It took more than the usual one morning coffee to power me through a day after a night of staying up all night to watch democracy unfold. But at 9 in the morning I had not expected to fuel my day with a sugar rush provided by a free sample of soft scoop Ice Cream.
Pure white Ice Cream to calm a mind that had been watching the differing colours of political parties skid across the T.V screen all night. I found all the AV special effects fairly baffling as the night wore on. But the, normally serious political journalists seemed to enjoy playing with computer generated building blocks. I’ve recreated my Ice Cream in the style of my overnight T.V politics experience. Baffling , I think you will agree.
In a last mention of the election some surprising news. Overnight Hugo and I had to swap sides.
Sofa slouching and varifocal glasses do not, a comfortable overnighter make. To avoid a nasty crick in my neck we swapped sides on the sofa every hour or so.
Saturday turned out to be quite the day of textures. Breakfast in a boatyard and Lola took me on a wild Hedgehog tracking adventure. We never found the hedgehog but her tracking led me to an old boat and I love the accidental colours that old wooden boats reveal.
I also had a curious moment with the new photo editor function on my phone. It uses a couple of algorithms to generate different versions of a photograph. Firstly using the information in the picture and secondly using information gathered from previous edits that I have saved. As a regular tool to use I would say it is a little unreliable. But as a lover of the serendipitous the function is proving to be very interesting. I download RAW data images from my actual digital camera to give the algorithm more to munch on. What it drags up from my past edits is beyond my control but yesterdays trip to the carwash made a fascinating Greek Seascape.
From this.To this.
My last textures of the day were aural. My local community choir sung a Contemporary Pagan Song Cycle on the theme of the Green Man Myths in an old Church of England building. Unusual but then not when you consider that many great churches are built on the sites of Pagan Temples. I love a bit of a sing but am hampered and helped by my synesthesia. I am quite incapable of learning to read music, and I don’t really learn by ear, but by the serendipity of the neurodivergance of Synesthesia, music goes in and I can sing it out. All the right notes, mostly in the right order but not always.
To say I keep a low profile when singing is an understatement. Kind people jab pencils at me and flutter the music sheet at me . Honestly it could be a Cornflake packet but I nod and smile. I am hugely bored by music pedants who bang on about notes. C’s and D’s are just bra cup sizes to me. As for the mystery/ worry of the missing Triangle dinger. I have no idea of the jeopardy involved in that WhatsApp thread. But the percussionists were energised by that predicament.
Fortunately our Community Choir has a composer /conductor who has no time for the niff naff of music pedantary so I can keep my head down and not feel like the musical Village Idiot that I am. Our performance was gorgeous,full of crunchy textured soaring notes and unusual harmonies. The Green Man and mid-summer were glorious in the churchyard.
This morning I had to hunt for an old sketch to send to a friend. The easy solution was to look in my Paintings/Art file of digital images.
This file is 10 years old in 2024, I am hopeless at keeping this archive up to date. This morning I put the two most recent paintings into the file. I also had a little scroll through an imperfect record of my creative output of the last ten years.
Once again I have mentally promised myself to be more diligent with my archiving over the next 10 years.And for now I must be more diligent in actually producing some actual art. Less pondering, more art .
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 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.
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.
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.
#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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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