#772 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Words4 Comments

Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

Having just stepped out of the Festive Season I can answer this slightly awkward question from Bloganuary. Playing is not built into my daily life. Far too much White Anglo-Saxon Work ethic has leached into my core. The Festive season is a rich and embellished few weeks, where hard work and the gathering of family and friends allows time out to play board games or read books. To go on real and imaginary adventures with small or large people. Playtime perfection some might say.

Having semi-retired from a serious and sensible career to take up a second career as an artist, could be construed as being pretty playful all the time.

How is playful defined or calibrated. Who sets the protocols or parameters on play?

The truth is that I struggle with the words play and playful. But if I could replace the word play with fun then fun is a daily activity both the planned and the serendipitous. Fun appears in the darkest of moments or the least expected places. It can be scheduled or awkward. Bubbling up out of the fun gland when seriousness or professionalism are expected and the correct response. I am an exploder of mirth, sometimes inappropriately. Is that playful or just bad?

I struggle so much with the word I looked it up. At last I could feel some comfort with this topic. The hook-in for me is light-hearted.

I can actually sign up for light hearted, so much easier to live with. Unless of course it is the Festive Season when anything goes.

#771 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn insonia1 Comment

What are your biggest challenges?

Sometimes the biggest challenges are the little ones. The one’s that trip you up or arrive unannounced. January the first 2024 arrived and at only 3 hours in, my challenge was to stay asleep. So the first cup of tea of the year was at 3:30 am. Festive season insomnia is like no other. Tasty snacks welcome me into the kitchen world and there is much to fill a mind that just needs to be tricked back to sleep. Sometimes, like today, I can barely stay awake to finish the tea, or indeed this early blog. But nobody needs a lot of pondering on the first day of the year. The picture in this blog was a surprising find on a regular dog walk. We must just have crossed the cobbles in a slightly different place and my first name initial appeared at my feet.

It also works rather well for January.

Happy New Year 2024. My pondering is done and I am off to bed. Again.

#770 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

What makes you feel nostalgic?

My favourite, yet random, images give me nostalgia and great joy. For this last blog of the year I gave myself fifteen minutes to find favourite photos from my phone archive. Some of them are serendipitous and conform to the December theme of #celebrating serendipity. Many of them have appeared in older blogs and some have never seen the light of day before. Some give me hope when I hit artists/writers block.

Here they are in no particular order.

Beach huts are a huge inspiration to me. I have actually only ever been in one once. I am an admirer not an inhabiter.

I love a sunbeam, this one landed on my mother-in-law when we were having afternoon tea.

Firestone Bay in purple mood. One normal photo and one editing error which I love because I don’t understand it.

The picture below has possibly never seen the light of day before but there is a link to my most significant art moment.

Using mixed media I tried to depict my mother and her friends in the 1960’s when they were busy young women setting up clinics to provide women with Contraceptives and specific women’s health needs.

I depicted their story on a pillow that was exhibited at Tate Modern in London.

It would not be @theoldmortuary blog without Hugo and Lola. Hugo looking every inch the smoking matinee idol with a dog chew and Lola in her dark chocolate puppy phase before she faded to beige.

Another perennial blog subject is coffee and this homage to stove top coffee was found in Cuba.

I love a complicated image and this glass and concrete shot is a favourite.

Words too give me inspiration. The seasonal cuteness of an alley near my workplace in Marylebone.

P.s I just found a link to the history of Grotto Passage.

The Weird And Wonderful History Of Grotto Passage

A visual pun or two.

And something that reflects my love of books.

My random paintings that are not commercial in any way but that give me a kick up the arse when I falter.

Including one that has serendipity all over it. I did a watercolour of Mussel shells and my granddaughter dropped actual shells on it.

Other shells also thrill me.

I always love the potential of somewhere interesting to sit.

I love simple acts of remembrance. Sunflowers wrapped in newspaper in a Spanish church.

And finally and fittingly for the end of a blog at the end of the year. Starting out to sea and pondering the future. Dungeness in Kent.

#769 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

The one that got away. This house was in a fund raising Lottery recently. We didn’t win it, but we could have made ourselves very comfortable overlooking our favourite riverside town of Fowey.

https://omaze.co.uk/blogs/news/take-a-tour-of-the-cornwall-house

We had a wedding party in Fowey 7 years ago. Such fun was had with a dressing up box.

It gives us an excuse to visit Fowey every Twixtmas. Not that excuses are needed for a favourite place.

Oh the serendipity of creating a picture grid when I can follow it with one of my favourite windows in all of the world. Crumpled by age it reflects the small world around it in many different angles. A picture grid created by the serendipity of time.

Other windows were also available.

And a hidden glimpse of daylight.

And a cute door with festive embellishments.

We have been visiting Fowey forever, 3 or 4 times a year, and always out of the busy tourist season. Each visit can be bittersweet as businesses that we love close or go on-line. This visit we mourned the loss of Pinky Murphy’s. A fabulous cafe, that was always our first stop on any visit. These pictures were easily taken more than ten years ago.

A truly eclectic former sail loft. A sail loft that holds so many happy friends and family memories, I could burst with happiness at recollecting moments from every visit. Even the one with a monumental hangover. Honestly it really was something I had eaten!

But change happens and yesterday we visited this new business, in a different location, and had a fabulous coffee.

A restaurant that was previously dog averse has changed their canine policy and we had a seafood lunch, with two sleeping dogs at our feet. Perfection, I would say.

Restaurant & Cocktail Bar
Restaurant & Cocktail Bar

Two seagulls were basking in the winter sun while we ate.

We spent a lot of time browsing and buying in some of our favourite shops. I found this gorgeous, but not for sale, arrangement of dried palm leaves in one.

A fine way to spend a Twixtmas day.

Time to drive off into the sunset.

#768 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

#celebratingserendipity. Some time ago I was given a topic to weave into a blog. I just had to wait for my moment. Here we are in mid-Twixmas and this prompt just landed in my lap

If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?

If I started a sports team I would adopt the colours of Dulwich Hamlet Football Club, my local team in London.

The beautiful heart of this club changes many of the awkward things that occur around football.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulwich_Hamlet_F.C

https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/dulwichhamlet

I have never seen a club mascot but given that their supporters are called the pepperarmy1893 I think that may be a good thing.

©vegconomist

Nobody needs a sausage as a mascot, especially near armistice day. Sports mascots showing a mark of respect with a minute’s silence have become an Instagram and X regular feature around the 11th of November.

So my sports club would have the colours and heart of Dulwich Hamlet.

And my mascot would be the beautiful Bourkes Parakeet.

So much more able to show respect than a giant sausage. And no awkward photographs.

#767 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment
On reflection

We are in the quiet mid-point of a festive season that for the first time ever features 3 granddaughters. So it is a Christmas like no other. Now children do say the cutest things but this blog is not for that kind of stuff . How do first time Christmas Nana’s and Nona’s cope providing all the familiar family traditions in a way that also accommodates the needs of small people. Compromise, flexibility and infinte knowledge.

Our key success points have been a willingness to pretend to breast feed a tiger who was running out of energy.

Our real world knowledge of anatomy as applied to a Unicorn with a flattened horn.

Our ability to sing Stranger on the Shore a 1961 tune played on a Clarinet by Mr Acker Bilk.

Unusual but essential Super Powers for the festive season.

#766 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, SerendipityLeave a comment

Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide (26 December).[1] Though it originated as a holiday to give gifts to people in need, today Boxing Day forms part of Christmas celebrations, with many people choosing to take advantage of Boxing Day sales. It originated in the United Kingdom and is celebrated in several Commonwealth nations. The attached bank holiday or public holiday may take place on 28 December if necessary to ensure it falls on a weekday. Boxing Day is also concurrent with the Christian festival Saint Stephen’s Day.

Our Boxing Day is a day for walking, eating, and relaxing with many of the people that we spent Christmas day with.

The weather was kind and our ferry crossing to Mount Edgecumbe was smooth.

Nature was beginning to show the buds of new beginnings.

After a few hours of rambling we returned home to enjoy the traditional delights of eating left-over food. All the pleasures of the previous day’s food with none of the work. Four of our Christmas guests are beginning their journeys home and those of us that are left, hunker down to play board games and start our Christmas books.

Our evening dog walk has all the twinkle of a December night but the bars and restaurants are no longer thrumming with excited humans. We have the space to ourselves.

Christmas 2023 is slipping away, making space for other celebrations and a New Year.

#765 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing1 Comment

Christmas Day was a bobbing day and unusually there were more observers than bobbers.

Bobbers 6-9 Non-Bobbers.

The Non-Bobbers managed a seasonal Victory despite two late attenders who failed to make the pre-match photographs. Coach is always a non-bobber but always takes the photographs. The Non-Bobbers had brought in International stars from Poland and Hong-Kong to bring strength to their team. Inane chatter at the end of the bob was kept to a minimum as bobbers and non-bobbers had post-bobbing commitments. This was the last bob of 2023.

©Jenny Tsang

#764 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

What is the texture of Christmas?

Once grief plays a part in Christmas it is a bittersweet gathering where absences are as much a part of the festivities as are the real world participants. The trick to making those sadnesses more bearable is to see them for what they are, a deep reflection of love that has been lost. Then those memories can sit more comfortably with the messy, overwhelming, joyous, communal event that this Christmas is.

Christmas was celebrated in our home with four families gathering from different parts of the world. Small cousins squeezed together in a hallway when normally thousands of miles separate them.

There will always be thousands of miles between some of our family members but they make their presence felt in different ways.

Merry Christmas.

#763 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

Merry Christmas blogreaders. We have celebrated our first Polish Christmas on the 24 th and are, I suppose,well-established seasonal over-eaters one day earlier than is normal. So many calories so little time. The last wrapping is done and the vegetables for the next big meal are prepped and ready to rumble. Pigs need wrapping in blankets. Let’s see where the day takes us.