I think cats can tell when people are soon to leave… Bruiser won’t leave me alone (not that I mind). Had a good cuddle with him on the floor for 25 minutes earlier (I got a very wet bum) and he got very comfy with my green corduroys & thick brown Icelandic sweater. Lots of dribble and lots of purring.
I do so hope that there’s a cat at Tregoss Barton farm… and a wood burner in my caravan. The combination of those two things would be top notch. Ohh it all seems so scarily close now! Going to go do something I’ve not done before! Well, not REALLY done!
I’m still having my nightly slumps, but I hope they’ll be sorted soon. I hope. For relief of any sort of stress I have, I got to skin & gut 4 pheasants earlier to prevent them from just getting chucked away; I saved their heart and lungs (to mash and add to red wine onion gravy) and packaged them up with them before putting them in the freezer like 4 small chickens. One for Rachel, one for Paul (since they were originally his!)? one for Phil, and… we’ll see what happens to the last one. Perhaps I’ll take two instead of one to Perranporth and keep one in the freezer for later use. Yes, maybe maybe.
Listening to Amy Macdonald (amongst other artists)… her songs have a habit of strengthening feelings, not necessarily of making sad SADDER but of making the sad a more concentrated sort of sad. Of course she also works the other way – making happy happier.
8.5 hours of paid work left.
Very almost Thursday 3rd November.
Well, here I am again… back up on my (yes, I like to think of it as MY now) cliff top next to Perranporth YHA. Finished Golant (yay!) and everything I own which is in Cornwall is now right under my bed. And next to it. Fair load of stuff, really! But not as much as I had feared (it all still fits in, which is a plus!).
31st October (Halloweeeen!) I managed to finally leave after packing everything up & Tetrising it in. Earlier that day I had driven over to Polperro (listening to Spice Girls on the car ferry over to Bodinnick) and picked up Lisa’s work from the gallery – although I’m pretty sure the chap there had met Lisa before, he seemed to think that I was actually Lisa! Not bad, I wouldn’t mind being able to create beautiful pictures of Cornish (and Lundy Island-ish) scenery out of rust and chemically rusted copper (makes the lovely turquoise green colour). Odd chap though, kept telling me right from the beginning to “STOP FLAPPING!”. It seemed to amuse him to tell me this… was I really flapping? I don’t think I was!
Lisa’s work can be found by looking for “Smythick Forge” on Goooogle to find her website (illustrations by yours truly).
Driving back to Falmouth was marginally worrying since there was a combination of:
-It was dark
-It was most definitely raining
-My van was rather very muchly laden
-There were HUGE PUDDLES across the roads in places
-Verging on rush hour.
But it was all fine in the end… the most challenging bit actually came when I drove up in to Lisa’s field to find that the rain had turned the entrance to a bit of a quagmire and made my wheels spin and spin and spin and me to stall… and stall… and stall. Thankfully I eventually got un-stuck and parked up in a slightly friendlier patch of grass before having to drag out Dave Wisdom to help me battle with Lisa’s water bloated front door. What a nice and friendly chap, is Dave Wisdom… shame he doesn’t eat meat, I could have supplied him with one of the skinned gutted frozen pheasants. But each to their own.
A night spent in Lisa’s field, slightly worried about her landlady Wendy coming out to tell me off (it got a little too late for me to go knock on the door and be honest), though had a good conversation with my old friend (etc) Red and watched some of “The Science of Sleep”. Phone battery ran out and so it was quite a miracle when I woke up on my own accord at just before 7am and made my escape from the field before anyone found me out…
Brief stop off at Sainsbury’s to buy the essential Lindt chilli chocolate and use their piss pots, then another brief stop off at B&Q to acquire some simple insulation (thankfully all these places are actually open at mental-o-clock) and then onwards! Onwards on the wonderful sunny morning, with loud semi-cheesy music blasting out and windows down (got to air the van out when it’s not raining). “Million Miles Away” by The Offspring was playing when I got my first sight of the sea at Perranporth, through a gap between two buildings; it was white and rolling, biggun’s too! I got that fantastic feeling where you grin and squeal and experience a perfect swell of happiness bubble up inside of you. Parking up, I watched the pure white foamy mess of the sea (not good for surfing, as there was so much froth that it looked like a foam party / snow) and studied the waves as the froth died off (sketching, of course). Phil popped up at some point, I helped with the hostel clean up (can’t get away from it! But only did the Hoovering…) before posting a couple of packages and then driving off to first Newquay harbour, then Gwithian, then the far end of Gwithian by Hawks Point to look at the surf. Hawks Point it was, we parked up.
I heard a yell.
I turned round.
Lukas Drinkwater!
What a nice surprise!
His van had broken down so he and his brother had gone for a surf and were then just hanging out in the back of the brother (Dan’s) van with Lukas’ girlfriend; she seems nice. We had a long brief natter and a good old Lukas hug, Luke seeming to already know Phil as “Mr Perranporth” and being apparently impressed by his McTavish longboard.
Wetsuits on, scamper off down the hill (not the comfiest experience ever with bare feet) and onto the sand before noticing that my glasses were still intact with my face and having to hide them safely on a rock.
The sea was good, the waves seemed big and powerful some of the time, the rest was just fun to bob up and down on so I got a decent amount of swimming in too (had to as there was a fair big current running this way then the next). Some kayakers were out in the waves too, they kindly tried mowing me down a couple of times but I managed to survive.
Sun still shining but I decided it was time to get out, so scurried back up the hill to warm up and eat a sneaky pack of white chocolate Maltesers (I wish they came in “multi race” packs, some milk and some white).
That evening I made a bolognaise and we ate it with Laura who also came round and nattered her feet off as per usual – we nodded and ahh’ed as usual.
A long day.
Today was far lazier, although not getting up terribly early I still managed to feel tired and have done so for the entire day, not done much (but done SOME stuff), supper was one of the pheasants – roasted with rosemary on the inside, butternut squash, parsnips, and potatoes. And some odd gravy invention made from the lungs and heart (not great, avoided most of it). For pudding I made an apple and rhubarb crumble, then we watched more Game of Thrones and I nodded off. And now I am in bed, and now it is twenty to one in the morn on the 3rd November. Good night.
6th November… well, I’m here now! At my new home for 3 months (ignoring the month away from it in the middle). A WWOOFing place called Tregoss Barton near St Keverne on The Lizard in Cornwall (bit of a mouthful of an explanation there!). Not too hard to find at all, and the drive down from Perranporth (where I watched dolphins) was beautiful as the weather has been gloriously blue all day, with the only cloud to be seen being the small cloud bank on the horizon over the sea. So yes… blinding, but beautiful sunset drive with the John Butler Trio as ear food. Am now here waiting for a chap called Anthony to appear, arrived just in time to get photos of a gypsy caravan and tree house with the bright red-orange sun behind it (it almost feels like a summers evening, but a fair bit chillier). As per usual with my current places to stay, all I can here is: …a plane somewhere in the far distance and a couple of birds. Wonderful…
So what have I been doing with myself these past few days up at Perranporth? Well, mostly getting in Phil’s way probably (helping to clean the hostel up after groups), but yesterday was really good. Woke up at 6:30am when Phil banged on my van and was in his van and leaving by 7am – of course, it’s still mostly dark at this point. Banana for breakfast. Arrive on the south coast just round the corner from St Michael’s Mount (Perranuthnoe) at roughly 7:30am, wetsuits on and in the sea by 35. The sun has just come up over a headland so whilst Phil surfs (theres a few others in the sea too, including Phil’s mate Su who had been in since 7am as she vanned in the car park overnight to allow time for a surf before work in the morning!). I drifted about in the water and had a good swim, the waves kept lifting me up high and dumping me down the other side so that my stomach flew out of my head and made me grin like a maniac, although I couldn’t body surf much as the water was a tad (rather very) “soupy” (seaweedy) in the depth that I’d need to be in… so I stayed out a little deeper. After about half an hour of floating and enjoying life and the rising sun I decided that I’d have to battle my slightly irrational fear of the seaweed and beat my way back to shore before the seaweed was in deeper water (more dangerous). It would have been fine if it was the see-through green seaweed which looks like soggy lettuce but it was the thick kelpy stuff which wraps round your ankles. Almost got dragged down in it when I tried to wallow over it, so had to give in and put my feet on the floor and tread through it. Yeeuuurgh! Dried off and sat in the sun eating breakfast of cereal & orange juice, grinning at a chap collecting driftwood, and briefly nattering to Su when she got out.
At about 10am Phil gets out and we drive to Lands End YHA via Tescos for some yummy things; there we meet manager Chris who’s first words were something along the lines of “Phil! I’m naked! Let me just put some clothes on…” and his other half Katie who is now noticeably pregnant. Sat in the sun for a while more, then took a stroll in to St Just to browse a couple of gallery shops and stretch our legs. The walk back was good, went to the top of a little hill and the weather was so clear that we could see all the way across the sea to the Isles of Scilly; get back and the four of us have a picnic lunch on the benches outside – fried Halloumi cheese, black olive bread sticks, Kalamata olives, rye bread, spicy soups, baby sweet corn, local brie, smoked cheddar, and houmus. And chilli chocolate for pudding. Having had this late lunch it is time for us to depart again, swooping back past the beach to see if Phil would surf again (too crowded by this time) and then back to Perranporth for a supper of spicy salmon cream cheese pasta with various vegetables, followed by the crumble of a few nights before with proper vanilla ice-cream (and two more episodes of Game of Thrones…).
(the evening at Perran)
A good day indeed!
(the sea at Perranporth earlier today. Isn't November lovely?)
And now, I hope I have a few good days also… lets see what is to come…
(this evening as I arrived, there is the treehouse & a rather SPOOKY looking rope)
UPDATE:
I’m now inside my WWOOFing place. I can sleep in the warm tree house or old Romany gypsy caravan if I like, but y’know… for now I might just sleep in my double bed with en-suite heated enough but not too much room with a view to the sea. Just for a little while… and a drawer full of chocolate? And a dog called Dogga? And friendly company? Well… I guess life is JUST ABOUT ok!!!
Other folks work:
Danielle Kroll
Melissa Castrillon
Delicious food porn
Someone knit me these please? But different colours?
Beautiful beautiful beautiful jewellery... when I get a little more money...
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