It was strange to be back in the UK again. But not a bad strange this time. The first familiar things made me laugh instead of making me roll my eyes… ‘National Express’ drivers miming ‘no drinking or smoking on the bus no matter what language you speak’… Accidents on the motorways making tailbacks from curiosity in the opposing direction… tailbacks on the M25 in general…
Maybe part of this is seeing things partly from the fresh eyes of a visitor (although I have to saying that calling Hemel Hempstead ‘quaint’ only solicited a puzzled frown. Quaint, my dear, it ain’t.
Arriving the night before my birthday jetlagged and dirty I woke up to summer sunshine – the way Bastille days are supposed to be! There was tea in my godmother’s canal-side garden with American visitors (no, we don’t like Bush, No we didn’t ever vote for him!).
The next day we traveled down to Cornwall; A long drive of motorways and holiday traffic. We stopped in Okehampton to buy Devon Oke and trays of double yolkers (‘the young chickens’ insides are all messed up so they do doubles,’ was the explanation for being certain they’d be doubles we elicited from the farmer’s wife selling them!)
And then on to almost Land’s End… Our cottage in Pendeen was lovely and stone with an inglenook fireplace and low-beamed celings. We emptied the car and followed the road to the end (about 50 m) and out onto the ruins of a tin mine at the top of a cliff. The sea was hazy and blue, breaking beneath us.
And so a week of salads, sausages, eggs, beer, wine, gorgeous sandy beaches, cliff walks, Atlantic waters and summer fruits… We visited old tin mines, St Ives (As I was going to St Ives, I passed a man with 7 wives, and every wife had 7 cats, and every cat had 7 kits, how many were going to St Ives?), posed as Pirates in Penzance, and uncovered the secret past:
On the return journey we undertook a treasure hunt. My step-father’s mother had spent some time in the tiny village of Rostronget as a child. In recent years her sister has made noises to indicate that indicate a family mystery lives there. So we went to investigate the past life of ‘Len’, garage owner and possible father. The villagers were helpful to our questions and we obtained the last copy of a tiny run of a local history book and took photos that will hopefully jog old memories…
Our final stop was in Salisbury plain to look at Stonehenge and marvel that its use was already forgotten by the time the druids were practicing (or whatever it is that Druids do) … As we left a summer storm broke and in torrential rain we drove back to London…