#1396 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn AustraliaLeave a comment

I believe that yesterday I banished the last of the pine needles from our hallway and sitting room. A real tree is the heart of the festive season’s fragrance profile. Even a dustpan full of dropped needles in January has a fragrance. Not the same as a tree freshly felled and loaded into a warm car. But definitely a recognisable smell of Winter.

The smell of Winter, Melbourne style is the vapour that you can see in this picture.

My sense of smell and taste has been shredded by Covid. I suspect what I am left with is unlikely to change. I mourned  my changed sense of smell and taste in the beginning but now I celebrate the flavours and fragrances I have retained. I was never timid about sniffing or eating but now there  is a new/old world of things to explore that previously I might not have liked.  I also have a newfound certainty about fragrance and taste.

I like it.

I don’t like it.

I have no opinion.

All the liminal areas of taste and smell no longer exist.

So when I walked into The Block Arcade and smelled something wonderful outside Essensorie then I had to have a closer sniff

A bottle of their Christmas Spice Essential Oil came home with me.

Blood Orange and Rose Geranium would have been the two scents that hooked me in. Anything citrusy is my gateway to flavour and smell. Geranium is a new  fragrance friend, eating it would be quite a stretch. Previously I just couldn’t wholeheartedly love it. Now I could roll in a field of geraniums like a frolicsome pony in hay or a kitten in Catnip.

I did neither of those things in their stylish and peaceful shop. I just calmly bought a bottle of their potion.

Essensorie | Artisanal Natural Fragrance https://share.google/0XyqhScCeiEccP7lF

Nobody needs a giddy goat in a shop just before closing time.

#1395 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Australia, chores1 Comment
Our Raw Prawn Christmas Decoration.

Flipping tradition . 12th night being the ‘right’ time to take down Christmas Decorations. But as ours were barely up by Christmas Eve, I decided to take them down on the 21st night. Or the 14th of January.

When at a Christmas Tree Farm in Australia it would have been foolish not to purchase a Raw Prawn Christmas bauble to hang resplendently in our Northern Hemisphere tree.

Now Mr Prawn is boxed up and ready to be packed away with all the other tree decorations from around the world.

Taking down Christmas so late in January has plunged me straight into a different sort of festival. Mid-Winter Decluttering. As I write this the house looks appalling as I am mid-point of the mid-winter urge to declutter. The clutter is everywhere having been pulled out from all the places clutter gathers. Writing a blog when I should be decluttering is unforgivable. Maybe I am double pondering. Pondering while pondering what on earth to do with all this stuff.

Including the prawn!

#1394 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Books, Film, Yardening1 Comment
Crepuscule in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.

‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’

Crepuscule is a bare root rose that I planted last year. I thought the name was clunky and ugly until I learned that Crepuscule was a French word for sunset. 

While I was away in December my bare root rose decided to put out her first ever flower.

I was both thrilled and concerned. What is beautifully acceptable in the early summer in Sydney is not the norm in a wintery Stonehouse. She also has a very high standard set by her Australian Cousin.

A new found love of growing roses brings with it some tough decisions. My bare root rose should be concentrating on growing roots not blooms. The secateurs were deployed to Crepuscules first efforts at budding and blooming. A Tragedy, some might say.

Which leads me tortuously to last nights outing to see the film Hamnet. On the day that awards and accolades have started tumbling in from the Red Carpet Film and T.V Awards Season.

I don’t often go to films of books that I have read that don’t seem to naturally lend themselves to a Screenplay. Hamnet was just such a book. Deeply enjoyable and dense but a bit of a tricksy read in parts. I couldn’t quite see how a screenplay could replicate my reading experience.

I shouldn’t have worried, Chloe Zhao the screenwriter and Maggie O’Farrell the original author and now co-screen writer did a brilliant job . Pruning and distilling the original text into something that worked brilliantly for me on screen.

Most times I put books and films of books into different filing systems.

Hamnet joins Perfume by Patrick Suskind as a film that I regard as accomplished as the original Novel. I imagine it works just as well for those who have not read the book.

Pruning and distilling at its best.

#1393 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Sunday pottering, Sunday Vibes, sunshineLeave a comment
What a difference a Day Makes.

24 little hours in Seatown. Another blog featuring home grown sunshine in January.

One day  the January sun might just have caused a little reddening of the cheeks. And the next our faces were whipped to a pinkish blush by harsh wind, sideways rain and seawater in the air.

Night and Day, that’s who you are.

An unexpected Christmas tree in mid-January.

Lobster pots and Buoys at West Bay.

Brains are funny things . Mine immediately picked out two songs written in the 1930’s to accompany these weekend photos

Night and Day- Cole Porter 1932

What a difference a Day Makes- Dinah Washington 1934.

These songs are absolutely on the periphery of  my experience. They have been stored subliminally in some hard to access , dusty warehouse in my Neo Cortex.

Neither were a family favourite. My parents were small children in the mid to late 30’s

Two pieces of music that I have never given a moment of thought to until their titles exactly matched the theme of the blog. Stored subliminally from background music on radio and T.V throughout my lifetime.

My earworms for the day… Maybe yours too

#1391 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Hong KongLeave a comment

Caught in a shaft of sunlight. My sunlight promise of some sunshine every day in January would not ordinarily feature art. But here I am within an art work by Marta Minujin. Part of a collective of Womens Art that we visited in Hong Kong.

Source: M+ https://share.google/a9cTaA1F0VTjbzHIG

Dream Rooms- Environments by Women also introduced my granddaughter to the work of her Great Grandmothers favourite artist.

Immersion: Judy Chicago, Feather Room (1966) – Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts https://share.google/ywy3no3ovdtqejGG6

Judy Chicago was the thinking woman’s artist in the 60’s and 70’s. Her Dinner Party installation of Dinner plates decorated with Vulva’s was a big talking point in the Sexual Health Clinics of rural Essex.

The Feather Room is a little more accessible for a 7 year old. Not that my blushes were ever spared from the womens chit chat that happened between my mum and her work friends at that time.

I think the Art we experienced in Asia and Australia might push my blogs through February just as the Sunshine from both locations is informing January. And by the time February is over that is Winter done.

Sunshine on a Saturday. It must still be January.

.

#1390 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Australia, Stonehouse, Storms1 Comment

Storm Goletti.The storm named after an Italian Cockerel was scheduled to strut around our Peninsular from mid-afternoon.

My grandad kept Italian Bantams at his smallholding attached to his pub. They were very opinionated little hens with fancy feet and extravagant plumes of fancy feathers. Tsthe hens very much liked to sit on eggs, not necessarily their own. The pub guard- geese were very much working women who left their over-large eggs in the tender care of  the fussy little bantams. Several bantams sharing the care of one goose egg. The Italian Bantam Cockerel went on guard duty with the geese. He almost certainly thought he was in charge. He just fussed around at their feet, occasionally attempting a more sexual liaison with no chance of success.

Storm Goletti was nothing like a Bantam but everything like an arrogant Cockerel in our neighbourhood. Noisy, all over the place . It knocked down our bins and scattered and picked over our rubbish. We got off lightly.

But I did put the sensation of the storm to good use and painted a stormy version of  my beloved sea pool at Coogee.

Storm over Coogee

I was even giddy enough to use hand made paper. What else could I do when confined to the house after a  government Red Warning for winds and flying debris. But there is nothing quite like painting a storm while in a storm.

#1389 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment
Central Park

This photo landed in my lap yesterday. It was a freezing cold day and cloudless, until it wasn’t. Out of nowhere, two black labradors, brushed past me, off their leads and owners nowhere to be seen. In that moment the clouds gathered around the sun and all colour drained from the scene.  Smaller dogs and their owners scattered, alarmed and protective. Moments later the dogs were gone and the bright day was back. As if the two things were linked.

And as if I had imagined the whole thing. Spooky things don’t generally happen in broad daylight. Digitally I popped a full moon behind the trees. It creates a haunting image much more in keeping with the sensation of the day.

Is an ownerless dog as other worldly than a riderless horse?

The dogs were like creatures from another realm. Fast and fleeting.  Bearing down on me, lLola and other wary smaller dogs. Black Labs overbearing one minute and gone the next.

Their owners insouciance irritating. Their languid body language, indifferent to the unfolding chaos. 

When the sun came out again the men and their dogs were nowhere to be seen. As if the clouds, men and dogs had been a wrinkle in reality, ghost dogs and their masters from a different realm.

Just as I reread this blog before posting I noticed the silhouette of a ghost dog on his hind legs in the first picture. I knew there was something strange going on!

#1388 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn history, Holidays, Serendipity, TravelsLeave a comment
7th December 2025, 22 degrees. Mount Eliza

Yesterday was a day of really bright sunlight and  a temperature of about 2 degrees Centigrade.

It was a day of dog walking, admin and another painting of Coogee Beach, more sunshine.

Coogee Beach, 27 degrees.

Beyond my day’s domestic plans, there was also some Tennis Club admin that needed to be done with a friend.

Beyond Tennis chat, we talked about Christmas, Grief, an erotic novel, kitchen plans, and our holidays. Mine in the past and hers upcoming. She is heading to Bergen and beyond in Norway. She is expecting to experience sunshine and temperatures of about -30.

The whole conversation blew my mind a little bit. Mostly because travel blows my mind a lot. The ease with which we discuss such things as women in the 21st Century is a delight unknown to most women in the past.

The kitchen that we sat in, nattering away, was built about 175 years ago. A home suitable for professional men and their families . The men would have worked either in a nearby Military base or Dockyard or been involved in the Maritime or Fishing industries. Plymouth was linked to London by train in 1848, making Plymouth an International Travel hub.  Travel would not have been an unfamiliar subject even when my kitchen was new.

Travel would have been much more complex. Timescales would be significantly different. Climate adjustment slower and riskier

Sailing to Australia would have taken three to four months, one way. Sailing to Bergen took about two weeks.

Luggage of only 23 kg is more than adequate for either of us to have the right clothing for hugely different climates.

I cannot imagine how much luggage we would have needed to make such journeys 150 years ago. English women of all classes were wearing Bustles.

Just one dress would weigh more than 23kg!

Very few women travelled for pleasure or exploration in 1850. For the most part British women were shipped around the world to service the sexual and dynastic needs of British men abroad who were busy doing British things like Colonisation.

British men being the powerful people. Taking political, economic, and cultural control over other territories and populations. Exploiting resources, labour, people and land for the benefit of Britain.

How lucky are we in 2026 to be able to travel quickly to anywhere in the world and to any temperature with just 23k of luggage. Know with almost 100% certainty that we will return, to natter, at the kitchen table after our travels. Safe in the knowledge that travel will expand our minds and not require us to search for a husband or create children.

Big changes at the kitchen table.

#1387 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Anecdotes, Serendipity1 Comment

My car is iced up. There is frost on the grass . One month ago this was my reality. If the day was not, in itself, hot enough the hot colours of two of these beach huts raises the temperature a little more. ( I am not so sure about the lilac one/)

Just looking at this makes me feel instantly warmer.

Being in hot places in the run up to Christmas presented some delicious conundrums. Images of snow where it could never possibly fall and images of roaring fires in a home that requires near-constant air conditioning.

Returning home to the Northern Hemisphere just on the cusp of Peak Christmas has given me a very casual approach to post-Christmas. Can I be bothered with denuding my house of the festive gaiety I only finished putting up on Christmas Eve.

12th night purists, or Boxing Day, early tree strippers will look on in horror as twinkling lights continue to twinkle in our house well into January.

Christmas is a delightfully social time,  there have been several holiday anecdotes to share over a mulled cider and mince pie.

Naked swimming with a StingRay went down well with a Canapé.

Not only the actual and accidental naked swimming with a Sting Ray but also the Origin Story of my small habit of swimming naked on occasions. Just Because.

When I was 17/18/19 and on the cusp of leaving home for college in London, a new hotel was built in Brentwood, Essex that featured an outdoor swimming pool. It had the gloss and pzazz of California and the weather of Essex. People posed around it in long dresses and Dinner suits. The hotel was very popular with Ford executives from nearby Dagenham for parties and dalliances. I had a friend who was regularly booked to DJ at corporate events there. Brentwood was between London home and home home. So if he was doing a gig there I could catch up with him from either direction as an assistant who enjoyed a free to me party for dancing, I also lugged numerous boxes of vinyl as my part of the bargain. Dancing and lugging vinyl was hot work, even in December. Why not have a quick swim in a barely used pool before catching the last train home in whichever direction I was travelling. Long before security cameras I doubt anyone ever knew.

I pretty much gave up naked swimming in my responsible years but since becoming a year round sea swimmer the occasional urge to be at one with cold water and nature in just my skin comes upon me.

Nothing untoward has ever happened until my StingRay moment last month.

I had positioned a large swim towel for fairly instant modesty. A towel which I completely ignored once I realised I was  at one with nature that could quite possibly do me harm.

I scampered up this boardwalk butt naked with one name ringing in my mind. Steve Irwin.

A complete over-reaction I am sure, but my early years in the cold water of Brentwood, Essex had only prepared me for grumpy hotel staff. Not creatures with stinging, life harming bits.