Tag: blogging

#1000 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging, Serendipity1 Comment

Co-incidence is a wonderful thing. The serendipity of life is a major factor in my blog writing.

Until this popped up yesterday I had no idea I had been blogging so long. The early years went through a few transitions and I really only found my niche when I accidentally hit on a prolonged daily blogging regime. Like many things in life Covid-19 caused a three month course related project to become open ended when the end point,the second part of the course failed to happen for two years.

15 years and 1000 editions of the current blog feels like an achievement. Not epic or outstanding, certainly not life changing for anyone beyond myself. I have become much more observant of the minutiae of a moment or tiny details in the bigger picture.

This picture of a snail appeared in the blog in 2017.

Much more recently Snails and I have been pondering companions as I undertook the white wall painting in the yard.

The two snails nicely demonstrate the different textures and directions of life. The last snail posing occurred this week. Not such great focus on the snail.

But this is where blogging, and my love of art and odd photography collide. A Surreal celebration of 15 years or a thousand blogs. Courtesy of my unpredictable photo manipulating  app.

Below is the snail of the moment.

A snail just waiting for something to pique her interest. The USP of my blog. Just waiting for something however small to spark a few words

#484 theoldmortuary ponders

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Today was a big day for the blog. I swapped to a new platform for publishing. Pushing the button and uninstalling the old system was a moment of anxiety. But guess what happened? Nothing, everything slipped smoothly into the new format and off I go. Everything is pretty much the same except every day there is a spunky little suggestion as to what I might like to write about. I may not take their suggestions seriously, the first one thought I might like to discuss what my parents did at my age. Well let me think..

Their ashes had, at this point, been buried in a country churchyard for two years. Idyllic in many ways but I am sure they would rather have been living and laughing. As it was they had been moved from their last resting place by a very industrious mole. This does not make for a great travelogue or even a great blog. So this is the first and last time I will seek my inspiration from spunky suggestions from Jetpack. WordPress was never quite so frivolous. I prefer raking through my own thoughts for these ponders. For reading to the end of this transitional blog I gift you an earworm. Answers tomorrow.

#72 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent, blogging, Food ( but this is not a food blog), Serendipity1 Comment

This Christmas Decoration represents blog perfection. Just after midnight there should be a blog ready to be automatically dropped into inboxes around the world. I”m not saying it never happens but it is mostly an aspiration rather than an actuality.

72 days ago when the blog changed its title, while I was on a blogging course. The course leader suggested being a little kinder to myself and give myself more freedom to deliver blogs less often. While not, as yet, feeling the need to abandon whole days I do, on occasion cut myself a bit of slack and a later blog goes out.

Yesterday I thought laying about would give me time to be on time with the blog, in fact all I did really is be a bit unfocused.

Yesterday not much happened following a bout of food poisoning. Me and the Christmas tree were together a bit as I dozed between bouts of activity which is when I noticed the time on the Christmas decoration. In truth I was just a bit less of myself, low energy and a bit achy after my digestive tsunami.

24 hours of abstinence, apart from two bowls of rice crispies with oat milk, has created a fine dining monster in me but at low cost. The first cups of real tea were revelatory.

All the flavours of the Asia, blended in Yorkshire, dancing around my mouth like there was a post pandemic party going on. Who knew tea could taste quite so good!

The afore mentioned rice crispies embellished by oat milk were a comfort food, tweaked by my newly over sensitive taste buds they have become fine dining. Their vanilla notes enrobed in oaty richness.

Goodness knows what gustatory delights await me this morning. Toast perhaps masquerading as something far more significant. Today I will be more focussed.

#64 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Nothing in my blogging life is predictable. Some days I struggle to find some words and pictures. Other days several little stories knock on my brain anxious to be let in, cogitated and then set free into the blogsphere. Today the typewriter story won the day but the others will get their moment in the sun.

I have long wanted a manual typewriter to type titles and my name on watercolours. I was quite specific on my needs, a hard type that might also slightly emboss and fairly rudimental. By a happy coincidence I met a blogging typewriter fanatic at the blogging course in Spitalfields. Michelle Geffken writes Paper Blogging.

https://www.paperblogging.com/

She was generous with her time and knowledge and after reading her blog I felt ready to dip my toe into actually buying a small typewriter. Ebay furnished me with an Olympic Splendid 99.It arrived yesterday, it is very cute. But hidden in its original leather carrying case was a whole little adventure. The original owners Margery H Butterworth and W H Butterworth had typed their address on the Final Test and Inspection Report. My little typewriter was delivered to them in 1960 in Singapore. The power of Google can show me the house it was delivered to.

©William Teo

28 Chiltern Drive, Braddell Heights, Singapore 13

Googling Margery H Butterworth and W H Butterworth also dug out a little gem. It turns out that in 1965 they wrote a paper on Green Elephant Grass in Tropical Foraging.

Is it too bigger leap of my imagination to think that it would have been typed on my new acquisition in the early sixties. My efforts with this typewriter had better be equally interesting. For now I’ve just dusted it and cleared out some very dry tropical leaves!

First typing, and a question, does anyone know of a typewriter servicing engineer. Those I’ve found on line are very fully booked.

Have a fabulous Saturday, I may be spending some moments typing.

P. S I tried a quick sketch of baubles with added typing. With a little practice this is going to work.

#3 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging1 Comment

Long before I started a blog, I had a normal job in London. One of the places I would seek refuge, after a nights work, was The Townhouse, Spitalfields. Home made cake and coffee embellished by the Townhouse itself always slowed the busy pace of London down to something more manageable. The link below describes the Townhouse far more comprehensively than I ever could.

https://www.theshopkeepers.com/town-house-spitalfields-london/

There was serendipity at work when one of my favourite blog writers, The Gentle Author offered blog writing courses based at The Townhouse.

Returning this weekend for a second writing course with The Gentle Author was a treat, both visual and experiential. In between learning and enjoying wonderful food I hopped around like an overactive magpie gathering photographic trinkets for future blog use. It helped that bright autumnal sunshine barged its way into the corners and recesses of the early Georgian building, making everything a little more magical.

Taking magic to a different place was the bathroom we used this weekend.

And the kitchen where refreshments were served.

Home

The link above takes you to the Townhouse website. I”m sure this will not be the last blog I write about this gorgeous building.

#1 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn blogging1 Comment

A weekend away on a blogging course and a little rebranding. Moving on from Pandemic Pondering as the world moves from Pandemic to Endemic @theoldmortuary will be pondering at large. My walk from Spitalfields to  Islington yesterday evening gave me the gift of this totally apporopriate sign.

There is an agreement within our blogging group that the course and its goings on are in the form of a conclave. While sticking very happily to those restictions I’m almost certain to natter on about the course in the future but not about the attendees or the contents. The venue is one of my favourite spaces in London and is always inspirational so talking about the course while not being explicit is easy.

There are 12 bottoms.

©Pádraig Macmiadháchain @Spitalfields Townhouse

Occupying 12 seats.

We talk about our blogs and how we would like to allow them to evolve and improve. Refreshment and blogging nattering occur over beautiful food.

Right now I’m on my way back for Day 2. Have a fabulous Sunday.

Pandemic Pondering #569

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The weather, very kindly gave me a fine illustration for this weekends blogging journey. An open road with just enough fog to make the near future unclear. I’m heading off to the Advanced Blogging course run by The Gentle Author. Last night my dog walk on Wimbledon Common was damp and boggy underfoot but the evening sky also provided some blog embellishments.

Daily blogging into infinite was never my original plan but a Global Pandemic has blown a hole in lots of original plans.

Have a fabulous weekend. I’m off to Brick Lane for a brain enriching bagel before the course starts.

Pandemic Pondering #467

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Hard on the heels of yesterday’s blog. Facebook memories gave me four images that I can use for the Monday Blog.

This first one is from the birthday some years ago of the friend who we always, apart from the last two years spend together. The rainbow cake rather nicely leads into a watercolour I did about three years ago. I was taking some watercolour classes. The subject of the week was human figures. I chose to paint a cruising site near Crystal Palace in London. It is called Beaulieu Heights and men go there day or night for casual sexual encounters. I suppose this is about a missed encounter. A man on his phone is oblivious to another man watching him from a park bench.

The word bench leads me rather fortuitously to a stool at Coffee Acadmics in Hong Kong.

Life is often a beautiful journey searching for something but this last picture is me just setting out on life’s journey.

This picture was almost certainly taken at the height of summer on the East Anglican coast. A brisk wind or sea mist often makes a cardigan essential beach wear even in July and August. Not such a problem on the Atlantic Coast which is my current location, although I could do without all the rain.

I have my fingers crossed for the successful instalation of a broadband service later today, that will make blogging and everything else a lot easier.

Pandemic Pondering #422

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

About this time of year @theoldmortuary are sometimes to be found at the Chelsea Flower Show. Picking up gardening inspiration for our own patch of horticulture. Our next project is going to be a courtyard garden and with the Flower Show cancelled for a second year we will have to go it alone using photos we’ve take in previous years. The Islamic garden above is quite beyond our talents but we could get close to something similar to the one below.

You might think that gardening and sea swimming have very little in common, and you would be right, but in our post swim natterings the subjects we cover are wide ranging. Some would make a nun blush, and quite possibly do, as we swim and natter just below the walls of a convent. Gardens though do feature a bit in our conversations because that has been the only place we have been able to meet friends and family. Bobbing has become a bit of a social club and we are looking forward to gathering together, with our clothes on, in each others gardens during the summer. The picture below popped up on our bobbing WhatsApp page, most bobbers thought it was a garden designed to be open to the public. But it is actually a Bobbers Garden!

© Kim and Andy Bobber

Also featured this week, in the the Bobbers Whatsapp group photos, is Flossy, a guinea pig, who has recovered from a recent illness, which kept her mum away from bobbing for a while.

©Helen Bobber

Bringing the subject back closer to actual bobbing, the picture below is a Bobbers portrait of a fellow bobber with her daughter.

©Marianne Bobber

And finally given the unusual location of our beach a warship and an assault vessel.

©Andy Bobber

Have a fabulous Thursday !

Pandemic Pondering #421

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Life is starting to stack up. With every slight loosening of government restrictions our lives @theoldmortuary get a little busier. In many ways it feels as odd as the sudden deceleration of our lives over a year ago. We are not even pushing ourselves to the max possible.

Lunch indoors with one set of friends yesterday followed later by a meal inside a pub with different friends was lovely and an enormous pleasure but it felt both exotic strange and exciting to behave almost normally for once . Just as lockdown deeply affected my sleep patterns, last nights sleep was disturbed by recalling the days events. We also have some longstanding domestic admin that keeps us awake and an art exhibition to organise at the end of the week. Just as Covid-19 has the physical nasty that is Long Covid, all our lived experiences will suffer from the after effects of this pandemic for a long while even if we have been lucky enough not to catch the wretched disease.

Another period of sleeplessness will not be welcome in this house.

Some people are, of course, oblivious, although even this doggy naughtiness is Covid related. Thermal socks for outdoor socialising and post swimming are the best for chewing and there are plenty of pairs to be stolen.

In other news, the Advanced Blogging course has been announced for October. Alongside this announcement, the delightful Gentle Author has decided to return to teaching the art of blogging. I will pop a link below, his courses are wonderful.

https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/spitalfields-life-1516790/departure-arthur-beale-8006014249

So in a fine example of art imitating life everything is starting to stack up.