Tag: clothes

#1425 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Box, SerendipityLeave a comment

After all my moaning in yesterday’s blog, the sun came out today.

#1424 theoldmortuary ponders

We walked the streets, giddy with the freedom of wearing no weather protective garments and giddier still no coats at all.

We did still have to keep our eyes slightly downwards looking to avoid puddles.

But the puddles have become blinding beacons of illumination in the sunshine. Lola was very keen on a coffee shop stop but we kept making excuses, reluctant to be indoors when there was Vitamin D to be harvested.

This harbourside walk is a regular one but we have not been for three months. In that time a new and benign sailor has been installed, sitting by a favourite Sailors drinking spot.

We queued to take a photograph of him. The only people in the queue who did not want to cuddle up or pose provocatively against his high-gloss resinous surface.

He is there to publicise an exhibition at the local Museum and Art Gallery featuring the work of Beryl Cook.

Beryl Cook: Pride and Joy | The Box Plymouth https://share.google/s0UM3sl5BNjtD0H7x

Future blogs will feature trips to the exhibition. There may even be moments at a comedy club and a silent disco when I crack out my extensive collection of Animal Print Garments and a bright red lipstick.

But rub myself over a Sailor on a bench in the sunshine. That has never happened.

© Products – ourberylcook https://share.google/UU9WT4REzgkRcpM6a

Although Plymouth’s gene pool and that of many other ports have been immeasurably enhanced because others have not been quite so fastidious.

Products – ourberylcook https://share.google/UU9WT4REzgkRcpM6a

A sailor of my acquaintance tells me that such welcomes in port are not an urban myth. His particular U.S.P, or strategy was to sit at an outside cafe reading a nerdy book.

I can see how that would be tempting.

#236 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn fashion1 Comment

Quite by accident today I realised that I was rocking a look that is called ‘Coastal Granny’ in North America. It is also popular in Britain but I am unsure of the name of the style here.

In the hands of an accomplished stylist the selfie in a mirror is a thing of elegance and simplicity.

Not words that have ever been used to describe myself. I have always liked to think that longer legs would be the boost I need towards elegance. It possibly does not help that the best full length mirror in the house is outside of the house. On the plus side I am indeed a coastal granny or to be much more precise I am a theoretical coastal nanna. Theoretical because one grandchild is thousands of miles away and another is in the cooking stage. Now it seems to me that pale colours and grandchildren might not be a good mix, so maybe a theoretical, coastal grandma is exactly the fashion ideal.

Unspattered by the excrescences of small children these pale clothes lasted all day, with walks on the beach and chattering with coffee and friends with dogs.. I believe the clothes could possibly make it to tomorrow. Coastal grannydom at its most theoretical. They even managed a garden centre without mishap. Very elegant indeed! But that was just the plants.

Pandemic Pondering #106

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderings3 Comments

Pondering was not the only thing I started on Day 1 of lockdown. A small clothing research project started.

With hindsight it had all the makings of the sort of research idea that should have been quietly binned early on.

All my non wardrobe clothes are kept in a chest of drawers in the spare bedroom. With no likelihood of guests I decided that as clothes were worn and washed I would store them on the bed. Then after lockdown I would know which ones never got worn and I could bag them up for a charity shop and I would have sorted them organically.

While I can allow pondering to go on I think this experiment failed from day one because it was a bad idea. Judging clothes usage from one of the most unusual period of my life has given me a clear idea of how to make a spare room look messy and very little else.

The piles of clean clothes stand on the bed like those towers of pebbles that are found on beaches and other pebbly places. Most of them have their tops removed where folded underwear was quickly removed to be worn.

Proper winter clothing remains, a wooly, dense reminder that late March was the last time I needed more than one set of clothing for socialising and existing in the outside world.

There are a couple of bright piles from early on when putting on a bright jumper or t shirt lifted my spirits artificially when the reality of a life in prolonged Lock down was difficult to process.

Because the weather was so good almost as soon as lockdown started I needed summer clothes to take my daily exercise dog walk.

I’ve improved my positional memory immensely, by knowing more or less when specific things were last worn and in which pile it can be found .

Handbags lay on the bed, unused, alongside gym clothes. When Joe Wicks YouTube exercise videos or dog walks are the pinnacle of fitness you can pretty much do it in anything. I wonder when a Handbag will feel essential ever again.

Somewhat madly I have put on, liked, but currently not essential, garments to go to the supermarket simply to save them from staying in the cupboard and facing the clothes equivalent of the last trip to the vets for a loved pet.

Not that charity shops are reliably open to receive my organically selected rejects.

Packing my bag for my first weekend away from Cornwall has made me realise this experiment had got to stop. There are about two bags of clothes left in the chest of drawers to go to charity shops if I stick rigidly to my own guidelines . I’m not sure it was worth the effort. They may just be clothes not required in a Pandemic.