Zzzz… my eyes are all sleepy like a dozy wasp. Wasps are very dozy at the moment, it is August and they have all done what they had to do and so are now spending time buzzing about and irritating / stinging people; annoyingly, yesterday I was a victim of a wasp sting. I was just driving through Bodmin, minding my own business; I had stopped briefly in the Morrison’s car park to tell my TomTom where to go, and had just driven out and approached a roundabout when suddenly OHHHH OWWW WTF OUCH BUGGERMENT POO GRRR! (Admittedly the words I said were far more harsh than any of those listed, however I felt I should at least attempt to censor what was said in reality). IT REALLY HURT, basically. What made it worse was that the sting was on the top of my boob (just below the top bit of my top) and the pain spread up to my throat & made me feel very sick, and then the wasp (I’m pretty sure it was a wasp as it felt crispy when I yanked it out of my bra) fell down UNDER my boob… so I had to swear & feel sick & dig out the wasp all whilst town driving, and that is tricky at the best of times in Bodmin in tourist season. So yes… that sting hurt all day, sometimes in waves of ouchy stingyness. At least the wasp / whatever it was was crushed to death when I yanked it out of my upper under crackers and flung it across the front of my van (I couldn’t find it later, perhaps the wind whooshed it out of the window).
My boob is still swollen (my right hand side one).
Eventually I arrived in Boscastle where I eventually found a parking space (people must have thought I was an idiot to attempt parking there on
a- In the summer holidays
b- On a rainy sunny rainy day, where the beach isn’t the right answer for tourists
c- I have Cornwall/Kernow stickers on both ends of my van, making me essentially a local so I REALLY should have known better). But anyway. Parking was finally found, and then we walked down a pretty side lane (off the beaten tourist track) to a small galley filled with the work of a woman called Helen Setterington. I’ve never heard of her before, but her work was pretty nice, all acrylic paintings of Cornish landscapes; she managed to get the turquoise transparency of the sea just right, and the yellow of the lichen (my favourite) and the blues of the sky… none of those silly wishy washy pieces which were so favoured round these parts some years back. I REMEMBER THEM. Stripe of one blue on top, stripe of a second blue on the bottom, maybe some variation in opacity with those colours – perhaps put in a bright ball of white for the sun, and maybe a couple of gull of boat silhouettes. Do you know the sort? Nice and simple, yes, but FAR over done.
But yes. Helen Setterington – not a wishy washy painter. I wonder if she was the woman I bought the 2 postcards off of, I’m guessing so. I had a brief natter with her about where she got her cards & postcards printed (www.monkeypuzzleart.co.uk). I liked the quality of the prints, although they are slightly contrasted compared to the original (I should have asked if she had created the contrast or if the printing company had).
After that we walked down a quay side path which had a notice saying “This is not a footpath, slippery when wet”. Again it was away from the beaten tourist track so that’s good. At the end we sat and ate the seemingly weekly lunch of crusty bread with salted butter & other filling (brie this time, from the reduced price jackpot… still not as good as the Petite Brie from Brittany!). It rained on us, but that was nice in a way. 3 young boys were leaping off the end of the quay area into the sea, and whenever they passed us they’d be all “Did you see my 360 yeeeeah?” and acting all ‘cool’. It was funny. Rain stopped and clambering on rocks was to be had, as when as a ridiculous amount of photos being taken of me (it’s flattering, really). The rock shapes round there are amazing, and the colours are pretty good too. Some rocks are really stained with iron rust and then dotted with patches of my afore mentioned favourite bright yellow lichen. The rock had formed in layers although not sedimentary but had then been crumpled and bent so that the straight lines became more like than of a drunken ant trying to walk in a straight line (really wiggly) and in places it was like two sides of a zip trying to fit together. I stole the camera at this point and clambered higher to get a couple of pieces of photographical evidence of this rock. I’m turning into my parents… I’m drooling over rock shapes. Next I’ll be packing my rucksack full of them and having airport security stop me (motherly sort!!!).
Come the end of lunch & other such ponderings we noticed that we’d taken way longer than we’d originally thought, so had to go top up the car park money before we then went to the Boscastle museum of Witchcraft. On entry and paying of £4 to a very witchy looking woman behind the desk (amid a cloud of incense) we wandered about attempting to read everything (it was impossible, so much of interest and so little ability to stop and concentrate and read things!!). Found a rather very slightly racist poster from ye olde times which pictured a witch and was advertising soap. The other picture was a face one half which was black, and the other looked like an albino black person!! The saying was “this soap works like magic, turning black to white!”. If they’d only have used less obvious facial features it would have seemed more like a “dirty people coming from the mines” poster rather than a “black people should be white!” poster. DEARY ME! Of course not all the museum was like that, that was just the “witches in advertising” section.
Things that came to my attention:
-Mass witch burning in Germany? (I think). So many witches were burnt that liquid human fat ran the streets. The fat got so hot that it eventually caught fire and the whole town set alight… ha haaa, suckers! Teaches you to be twats to those who are possibly slightly different.
-A lump of knobbly flint stone which was shaped like a penis and aptly names “cock rock”. It was given to the museum by a witch who no longer had a need for it as no one in her town believed in it’s powers any more (I can’t remember which town this was). The use of this stone was for a woman trying to conceive to put it under her pillow, it would help within 9 months (there was also a “vagina stone” although it’s use fails to be remembered).
-A human head which had been dipped in tar immediately after it’s execution but then rescued by someone… due to the tar covering there were still lots of details such as the closure of the eyelids. It had a sign up next to it with the words “Please do not laugh at this head. It once smiled and laughed, just like you or I. Please spare a minute to good thought for this head”. I can’t quite remember the meaning of all this, but none the less… interesting!
I shan’t tell of any more of this museum as I don’t wish to spoil it for anyone who visits it in the future (you should, £4 really isn’t that much for what the museum is!). I now have big urges to:
a- Draw some witches, stereotypical variety or no.
b- Buy a book of witchcraft history / facts, so I can read more about it.
c- Get some little charms and such. Even if they don’t manage to have the desired affect of what they’re meant to do (ward off evil, etc etc), they sure do look pretty and appeal to my aesthetical likes.
One the way back to the car we bought ice creams. Yum yum yum! They were (and still are) organically made from Helsett Farm (local to there), I chose the honey and lavender flavour as I’d never eaten lavender before and I love honey; glad I chose this! It was super tasty.
I shall indeed visit Boscastle again, perhaps next time not in main tourist weeks. Maybe I’ll stay at the YHA there, it’s a lovely little one – not sure if I’ve stayed there before?
Driving back home I made a quick detour to Advent Church as despite not being religious, I do like to see churches and this one seemed in the middle of no where (churches are generally old buildings and so nicely carved, but unlike most old buildings which are now owned by National Trust or English Heritage etc, they’re free to get in to! Although I was thinking of getting a National Trust membership).
So that was my “Saturday”. Today is more lazy, and I feel tired. I am sitting once again at the desk area with the windows open. Sunny intervals, a small breeze (much different to the fast winds which have been with us these past few days) and I can hear a plane going overhead – to me, that sound sounds like summer. Of course I can also here all the birds (as per usual). The air is not stuffy as it has been as we had a thunderstorm the other day (at the same time as I was standing in the middle of the chicken coop, feeding them watermelon).
In a week or 2 my old classmate (from illustration) Carl Norris is coming to work here. Have I already mentioned that? I don’t think so…? Hmm. But yes, he is. That’ll be good, a second chap in the staff house to balance out the 2 girls to 1 guy thing, plus he’s COOL. And has a spare surfboard… cackle. Ohh I miss the sea! I need to be forced to go jump in it again! I’ll go help him move his stuff out of Falmouth, and see Miss Harrison too. I hope the entire town isn’t still full of scary zombies! (Brad Pitt is filming his new zombie film on a big boat in the Falmouth Harbour area?!).
Apart from this weekend, not much has happened this week. The normal traumas of not being able to do cash up correctly, a few (but not too many) pissy customers, and the boredom of cleaning.
I’ve just had said to me “I wish I could write” (jealousy of me writing roughly 1800 words in 30-45 minutes). It reminded me of what I used to do “back in the day”, which was to write bad fan fics (the original ones were written with my good old friends Tanzee and Jennie, of whom I really do not see enough of…) these stories would consist of ourselves being something a bit better than we already were (possibly like the us of the future, who had money to buy expensive gothy corsets and own a house etc). We’d have flings with people such as Marilyn Manson, Ville Valo, and Billie Jo Armstrong as well as do multiple lots of drugs and drink at the same time as each other (of course back then we’d only really be drinking Alco-pops, stolen little bits of parents booze, and eventually in my case straight vodka). Tanzee would be the one who would get it on with Marilyn “Mazza” Manson, before end up getting pregnant much to the dislike of her fellow “housemates”, before getting very upset and having an overdose on something (not fatal) and falling down a flight of stairs (also not fatal). Jennie would be leaping on Billie Jo Armstrong and making a bit of a public spectacle of it, and I would be having my kink on in a darkened room with Ville Valo (and sometimes Dani Filth (CoF)). I wish I still had a copy of these awfully great stories – Tanzee, if you read this, do you?!
As well as these works of literary shit, I had a bad habit of regularly updating a ever deepening pile of angsty blog. Updates generally consisted of girls and guys who I had decided I really rather loved, but alas – the love was generally unrequited, and the blog entries eventually got me in a fair chunk of trouble someone… whoops! Agh well. TEENAGE YEARS, EH?? Chuckle (I’m currently listening to The Offspring – Conspiracy of One, for nostalgia reasons… I do actually still like them though).
William Arnold: “You’re not writing about me with cucumbers on my face are you?” “I am now” “Nooo…” (He’s lying down with cucumber on his barely there eye bags, and one on his forehead which I decided to take a chunk out of (the cucumber, not the forehead). He’s now just made mooing noises like the loud cows outside.
Anyhoo, for now, I shall stop writing this. I may do some gardening, or I may not. We shall see! Hum hum!
The third and final piece for Petra's homework things...
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