Tag: Pandemic ponderings

Pandemic Pondering #365!

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderings3 Comments

Sun rising on one whole year of Pandemic Pondering.

The United Kingdom is marking one year since the first Lockdown announced with a minutes silence at noon and a collective act of reflection and rememberance at 8pm, when people are encouraged to leave a candle or other source of light on their doorsteps.

When plans for a UK wide act of reflection was announced last week I had mixed feelings. One year on we are still in the midst of this pandemic with no clear idea of how or when it will end. In the future 23rd of March may well be the day we remember, reflect and count the cost of the Pandemic but at the moment it is still our lived experience and most of us reflect and readjust many times a day. The world may decide to have a different International Day of Mourning once this Pandemic has been brought under an acceptable level of control. The details of the end remain unknown and the only thing we can reflect on is our personal current running total of loss which is accurate. Governments figures will be adjusted up and down as the pandemic is considered over the years and statistical analysis is argued over. Individuals and families know with upsetting accuracy exactly what they have lost in one year.

I would hope not to still be Pandemically Pondering in a years time. An additional P for Post will be added just as soon as it seems appropriate. Thanks for reading along and commenting on various platforms, thanks for stopping me in the street and saying that you read and enjoy Ponderings. Tomorrow will be a festival of Positives sharing the good things that have happened over the past year @theoldmortuary

Pandemic Pondering #230

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

It’s Complicated

Living @theoldmortuary currently is a little like living in a wisdom tooth while the tooth next door is being filled. Unanounced a week ago a team from a gas company dug up the road next to the house. The front of the house is both an informal depot and the location of temporary traffic lights.

The configuration of barriers, mounds of tarmac and holes in the ground changes daily. This morning the set up feels like a metaphor for the soon to be imposed Lockdown and just like the Lockdown we have no idea how long these road works will go on or how disruptive they will be.

Today was another day of domestic admin and rain avoidance. Looking into the roadworks during a spell of dry weather didn’t make things any clearer.

Time to accept that the road ahead is full of pitfalls and barriers,while we wait to find a way through.

Pandemic Pondering #46

On By theoldmortuary.designIn archive, Pandemic ponderings, SerendipityLeave a comment

Even in the midst of this pandemic there is some great thoughts and conversations happening around how we will remember this period of our lives.

A smart phone has made diarists of us all. My phone is set deliberately to store all the pictures my family and friends send me. I delete some but most are kept as a personal archive.

This blog contains my pictures and ponderings shared to those who care to read it. Facebook and Instagram are more public. Instagram is the quickest, I think, to give a flavour of the times. I just scrolled through my Instagram grid to check out how 45 days of restricted living and Lockdown looked in picture form from @theoldmortuary.

This grid marks the end of normal life. The bottom 6 pictures are from the days running up to the official lockdown. The next row up shows a poster for a cancelled art exhibition and the offer of local help plus the all important hand washing picture.

The cancelled art exhibition poster also marked the beginning of Pandemic Ponderings.

The top row are images from early Ponderings. In private I was pondering on the madness of thinking I would find something to write about, every day, when life was so restricted.

This second grid shows a life of settling into Lockdown. The bottom row shows memories of foreign travel. A wet footprint on some decking in Hong Kong, it was so hot that image lasted less than 5 seconds as it dried off. The picture represents my first meeting with our adored granddaughter in 2018,We thought it was awful that she was thousands of miles away and our meeting with her was so brief. Then her mum and dad decided to move home. Just 50 miles between us and still we rely on phone calls to chart her progress.

The Pangolin pictures in the middle were an homage to the poor creatures caught in the middle of the controversial ‘Wet’ markets where this pandemic is said to have originated.

An image of coffee shows our early pangs of missing out on coffee shops and the bottle of Cuban rum marks the beginning of our cooking obsession.

This last grid shows us settled into Pandemic lockdown life. No longer worried about the subject matter of Ponderings I just natter on about any thing. There are two images that mark slight freedoms. The roots on the second row up were photographed when it was made clear that we could drive a small distance to take exercise and the cogs on the top row were photographed on our first trip to a proper independent coffee shop this Saturday. Yesterday, the very first picture on the grid above, there was of course, Cake.