#233 theoldmortuary ponders

Watercolour scraps.

Its been quite the painting day here, but first the morning bob needs a mention purely for its novelty moment. It is not unusual for us to be passed, at some point, by Royal Marines out on training runs. What is unusual, however, is to hear the command, “Shirts off” and just like that the Marines took their shirts off and plunged in the sea.

The Bobbers, of course, were completely cool with this but not so another swimmer. The Marines chose a good day, it was a fabulous swim.

Meanwhile the outside of our house is being given a big makeover. Dark blue masonry paint and a yellow front door. The decision had been made and the paint purchased but moments before the paint was applied I was still checking Pinterest to see if the colour combination worked on other peoples houses.

I was in a deconstructing mood and chopped up a watercolour that had been deliberately painted to be cut up.

The scraps are endlessly fascinating.

Below is the reason for creating all this vivid mess.

These squares represent nearly a year of observing the sea colours on my daily walks on the Stonehouse Peninsular. This is my first experiment with the technique . #1 stacked up in the studio.

#168, theoldmortuary ponders

For the last few weeks I have been involved in a Wordle Whatsapp group. It involves a group of people connected with a fiftieth birthday party that I went to in Pangbourne. It must be a sign of age that the only significant thing I don’t remember from the party is talking about Wordle. Perhaps even more important is that it appears to be an early morning WordleWhatsapp so I wake up already under pressure from the really early birds.

Now my early mornings have so many possible starts. Dog Walk? Blog? Wordle? Shower? Breakfast? Book? Staying awake beyond midnight gives me the chance to Wordle or Blog before most people are about, but me and midnight are not as well acquainted as we used to be since I swapped NHS life for that of Museums and Art.

All the interiors or fashion magazines mention Wordle Green as a key colour this year.

I’m not convinced, myself, that I could wear Wordle Green or live with too much of it. But some of my favourite colours are greens. When the sun is out in April it makes greens especially vivid. So taking my queue from recent style magazines I’m going to feature some almost Wordle Greens for the end of this pondering

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Plymouth to Gunnislake railway journey. Bright shafts of sunlight hit overgrown hedges along the track . April 2021
Inherited 1970’s coloured glass tumblers sitting in the sun waiting to be packed for a house move. April 2021
Easter painting from our Grandchild in Hong Kong . April 2021
Seaweed in the tidal pool at Firestone Bay. April 2021
Old door near the Cremyl Ferry. Stonehouse Peninsular. April 2021

All the dates on these pictures predate Wordle Green by a year. If only I were published by the New York Times, the hot new colour on the block could have been…

@theoldmortuary Green. There’s a thought!

#45 theoldmortuary ponders

Todays blog was knocked off the front page by another story of bobbing. This is how tranquil the area was when we went for a dip last night. But what lies underneath?

A playful seal! Spearmint the seal joined the two distance swimmers at the furthest buoy and swam back with them to one of the other swimmers. They calmly warned her that they were not alone. Not trusting them at all she disbelieved them. Calm, was not, in truth, how any of them were feeling . An onlooker who was alerted by their excited chatter said she had never seen anyone swim back to the shore so fast. On arrival back in Tranquility bay Spearmint played around with two other bobbers before noticing that the others were getting out, she joined them in a rush for the beach and the video that follows was her being calm with a background soundtrack of excited chatter.

©Teresa

Teresa, the quick thinking onlooker who filmed this also had a video of Spearmint having her supper.

©Teresa
©Teresa

I think it is safe to say that the whole encounter was a lot more exciting for the humans, Miss Spearmint just takes the whole thing very much in her stride.

©Teresa

Soon after she returned to the sea the water if not the ‘ bobbers’ was entirely tranquil.

#44 theoldmortuary ponders

I had known for a little while that this particular blog was going to be about illumination because I had tickets to attend an illumination festival in the Royal William Yard.What I hadn’t expected was that the sunset over our evening swim would be quite so spectacular. Just a tiny tweak on the saturation of this image brought out all these gorgeous colours.

After drying off and warming up we set off to visit the area around Ocean Studios which was the location of Illuminate.

Like lots of things this event has been postponed a few times.

Many of the illuminations were similar to previous years but a new one was a fabulous, luminescent squid called Bobby Dazzler by Kate Crawford and Beth Munro. Visitors were invited to add embelishment to Bobby with fingertips dabbed in luminescent paint.

Outside we could write on a graffiti wall. My rookie error was to seek out a clear piece of wall to advertise this blog without checking the appropriateness of the surrounding marks.

Also new to Illuminate were the thousands of bugs and moths fluttering in the breeze to remind us that we must protect biodiversity and species around the world. There was also the luxury of a cafe serving decent quality late night coffee, always a bonus!

The architecture of the Grade 1 listed buildings lends added texture to projected videos.

And although I failed to record a video the musical pipes and interactive lights were fascinating. Although not particularly musical in our hands.

Returning just for a final comment and illumination to our sunset swim. Here I am wearing my night swimming hat which was a birthday gift last week.

©Gilly Bobber

Pandemic Pondering #299

The quiet observance of two resin ruminants. One of our regular and frequent walks on the Stonehouse Peninsular takes in part of the Southwest Coast Path, Hugo and Lola always like a sniff of these two quiet cows.

They ruminate on a green which would have been a historic walk from a tunnel where animals were unloaded to walk across the green to a slaughterhouse that was part of the Royal William Victualling Yard. The place where the Royal Navy loaded up ships with food, drink, and essentials to keep sailors fed and effective.

We did a couple of circuits of our usual walk once in each direction. A friend had told me she had seen a rare daffodil on New Years Eve . I didnt find it first time around so I put on more clothing, the wind was brutal, and walked back in the opposite direction. Success!

A single clump of Grand Primo Citronaire.

Identified by Kathy’s photograph from a Daffodil Identification Day.

©Kathy Lovell

10,000 steps, ruminating ruminants and Grand Primo Citronaire. What more could I possibly want from an hours exercise!

Grand Primo Citronaire