#310 theoldmortuary ponders

Four hours early for an appointment! What to do? Returning home in rush hour traffic, of a sort, did not seem particularly exciting. So I figured out four hours of activities to the east of the city. In no particular order of dullness I went to a rarely visited supermarket and bought a new frying pan. Necessary because our old one had sprung a leak. Creating puddles of Rape Seed oil wherever it rested its bottom. Never having had a leak occur in a frying pan we had blamed Rape Seed incontinence on many other factors before noticing a steady drip of oil spluttering into the open flame of the gas hob.

The dogs then got two decent length walks, one on the coast path and one up a valley before they gratefully fell asleep in the car while I read a print edition newspaper and snacked on supermarket pastry. The hours had passed and I handed over some, still tired, hairy hounds to their canine beauticians. Freeing me up for some sea swimming and book reading under lumpen grey skies and no expectation of heat. Typical English Summer recalibrated from the Sunny Summer Sumptuousness of the past month or so. Four hours early for an appointment, no problem. British Summer Time has finally arrived, the rain chased me off the beach. Like any good English person I sat resolutely as the pages of my book darkened with blobs of rain, playing an internal game of brinkmanship, not wanting to be the first person to run to the comfort of a warm dry car. Not wanting,either, to be a drippy wet mess unable to balance on plastic flipflops made slippy by rainfall in a way they never do with saltwater.

Four hours early for an appointment and British Summertime has finally arrived.

#16 theoldmortuary ponders

Waking up in the dark to start the day is becoming our autumn/ winter normal. My phone woke me up this morning with a blast of sunshine, with the photograph above. Bright sunshine on 25th October at Rock in Cornwall 5 years ago.

This morning there is very little gap between bed and a swim in the sea. I can already tell there will be no sunshine to stroll to the beach in. I suppose that is part of the charm of October. It is never entirely certain what shape any particular day will take, weather wise. Our evening walk last night revealed beaches overwhelmed with seaweed after the storms of last week which is also in stark contrast to that beautiful beach of five years ago. There is an upside to this, we plan to start making our own compost again and it would make sense to gather seaweed to mix with our teabags and coffee grounds. So today may be the day to make our first harvest. Moving house and garden is, as is always said, a big thing. We’ve moved from somewhere that every square inch of the property and garden was lovingly designed and planned by us to somewhere that was someone elses home for longer than I have been alive. In this regard planning a new compost bin is almost the first new plan we have put in place, as we promised ourselves we would give the house some time to reveal its quirks and charms to us before doing anything major. I realise a compost bin is not major! We also need to learn to live in this location before we make too many changes that we may come to regret.

Luckily for this blog one of the other 25th October pictures, that I was woken up with, suggests calm contemplation. Something that is needed along with Google to make seaweed into compost. A cup of tea on Wembury beach, 4 years ago, is a lovely way to suggest time spent researching the rotting properties of seaweed.

I wonder how today is going to shape up?

The final of the three wake up pictures is also beach related. Sai Kung in Hong Kong, 6 years ago. I think I can say with some certainty that today is not going to be a day for vivid crabs. But this is October, anything could happen.

Pandemic Pondering #451

Recycle, repurpose, reuse

This reused headstone gave me all the excuse I needed to repurpose the same outing into another blog. The gravestone forms part of a beach footpath that is regularly damaged by winter storms and high tides. Another reason for recycling is that bobbing at Wembury is far more gentle than our usual locations and I could take the camera into the sea using my dry bag/float without worry of mishap.

St Werburghs Church from the sea.
The South West Coastal Path heading to Heybrook Bay from the sea.
Wembury Beach from the Sea

We met another Bobber this morning, she lives just round the corner from here but chooses to swim the rougher waters of Plymouth Sound because the company of other bobbers on a regular basis is an experience not to be missed.

Cornish Bobber, Local Bobber

Sea weed and sea water from the sea were also small excitements of the morning.

Back on dry land we found a coastal lily and a pretty piece of driftwood.

Then after a quick peek at the view from the car park…

Looking towards the Mewstone.

… we set off to visit some friends who are in the middle of a big building project. Having lived through the big rebuilding project that was @theoldmortuary a few years ago there is something nostalgic but not necessarily in a good way about seeing people trying to live their best life in an atmosphere of disruption and concrete dust. The thing that is great about visiting people in the middle of a big build is their expertise in making ‘ builders tea’ which is the perfect way to drink tea after a swim.

A quickly recycled blog for a Saturday. The original one will follow this, as these things do in a newest on top way. Have a great weekend.

Pandemic Pondering #450

Dog grooming day takes us to this delicious location for breakfast. The forecast storms have not blown into the Southwest peninsular over the last couple of days so a campervan breakfast followed by a swim is the morning schedule.

Wembury is a regular destination for dog pampering. Even in poor weather there is plenty to do here for a few hours while the dogs are turned from rural scruffy mutts to urban sophisticates. We do coastal walks or rockpooling or just catch up with reading.

Today, after breakfast, some bobbers are meeting us here for a morning swim. But for now breakfast is the main event.

Pandemic Pondering #240

It’s a significant birthday today. Not one with a 0 in but important in a different way. My parents were both the age I am now when they died. There is no genetic or familial map for me to follow from here. Overnight a schoolfriend offered me the sage advice to take each day as it comes and enjoy every single one. I plan to do that with every day, every year and every decade that I can inhabit.The pandemic will ensure that each of those date milestones is different to how we imagined.

Connie the Caterpillar came with us on a coastal walk yesterday . We celebrated early with cake and a flask of tea using the millstones as a table at an ancient coastal mill on the South West Coastal path.

The size of our flask led other walkers to assume we had set up an impromptu and in these times , illegal cafe. Unfortunately the size of the flask also encouraged too much tea drinking and we had to scamper back to the loo which ended a breezy coastal walk.

© theoldmortuary.design
©theoldmortuary.design

The setting sun caught the birthday confetti, just before we gathered it up to use again on future birthdays.

Pandemic Pondering #211

The positivity of aloneliness, a very different thing from loneliness. A love of aloneliness does not protect from loneliness. Like many things my love of aloneliness is an accident of birth. Not mine exactly, more the non birth of any subsequent siblings. My mother was an ardent provider of contraception to the women of Essex in the sixties, seventies and beyond. “To make a mistake once is acceptable, twice is a mistake; three times is stupidity” was her mantra. Her child bearing stopped at acceptable and I was set on a path of embracing aloneliness.

Before life started dealing me tough stuff I would glibly have said that I didn’t suffer from loneliness. In truth I think I had just adapted and learned to enjoy aloneliness. Which is a very different creature from the bone grinding, mind numbing loneliness that can appear in anyone’s life.

The Pandemic of 2020 has given everyone a little more time to think and evaluate all sorts of stuff. Sadly it has also created far more loneliness.

I’m unsure where aloneliness bleeds into selfishness. For the purposes of this blog my own definition is this. I can be quite content on my own and I often enjoy the experience ( Who wouldn’t enjoy having a swimming pool to themselves)

I do manipulate circumstances to create aloneliness. This morning, for example, I chose to walk on a beach after the before-work walkers/swimmers and before the regular every day walkers/swimmers. The images in this blog of Wembury Beach are an illustration of fabulous aloneliness. Nothing about this is selfish because I didn’t chose to deliberately exclude other people, I just gave myself the best chance of being alone. Having a private beach would be outrageous selfishness.

Even writing this has made me realise that the familiar trope that ‘only’ children are selfish is more utter nonsense than I already thought it was. I’m sure some are, but it is more likely that they have just adapted positively to a situation way beyond their own control.

Having the beach to myself allowed this blog to be written. The dogs are away having their regular wash and brush up, which is why these pictures do not feature dog bottoms. Just to prove I really do love other people, here is the beach as it was just one hour later. This too makes me very happy.

Finally, every artist loves a bit of red in a seascape, thanks Mr Turner and thanks to the man in a red jacket.

Pandemic Pondering #180

The Mewstone, Wembury.

A vision of the Mewstone means that @theoldmortuary it is dog grooming day. Now we are addicted to sea swimming it no longer means coastal path walks and coffee. It means 2 hours of swimming without dogs waiting not so patiently for us on the beach. Serendipity is a funny thing, when I was doing training at The Box, mentioned in Pandemic Pondering #220 I met a woman who had lived close to us in London, we discovered this when she commented on my tote bag.

East Dulwich Tote Bag

In London we lived 2 miles apart, in Devon/ Cornwall 13 miles divides us.
We met for the first time last Thursday and today by complete co incidence we sat next to each other on the beach at Wembury. Tomorrow despite neither of us wishing to work at The Box on a Tuesday we find ourselves both rota’d to do our first days work, in the new museum and art gallery, as you read this blog. It seems we were destined to meet somehow. Luckily neither of us were hiding behind the ubiquitous British windbreak. Less about protecting from the wind and more about defining territory I often think.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing.

Pandemic Pondering #114

Wembury Part II- The beach is closed to dogs, as is normal for the summer. Summer is a time for the cliff paths and always, at this location,some contemplation for a soldier unknown to us.

We walked to his memorial bench, positioned at a bend on the cliff path.

It is a beautiful spot overlooking the Mewstone. It commemorates a young life lost at war. These two links tell the story of his passing. Yesterday was his birthday.
https://www.gov.uk/government/fatalities/lieutenant-colonel-rupert-thorneloe-and-trooper-joshua-hammond-killed-in-afghanistan

https://youtu.be/s6ODJw014YY

Pandemic Ponderings #7

Wonderful, wonderful Wembury.

This picture is from a previous visit to Wembury when a cup of tea overlooking the sea was just every day life. Wembury was my destination yesterday. Hugo and Lola needed their regular hair cut at their dog groomers.
https://www.nataliesdoggrooming.co.uk/

Wembury is a regular visit for this exact reason.

The hours between dirty dog delivery and pampered pooch collection are spent doing Plymouth based jobs or enjoying the beach or coast. The charity shops of Modbury are also an irregular treat.

The beauty of Wembury beach is the sand. It doesn’t cling so even freshly clean dogs come off as clean as they went on it.

These shots make it look like we were the only people there. Nothing could be further from the truth, I would like to say we are really good at socially isolating but I think I just got lucky with photographs. It was pretty chilly so many people were hunkered down against the rocks with flasks of coffee. The coast path was probably very busy but that involves mud and we don’t do mud on grooming days.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/

The National Trust giving free access to much of their land during the pandemic is very generous and public spirited . The car park was as full as on a hot summers day. Even after only 5 days of keeping ourselves isolated fresh air and a walk was like drinking fresh lemonade.