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.

More snow...

I’m meant to be going to my Mum’s in Kent this weekend, to help her with Christmas shopping and planning, getting the tree indoors and the decorations up, and so on. I’m about to set off; but it may turn out to be a bit of an adventure getting there…

Over the course of the day we’ve had a series of alternating bursts of heavy snow and sunshine. Bizarre, and very pretty at times, but the result is that today heads into evening the ground is fast refreezing, with a mixture of snow and ice, and more snow on top of the ice, and I think I can safely say this is not nice.

I felt a bit silly, first thing this morning before the snow started, putting on my proper walking boots in case the forecast icy conditions came along by the end of the day. Boy, am I glad I did, now.

As far as I can tell from the BBC and from assorted travel update websites, trains in the south east are still running fine at the moment. More snow is forecast for the weekend. I will set off, and travel hopefully – and hopefully arrive (& hopefully get back again, too).

Wish me luck, and have a good weekend, everyone!

Coming home from going home...

There’s something very soothing about looking out of a train at the countryside rolling by at dusk. I spent rather a long time doing this yesterday evening on the way back through Kent to London, as the Sunday train service meant things were running rather slow (& rather roundabout in route as well). I didn’t really mind; it was early evening, with soft deep shadows to leeward of the hedgerows and woods; white ghosts of Queen Anne’s Lace, rabbits grazing, slim dark cattle walking slowly along the banks of the Stour, and the Downs rising like a distant line of cloud off to the north.. The train went due west into the sunset, fleeing its own shadow.

I had a wonderfully peaceful weekend at my mother’s, doing very little except helping her with some of the heavier kind of gardening (me heap big tough woman, do lots of chopping – ow, my back). Back to reality now. And now the sky has clouded over, after two days of flawless caerulean, bang on cue for Monday. A clouded sky in June is the visual signifier of the self-pitying sigh it inspires in me...

Watched the film of "Snow Falling on Cedars" while I was at Mum's; rather good, an excellent cast, and pretty true to the book - yet missing a lot as well, of course. Just before that we caught the end of an episode of "Robin Hood", which both of us have given up upon lately (when's "Merlin" coming back? That was FUN). The evil Gisborne sat crying his manly eyes out over a corpse by a riverbank, while Robin (faithless drip that he is) was Kissing Another Woman although it's only half a series since his One True Love died. As the phrase goes, what's that all about, then? They've lost me, I'm afraid. Though it was nice (in a slightly pervy way) to see Richard Armitage cry.

What else can I ramble about? I got back my holiday snaps from Crete this morning but they are mostly fairly dire - I think my dear, ancient camera may be nearing the end of its useful life. It's had a good innings, as it's several years older than me; a Zenit weighing nearly a kilo, the subject of many sarcastic comments at college - to my delight in Cuba I learned that Che Guevara used the same camera. Since the Zenit seems to be on its last legs my only good visual souvenir of this trip is the handful of sketches and watercolours I did - of which I am moderately pleased with about two. If I had a scanner I'd insert thumbnails of them here, now, but I am behind on the technology (to put it mildly). Sorry...

Off home, via the health food shop. Have a good week, world.