I’m here again! So soon? Yes, so soon!
Once again I’m in my van up on my cliff (“my” cliff, haha), and the wind is blowing and so my bed is shaking. I’m not so sure that it’s much of a relaxing sway, it’s more of a frantic sporadic rocking… if I got sea sick, now would be the time (it’s not so bad). There is barely a cloud in the sky and the moon is bright, it’s full moon soon… ow ow owwww! (that’s a wolf noise, for those of you who hadn’t already guessed) (don’t think we get wolves round here… can you get were-maids? Hairy fanged mermaids? Now that’d be WEIRD). I love how light it always is here at night – not light in an orange light pollution way, despite the fact I live on the edge of a town, but light in a bright moon whatever period it’s in. The moon and stars always shine so bright, and you can always look down at the sea and see the white horses skipping about (currently due to the windy conditions I think they’re more charging about like lunatics).
Do I use brackets too often? Maybe. But I don’t much care! I enjoy my excessive bracket use! (YEAH!).
Walking from the hostel to Hector I decided that I AM HAPPY. Partly due to the fact that I’m next to the sea, everything is bathed in moonlight, and… well, those two things are just the start of the little pile as to why I’d be happy.
I have a job which I really don’t mind at all – even if I have to spend a short amount of time attempting to get old silicone off of from around the bottom of the (dun dun DUN) THREE toilets, it’s really not bad at all. I could be cleaning twelve toilets after a very smelly large school group.
So yes, I really don’t mind it.
So many people hate their jobs, it’s just a job for jobs sake – they’ve got it so that they can earn money to hopefully one day get them to somewhere they’d prefer better. A chap I semi-know, Robin, lives in the same field as Dan and Lisa; he recently gave a voice recorder to everyone else in the field (including the land lady) and told them to take it to bed with them and talk to it about their life in the field, related to the field, and suchlike. The best bits were pieced together to make a short 7 minute radio documentary which I’m currently having a slight love affair with, I want to illustrate it somehow and all!
But anyway, I’m straying off of the path, here is a bit of something Robin himself said in the documentary:
“…worked in an office, for, six years, and it was like… soo boring, every day is the same, and then suddenly before you know it you turn sixty five or whatever and they give you your pension and say ‘cheerio!’ and you’re like ‘oh thanks, that was my life, gone’… so I left”.
If you want to work in an office, then fair enough… I suppose in this current day and age someone has to! Or so it seems. But I’m so glad that I don’t, and hopefully I never will. I’m pretty sure I’ve always been against office work, for a long time, anyway… for work experience my mum suggested that maybe I worked in her office, they’re a chartered surveyors… I avoided it, and instead ended up working in a shop called “The Hippy Shop”. What most folks would know as a head shop, I suppose… we sold hippy clothing, smoking gear, magic mushrooms (they were still legal to sell at that point), and silly other things. It’s long gone now, that shop… I guess it had to leave after the mushroom ban came along since that was her main point of sale. Ahh Debi. Anyway! I thought that work experience was pretty damn good – the only bits of work I remember doing were sorting out a tangled box of hangers, arranging bongs in an attractive manner on a UV glow shelf, and putting price tags on large cock shaped pink and black candles. Other things which occurred were me getting my ears pierced for the first time (much to my mothers horror… many more holes have appeared since…), having blue fake hair plaited into my own, and watching all the local “weirdo’s” come and go… there was one chap who we always used to see about town, my mum called him a total eccentric. He wore feathers in his hat.
Funny that.
I wear feathers in my hat now, he was one stylish sir.
Hmm, I appear to have trailed off a bit there…
All in all, I’m glad I’m the one texting people / person / Jack to say that I hope their work day wasn’t too awful, rather than the one receiving the text…
Not that I’m glad that people have crap jobs, but I’m sure you understand what I mean.
I’ll also be glad if my van doesn’t blow off the edge of the cliff (I’m sure it won’t).
How could I be happier? Is anyone ever completely happy?
I can think of a few things which would help, for example I wish current life were a little warmer… but that’s just the seasons for you, no doubt mid Summer will be here before I know it and I’ll be complaining that Hector has turned into an oven rather than a van.
I like life.
I do sometimes wish that I had my own little home, one without extortionate rent, without bills which creep up on you, one which didn’t rock so vigorously in the wind, which wasn’t slightly damp…
I don’t mind having Hector as my bedroom, I can always use the facilities inside the hostel, but one day I’d like to have my own place. A hut, even; why the need for huge great houses? You don’t need all that stuff. I’d like something tastefully small, a caravan even!
Referring back to the afore mentioned documentary on caravan dwellers, Lisa says:
“The fires going and its warm… and I can’t imagine why anybody would need any more…”
The simple little things.
Maybe one day, if Lisa ever feels like leaving her little triangular field, we can put our money together and buy a plot of land / a field… we briefly discussed this before, some months back. She’d have her caravan, I’d have… something… I’d have to work that one out… and we’d grow some of our own food, have some pigs, chickens… solar panels, wind turbine… become almost self sufficient.
It’d be hard to start off with, lots of work – I found that out at Bosavern, growing food is hard work. And we’d need fire wood, so we’d grow some willow or other fast growing tree. Skip diving? What works too – in my mind that’d count as self sufficiency.
Would I be allowed internet? I can’t work out if I like not having constant internet.
Ok, lets say MOSTLY self sufficient. I wouldn’t be a purist, after all – I’m not sure I could make chocolate from scratch.
Back to real life…
This just past “weekend” was a good one. On the Monday Lisa and I went on an “around Cornwall” trip, starting off in her field and then off to Porthleven for the arts and crafts shop (I banned myself from taking my purse in with me, and so instead just drooled over all the wool). Next stop: Newlyn! Sorry, Horse & Jockey… your “flaky steak” pasties have been beaten, I’ve found a new favourite. Aunty May’s medium steak… I’m pretty sure it’s so good because of how crunchy the pastry is, and the reason for it being so crunchy is because it’s so fatty (my lips felt moisturised for a fair long time after), but ohhhh… it was good. Perfect size, too. Flaky steak was just too much most of the time. Next stop! St Just, the slightly scenic way. Pigs! Chickens! Farm produce! Mmm… it was nice seeing it all again. Moving on! Driving slowly from Pendeen to just before St Ives, rolling to a stop at random intervals for Lisa to take some photos (for reference) and for us to draw until it too cold to draw any more (it’s this wind! It’s a cold wind!). Climbing a hill to clamber over rocks, looking about at the top and being able to see for miles and miles… half the county, perhaps. The day was finished with a visitation in Lisa’s caravan from Lurk Dink (Lukas Drinkwater). What a good chap, I do hope he can sing with us lot at Aberfest (though hopes aren’t too high).
And then, another good chap! Loveliest chap Jack. He even gave me tulips! What a good one… please let the tulips survive… I really do have a shoddy track record with plants!
Tuesday afternoon we went to Glendurgan National trust gardens, it’s a bit of a shame that they charge so much to get in for non-members, especially when not everything is out in flower / fully alive. But still, I enjoyed seeing what there was, and tackling the maze, grinning and nodding at all the elderly couples, must remember to visit more NT places to get the most out of my membership.
Hhgvvnb… I’m falling asleep, face has gone into shut down mode.
Tuesday evening we were lazy and I Skyped the…
Thursday 8th March.
I fell asleep at that point, only half waking up enough to put away my laptop.
Today is another day. Now is another night.
I’m not going to write much, this time… for I haven’t had much to fill in on!
Today was mostly filled with a little bit of hostel work (chasing spider webs), eating far too many quadruple chocolate cookies for my own good (the entire pack, in fact. 8 cookies! If anyone ever fancies winning over my stomach and love handles then these are the things to get me, they’re the Sainsbury’s ones), washing Hector – who ever knew that he was a WHITE van! And enjoying the sun in the back of my van… sure I essentially wasn’t IN the sun, but I looked out at it a couple of times… however as I mentioned in yesterdays ramblings, Hector works a little like an oven; of course he didn’t get hot, but he got nice and cosy when paired with a thick woollen jumper.
Ahh the subject of warmth… that’d be nice. Apart from the couple of warm days a couple of weeks ago, we haven’t had much. I think I used to take warmth for granted, living at home with the parents for all those years there was always central heating (apart from the period in which I decided that I wanted my window open all the time, and so my heating was always off and door tended to be shut. I enjoyed fresh air!). But yes, heating. In Falmouth… ok, so our house wasn’t warm. No, in fact it was quite cold and damp for the majority of the time, but there was always a radiator on somewhere and failing that then there was always the studio at uni, or the pub. Wearing layer upon layer upon layer of long skirts… that was the way to go for a while. Not sure I can get away with doing that paired with a YHA branded polo shirt. Golant! No worries there, it was summer. If I got too cold, I’d just shut the window (a very rare occurrence).
Lizard? Downstairs wasn’t too warm… but my room had a radiator, and I took full advantage of it whenever I was up there (though was usually outside in the elements, wearing multiple waterproof layers). Bosavern… BRR! Old granite walled farm building with no heating, BRR!!! And now here, van on a cliff!
I’m not complaining about where I’ve been living since Christmas (Bosavern & here), I’m just getting a little fed up with going to bed wearing the clothes that I wore in the day time as I feel too cold to change out of them, and then waking up in the morning and changing my pants but not my clothes…
Roll on weather when getting to and into my van at night is a more pleasant experience!
“Such a stereotypical English thing to do, talking about the weather!” maybe so, but it affects me quite a lot.
I wonder if I’ll ever live anywhere where I don’t have to worry so much about temperature, where I don’t have to go “brr, it’s cold in this bed… lets curl up in a ball entirely under the duvet and hope that my breath doesn’t condense too much…”.
Anyhoo, now I’m going to read some more. Yes! Read! I haven’t read properly in… well… ages! So now I’m going to read.
I noticed on the communal bookshelf that there was the slightly revised version of “Ozzy: unauthorised” book, but also a copy of “Eat, Pray, Love”. I wasn’t too sure what it was about, but I’m rather fond of eating and loving so it’s title appealed – upon reading the first little bit of it, it certainly seems a bit like a slightly silly girly book, suitable for an easy reading book club… but I like it. So I’m going to read it. I’m not sure I’d refer to it as trash, but I don’t really think it’s exactly heavy going either! We’ll see how it goes…
March 11th.
YES. DAY 2 OF SUCCESSFUL PAINTING ARTY TIME! Go go go! Keep it up! Only… 10-ish pages to go?
It’s a book!!
Here's some images... my photos (not many) and illustrations (again, not many) are at the bottom today. There are some illustrations which I CAN'T PUT UP YET. Not because they aren't finished, but because they're remaining in secret for... well... meant to be until June, but we'll see how long I can hold out.
Yellowlion. Mmm... sedimentry looking layers, and the lovely pattern of the moon!
Wesley Bird. Possibly a tad too hip and cool for my liking, but the general thing appeals!
Yelena Bryksenkova. Give me a cat now.
Part of a piece by Owen Gent, Falmouther I think? Could be wrong... I like her WHITE BOOBS. I get that problem in Summer, too.
Page from Owen Gent's sketchbook... what delightful creatures.
Michelle Morin of United Thread. Nice bird.
It's that Nina Cosford again! Oh to draw buildings like she does!
Maurice Laban. Loving the built up colour layers.
Joe Lillington. I've fallen in love! Mountains! Nordic stuff! GIANTS. Some giants shrink if they swim / go in the sea, you know.
More delicious layering up of colours... Joohee Yoon (and what a fab name!)
Found this near Valentines... now THAT is a good chat up. H'oh yes. Laura Berger.
Ávtsusjvágge Valley, Northern Lapland, Sweden. Another one to add to my "cabin porn" collection.
Lake Meðalfellsvatn, Iceland. And again...
THAT is a good outfit. Hel-Looks, Nana.
Beautiful mittens... I'd hate to split them up from each other... "natural forest dyed mittens from Sweden by Klara Bothen".
Anja Louise Verdugo. More cabins... om nom nom...
Antonio Quadros, Hobbit cover! Loooove the cut out mushroom toadstool bits.
This is my sister. I like this picture lots and lots.
I liked the photo of Elk soo much that it inspired me to create the character on the left... he's called Loui, and his little sister is called Beansprout. She hates being a beansprout. And hates daffodils. And is in general, really grumpy.
Pattern created from Loui...
4 baby mice... before I froze them (back at Bosavern Community Farm).
Most of my pants, drying, here at Perranporth! This is how much on a cliff I live...
No comments:
Post a Comment