A Whisper Away

It's that time of year again, that time when you can smell droplets in the air, when the bulbs have been planted, and the soil fixes on the lines in skin, in the heart line, and the life line, and underneath nails, dry and chipped. I feel viral. I feel tired. But I have seen a russet moon, the colour of a dog's tongue.

Summer is being covered in yellow leaves and toadstools over the lawn. Is it a toadstool or a mushroom or a fungus? I never know the difference, and the spores make my breath rasp, my chest yearn for inhaler. But it has disappeared, the heat, the longer days, and with that I'm fattening up on crumpets and cake, sausages and mash. Most things baked and fried.

I love all the colour, it's just all these damn colds.

And she, she is six weeks into year one. The stories. How so and so chased so and so. The ongoing battle of girls against boys. Who is marrying who. The grazed knees and the cut fingers. It's hard to keep up. She is happy, she has friends, and I am happy too. She is reading, she is eager to spell. When I write a letter to a friend, she must also write one too. Mummy, how do you spell birthday? Mummy, how do you spell friend? And now she has discovered a love of numbers, loves writing number sentences she says. 4+2 = 6. 15+3 = 18. I think she has her father's precise mind, he's an engineer, a lover of logic and solution. Where as I, well I'm not sure, my brain is.... I was branded unclassified in maths.

Her new thing is sewing. I draw the picture on the material, a shape, a butterfly, and she carefully eases the needle with the red thread through. Her stitches to begin with are a little erratic, set wide apart, and then she finds her flow following the pencil, finding the coordination in her hands. She prefers it to the IPad. She prefers it to Pinky Pie and Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Any clues to Summer have now faded from my face. The colour. The freckles. All gone. I look a little wan, a little waxy under the eyes. And I try pulling back the warmer days but even their memories are as pale as my skin. A holiday home - an old vicarage. An ancient town built on a hill. The harbour. The cobbled streets. The tea rooms. The back garden disappearing under lavender, under holly hocks, under fallen apples. The wonky floors and the old beams. A princess castle with a moat. A grand old house with old, old wall paper and the smell of dusty, unread books - the smell of history. Days on a beach over-turning shells, adding height to sandcastles, running from an incoming tide. A weekend spent with Granny, and an aunt in her new pub. And a few days in a forest lodge with dappled sunlight and roaming deer. The discovery that peacocks can fly and the gift of a fallen feather. A morning spent purifying in the steam of a Japanese salt bath and the eucalyptus of a Turkish Hamman... It all seems a whisper away now.    

And half term is around the corner. She has a new coat and new wellies. The zip on my coat is broken. And the winds are coming and so is the rain. One last mow of the lawn. One last pruning back of the shrubs and the clemetis overgrown.

I have my light box switched on: I am galvanising myself for shorter days...

Winter Sun

'Mummy, don't be afraid, flying is fun.'

And when I looked out of the window, down below seemed very, very far down indeed; shades of weak tea brown, white spots, threaded black lines. Over a Spanish mountain range I thought I saw a giant alligator etched in its peaks. Shapes in the earth, not in the clouds. I was nervous. Over an hour in I was still wearing the seat belt. This was my first flight since the honeymoon. It didn't matter then, it was just Younger Dad and me. Now there was Little A to consider; all week I'd worried about the plane crashing, that sequence from Flight on auto replay, over and over. I couldn't be sure if the pilot steering our plane - flight something, something, something, bound for Lanzarote - had the same skills as Denzel Washington.

How would I save Little A?

And I wasn't ready to die. My novel wasn't finished, not even the first draft.  

On the toilet, the plane hit turbulence; one hand clung to the sink, an elbow propped against the opposite wall. Balanced. Just. I couldn't concentrate, that annoying ping-pong sound and red - red for danger - image of the seat belt sign.

I returned to my seat shaken. Certainly not soothed.

'Don't worry Mummy, it's just a bit bumpy.'

And if in panic, boiled travel sweets are the best remedy by far. Half the tin had disappeared by the time the plane circled over the volcanic land of seal skin grey. Welcome to Espana.

Lanzarote is made for moon people. If you took a small jump, you might float in the air, weightless. The villages - tightly clustered, their low lying white buildings brightly off set by their dark, arid surroundings - like the out postings of an interplanetary mission. There is an other worldly beauty and grace here, empty of complication, naked, a severity of truth.

We stayed on the blustery north east coast in an eco retreat, a finca, consisting of varying sized yurts and villas. Ours was a family villa originally converted from an old water tank. The lounge housed the most ornate day bed. In fact, throughout the entire property such exquisite detail had been paid to all the decoration and furniture. There was a donkey called Molly, and well over a dozen chickens, their fresh egg yolks like baby suns.  

I didn't write. Instead, I read, flopped in the sunshine, enjoying the simplicity of words, or I spent precious time with my family, burying our feet in cool, wet sand, splashing about in the water with Little A. The temperature was perfect, like an English summer's day; it was the end of November, winter, and the time of year didn't seem real. On the afternoon of my birthday, we paid a visit to a Cactus Garden set in a circular walled enclosure. Hundreds of varieties. Aliens. Unsure of the prickles, Little A admired the various forms and shapes and colours, 'that one's furry Mummy, a silly furry cactus.'

It was an easy holiday. We woke up late, spent most mornings in our pyjamas, the odd morning scrambling a bag of essentials together for a spot of sight seeing; the Timanfaya National Park was a favourite, Little A's face pressed against the window, jaw dropped, 'WOWSERS, look at the volcanoes Mummy and Daddy, they're AMAZING.'

The afternoon's were enjoyed either on a beach - not all the sand was midnight black - or by the pool side back at the finca,Younger Dad, his teeth clenched, taught Little A how to swim in the not so solar heated water. I rediscovered the art of deep relaxation; a reflexology session and a yoga class kissed my worries away. I had forgotten, had become addicted to the tension held in every sinew and muscle. My body sighed with the release, the relief. And I remembered.

On the return flight home, I was too relaxed to care about dying.

And in the fortnight after we'd arrived home, I revived my yoga practise with gusto, and bought Little A her own mat, and DVD.

Breathe In. Breathe out...

Good Times

It's a chilly Thursday morning, made worse by not quite dried hair. Even though it's tied in a loose knot, it still manages to send rippling waves of cold through my scalp, butterflying down my spine. So, I'm wearing a blue cardigan overlaid by a sleeveless jacket to offset the shivers. Our boiler, over aged, very tired, is on the blink. As too is my very ineffective hairdryer that's intent on blowing tepid air through my long, damp strands.

As I contemplate the sudden drop in temperature, inside and outside, and I wonder what Autumn has up her blustery sleeve, I realise I haven't told you about our recent Summer escape to the beautiful Lizard Peninsula, in South West Cornwall. I've hinted at it. But up until now, I haven't forged a blow by blow account. Don't worry, I shan't bore you with the tiniest grains of detail, just the highlights accentuated with a few pictures!

St Ives Harbour

Every year, thankfully, we manage to grab a week's break away from the walls of our two bed roomed flat. And every year, regretfully, we kick ourselves (that's Younger Dad and I) for not having taken two weeks instead - this year, probably more than any other. Have you ever been to Cornwall? Have you ever seen the abiding charm of the Lizard Peninsula? For me, other than the Lake District, it isn't like any other place in this country. Quiet, secluded, untouched. Beautiful, dramatic, undulating. The craggy coastline is dressed with golden sands, sculptured by hidden coves, decorated with tiny fishing villages, and sugar coated cottages. The landscape is unspoiled by tarmac and industry. Only fields and farmyards reign.

And as a child, The Lizard was the Summer destination, year, after year, with my parents and younger brothers. So it was a joy to return after nearly three decades. My memory, after all this time, still intact, held a vivid bygone portrait that accurately mirrored the present day. Nothing much had changed, apart from a better selection of ice lollies, and the lack of dubious role models - Punch and Judy anyone? ...

We feasted daily on Cornish ice cream (Little A introduced to the flavoured delights of chocolate, strawberry and hokey pokey honeycomb). We luncheoned on freshly baked pasties, Cornish Yarg, and plump apples. We Sunday roasted in a cliff top dining room overlooking the misty swell of the most southerly point of England. We ate locally caught fish and chips out of vinegary, salty, paper. And we scoffed three too many clotted cream teas; one afternoon, we found ourselves gorging on scones, piled chin high with jam and cream, in the front garden of a very hospitable farmer (she just happened to be selling homemade teas). The down side was that it attracted the unwanted company of determined, yet dozy, bees, and the unfortunate nostril pinching fragrance of manure, pigs, and chickens.

Little A thrived. She stroked miniature ponies. She watched cows being milked. She ran gleefully around and around the garden belonging to our holiday cottage, prodding snail shells, zig zagging after royal admirals. Sheltered under the leafy canopy of a giant rhubarb, she imagined the residents of a pair of antiquated gypsy caravans we'd discovered in the neighbouring meadow of a dairy farm. "Does the Gruffalo live in one of those tiny houses?" "Is this where Abney and Teal go on holiday?" She trekked up St Micheal's Mount, in a back pack, with Younger Dad. She built sandcastles, collected empty crab shells, hopped over baby waves. And she slept like a dream ...

Minack Theatre, Porthcurno

We revisited the hotel I stayed at when I was a child.  To my dismay, it was boarded up, paint peeling from the balcony windows, moss growing on the tennis court, the garden, wild and over grown. My mind threw flashes, recollective missiles, of times gone by. Aged nine, a tennis rookie, learning the ropes with Dad. Aged eleven, eating sweet cream cakes on the manicured lawn with mum. Aged thirteen, styled in a Frankie Says Relax t-shirt, pining after a boy ...

It was wonderful, liberating, not to feel the chains of my laptop for a week. I thought about my writing a little, the direction of my blog, the plot for a novel I have in mind (whether I am brave enough to pen my story is another matter). It was lovely to be away from the call of my inbox. I spent the days doing nothing much other than sightseeing, eating, and just spending quality time with my family; we played raucous games of 'moo, baa, meow,' as Younger Dad navigated the car cautiously down tractor wide lanes to our next port of call. On the beaches, I studied sand smoothed pebbles, and let myself melt, disappear, into the light buffeting of the on shore breeze and the reserved sound of waves gently breaking at low tide. I inhaled the present, and exhaled my worries, and for those five days I forgot about my higgeldy piggeldy life outside of Cornwall.

Good times ...

Mousehole Harbour

Such a wonderful holiday was had, albeit a fortnight ago, that I'm linking this post up with Reasons To Be Cheerful.