What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
As a carpenter, I have always loved the smell of squiggles of shaved wood.
Tag: dailyprompt
#theoldmortuary ponders
What gives you direction in life?
A no ponder, ponder. Just an answer.
The fear of not having a direction.
#902 theoldmortuary ponders.
Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
I could quote something really meaningful here, but to my shame, my often thought of quote is rather passive-aggressive. Rarely said aloud but thought of through gritted teeth while smiling.
” You are mistaking my tolerance for indifference”
These 7 words have a whole scale of thoughts behind them. 90% of the time the response is of no consequence outside of my thoughts, just me thinking that I am a bit annoyed or really annoyed but nothing really earth shattering . But the 10% can be an unexpected fierce retort or worse the icy chill of some final invisible line being crossed.
I hear you thinking what relevance to the picture of Kingsand Clock tower is my admission of passive-aggresive thoughts.
Well, when the sun came out on Sunday we were sat at the bottom of the clock tower basking in delicious sunlight. Coffees in hand and calm happy dogs resting on the beach. The beach was big, as the tide was out, and there were very few people about. I was pondering that our exact position on a calm and beautiful day was sometimes under 40 foot waves as the worst of winter storms hit this coastal village. Images and news article below.
BBC News – Storm-hit Kingsand clock tower reopens after £600,000 repairs
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-31469491
My pondering and basking were interrupted by 4 people and a large dog choosing to sit right next to us. They were not basking and pondering sort of people. Noisy, competitive, faffers without a scintilla of calm about them. With a whole beach to choose why sit next to the only other people sitting peacefully pondering?
I had about twenty minutes of tolerance in me. My coffee was done, and my pondering about massive waves was unnerving me slightly. Time to remove my intolerant self from the location with one of those statements that may or may not have been heard.
” Shall we move on?”
“This is about as relaxed as my bum after a hot curry”
Oh dear!
A clear case of me hiding a case of grumpiness in some beautiful surroundings. In a world of so many wonderful, positive quotes the few negative ones I hold onto are easier to recall.
Moving on, have you ever seen a more gorgeous village hall.
#900 theoldmortuary ponders.
#900, I should write something epic and meaningful. And as it happens I can say that yesterday just like life, was about the journey not the destination. Although the destination was certainly the plan.
Cawsand, as viewed from the round window was the destination, but the weather got in the way. Heavy rain kept us prisoners in the van in a rather dull carpark so we chose to relocate to a car park with views . We had lunch, books and newspapers with us and all the facilities of our campervan. We drove to Maker Church and enjoyed the views. There are footpaths from Maker that link to the nearby South West Coastal path, we have parked there often. But never since we have had a camper van and the luxury to enjoy a lunch with comfy seats and a view. Then the rain stopped. The church and churchyard were bathed in bright sunlight. We decided to walk the dogs in the ancient churchyard.
The old churchyard was full of blue and white bluebells and a smattering of wild garlic.
The fragrance as the hundreds of flowers warmed up, was unexpectedly powerful, not sweet but heady and musky with a hint of garlic. Since I have never heard of a bluebell perfume I assume it is a redolence that is hard to replicate by the beauty industry. I could have rolled around like an excited dog in fox poo. Obviously I didn’t do that but a smell so gorgeous could easily make me do giddy things. What I did do is study old grave stones.
If I were ever to write a novel I would search old graveyards for character names. Yesterdays top name for a character was Philadelphia Jago.
Although unphotographed there was an unusual amount of Samson or Sampsons buried in the old bit of the graveyard. I wonder if that is a Cornish thing or if the name was just much more popular 200 years ago. My son is a Sam but his full name of Samuel means ‘name of God’ or ‘God has heard’ . Had I called him Samson or Sampson his name would have been far more appropriate as that means child of the sun and he, very much, is a sunny kind of person. I wonder how well Samson would have worked for him in the classrooms of the nineties.
Maybe I should finish this 900th ponder with some views from a country churchyard. They were spectacular.
Below is the morning question from my blog host. Is camping only considered camping if an overnight has occured. Yesterday was definitely camping light. Hours avoiding rain in a snug van with enough to read and eat and then much later than planned we arrived at the actual planned destination of the day. But that is a blog for another day.
Have you ever been camping?
#899 theoldmortuary ponders.
When do you feel most productive?
I am erratically productive. Naturally most productive from 7 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. Sunshine helps enormously. At 3 I am ready for lunch sometimes the first meal of the day. Then there is a creative hiatus until about 7 in the evening. 7 pm is my creative planning and thinking phase. Unrecognisable to outside observers who might think I am just being a regular human doing regular human stuff, but outside appearances can be deceiving. Inside my skull, all sorts of schemes are being hatched and discarded. Google Research is my friend at 7, both ends of the day if I get the chance.
Colour was my stimulation yesterday. Some Green Man Choir singing is always a good inspiration for some thinking,usually about the patriarchy and folklore. When I got home there was a lovely, accidental, Primary colour placement of some supermarket lemons.
Actually all the citrus fruits were feeling photogenic yesterday.
Only purple was missing from the mornings colour ponderings but as luck would have it Facebook had a timehop from more than 10 years ago in my Cornish garden. Obviously, a better Spring than we are having this year.
Creativity is such a strange phenomenon. Trapped by being close to the results/ punishment/rewards cycle of Productivity. Nobody gives credit for creative/productive thinking or experimentation. A huge amount of creativity never creates a tangible ‘thing’. But sometimes intangible things gather together to become something. Sometimes failure becomes success and sometimes the other way round. Sometimes I creatively ponder around in circles.
#897 theoldmortuary ponders.
What topics do you like to discuss?
I love a discussion that takes me somewhere interesting. Either in real life or in an inner monologue journey. There is a load of stuff that doesn’t interest me, but if someone speaks interestingly about something I have no interest in then it is the style of discussion that becomes the thing of interest. Sometimes the route I take in discussions is almost inexplicable even to me. But that is a sign that I have not been bored. Boredom in conversation is the worst. Boredom comes in all shapes and sizes, all of them human. Oh, I wish I was better at handling it. I’m never bored in my head so I get no practice. I know it is good manners to listen and I am a very very happy listener but not to boring people. I am in absolute awe of people who can tolerate bores and continue to look and sound interested.
The pictures in this blog come from a frequent family discussion that I was aware of at the age of five and in some ways continues on 60 years later and illustrates the twists of an interesting topic that involves boredom at an early stage. My grandparents had a relation who they kept in good contact with but rarely met. He worked at the Dungeness Power Station and lived somewhere near. He sent post cards of his Kent home. My grandparents who lived in the rolling, beautiful, Essex country side thought his landscape was boring.
In the seventies I loved the work of a punk/ Gothic film maker and Artist Derek Jarman.
In the early 2000’s I moved to South London and my nearest coast was Kent.
Derek Jarman had a home on Dungeness.
I was living a day trip away from somewhere my grandparents thought boring but that fascinated an artist I admired.
*Dungeness* https://g.co/kgs/Nh1bce3
I loved the place instantly and love talking about it.
My dogs love it too
And now some lovely friends are holidaying there and sharing their pictures.
And so a discussion that I have been part of for 60 years with huge gaps, different people and for a variety of reasons just keeps going and I never know where it is heading.
That is something worthy of discussion.
If only magic realism was a thing. Or Time Travel. I could take my grandparents to Dungeness and show them how fascinating other landscapes are. We could pop in to see Lionel, the relation or Derek the artist or even Marianne and Gill in their campervan. Or maybe a Dungeness discussion of the future!
#896 theoldmortuary ponders
When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
Don’t we all take risks from time to time? Carefully judged most often but sometimes not thought out at all. Yesterday, I was tired after a few hours of computer work. I decided to sweep the yard, clearing all the moss dropped by nest-building birds. In doing so I knocked some rotting wood from a raised bed, full to the brim with these small rocks. Should I remove all the wood and accept the consequences?
Several hours later and many many shovels full of these rocks I unearthed a perfectly acceptable concrete seating area.
Currently not a thing of beauty but nothing a power washer can’t sort out. I am somewhat perplexed as to why anyone would turn this into a stone-filled raised bed. But my tiny bit of risk taking paid off. I don’t even want to know what the concrete is hiding. We will sit here in the sun oblivious to the mystery.
The Buddha with the fractured skull seems very happy with the new location.
So now to dispose of many bags of grotty old rocks…
#893 theoldmortuary ponders.
What makes you nervous?
I am not by nature a nervous sort of person but I suffer from retrospective nervousness when I hear that something I have been involved with has not gone to plan. I question myself as to whether I had done my best in that situation, done what was required of me and done anything extra that would have smoothed the wheels of a positive outcome. I wonder if that is a normal reaction. I would say I am a fairly confident person but not supremely confident. As a woman I am without balls, both real and metaphorical. Here lies the pondering part of this ponder. I have often wondered what it would be like to try out some testosterone for about a week. Nothing whatsoever sexual in this,just a week of being in someone elses size 10 boots being male about everyday things . Goodness I know so many absolutely lovely men who are just a pleasure to know. But in life I have met some absolute corkers of bad examples of malehood, men who I really struggle to empathise with or understand at any level. Would a week with testosterone give me any level of understanding or insight?
The reason this question prompted this quite random ponder is that some men would not bother to consider that anything they had done would contribute to a less-than-positive outcome. Cocksure springs to mind.
There is no female version.
Quim Questioning has a nice ring to it.
” The Marquee blew over the sea wall, he was somewhat Cocksure that everything had been done correctly”
” The Marquee blew over the sea wall, she immediately Quimquestioned if everything had been secured correctly”
A week of feeling cocksure might be quite revelatory, no retrospective nervousness.
#892 theoldmortuary ponders
How do you unwind after a demanding day?
Sometimes I just let difficult days take their own course. A series of awkwardnesses and challenges during a day is the prompt we all need to rethink things . Demanding days are just that. Facing up to the reality of the challenge, accepting it and searching for a resolution, even an imperfect one just moves the whole thing a few steps forward. With just a slightly different perspective and a cup of tea ( or coffee) things look different.
#891 theoldmortuary ponders
How do you use social media?
Hmm, how do I use Social Media. Or does it use me? The latter is almost certainly true. This advert pops up everywhere I go online.
But as a Social Media content manager for a series of Arts organisations and now a Sports Club, I am unable to boast, loftily, that I have nothing to do with Social Media. Social Media evolves quickly, using it effectively, rather than the other way around keeps me on my toes. I publish my personal blog on two platforms. I keep up with people and places that interest me. The weather in Kent for instance.
Facebook keeps me in touch with paintings that I have sold and social events I have enjoyed with memory features.
Sometimes Social Media lets me know the sad things in life like the death or illness of friends, colleagues or celebrities.
Today is the nine year anniversary of a job leaving me, rather than the other way round. The Heart Hospital in Marylebone closed and all the staff either moved to Barts in the City of London or moved to different places of their choice.
I’m not sure me and a job have ever parted company quite so elegantly before or since.
Social Media lets me share jokes with friends.
How do I use Social Media. In a way that I feel comfortable with.
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