactured in Germany in 1939 and sold to its first owner W.H Butterworth while he lived at 28, Chiltern Drive, Braddell Heights, Singapore. The original sales document is still in the ginger coloured carrying case, resting on my sofa.

I was in Singapore in November, had I remembered this fact I would almost certainly have taken myself off on a wild goose chase to see my typewriters first home.

Somewhere in this photo from the Marina Bay swimming pool is Braddell Heights. Very far distant but there nevertheless.

Why such a wild goose chase?

I quite like a wild goose chase. Sometimes a seemingly pointless task brings unexpected experiences. So I regret not chasing that particular goose but Singapore had other wildlife.

But we did not meet Otters in the Botanic Gardens, which was a dissapointment

So perhaps we should have chased the odd wild goose.

Or maybe we did.

#1397 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, WinterLeave a comment
Sunshine in a preserving pan.

I always think winter is best endured if observed and endured in bite sized chunks. Getting to mid-January there is always a natural high point when a friend makes marmalade. Something I very much enjoy on a bite sized chunk of bread. A glowing pot of freshly created 2026 marmalade is lurking in my cupboard from today. The pot arrived on the same day as another sign that Winter is loosening her cold boney fingers from our vital parts. My first bunch of Daffodils. Really my favourite flower of all time. Just dont tell the Sunflowers, Roses or Tulips. Dahlias, peonies or Leucospermum.

Winter may have loosened her fingers a bit but there is at least another 6 weeks of mood boosting required . Marmalade , Daffodils and December Leucospermum. Are todays little sunshine coloured pick-me-ups.

December Leucospermum, Mornington Peninsular

Never forgetting another December treat.

Hong Kong Fruit stall. December.

Seeing so much sunshine and vivid colour in December has propelled me through the first half of winter . Marmalade and Daffodils will carry on the good work. I have been so lucky.

#1396 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn AustraliaLeave a comment

I believe that yesterday I banished the last of the pine needles from our hallway and sitting room. A real tree is the heart of the festive season’s fragrance profile. Even a dustpan full of dropped needles in January has a fragrance. Not the same as a tree freshly felled and loaded into a warm car. But definitely a recognisable smell of Winter.

The smell of Winter, Melbourne style is the vapour that you can see in this picture.

My sense of smell and taste has been shredded by Covid. I suspect what I am left with is unlikely to change. I mourned  my changed sense of smell and taste in the beginning but now I celebrate the flavours and fragrances I have retained. I was never timid about sniffing or eating but now there  is a new/old world of things to explore that previously I might not have liked.  I also have a newfound certainty about fragrance and taste.

I like it.

I don’t like it.

I have no opinion.

All the liminal areas of taste and smell no longer exist.

So when I walked into The Block Arcade and smelled something wonderful outside Essensorie then I had to have a closer sniff

A bottle of their Christmas Spice Essential Oil came home with me.

Blood Orange and Rose Geranium would have been the two scents that hooked me in. Anything citrusy is my gateway to flavour and smell. Geranium is a new  fragrance friend, eating it would be quite a stretch. Previously I just couldn’t wholeheartedly love it. Now I could roll in a field of geraniums like a frolicsome pony in hay or a kitten in Catnip.

I did neither of those things in their stylish and peaceful shop. I just calmly bought a bottle of their potion.

Essensorie | Artisanal Natural Fragrance https://share.google/0XyqhScCeiEccP7lF

Nobody needs a giddy goat in a shop just before closing time.

#1395 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Australia, chores1 Comment
Our Raw Prawn Christmas Decoration.

Flipping tradition . 12th night being the ‘right’ time to take down Christmas Decorations. But as ours were barely up by Christmas Eve, I decided to take them down on the 21st night. Or the 14th of January.

When at a Christmas Tree Farm in Australia it would have been foolish not to purchase a Raw Prawn Christmas bauble to hang resplendently in our Northern Hemisphere tree.

Now Mr Prawn is boxed up and ready to be packed away with all the other tree decorations from around the world.

Taking down Christmas so late in January has plunged me straight into a different sort of festival. Mid-Winter Decluttering. As I write this the house looks appalling as I am mid-point of the mid-winter urge to declutter. The clutter is everywhere having been pulled out from all the places clutter gathers. Writing a blog when I should be decluttering is unforgivable. Maybe I am double pondering. Pondering while pondering what on earth to do with all this stuff.

Including the prawn!

#1394 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Books, Film, Yardening1 Comment
Crepuscule in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.

‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’

Crepuscule is a bare root rose that I planted last year. I thought the name was clunky and ugly until I learned that Crepuscule was a French word for sunset. 

While I was away in December my bare root rose decided to put out her first ever flower.

I was both thrilled and concerned. What is beautifully acceptable in the early summer in Sydney is not the norm in a wintery Stonehouse. She also has a very high standard set by her Australian Cousin.

A new found love of growing roses brings with it some tough decisions. My bare root rose should be concentrating on growing roots not blooms. The secateurs were deployed to Crepuscules first efforts at budding and blooming. A Tragedy, some might say.

Which leads me tortuously to last nights outing to see the film Hamnet. On the day that awards and accolades have started tumbling in from the Red Carpet Film and T.V Awards Season.

I don’t often go to films of books that I have read that don’t seem to naturally lend themselves to a Screenplay. Hamnet was just such a book. Deeply enjoyable and dense but a bit of a tricksy read in parts. I couldn’t quite see how a screenplay could replicate my reading experience.

I shouldn’t have worried, Chloe Zhao the screenwriter and Maggie O’Farrell the original author and now co-screen writer did a brilliant job . Pruning and distilling the original text into something that worked brilliantly for me on screen.

Most times I put books and films of books into different filing systems.

Hamnet joins Perfume by Patrick Suskind as a film that I regard as accomplished as the original Novel. I imagine it works just as well for those who have not read the book.

Pruning and distilling at its best.

#1393 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Sunday pottering, Sunday Vibes, sunshineLeave a comment
What a difference a Day Makes.

24 little hours in Seatown. Another blog featuring home grown sunshine in January.

One day  the January sun might just have caused a little reddening of the cheeks. And the next our faces were whipped to a pinkish blush by harsh wind, sideways rain and seawater in the air.

Night and Day, that’s who you are.

An unexpected Christmas tree in mid-January.

Lobster pots and Buoys at West Bay.

Brains are funny things . Mine immediately picked out two songs written in the 1930’s to accompany these weekend photos

Night and Day- Cole Porter 1932

What a difference a Day Makes- Dinah Washington 1934.

These songs are absolutely on the periphery of  my experience. They have been stored subliminally in some hard to access , dusty warehouse in my Neo Cortex.

Neither were a family favourite. My parents were small children in the mid to late 30’s

Two pieces of music that I have never given a moment of thought to until their titles exactly matched the theme of the blog. Stored subliminally from background music on radio and T.V throughout my lifetime.

My earworms for the day… Maybe yours too

#1391 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Hong KongLeave a comment

Caught in a shaft of sunlight. My sunlight promise of some sunshine every day in January would not ordinarily feature art. But here I am within an art work by Marta Minujin. Part of a collective of Womens Art that we visited in Hong Kong.

Source: M+ https://share.google/a9cTaA1F0VTjbzHIG

Dream Rooms- Environments by Women also introduced my granddaughter to the work of her Great Grandmothers favourite artist.

Immersion: Judy Chicago, Feather Room (1966) – Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts https://share.google/ywy3no3ovdtqejGG6

Judy Chicago was the thinking woman’s artist in the 60’s and 70’s. Her Dinner Party installation of Dinner plates decorated with Vulva’s was a big talking point in the Sexual Health Clinics of rural Essex.

The Feather Room is a little more accessible for a 7 year old. Not that my blushes were ever spared from the womens chit chat that happened between my mum and her work friends at that time.

I think the Art we experienced in Asia and Australia might push my blogs through February just as the Sunshine from both locations is informing January. And by the time February is over that is Winter done.

Sunshine on a Saturday. It must still be January.

.

#1390 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Australia, Stonehouse, Storms1 Comment

Storm Goletti.The storm named after an Italian Cockerel was scheduled to strut around our Peninsular from mid-afternoon.

My grandad kept Italian Bantams at his smallholding attached to his pub. They were very opinionated little hens with fancy feet and extravagant plumes of fancy feathers. Tsthe hens very much liked to sit on eggs, not necessarily their own. The pub guard- geese were very much working women who left their over-large eggs in the tender care of  the fussy little bantams. Several bantams sharing the care of one goose egg. The Italian Bantam Cockerel went on guard duty with the geese. He almost certainly thought he was in charge. He just fussed around at their feet, occasionally attempting a more sexual liaison with no chance of success.

Storm Goletti was nothing like a Bantam but everything like an arrogant Cockerel in our neighbourhood. Noisy, all over the place . It knocked down our bins and scattered and picked over our rubbish. We got off lightly.

But I did put the sensation of the storm to good use and painted a stormy version of  my beloved sea pool at Coogee.

Storm over Coogee

I was even giddy enough to use hand made paper. What else could I do when confined to the house after a  government Red Warning for winds and flying debris. But there is nothing quite like painting a storm while in a storm.

#1389 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment
Central Park

This photo landed in my lap yesterday. It was a freezing cold day and cloudless, until it wasn’t. Out of nowhere, two black labradors, brushed past me, off their leads and owners nowhere to be seen. In that moment the clouds gathered around the sun and all colour drained from the scene.  Smaller dogs and their owners scattered, alarmed and protective. Moments later the dogs were gone and the bright day was back. As if the two things were linked.

And as if I had imagined the whole thing. Spooky things don’t generally happen in broad daylight. Digitally I popped a full moon behind the trees. It creates a haunting image much more in keeping with the sensation of the day.

Is an ownerless dog as other worldly than a riderless horse?

The dogs were like creatures from another realm. Fast and fleeting.  Bearing down on me, lLola and other wary smaller dogs. Black Labs overbearing one minute and gone the next.

Their owners insouciance irritating. Their languid body language, indifferent to the unfolding chaos. 

When the sun came out again the men and their dogs were nowhere to be seen. As if the clouds, men and dogs had been a wrinkle in reality, ghost dogs and their masters from a different realm.

Just as I reread this blog before posting I noticed the silhouette of a ghost dog on his hind legs in the first picture. I knew there was something strange going on!