Tag: greige

#1262 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn FriendsLeave a comment

Easter weekend returns us to greige…

Our morning’s domestic admin and dog walk were done in terrible rainy conditions. Enlivened only by a trip to Jacka Bakery where we picked up Cardamom Buns and a bedraggled friend, he was as anxious as us to hide in a coffee shop and play parking space jeopardy. A game where you assess the risk of Parking Wardens patrolling the timed free spaces and catching you stretching two hours out of one.

The wet morning turned into a wetter afternoon so we turned the afternoon into a time warp. We are both former rowers and had somehow managed to miss the Oxford and Cambridge Boat race last week. Not only that we had both managed to avoid the race results. So two hours were happily spent watching a sports programme that was 6 days old from start to finish, interviews, statistics and of course the endeavour of rowers whose pain, win or lose, we understood.

Madness how easy it was to fill a rainy day in interesting, to us, ways.

The evening dog walk was as wet and greige as the morning. Not a scintilla of colour anywhere. The picture below has every speck of colour available . Mallard Ducks on the sea.  When I was growing up a bad day of rainy weather was described as,

“A good day for ducks”

I’m not sure if even the ducks were having a ball yesterday.

Although a friend is in Egypt currently and things were not a lot better for her.

© Charity Evwierhoma

#1221 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, Serendipity1 Comment

After the fabulous light show of Dazzle which has brightened up my weekend nighttime dog walks .

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16KaWjxHjM/hi

It was marvelous to see this lovely Magnolia in the dark yesterday.

https://theoldmortuary.design/2025/03/03/1220-theoldmortuary-ponders/

It reminded me to reflect, in a very self indulgent way, on the passing of winter and how as an ardent winterphobe I improved my attitude to my least liked season.

Reviewing things I realise that actually there are only three things I really dislike. January, constant rain, and short daylight hours. None of these things avoidable.

In December I am lifted by the run up to Christmas, festive lights and goodwill.

And I love February for its brevity and skippy nature as the days grow a little longer and Spring flowers spike the sodden soil.

Leaving me just with January to endure. ‘ Find the positives ‘ was the advice from Newspaper magazines each Saturday. I am always an optimist but January sucks my optimism. But I gave positivity  a go and decided to try and create interesting images out of the shockingly dull photographs I was taking. What light there is in January is overlayed with a perpetual mist and large quantities of rain. I tried everything in my medical imaging repertoire of image manipulation, everything in my arty photograph toolbox, some painting skills and used image manipulation software from really old systems to current ones.

There is almost no predictability about which bad pictures will turn out to be visual gems with my tweakments but learning to use all the tools and ideas in my head has been  fascinating. There have been some epic failures.

I even went back to the nineties and bought myself a home printer. Goodness me they have improved.

January and indeed winter 25/26 I am ready for you.

Here is the Magnolia on a gorgeous shade of ‘ greige’, surely my most used word of the winter months.

And finally the image I was aiming for.

Other worldly Magnolia.

#525 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Colour3 Comments

As predicted we have been plunged into a period of greige weather. Coincidentally I have created a landscape with no colour. Greige is many things. Initiated by weather it can also be a state of mind or a physical feeling. Outdoors the colour has been rinsed out of everything, much like a landscape in fog. Greige is possibly the love child of fog and mist. Not as dangerous as one or as whimsical as the other. Colour can only be found close to hand, or foot.

Evergreen Clematis
Wet flagstone in a local pavement.

But beyond about ten feet, things fade to greige.

Pastel colours are not normally my thing but as I am likely to be surrounded by them for a few days I had a little play around with unusually subtle colours for me.

Evergreen Clematis overlayed on a flagstone.
Evergreen Clematis overlayed on papier mache and a mount.

The funny thing is that I can’t quite bring myself to paint on the papier mache. I love the simplicity of the torn paper edges. Clearly greige is getting to me.

#128 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn HomeLeave a comment

100 shades of greige. Serendipity took me to a strange place recently. Strange for no other reason than greige is the opposite of my actual life while I am doing a colour course. A local department store has refurbished its cafe during lock down and come up with a colour scheme devoid of any colour.

With a nod to the city’s nautical history, boats are the theme of the pictures on the wall. All colour sucked out of them by a digital photography programme.

Not to be outdone the wallpaper celebrates a neutral palate.

Not that I helped myself any, ordering a pot of tea was hardly going to set my colour world alight.

Is neutral really a good look for a post pandemic world.?

Thankfully this restaurant does a fine breakfast and we populated our time there with colourful memories. Too much neutral made my eyes hurt…

Pandemic Pondering #311

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderingsLeave a comment

The greige is back! This picture is in full glorious colour but you would never know it, only a life jacket on the pontoon gives a tiny splash of colour. Headlines are a starker version of greige, the United Kingdom has recorded an excess of 100,000 deaths linked to Covid.

This picture is also in full glorious colour again there is a tiny splash of colour on a pontoon . On this occasion the splash of colour is an office building painted a curious shade of salmon pink. The thing neither of these pictures show is the unrelenting rain. What they do demonstrate is why safety equipment is painted red, or in unusual circumstances Salmon Pink. The salmon pink office is part of a Royal Navy Munitions Depot. Barges, called Lighters, make their way to the Jetty, on which it stands, from the Dockyard to collect armaments to transport down the river to load onto warships. I had often wondered why the building was pink. I presume now that is is because Salmon Pink also stands out in Greige. There would not be a jetty if the barges had trouble seeing it.

As ponderings go this one is biased towards the dismal end of the spectrum. Late January, dreadful pandemic statistics, jetties solely built to deliver weapons are not the ingredients for a joyful blog particularly set within a background of a third lockdown.

Thankfully Facebook timehop gave me an eight year old image, also with some obvious red to twink the mood a little.

Hugo loves a drink of tea. He is never too fussed about the design of the mug, but for the purposes of this blog I’m quite grateful he chose this one for his morning refreshment. A tiny uplift of encouragement in a world that is rather greige.

Pandemic Pondering #305

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home TownsLeave a comment

Another greige old day. Hannahs birthday,and we had plans, weather permitting, to walk on beaches, enjoy coffee and have a great burger for supper. The weather was having none of this and an unplanned but essential session of domestic admin stole time and space to achieve the planned day.

Modified plans held the same ingredients but not quite the same pizazz as anticipated. Coffee was from a drive- through and picnic lunch was a side order whilst we read through mountains of paperwork. The dog walk was taken during a miraculous break in the weather, we were still blown about like shuttlecocks but without a side serving of torrential rain. Hands were firmly dug into pockets so no photographs of joyful dog bottoms enjoying a playful walk. Facebook came to the rescue on this particular subject. Offering me an image from 8 years ago. Hugo’s first day out in South London, about to create his first patch of yellow snow!

The only bit of our day to stay on plan was the burger. In some ways another South London throwback. Zephyr Burgers were a pop-up in our neighbourhood. https://www.zephyrburgers.co.uk/

What you don’t expect when you move back to the West Country is for a familiar London pop-up to pop-up close to home again. Currently parked at the back of Bullet Proof Brewery on Mutley Plain.

Our burger choice marked not only a birthday but also had a nod to the inauguration of a new Potus.

Either the carb load or a more reliable hand on the nuclear button made for a good nights sleep.

Pandemic Pondering #304

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, walkingLeave a comment

Storm Christoph shaped our 10,000 step exercise hour today. We walked from Victoria Park to Mutton Cove via the 18th Century Richmond Walk. Ordinarily this walk is a heady mix of beautiful seascapes and a mix of marine and industrial landsapes. Today the greige of a wet and foggy pre-storm made scenic pictures a pointless exercise so we concentrated on Street Art and man-made embelishments to our route. Contrariwise the first picture is of King Billy our halfway point turnaround.

The reason for the slightly odd order of pictures is the unbelievably grim, greige weather. On the return walk it was easier to see and stand still with the weather at our backs. The next three picures show a man made structure being taken over by the sea and nature and then being recontrolled but not reclaimed by humans once again.

Next a lovely palimpsest of heavy iron doors, paint, rust and graffiti caught our attention next.

Followed by a lone tag on an old wooden gate.

Then a colourful flourish to the end of our walk in the tunnel beneath the Stonehouse Bridge.

Not a greige image in sight. A modern miracle on a day like today.