Tag: Christmas lights

#68 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent, FamilyLeave a comment

Advent and the run up to Christmas is not all about the ‘front-of-house’ stuff. Some prep is definitely more mundane. A new loo seat and a consignment of loo rolls were part of this week’s plans.

As it turns out some nice soft tissue was exactly what we needed. Christmas is bittersweet for many people. There is the excitement of gathering with family and friends tinged with sadness remembering the people it is no longer possible to mingle with on the earthly realm. With this in mind we took ourselves off to see the Stephen Spielberg, West Side Story.

Having both grown up with this vinyl recording of the soundtrack in our homes, we thought it was a good way to remember our mums. Obviously @theoldmortuary blog is not normally a film reviewing blog.

We loved it, a fabulous way to spend three hours in a reclining seat. Spoiler alert. You may need tissues.

#63 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn AdventLeave a comment
Tavistock

We don’t have any advent calendars in the house. We mark our way through Advent with jobs achieved. Nobody needs to see dull, domestic tasks so I thought I would share some of the doors that I’ve collected over the years to illustrate this blog. The doors are a nod towards the excitement of opening a door or window on an advent calendar every day of advent. If not exactly excitement there is satisfaction as Christmas slowly comes together in a new house and in a new location. We are avid watchers of property porn, it is a wisdom gleaned from such programmes that you really like a house when you imagine where you would put your christmas tree in a property that you are viewing. I dont think it ever crossed out minds where Christmas trees might go when we looked at this house. This lack of decisive property planning bit me on the bum today.

Hoi An

Our old house had some unusual proportions and we have a curiously slim but tall artificial tree that suited the old dining room, the actual mortuary workshop, perfectly. The new house is Georgian with a later Victorian extension. It took me many relocations of the tree to find it a new home in this house. Snuggling up next to the fridge freezer was the only place its skinny frame looked comfortable. Who could have possibly guessed that several hours are needed to find a Christmas tree its happy place.

Seoul

In other advent news the international parcels have set off on their journeys, and in quiet moments I can track their journeys across the globe on an app on my phone. They are boldly travelling to countries that would not currently welcome me in person.

Spitalfields

Today is the day for buying and positioning a bigger tree and writing christmas cards.  Beyond that I’m not entirely sure what else will be behind the Friday door!

Stonehouse

But for now there is a skinny tree in a happy place.

Pandemic Pondering #270

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Covid Christmas, SerendipityLeave a comment

Another day, another dog walk.

We are really clocking up the footmiles this weekend. Fresh air and thermal underwear, the 2020 theme for buzzingly busy pre-christmas weekends. Except the buzz has been replaced by lateral conversations and an intimate knowledge of the state of neighbours illuminations.

Last night took in some luminous examples of house decorating and bush trimming. This one stands out because it has been done to raise funds for a charity and with all the ingenuity of a Covid world it is very easy to donate by following the instructions on a sign.

Donating is the easy bit, pondering rarely takes the easy bit. @theoldmortuary spent some time reading the charities web page while our feet throbbed from our pavement pounding. The work they do is significant and hugely important. The published case studies kept @theoldmortuary awake last night.

The United Kingdom is in a funny old place in this run up to Christmas. An apolitical truth is that none of this is the fault of anyone under 18. Christmas 2020 will put on a brave face but its midwinter, Stygian understory will be every bit as bleak as those Christmases of Dickens or Rossetti/Holst.

Those of us that are able should donate to charity, just like shopping, small and local is probably better than large and corporate.

Thanks to:- https://homestartmerton.co.uk/about-us

and :- CC Construction https://cccon.co.uk/

For inspiring this blog.

To donate.

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/donation-web/charity?charityId=1005628&stop_mobi=yes

In the UK there will be a Home Start somewhere close to you.

Pandemic Ponderings #34

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderings, SerendipityLeave a comment

Pandemic Ponderings started on 17 th March sometime before the Government Lockdown restrictions and a little before my own self isolation due to a common virus. That’s about 36 days of life being significantly different from anything any of us have experienced before. Have we @theoldmortuary developed a new set routine? The answer would have to be no although we do seem to run out of food/ provisions on Tuesdays. Our world has shrunk and the weekly trip to two supermarkets, one each, is an event in life rather than something squeezed into life. Communication is everything and we’ve not quite got that right. Yesterday was National Tea Drinking Day, unconsciously we took the cue and bought 500 teabags, both bagging a bargain. Stockpiling at its most shameful, the T bags join the six tins of sweetcorn.Gardening has become a routine but we are fast running out of places to store lawn cuttings, bush trimmings and weeds. It is weather related rather than supply and demand which governs shopping. Storage of garden waste is soon going to be the factor that controls us. The weather flip opposite of the gardening routine is interior DIY. It’s amazing how much we can achieve just by using stuff we already have in our shed.Curiously Mondays have become our laundry and house cleaning day. This is exactly the routine my grandparents had and it’s one that has crept up on us. In non pandemic times we washed whenever there was a load but with no life beyond home we are producing less washing. House cleaning is not so bad when you are not exhausted from working elsewhere, I can only think of two pre-pandemic routines that we’ve not modified. One is the bedtime walk for the dogs, we never meet anyone even in normal times and that’s not changed, people don’t whizz past us in their cars anymore . No cars means no pollution and what is noticibly more lovely about our evening walks, this spring, is the intensity of fragrance from people’s gardens and the hedgerows.The other unchanged routine is having flowers in the house. The weeks of daffodils have passed and currently we have tulips.One slightly odd juxtaposition is our fireplace. An interiors psychologist suggested keeping Christmas lights up until Spring as it helps to make darker evenings less dire. Weve stuck with that because a Pamdemic needs light shining on it. Fear not, that is not a Trumpian solution , we just love a bit of twinkle, any excuse. Now we have tulips and Christmas lights,if this goes on it could be sunflowers. In this shot the pandemic gets a mention too. It does not improve with twinkle.

Not to be outdone the garden has some new solar lights to brighten up the evening of whoever walks past the house. Something we do at Christmas time but it seems important to do it now too.Lola reminds me that there is one other routine that must be adhered to, dog hugs. This is the face of someone who wants me to stop pondering.