Obviously I am an addicted ponderer. It is the beating heart of this blog and for me is both creative and endlessly fascinating.
Mulling on the other hand is a much less lightweight, pleasurable task. Mulling however is every bit as essential for me.
The two thinking techniques are closely related. I have always been a ponderer, I started young, in Reference Libraries. As I edged into adulthood, worries and problems could not always be pondered into a solution. Sometimes more serious and better targeted thinking is required. Mulling moved into my life.
Recently, away from this blog I have had to do a lot of mulling on the behalf of an organisation that I help to manage.
My Mulling team, confidentiality guaranteed.
All organisations, whatever their title are essentially about people. My recent mullings have taken me to places I never imagined I would need to explore. Despite the importance of mulling it uses much the same mental muscles as pondering. And for me the creative, familiar places where I choose to ponder have proved to be equally suitable for mulling.
1.Dull domestic tasks.
2.Dog walks
3. Yardening in the yard.
Staring at the laundry whilst thinking.
Just one stark difference between pondering and mulling.
I have been feeling a bit nostalgic this week. I can pinpoint the exact moment it started on Monday. I was shopping in a local supermarket and saw a dress that looked like the curtains in the kitchen of my home when I was 3 or 4.
I didn’t need a new dress, and out of choice I try to only buy a tiny amount of new items of clothing. Adopting a recycle, repurpose and reuse policy as a small act of saving the planet.
This dress was certainly fast fashion, everything I choose not to engage with. I bargained with myself that I would not buy it because I only wear dresses with pockets and this one, being cheap, would not have pockets.
It had pockets and it came home with me. Nostalgia won.
That started the undercurrent of my week. A slight longing for the past. This very bland set up in my bathroom is nostalgic too. My dad was a man of the seventies and loved his electric razor but he too had nostalgia in his bones and used this shaving mug on rare occasions to have a wet shave as the fancy took him. I use his shaving mug as a regular soap dish, a small act of daily remembrance. And beyond that I don’t really pay it much attention. But because the dress triggered kitchen nostalgia the shaving mug joined in and I pondered how very different my bathroom is from the one the mug lived in during the seventies. My parents bathroom fittings were bright blue, their towels, and facecloths were in bold bright colours and in the iconic designs of the era. Unbelievably, soap was a curious shade of red. Lifebuoy Red.
Lifebuoy red shaped my early life, every part of us was washed with it. I hated it, my face was as dry and tight as the worst sort of sunburn after every face wash, noses and other orifices burned and stung if the lather or suds of the soap got anywhere near them. I soon adopted an independent washing and bathing routine that actually avoided the use of any soap. The only time the soap met water was at the end of my ablutions when I tossed it in the water after I had finished so that I could, in truth, say that I had used soap when my parents questioned my cleaning regime.
During my bathroom nostalgia I pondered that red soap, and wondered if I had just been a bit dramatic about the stuff. Being over-dramatic is always possible, I was an only child with a vivid imagination.
Dr Google has an opinion on Lifebuoy Red ‘ Health’ soap and that opinion is that Lifebuoy Red contained Carbolic Acid.
Which exactly explains why trying to rinse off the soap seemed to make things so much worse. Nobody mentioned rinsing off with alcohol
I may be being overdramatic, but just thinking about that soap gives me the shivers when I recall the lather of that soap going up my nose or south of my belly button. And the effect on my four-year-old face was certainly a mild chemical burn.
Kitchen curtains are one thing, but I can’t imagine a seventies bathroom ever making me feel all warm and nostalgic.
A cheap dress with pockets is so much more appealing.
I am so glad I made the most of two days of good weather and more importantly I basked a little in sunshine.
Pirate Santa eloquently shows the difference. West Country Greige is back this morning. He also sets the monotone ( with a pop of red) of my day.
A day of catching up with domestica, also with a pop of red.
Domestica is dull and even duller on a greige day. So enough of that.
So E for 26 Days to Boxing Day.
E is for Education, and you may thank me for this, or not. No monotone.
Hot water bottles have a lifespan. Who knew? Hot water bottles should be no older than two years. I had no idea. I am sure I have only had about 5 hot water bottles in my life. I am way older than 10! Hot water bottles live an unloved life with me. Only really thought about now when my back aches or my feet are cold. My last hot water bottle did fail, it started to leak. The ‘new’ one is already too old to use officially. I really dont know how I feel about this I imagined we would be together for some time.
Yesterday I learned the Daisy Date Wheel. The way all hot water bottles are marked so we can tell when they are passed their 2 year lifespan.
4 dots in 5 segments around 22.
My hottie was made on the 4th May 2022. Out of date by 7 months!
When I read this yesterday I pondered that I had never seen a daisy on my hottie . It was a real shock to find the daisy and even worse that she had exceeded her lifespan! The risk of a scold from boiling water should she become faulty seems a risk not worth taking. But I have clearly been taking this risk most of my life.
The rain has set in, in Stonehouse, not as beautifully as it did in Arcadia . In truth we may have returned to the days of greige.
Full colour image! Stonehouse
I had promised myself to the ironing board when the weather turned. Somehow it feels like I am ironing myself into autumn. Lightweight clothes are ironed and put away, more firmly than before. If there is such a thing as a summer table cloth then that is ironed and may not see the light of day until 2024. I’ve always turned ironing into a learning experience, documentaries or podcasts. Today I ironed in the company of an Octopus called Scarlet, courtesy of the National Geographic Channel. Several levels of improvement from the mostly black and white magazine that popped through the postbox of my childhood home. What luxury to be able to absorb other worlds whilst ironing. I am so intrigued by the Octopus programme, I almost want more ironing, but I also know that an Octopus life has drawbacks, so I am happy that my pile is done with just as Scarlet meets her beau. He touches her with his ‘special’ breeding arm just as the last shirt is ironed. I am released from the responsibility of knowing that she will die as soon as she gives birth and that her babies will feast on her carcass as their first meal. For two reasons I am glad the ironing is over. I am also glad to not be an octopus. I am a loving mother but I know my limits.
August the 19th Monday. A grey old day that was always going to be one of chores. With away-from-home jobs done I am about to do the home tasks. Laundry and tidying up. Aided and abetted by podcasts and music.
While pondering about Monday Mundane Monotony I thought I would spend five minutes checking up on previous 19th of August photos .
12 years ago I was escaping a blisteringly hot day post-on call in London. All of London was heading for the coast of Kent. I deliberately chose a rather unlovely part of the coast, Minster-on-Sea on the Isle of Sheppey. Just one photograph all day but I’m sure I had a well earned sleep and some book reading while looking out over a rather unlovely part of the Thames Estuary. 12 years on, my extremely random automatic photo editor turns my close-up beachscape into something rather joyful.
9 years ago packing my art stuff , this time before an on-call but also related to an escape the next day to the coast for some arty dabbling in Cornwall.
At no point until 3 years ago did I ever imagine that the coast would become a five minute walk from home. I’m not sure I imagined a life where a coastal escape could happen whenever I fancy it. It certainly makes a day of domestic chores much more enjoyable. Not exactly Fireworks all day but definitely something to perk up a dull day with dull chores.
These spoons have had quite the life. Not the life intended for them in 1955, when they were gifted to my parents as a wedding gift but a life never the less. When my parents died nearly 30 years ago I had the difficult job of clearing and selling their home. Everyone who has done that task knows the heartache that such a job brings. These spoons were unused. Still in their wrapping paper, and with a heartwarming and loving letter from my dad’s cousin. I imagine they were never used and preserved, just as they had been gifted, because that cousin killed himself soon after my parents marriage.
Unused spoons are of no use to anyone so I kept the letter and put the spoons to use in my busy family environment.
30 years of daily life without being cleaned. Obviously they have been in and out of the dishwasher, almost daily. A thing not even invented when they were made.
Grubby perhaps, until this week when we made a new-to-us salad dressing. It had eye watering amounts of mustard in it. The salad dressing was a step too far for our stoic spoons. Something dreadful occured. Discolouration and a tang or odd taste came off the spoon.
Dr Google saved the spoons. I did things with boiling water, tin foil, salt and Bicarbonate of Soda and then buffed them with a soft cloth. They have never looked better. The spoons were old looking when I found them. Today they are positively youthful.
I wonder if nasty viruses are a good way for people with normally robust health to live in the shoes of people who are less fortunate. After 24 hours of exploding insides I was left like a whimsical husk, unable to function in any useful way until my insides decided that they would permit half a can of flat coke and a small amount of plain pasta.
My best descriptive word for my state yesterday was flimsy and the previous few days were definitely queasy.
Goodness I love the word ‘flinsy’. I have not always used it wisely or in a kindly way. In my teenage years I described a friends new boyfriend as flimsy. I thought I was being kind and truthful but maybe finding something good about him would have been what a truly good friend would have done.
The other definition of flimsy is almost certain to be or to become extinct. Hand or type written reports were often created on triple layer stationary. A sandwich of normal paper for the original, ultra thin paper in the middle and thin card on the back. The ultra thin paper was often called the flimsy and most organisations had a special filing system for flimsies. Paper versions of credit card transactions were possibly the last incarnation of the flimsy as a noun.
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