The return of rust. About 7 years ago I had a trauma with an iPhone. It had been a little cranky for a few weeks, but turning it off and on always chased the gremlins out. Then one day, in a Marks and Spencer Food Hall, it died a sudden death. There was no resuscitating it.

I replaced it with a Huawei because of the excellent camera. When it was time for a next planned upgrade I moved away from Huawei because of the Google ban and am currently using a Google phone.

Somehow in the iPhone to Huawai to Google swap I lost access to my Pinterest and Flickr accounts. I still used those apps but only as a guest and never bothered to log in again. My use of them both lessened, and I didn’t particularly miss them.

Yesterday an email from Pinterest prompted me to re- activate my account. It was like stumbling across a lost handbag before the digital age when handbags* were much more of a thing. I could not believe the stuff/images I found there.

Collected images and ideas for the rebuild and refurbishment of the actual Old Mortuary. All sorts of interests from my personal pre-Covid era. How did I even survive the Covid era without dipping into Pinterest?

Things have changed whilst I was away. My interests have changed. I deleted most of the boards and most of the images I had saved. It would be exactly the same if I found an actual old handbag. But my inspiration board was worthy of keeping, and my collection of rust images.

Reconnecting with Pinterest is like having an old friend move back into my life. It probably won’t occupy exactly the same space in my creative processes but the app will be a very welcome source of alternative ideas.  Although I am never likely to return to the days of an over-spilling handbag…

Yesterday I found this cranky old pipe which had previously served a Victorian greenhouse. The pipe was a gorgeous combination of metal and insulation materials. These images will be added to my Pinterest, Rust and Verdigris Board sometime soon, as will this blog which can be linked to my Pinterest account. Ooooh the changes over 7 years.

* Handbags. In my previous medical imaging life, a well filled handbag could be a useful test tool if the machines were not quite working properly. Handbags are a great example of soft tissue and metallic objects. Nearly always easier to find than the ‘phantom’ human that cost thousands of pounds and was always stored, or not, in a cupboard very far away.

X-raying or CT scanning a handbag was also a really useful skillset when precious things were accidentally thrown away in the surgical or infected waste bins or bags.

When I worked in an extremely posh part of London, a doctor’s expensive vintage Rolex was missing at the end of a case. He believed he had left it in the scrub room before the emergency case. Opportunistic theft was the only obvious scenario. Which made the whole team feel very uncomfortable. The item was of such value the police would have to have been called. Picking through a night’s worth of surgical or infected waste would not have been a great experience for anyone but x-raying every bag or box would reduce the number of bags needed to be searched. The watch, ironically true to its Submariner name had been taken off very early in the proceedings and put safely in a small plastic pot below the trolley. In the aftermath clear up of a very difficult and bloody case the small pot had become covered by other things. Just like a submarine it had taken a dive to the bottom of a yellow waste bag destined for an incinerator. No member of the team was a thief, no police needed. Just the random skill of knowing how best to x-ray a handbag. Why did I not photograph that x-ray, that moment of victory…

The end of a very long P.S is just a blank space!