Tag: dailyprompt

#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.

#810 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn pondering, Serendipity1 Comment

I am not the only family member that ponders. Hugo finds pondering easiest on a comfy bed. He is pondering the quality of the biscuits he was given in a pub in Penzance. I was at the same pub but not given a biscuit, a tickle or photographed by a stranger, looking cute near a ship’s wheel or staring masterfully at a sextant. For me the pub itself became a massive ponder.

The Admiral Benbow is one of the oldest pubs in Penzance. It has elevated itself from an illegal drinking den in the sixteenth century to a regular pub with an irregular clientele in later centuries. All safely in the past. Famed for being the meeting place of pirates, smugglers, wreckers and all other forms of seafaring miscreants. The pub would also have been a great place for all varieties of prostitution to thrive.  My ponder on the subject of the Admiral Benbow is really about the whitewashing of crime and criminals, illegal activity in all its many forms by the passing of time and the ‘ romance of the sea’

I cannot imagine choosing to spend an evening in a pub or club associated with 21st Century criminals. Drug dealers, handlers of stolen goods, people traffickers, or perpetrators of modern slavery.

But centuries passing and a whiff of the sea makes sharing a time-hop space with the imagining of rogues acceptable, fascinating and enjoyable.

Romance and fantasy stick themselves to the sea and seafarers in a way that seems disproportionate and mystifying. The whites of tropical uniforms are a ‘thing’ in both heterosexual and queer culture. Sailors have a word for a temporary madness that hits them in the tropics.

Calenture a sort of giddiness that brings a heightened state of excitement in hot weather. Throwing themselves into the sea for fun and feeling sexually aroused.

Seafarers really do get some of the best words.

As I sat in the Admiral Benbow enjoying a rum,while Hugo enjoyed a good sea dog biscuit it was easy to imagine the bar boasts of olden times. I really hope Calenture cropped up.

Prof.Google helped me out on this one.

Are Sailors romantic because they were the first profession to really see the world and bring us unimaginable things from foreign destinations.

Which brings me, rather circuitously, to today’s random question

What’s your favorite candy?

Chocolate. Just chocolate. Not chocolate cake or puddings. Nothing too fancy.

Ponderings, in the Admiral Benbow on Monday night. Plenty of space for historical visitors from all centuries. Some nibs of chocolate in a leather pouch and tales of Calenture. Just fascinating.

Lola, meanwhile, thinks such pondering is overated. She could be right.

#809 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Do you need a break? From what?

The job I am doing needs a break from me, not me from it. I am cleaning the grate in a very old fireplace. When the fireplace was installed this job was performed daily. A waxy potion has been applied to all things grate related and I have retired for two hours for a miraculous transformation to occur.

Attending to the houseplants yesterday was much more pleasurable. But not all Spring Cleaning is about pleasure, and thankfully, not all of it is quite as filthy as cleaning fire grates. Mostly this week I am tinkering between rooms. Filling bags for the charity shop with ‘ stuff’. Stuff that we no longer need and quite possibly never needed. In my two hour gap I have also done domestic admin and eaten lunch. Like my fireplace this blog is unbelievably dull. Recounting the joys of Spring cleaning is like that. Dull, but essential. In two hours time my grate will still be dull, a little less dull apparently with the addition of graphite powder and an enormous amount of rubbing.

Bloggng is a much better daily activity than cleaning a fire grate and never dull. This was a battle, done wearing leggings and an old jumper. The different angles required to buff everything were extraordinary. Unimaginable in a traditional maids outfit. No wonder gentlemen got the wrong idea, there is absolutely no way to clean these things with modest movements.

Still dull after two hours, just less dull.

#808 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Daft Questions, Serendipity3 Comments

While January, in the West Country, seems to drag its feet. February definitely skips along a little faster. There were a few photographs that didn’t make it into a January blog. Each of them was taken on a January day when the sunshine was bright. In contrast, so far, February is a little more murky. Today seems like a day to play catch up and give each of these images its own moment in the sun. They also only have tiny stories attached to them so there will be an element of randomness to this blog.

In no particular order. January always starts the Spring cleaning bug, long before Spring is anywhere close. Taking down the Christmas decorations is the trigger point. My copper preserving pan got a new location and a lot of polishing. Thank goodness for podcasts.

Christmas left overs would never normally feature in a blog but my Stilton and Parmesan pastries cooled down in a sunbeam.

Gourds on a window ledge in Totnes made a cosy corner on one of our out of town excursions.

The reason the West Country can be greige is because on the whole the climate is a little milder than the rest of the United Kingdom. Better than normal sunshine brings colder temperatures. Cold, cold dog walks drive us to find convivial spaces to warm up.

These last two pictures were taken at Marazion. The day was very bright, as you can see from this photo of seaweed.

It was also very cold and we were the only people out and about on the promenade. Or so we thought. I stopped to take this ghost image of a swimmer.

Out of nowhere two Northern European men approached us. Sunday morning Evangelists extremely focused on talking to the only people visible to them. With the practised certainty of their faith they smiled, asked questions and countered our answers with smiles and different opinions. We were all battling icy cold gusts of wind that took most of our words out to sea. 10 minutes passed and we had no idea what they were trying to convert us to and similarly they probably had no idea what they were trying to save us from.

I am fairly certain this was not one of their questions. Science not normally being a faith kind of thing.

The most important invention in your lifetime is…

My answer, had they chosen to ask it would have been the perfect hook-in.

I have no idea. Proselytizing gold!

#807 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, blogging, Daft Questions, Serendipity1 Comment

Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.

An ideal day cannot be predictably planned and is perhaps only recognisable as ideal once it has come to an end. Because I was involved in doing Bloganuary many of my ideal days went unmarked because they did not fit with the Bloganuary prompts. There were many days that would be considered to be ideal in January especially as the sun came out a lot more than usual.

Sometimes the tide was just perfect too. Or the light was in just the right place to catch a wave.

On one occasion some Pilchard Street Art popped up.

In very similar colours to some doughnuts I had just seen.

By superimposing those two images I created the header image of this blog.

An ideal day is harder to categorise than I could possibly describe.

#806 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

It is not how the significant things in life alter my perspective that fascinates me. Although like everyone my life has been radically altered by time passing and significant events.

What I love is the way tiny details in a day can spark a train of events that make some big,fat,gorgeous thoughts spring out of almost nowhere. Big, fat, gorgeous thinking is such a positive thing.

Yesterday I had to search out a portrait I had done of a dear friend. I had taken her photos after the last Covid lockdown . I spent the morning with her, a golden moment because we both knew that was the last time we would probably have together. I eventually tracked her photo down in my archive and in searching for it I found the picture that illustrates a golden moment so well.

It is also tiny things that alter perspectives and that is always a good thing.

#805 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, dog walks, Interior Design1 Comment
©Jenna Bobber

The first bob of February was achieved yesterday morning. It was a somewhat monochromatic day. And for no particular reason quite a brutally cold swim at Tranquility Bay. There were only four bobbers, two bystanders and two dogs. A small highpoint was waving to the sailors on the deck deck and them waving back. An excellent way for us all to warm up.

Monochrome was the flavour of our outdoor life yesterday.

Two barrel hoops had dropped off a barrel near the Cooperage.

And much to the disappointment of Lola, one of her favourite cafes was shut.

Which leads me to today’s prompt rather nicely.

Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

February sees us back in home DIY mood. We are fired up by a very arty weekend away in Penzance.

Every inch of our previous home. The actual old Mortuary was designed and created by us and two wonderful builders, Jason and Dave who humoured our maddest ideas while still rebuilding a mortuary and attached cottage into a wonderfully comfortable home.

But fate took a turn in good ways and bad. We became the family hub and our family, which had been shrinking for many years, started to grow.

To paraphrase Chief Martin Brody in Jaws. We were going to need a bigger house. Our current home is an old Townhouse that had been owned by the same family for 60 years. It had been ‘done up’ to sell but has many original features. Without ripping out perfectly good things we are slowly remodelling the house to better represent and accommodate us. The to-do list will never be done. And we are just fine with that.