Cornwall

I've been away; hence lack of blogging.  I went to Cornwall for a week with my mother and elder brother, to celebrate Mum’s 80^th birthday.  Cornwall was beautiful, as always, the weather was variable, again as always, and the peace and quiet and fresh air were all blissful. 

The journey down did not go well.  It had all looked straightforward on paper.  Mum and I were to meet at Paddington and get a morning train to Exeter, Stephen would meet us there with his car, and we would drive on as far as Plymouth, picnic at Jennycliff, then drive on to Polruan in the afternoon.  Simple!  Except Mum and I managed to get on the wrong train.

I’m still not sure how we managed to do it.  I really thought we were on the right one.  But we were spotted, and thrown off, because our tickets weren’t valid on the service in question.  The train was extremely crowded and by the time we had managed to get back on to the platform the train we should have been on had left.  Just to add insult to injury (at least in my own mind) one of my favourite actors was on the train and very sweetly helped us with our luggage, and I failed to recognise him and growled “No, no, I can manage, honestly what a bloody cock-up”, when I should have been smiling and saying “Thank you” courteously.  What a cock-up, indeed.  Hopefully not being recognised is a pleasure rather than a pain for the chap in question. 

No, not that actor, alas.  This was the lovely Samuel West.  Who turns out to be rather taller than I had imagined, and in fact damnably attractive in person.  Lovely brown eyes with crinkles at the corners.  Bah humbug.  If I had recognised him I would probably have made a perfect bally fool of myself all the way to Exeter, so I guess it was all for the best.

All this meant we were running late; Stephen rearranged his journey, and was able to meet the next train without undue trouble, but as this meant we arrived at lunch time instead of well before, we went down to have our picnic lunch beside the Exe instead of overlooking Plymouth Sound.  We parked outside St Clement’s church, below Powderham Castle; and Stephen promptly reversed into the church collecting box.  Which was built into a large granite pillar.  So the starboard stern bumper of the car looks as though it's been attacked (though luckily none of the rear lights were damaged).  Poor little Volkswagen; but at least it gave as good as it got - the collecting box looks as though someone tried to stage a smash-and-grab raid on it...

Then we went down to the foreshore with our food, and I sat in a large lump of tar.  Large enough, and warm enough (it was a very sunny day, and tar melts in the sun) that it went through my trousers, through my underpants, and onto me.

I now know one can get tar off one’s backside quite efficiently with a good squirt of WD40, so I learned something useful from this; but still, it was not a good start to a holiday.

From then on, though, things were okay.  It was almost like the old theatrical adage about a bad dress rehearsal meaning a good first night.  Nothing else went wrong, and pretty much everything went right.  We all caught up on some sleep, walked on the coast path and along the Fowey River and its assorted creeks, got a lot of wonderful fresh air, talked to cows, visited country churches, bird-watched, ship-watched, paddled, went to the Eden Project (fascinating but very expensive!), talked our heads off, drank a lot of gin and tonic, and ate too much.  Perfect family holiday, I think.

Sadly I didn’t manage to do much writing, as I was too busy doing all of the above (& too tired by the time I went to bed each evening).  But I’ve got stuck into it again since I’ve been back.  Only I do wish I were still in Polruan, with that clean, clean air to breathe.

Busy busy bee, encore une fois (or, busy poseur, perhaps)...

I want to say that I have been on the go for so long I feel slightly disorientated.  I want to have a little moan about that.  But that “for so long” refers to a period of about three weeks.  There are people in this world whose lives don’t provide them with a break and a decent rest for several years at a stretch, never mind weeks.  Heck, there are plenty of people who never get a holiday in their entire lives.  I should grumble.  Heavens, what a wimp I’m becoming.

Work has been busier this month, which is good.  The weather has been – well, British.  Since I last wrote any notes here I’ve been gripped and thrilled by a magnificent performance of “Peter Grimes” at the Proms (Stuart Skelton in harrowingly good form in the lead, the chorus practically blasting off the roof of the Albert Hall when they let rip, all this and the lovely Iain Paterson to boot); I’ve also spent a blissful afternoon at the Science Museum (no longer just for kids), I’ve written my arse off all the bank holiday weekend, and I’ve dashed down to Kent to help my mum celebrate a big birthday – you know the kind - one with a number ending in zero. 

The latter is a bit of a “good grief, really?” moment for me; presumably a hell of a lot more so for her.  She never really seems to change that much, much less age particularly, and it is weird to realise how the numbers are still stacking up notwithstanding.  Well, I hope I have inherited her life span genes, and not my father’s. 

Mum’s birthday was fun, and would have been more fun if the weather hadn’t been so up itself.  It’s still August, for crying out loud.  What’s with the howling gales, persistent heavy rain and thunder and lightning?  But there was plenty of champagne, as well as both vanilla and maple-pecan fudge (she’s allergic to chocolate) and several kinds of cake, and curry for supper, and bouquets of flowers, and potted phalaenopsis, and a nice stack of greetings cards to prop along the front room bookcase.   And gin and Pringles, without which no family gathering seems to be complete these days.  Whatever did we do before the advent of the Pringle? 

Outings (it being way too dodgy, weather-wise, for the planned picnic on the beach either day) were instead spent partly sitting in the car listening to the rain beat on the roof, and pondering the intricate patterns very heavy rain makes on a windscreen in a very heavy & horizontal wind (like quivering water-lace; rather beautiful in a wet way), and partly indulging in the atavistic pleasure of blackberry picking.  So what with the dear UK climate doing its absolute nut, and the blackberries leaving all of us with lacerated burgundy hands, and champagne going to everyone’s head, it was a mad but very happy couple of days off. 

This weekend I’m cat-sitting (for the cat who is scared of farting – note to self, do not fart at the cat.  As if I needed telling.  But then, I’m no lady, me).  Then next Friday I’m off to Cornwall, for the second half of Mum’s birthday celebrations (I told you it was a big one) – a family week in Polruan.  Beautiful Cornwall, beautiful Fowey River, beautiful clean sea air and peaceful walking, silent country nights, lovely pubs, and good Cornish cider, yarg cheese, and pasties from Niles Bakery... 

Trying to catch up with everything that's gone on...

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I wrote...

Life has been hectic; it’s the run-up to Christmas, after all, but being a chump I went away on holiday and have now got dreadfully behind on everything.  I have just managed to post my UK Christmas cards, on the last safe posting day for second-class stamps – but I missed the last safe posting dates for parcels and for international post – by miles, in the latter case.  And I still haven’t finished dealing with the problem of Christmas presents.

I remind myself that Christmas isn’t about presents.  Or cards, for that matter.  The problem is, when you are not a churchgoer, and can’t really call yourself more than a fellow-traveller of Christianity, it becomes ridiculous to say “Christmas is about Christ”.  But the capitalist subtext (“Christmas is about spending and consuming as much as you humanly can!”) is thoroughly sick-making in every sense. 

So for me, Christmas is about the people I love; seeing friends and family, catching up on news from people I don’t see much of (because they have done outrageous things like going to live in another country); it’s about sending greetings cards to say “I am thinking of you and I hope life is going well & hope you and yours really do all have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year”.  So giving gifts (which needn’t be anything fancy - I am doing a strong line in socks and home-made jam this year) becomes a tongue-tied-and-terribly-British way of saying “Um er, and I love you”- mumble mumble turn-pink-and-look-at-your-shoes...  So I want to buy and send cards, and buy and/or make presents, because they are my annual “Um er I love you”s.

I’m off down to Kent tonight to do something practical and, hopefully, helpful; my mother always has a big, real tree, and lots of greenery and decorations all over the house, and really appreciates a hand getting this all done.  She also appreciates a hand with some of the grocery shopping.  She is 79, after all.  So that is my weekend sorted; lugging a wheely basket of bottles and biscuits back up the hill from Sainsburys; dragging the tree in and setting it up; cutting and gathering armfuls of evergreen from the garden; and decorating the lot.  With the final of “Strictly Come Dancing thrown in for good measure on Saturday night.  And, you know what? – I’m really looking forward to it.  Maybe this is one of the signs of adulthood - good heavens, did I get there at last?  Instead of regarding a weekend spent helping my mum as drudgery I am thinking “Great – this will be a lot of fun!”

In a week’s time I will be heading down to Kent again, for ten whole days off.  Ten days of peace and quiet with my family; eating decent homemade food, playing board games, walking by the sea.  It’s a time I always look forward to, and this year more than most, as I feel in serious need of recharging my metaphorical batteries.  The week in Cornwall, though it was lovely, didn’t give me as much of an energy boost as I had hoped for.   The picture at the top is one of my holiday photos and makes me feel very nostalgic - wintry afternoon sun over the sea, with the Trinity House daymark on Gribben Head in the distance. 

Part of the problem has been stress at work.  Things here have been over-stretched and understaffed for quite some time now, and everyone has got more tired and frazzled as the months wore on.  Then in late November we were told that the team I work in is being restructured.  In the end this has turned out less horrendous than some restructures I’ve heard about elsewhere, but it has still led to a very uncomfortable few weeks of uncertainty, not to mention the hassle of filling out all the forms to apply for new roles, or in some cases our own existing roles, again.  For me, matters were not helped by the fact I can’t find a copy of my CV (being as I am a nitwit), so I had to do it all from scratch.   I found myself earlier this week laboriously working back through my entire employment history, listing all my jobs and my duties in each, in order to fill in an application form.  Given that I’ve done some fairly odd things in my time, the end result does look a bit as if I’m taking the mickey.  They can’t see many cvs that include a degree in Fine Art preceded by being a chef, an actor in street theatre, an artists’ model, a cleaner and a furniture restorer.  Plus a lot of retail work.  I even know how to clean vellum book-bindings, courtesy of my first-ever job in Canterbury Cathedral Library...

Anyway, off for my weekend of hauling and decorating duties.  By Sunday evening Mum’s place should be bursting with good things to eat and looking like Christmas at Dingley Dell.

Another Friday

It's Friday, it's gone five o'clock, and I am about to start a week of annual leave.  A week of fresh Cornish air, fresh Cornish fish, strong Cornish cider and scary Cornish clifftop paths!  Possibly even all at the same time...

I've been ridiculously busy at work, and haven't even written the ghost of a shadow of a review of the new "Eugene Onegin" at the ENO, or of the excellent Royal Ballet triple bill I saw with my Mum last weekend, or even I think of the previous RB mixed bill - the one with the stunning revival of "Marguerite and Armand" and cry-your-eyes-out "Requiem".  The more recent one continued in the emotion-wrenching range, with "Asphodel Meadows", "Enigma Variations" and MacMillan's "Gloria".  Magnificent. I am getting a veritable feast of dancing so far this autumn.  At this late date I don't think I can single out individuals; besides, the whole company are at the top of their game.  Okay, perhaps a special mention for the wonderful Marguerite of Tamara Rojo.  And Ed Watson's tragic, tortured soldier in Gloria.  And - no, I mustn't, I could be hear all night otherwise.

"Eugene Onegin" although not quite to the "magnificent" line was fairly close; Amanda Echalaz a rivetting, passionate Tatyana, Toby Spence a gorgeous (& gorgeous-voiced!) Lensky.  There were some odd directorial decisions (the Larin estate certainly had a very beautiful barn, but I never got why Tatyana slept in it rather than in, well, a bedroom.  Like normal people.) and a rather wooden Onegin let the side down a bit.  Some fabulously beautiful sets and very well-directed crowd scenes compensated, but Echalaz's thrilling performance is the biggest reason to see this - she is definitely a star in the making.

And now I have nothing to do except finish my packing, drink a beer with my (rather piece-meal, night-before-holiday, using-up-oddments-in-a-curry) supper, and get an early night.  Tomorrow morning, to Paddington, and the train west...

Cornwall, and back again

Cornwall was so beautiful; huge open skies and blissfully quiet.

I cannot pretend it was absolutely silent (seagulls, swallows, robins, working boatyards, the wind and passing ships all make a noise of one kind or another) - but compared to the steady rumble of London, the traffic, tube trains, aircraft flying over on their way into Heathrow, and so forth, it felt like the middle of nowhere. And the cold, sunny, bracingly fresh air was like an energy shot to the heart. I feel cleaned out and washed free of clutter, ready to plan and sort out my autumn.

I was staying in the tiny harbour village of Polruan, overlooking the Fowey River. Fowey proper, across the water, was still quite bustling and crowded, but Polruan was peace itself. The Old Foundry was huge, and had the best-equipped kitchen of any holiday property I've ever stayed in. The lounge looked out across the river to Fowey, a pretty pink and grey and cream coloured town scattered along the steep riverside between two ferry landing stages - Whitehouse Quay, for the foot ferry, and the slipway at Bodinnick for cars. One could sit all day and watch the comings and goings on the river. Big china clay ships came in daily to load up at the little docks upriver. An aircrew training ship came in twice, and a HM Customs vessel called, and a dredger. The local lifeboat bobbed quietly at her pontoon, and fishing boats, yachts, dinghies and sailing skiffs assorted bounced by in all weathers. The different types of dinghies and skiffs have lovely names; Sharpies, Toppers, Laser Stratos and Firefly class (I'm so pleased there is a real Firefly class out there!).

I walked along rocky cliff paths where the world's granite bones seemed to be right against my feet, and inland paths above wooded creeks full of birds. I ate too much (a regular feature of my holidays, I'm afraid) and did a couple of pages of sketches, and re-read "Hornblower and the Atropos"; I went rockpooling like a kid at Readymoney cove, and scrambled all over Henry the 8th's little harbour fort, St Catherine's Castle, and the ruined World War Two watching post in the woods behind it... I've had such a lovely break.

I wish I were still there, up to my eyes in beauty and history and wildlife and fresh air.

The train journey home was rather hellish, which was a pity; the train had been overbooked and was fearfully crowded, with people standing jammed in the corridoors and outside the toilets, and luggage toppling into the gangways. The two railway staff on board dealt with it all with amazing courtesy and aplomb; a lesson in quality customer service in the face of extreme difficulty. Watching them in action made a rough journey easier to put up with.

And now I'm back at work. Ah well, at least I like the place where I work. If I lived in Cornwall, who knows? - I might start to take it all for granted.

Funnies (pt 2) and freedom

The joys of spellchecker, part two:

Rudbeckia hirta = Rebecca Hart.
Wow - this could be a new way to invent names for fiction characters.

Less helpfully, a nice winter-flowering scented shrub comes to a smelly end:
Mahonia = ammonia. Ugh.

I'm off down to Cornwall tomorrow, hurrah - staying in a converted anchor foundry in Polruan. A week of sea air, decent fish and chips and proper scrumpy cider, walking and watercolour-painting. Peace and quiet and open air...

Have a good week, everyone!

Daydreaming...

It’s an odd day, sunny yet chilly. I would say it has the feel of the first day of autumn, daft though that sounds in early July, yet that is the sense-memory that this combination of light and temperature evokes in me. It carries me back to Cornish holidays in childhood; it always felt slightly autumnal there, even in high summer there was that yellow intensity to the sun and that sharp odour in the air, and the heavy, heavy dewfall each night. I used to love being woken by the shipping forecast, and my father’s bubbling childlike excitement if it became clear that this was a day when we could take the boat out. Now in this autumnal Kernow light I’m haunted; I sit in the office and I keep expecting to catch a whiff of the rank small of wet bracken coming in through an open cottage window.

It is extraordinary to think how long ago that was. Dad rented a boat called “Demelza” from a little firm in Falmouth, a fifteen-foot skiff with brick-red sails. Every day the weather was decent we would drive the short but blissful ten miles or so of twisting lanes and sudden stunning views, from Tregolls, outside Stithians where my grand-stepmother lived, to Falmouth, and set off to sail around Carrick Roads, and up and down the myriad creeks that run down into the Fal estuary. I loved these sailing days – I’m lucky enough to be a good sailor, unlike my elder brother who was violently ill every time – and they remain some of my happiest childhood memories, and some of my happiest memories of my father. Dad was a difficult man in some ways, but he was at his very best in a boat.

I want to go back, whenever I think of it.

If now were then, I’d be getting excited by this point in the month, knowing that as soon as term ended I would be off on the first of my two summer holidays (there aren’t many other perks to having divorced parents both of whom are broke, btw), and the only extended period of time I got to spend with my dad each year. I loved Jane’s mum, Betty, and her wonderful granite cottage on a hillside above a dairy farm, with the outhouse converted into a sculpture studio, the big Rayburn stove, the vise attached permanently to the kitchen table, the proper open fire and the bookcases tucked into every corner; and the garden full of tangled attar roses, leggy marigolds, harts-tongue ferns, redcurrant bushes and rows of lettuces and beetroots. The view from the window of the room I slept in was a vast panorama of moorland and farmland, with grazing cattle, ripening wheatfields, and the roofs of the village in the distance. I remember it always with huge summer clouds like îles flottantes drifting by overhead, drawing their shadows after them. Even though we only ever spent the day on land if it was either raining hard or very wild and windy, we visited castles and stately homes and magnificent gardens, and wonderful prehistoric monuments like Chûn Quoit, Mên an Tol, and the Merry Maidens. I revelled in the atmosphere and the sense of the earth’s heartbeat so close under the soil, so intense in Cornwall. I want to go back, whenever I think of it…