Tag: dailyprompt

#833 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Art for sale3 Comments
Gelli print, direct print and watercolour.

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

March is here. My fate or destiny for the day is set. The first sea swim of the new month awaits. I have spent the week mistressing* a new printing technique. Gelli printing. My shoulders are tight from concentration and need the morning swim. I wouldn’t be in this tight time constraint with tight shoulders if I had used the last 18 months wisely. I hadn’t printed since Art School when I planned and curated a print exhibition in a local gallery.  In the summer of 2022. The printers I worked with were inspirational and I vowed to take up printing, to be well prepared when the next exhibition happened. I am rubbish at long deadlines. A sensible woman would have done printing courses. Not me! I did a watercolour course and fell back in love with the serendipity and subtlety of pigment in water. I do have a print course booked in two weeks, exactly one week before the exhibition. Meanwhile I am trying to invent a method that involves printing and watercolour. Madness.

This morning a swimming friend sent me the video at the end of the blog. Oh dear!!! My tight shoulders got an early work out as I chuckled and was appalled. I have used those smug phrases.

” I swim all year actually “

Even worse for me, in a distant life I moved from London to Brighton

” Well, Hove, actually” **

In other printing news, next year’s Christmas cards are with the printers. Last use of the C word until the other side of Autumn.

Happy St Davids Day, enjoy the vid.

* I like to rehabilitate the word ‘Mistress’ from its philandering connotations. I don’t need to master anything I am a woman trying to create a mistresspiece.

** ‘Hove actually’ is another, possibly smug, statement known to all who live or have lived on the South Coast.

theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity2 Comments

Do you enjoy your job?

I’ve always enjoyed my jobs. The art one of the last few years does not bring with it a reliable income but that is the only downside. The job that brought a reliable income had a few more downsides. But both have been enriching experiences. Before my ‘proper’ job I worked from the age of 14-20 in a series of low paid, part-time jobs that could be fitted around education. Nostalgia and the elixir of youth make those jobs and time with minimal responsibility seem like the twinkly moments of employment. I fitted so much variety into those six years. Always at the bottom of the pile of employees, the ‘Saturday’ girls or boys got all the dreadful jobs on any day of the week.

Menial jobs were good for me. I find it easy to spot people who have never done minimum-wage jobs. Just as privileged people who have never been in that position can probably ‘spot’ me. Finding pleasure, and enjoyment, even in the tough, and at times gritty, low-paid jobs was a great lesson to learn.

#826 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity, Words1 Comment

This time next week we will all be waking up in March. If January was all about recharging and recovering from the pleasures of the Festive Season it also brought some unexpectedly lovely sunny days. Bright shafts of sunlight kick-started early Spring Cleaning and redecorating during February.

No bad thing as February has been relentlessly wet and drear. Global warming in the far south-west of Britain reveals itself damply. Growing up in the Cold War years (1947-1985) nobody talked much about the climate until they did.

BBC News – A brief history of climate change
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15874560

As a lover of words it seems interesting that almost with a flick of a switch the media swapped one temperature based threat with another.

I first heard the term ‘ Global Warming’ in about 1984 just as the ‘Cold war’ was limping to a conclusion of sorts. My ponder today is a really naive one. Does the world not take Global Warming seriously because the word warming is one that suggests comfort and cosiness.

Which leads me to today’s random question/prompt.

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

I took far too much advice as a teenager, so overburdening my younger self with more unsolicited advice might be unwelcome. But here I go.

Nobody gets it all right, all of the time. But getting things wrong is often the more interesting path but not the most comfortable.

Study Global Warming.

Plum Beautiful lipstick, Levi’s and Doc Martin boots will still be with you when you are sixty.

Keep reading and listening.

©theoldmortuary

#825 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, ExhibitionsLeave a comment
©theoldmortuary

What bores you?

I have no idea what bores me. I seem to have made it my life ambition to avoid boredom. I wonder if that is just the way some people are. The painting above is hot off the press and depicts clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Black jeans, blue jumper and an off white silk shirt. It is possible that a woman who could spend 3 hours doing such a painting maybe has no grip on boredom and really should not be commenting.

The technical challenges of painting such a dull subject were fascinating and kept me busy planning how to go about it.

The first stage was to paint the shadows that would fall on the tiles, then print the tiles but masking off the area that would be the clothes.

Have I bored you yet?

Clothes dropped on a bathroom floor. Who would ever choose to paint such a thing?

On a less boring note my greetings cards for an upcoming exhibition have just been printed. I am pleased with the way they look.

#824 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity2 Comments

What is your favorite drink?

Life changed and took me along with it. My favourite drinks are time specific. The first caffeinated cup of tea of the day followed swiftly by the first black coffee. Since Covid stole or altered almost all of my sense of taste and smell, my favourite drinks are the ones with many layers of flavour. I am at my flavoursome best in the morning.

After midday I only drink modified water really. This is not a hardship. A whole new world of fruit tea is out there for me to explore. Sadly they are mostly just a few moments of flavour before they just become hot water. Mostly I just drink hot water.

©theoldmortuary

Barszcz, clear Polish Borscht, served in a cup on Christmas Eve was a revelation.  Exactly the mix of flavours I need to kick my tastebuds into afternoon action.

By the evening there is no point trying to kick the tastebuds, they are tucked up in bed long before I am. Alcohol has more or less abandoned me.

And this is the point when a prompted blog finds the true path to a ponder. Humans, or at least the ones I mix with are gorgeous hospitable people. They want me and my taste buds to have a good time. Only asking for a cup of hot water or a non-alcoholic drink upsets the balance of hospitality and generosity for most people. I realise now the struggle that it must be to be a non-drinker, by choice or need.

Generous humans abhor a clear fluid.

#821 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity8 Comments

The best gifts to receive are the ones that take you on a journey. To single out one gift as the best I have ever received would be madness. Gifts are such diverse items. A kind word is a gift, as is a small portion of chocolate or a shoulder squeeze or a cup of tea. To stimulate today’s blog I have chosen a recent gift. A book from one friend’s pile to mine. The joy of a random book.

Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.

As all things have for the last few weeks, Saturday started with DIY. The flip side of a recently gifted book showed this image of a woman doing DIY.

©Hilary Macaskill.

Not just any woman dabbling her paintbrush. The world’s best selling author of all time, Agatha Christie. Her old home is less than an hour from us.  We have the book so why not go and inspect her brushwork?

The longer I live in Devon the more I realise that the world moves in strange circuits. Particularly for the rich and famous.

Our journey started ordinarily enough at a cafe/coffee shop.

The Almond Thief

The Almond Thief in a building that was once the home of Sir Francis Drake.

Greenway, the home of Agatha Christie. The Greenway Estate was formerly the home of the Gilbert family. Sir Walter Raleigh,the first importer of Tobacco to Europe,was a Gilbert and when this land needed landscaping his chum, Sir Francis Drake,from the Almond Thief Cafe,  just happened to have captured a Spanish ship with 166 crew who became prisoners of war who were then gifted to Sir Walter Raleigh’s uncle as ground workers. And that, it seems, is exactly how 16th Century Devon worked. Which completes the coffee shop circle. Back to the book.

Exploring anywhere in February rain is a challenge but we did appreciate all the Spaniards hard work. The grounds were fabulous and the artificially created viewpoints gave hints of gorgeousness but for us just monochrome hints.

10,000 steps in the rain did not give us much time for the house and we had to do it in split shifts for outdoor dog care. But it was amazing, so many stories to tell. But this is a blog about a gift which took me on a journey, as all good gifts should. Plenty of time to natter about Agatha and her lovely house next week.

I loved her lobster plate.

EBay tells me I could have one for £420. Another journey. One I am unlikely to complete.

#816 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Daft Questions, Interior Design2 Comments

What’s afoot? Not what we had hoped. Our DIY phase has entered a  ‘get someone in phase’  This footprint should be on a floor that looks like a Victorian bathroom. But, when the flooring was delivered, there was a flaw and now we await a new delivery.  Once again our minor renovation of the house is slowed down. Which turns out to be a thing! Unknown to us we are part of a new trend in home decorating.

Slow Decorating is a ‘thing’

Our slowness is circumstantial, financial and serendipitous. Some of it is unplanned, like the bathroom floor. Other times we are waiting to find the right thing for the right place.  Wherever possible we find second hand or recycled items. Very much as this article suggests.

https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/why-we-should-all-be-slow-decorating?utm_campaign=dashhudson&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=instagram

Magazine article homes are all very well but when the photographer and journalist leave, these homes have to be lived in. Stuff needs to move in and find a home.

Part of our bathroom refurbishment is required because nearly all of the houseplants have decided they want to live in the west facing bathroom . The previous owners had wanted an all grey pleasure dome. We just need to be clean human beings. Juggling these three different design needs has taken us some time to puzzle out. Ripping out all of the new fixtures and fittings would have been the easiest but least ethical or affordable solution. The party bath is currently hosting the plants while they wait for the new floor. It will all work out in the end. Which brings me nicely to today’s blogging prompt, daft question.

If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?

She worked it all out, in the end.

#815 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Friends and Family, Serendipity1 Comment

What were your parents doing at your age?

My parents had stopped map making for me at my age. They both died at the age of 63 and had been terminally ill for some time so map making for their adult child had not been at the top of their to-do-lists for a couple of years before that. Their maps stopped .To use a nautical term, I have been on uncharted waters for some time. Cartography -on-the-go for me.

Anything that I’ve done beyond the age of 36 has had no inherited map, lovingly offered from anyone that shared my own gene pool. But life maps are everywhere. If it takes a village to raise a child then an adult child can look to the village for spare maps.

My how-to-be-an older adult maps are tatterdemalion-like. Made up as I go along with bits stolen from people I admire, books, the media. From time to time I  look at large multi- generational families in awe, as they navigate life with shared wisdom. But if I love the way they do things  I can copy and paste.*

How to be an older adult? I have no idea, I am a stranger here myself.

* sometimes when I copy and paste I have a slight sensation of something on my fingertip. Is that a little odd?

P.S Yesterday, while searching for some fabric I found a barrel of pure white feathers for sale. I know that some people like to think of the souls of loved ones when they see a pure white feather caught in a sudden breeze. I thought a barrel of them was magical. A tiny feather also usefully demonstrates the sensation I sometimes get when copy and pasting.

#813 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior Design, Interior design inspiration, Serendipity1 Comment

Write about your dream home.

A good weekend for this prompt. We are in the midst of wallpapering. Not exactly to turn our current home into a dream home but maybe to turn our existing spaces into something more beautiful. When we bought the house it had been done up to attract buyers. It is full of original features and the materials used are mostly of very good quality. We have spent two and a half years trying to love an expensive French style wallpaper chosen by the previous owners.  Love has not overwhelmed us and the pale blue birds on pale blue twigs on a pale gold background have been replaced. A hugely different, concrete, abstract paper burnished with a soft bronze has silenced the already mute birds.  The concrete, just like the birds reflect the morning light from the East.

By this time tomorrow those irritating birds will be gone. One person’s dream eclipsed by another.