#145 theoldmortuary ponders

This time last year our precious Cornish garden plants had been in their containers,for moving house, for nearly six months. Ready for a pre Christmas move in 2020. The transaction was long, with many pitfalls along the way. Right now they have all spent 18 months in containers despite many of them not being considered suitable for container growth, we have only had one casualty. The house sale contract was only actually completed late in September 2021, not a time when we could do too much about them. Another whole winter in containers has done them no harm and this weeks brief sunshine has brought out some blooms from under planted bulbs.

This Buddha got a major head injury in the move but has grown, over winter a fine wig of succulents to cover up her caved-in temporal and parietal bones.

Two pumpkins from October have also survived the winter and are bringing colour to our yard. Despite all the recent storms, we are due another one today, Spring might well be just around the corner.

#144 theoldmortuary ponders

Work in progress.

Most artists work in isolation, myself included. Today was quite different, 12 artists from Drawn to the Valley got together in a cafe to natter and get to know each other. Most of us were unknown to one another or had not been in contact for a long period. We plan to meet regularly from now on, once a month, in the same location, Ocean Studios Cafe in the Royal William Yard, Plymouth.

https://realideas.org/our-spaces/ocean-studios/

Some of us brought small projects to work on, others just brought themselves and fabulous conversations.

I wondered if it was possible to paint a meditative mind map whilst in the company of others and it turns out that I could. Depicting the flavour flooding out of my herbal tea and mingling with the intriguing topics of conversation that were surrounding me. It is currently unfinished because I also talked a lot, no surprises there. But I am further along than when I took this picture.

#142 theoldmortuary ponders

Without passports we are seeking our holiday pleasures much closer to home. At home to be precise. I am a complete sucker for peeling paint and although this neighbours door is not strictly peeling it is the sort of thing that I love to find when I am abroad. Bright shafts of sunlight would make it perfect but yesterday was not that type of day here.

Stripped back ready for refurbishment there is real history in these paint layers. The door could be original and may date back to the 18th century. Once a grand townhouse built some time around 1760, the home has been converted into flats. Stripped of uniform colour it is now obvious that the letterbox was not centrally placed.

If the door is original the letterbox would have been retro fitted for the start of the postal service in 1840.

By the time I walk past again today the door is likely to be shiny and bright under a new coat of paint. All that simple domestic history hidden again until the next time.

Today the number may be less informal.

Even this simple photo reveals another little piece of history. A modern door security lens. So much to learn from one simple door.

#131 theoldmortuary ponders

My apologies for the blogs being more than usually peppered with art stuff. I am in the midst of an on-line art course called Finding Your Colour Voice. I am trying to complete the course initially in a little over the ten working days and two weekends. My plan is to do each day’s tutorial and weekend projects as soon as I can after they drop onto the website. After that I have another 4 months when the content is available to me to study more at depth. Precious Pondering time is mostly colour related at the moment.

My project yesterday was to create colour charts from a huge variety of sources. I made a start by producing 4 colour charts of places from memory. I’m going to share two of them as they are my short term memory efforts. Unsurprisingly they are of places close to home and easily visited to check out how accurate my memory is. I also have recent photographs to share my thoughts. On reviewing yesterday’s work, I am immediately struck that with these two I have very specifically created a winter colour palate. The other two places I completed are clearly less season specific, I haven’t visited either of them since the pandemic started.

I am particularly pleased with the Cornish colours, I wanted to show the softness of the county. Something that is less obvious in the brashness of summer. Something that doesn’t show well in the photograph is the greigeness that cloaks the county frequently.

Stonehouse is altogether ‘harder’ despite being geographically not far away. It does however share the greige and that colour,or indeed sensation is much better depicted on the Stonehouse colour chart.

A tremendous exercise, many more charts to paint…

Artist / educator

#95 theoldmortuary ponders

Misty nights have so much more charm than misty mornings, currently. There is a cloak of greige over everything this morning. It started to creep in last night making our evening walk softer and more mysterious.

At the book club meeting yesterday a friend said she felt suffocated by the current weather. This morning it is easy to sympathise with that statement. January really is a hard month to love.

There was a break in the greige yesterday. I am ashamed to say I missed it, a fellow ‘bobber’ grabbed this photograph yesterday morning at Trematon.

©Angela Bobber

That really is a beautiful ‘break in the clouds’ I will keep my wyes open for something similar today, but I’m not holding my breath!

#34 theoldmortuary ponders

Goodness me, another late blog for the best of reasons!

November is my birthday month so I always get a boost of love and gifts in one of the darkest months.

November 2019 was pretty stormy and in November most normal human beings knew little of what the next 4 months would do to the whole of the worlds population. At a more granular level we certainly thought life would evolve and change at a fairly normal pace. In November 2019 we got our kicks on my birthday walking on stormy beaches Then a pandemic happened and strange and unsettling things changed our lives forever. Wind on two years and we get our kicks swimming in stormy seas in November and any other month. What started as an alternative to swimming in swimming pools during lockdown has become at least a twice a week habit. Winter swimming in particular is addictive and hugely rewarding, the buzz after a winter swim is hard to explain.

Todays swim was pretty rough and bouncy but enormously energising.

And then the bobbers had a surprise in store, and this is the reason for the late blog. After our 9:30 swim we had an 11:00 birthday party. The sugar and carb rush of party food on top of the post swimming high is an extraordinary feeling. We may never give this sea swimming malarkey up and with 14 of us in our group now there will always be the occasional party!

#31 theoldmortuaryponders

It has been complicated. In truth not much has gone on in the last 36 hours apart from wallpapering or thinking about wallpapering. Almost no time to ponder really, especially in daytime hours when natural light was essential to our pattern matching. The new-to-us house is built almost at the top of a hill and runs down the hill northwards and westwards. Such was the diligence of Georgian builders, that to gain the appearance of symmetry and regular shaped rooms some very odd wall angles and floor levels disguise the almost 30 degree slopes in two directions. This does not make wallpapering easy. Dog walking has, of course, continued and, thank goodness for this blog, the night walk is illuminated and interesting. The window above overlooks the green where the dogs like to snuffle, overlooked by model cows and fairy lights..

The cows are a reminder that the whole of the Royal William Yard was a factory for stocking up Royal Navy ships for long voyages at sea. The green, where we walk the dogs, was used by livestock that had recently been delivered, live by sea,and would soon pass through the slaughtehouse to be processed and packed onto ships. The view below is the one taken from the tunnel that leads onto the green.

The green is also well stocked with deck chairs. A reminder of pre-Covid times when we could come here to watch Open Air Cinema, Live Theatre or live streamed sports events.

On the other side of the yard we walk along the side of the River Tamar and Stonehouse Creek. A business and industrial area that is always lit up at night.

The path we take runs along the length of the Royal William Yard. As luck would have it I took a photo of this side of the yard last week from the Tuesday river cruise.

There are many different routes for us to take each evening, although winter walks stick to the areas that are well lit and dry underfoot, most evenings on the route home we see the same message. Which works just as well for the end of todays blog.

Pandemic Pondering #516

Hot on the heels of yesterdays morning blog is an evening blog of the same day, and two pictures from the exact same position with only a dog walk between them. Between yesterdays blog and this one lies the path of a day taken up by stuff, complicated by maintainance work on a local bridge. A normal 20 minute journey swelled to fill an hour and I missed an appointment. Rebooked for two hours later I filled my time with delivering brochures for an upcoming Open Studios event.

And took a trip to the supermarket. The appointment required me not to drive for two hours after so I was ‘forced’ to enjoy a late lunch in a friends garden and soak up the sun whilst my eyes returned to a normal, not blurry, way of life. Time then to head for home and get all the day jobs done. Before heading out for the evening dog walk which provided the two pictures that top and tail this blog. Since moving, our evening dog walk always takes in the area around the Royal William Yard, especially since the evenings have started to get darker. Royal William Yard is a collection of Military Buildings in Plymouth.

https://www.visitplymouth.co.uk/explore/areas-to-visit/royal-william-yard

Between the two photos we walked up to a meadow and the dogs chased each other inside the old, second world war gun emplacements of Devils Point.

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/history/world-war-two-defences-you-2750611

I’m sure the longer we live here the more the history will soak into our bones but right now every slab of concrete is a complete mystery to us.

Returning to our original position, night was properly upon us.Time to turn our twelve feet for home.

Pandemic Pondering #462

This is an image from our evening walk, coming out from the tunnel was the nighttime sound of a Jazz Saxophonist. Rather lovely.

The day preceeding the evening walk was rather less lovely. Several trips to the tip and the house moving favourite, cleaning the oven! We’ve been in the physical part of this house move for 5 days now, cardboard boxes are the most prominent feature of our current lives.

Since we have no usable sofas currently, walking is the best way to stretch our hard-working backs. We stopped a while to watch the sun disappear.

Until tomorrow…

Pandemic Pondering #321

Summer in February. The sun put in an appearance today and the Stonehouse beaches looked like socially distanced summer.

We enjoyed coffee in the sun and witnessed a charming rescue by Plymouths Plastic Patrol.

Pictured below before the current pandemic.

© Plastic Patrol/Planet Patrol

A toddler dropped a much loved Zebra in the water near the Royal William Yard. The tide was high and, sadly, Zebra had to be left to his watery fate. Some time later members of Plastic Patrol paddled past.

They swiftly recovered the Zebra and, as luck would have it, Archie and his parents were waiting for a take out-coffee.

Zebra and toddler reunited.

A good end to a brilliant morning.