Saturday 5 May 2012

108. Brazil nut in a date

(It tastes a bit like chocolate)

Hello, bonjour…

All is change!

Well, I say all…
A few things are change!

Such as, I think I’m going to get a haircut (ground breaking news, I know… don’t worry, I don’t think I can bare to lose more than a couple of inches).

More excitingly, the season – summer is definitely appearing slowly, the evenings are noticeably lighter and brighter, and Hector isn’t so deathly cold to sleep in.
Many evenings up here on the cliff I’ve suddenly noticed the bright orangey pink light poking it’s head in through the common room / everything room window, and then sprinted towards said window or outside to the back of the hostel to stare at the sea. What wonderful sunsets! I wish I could record every single one of them, re-watch them over and over again with “loved ones” around me and gape in awe. Instead, I shall take photographical evidence of some and then return to my work – not forgetting to sprint about and tell all the guests that they should all head outside and watch the sun go down over the sea (with the temptation of “you might even see dolphins!”). I wonder if I’ll ever get used to these sunsets… I don’t think Phil has yet, he’s been working here 8 years and he still goes out to watch.
Another place I watched the sun disappear recently was Lizard Point; I looked after the hostel there for a few nights and the weather was gorgeous! It was certainly time to whip out the shorts for the year (I did, and now welcome back SHORTS TAN). In the evening there I would grab camera and sprint out down from the hostel to the actual point itself (it’s not far, I’m not overly athletic really…). If you’ve never visited, you should – I’d certainly man the hostel again, especially since it means I get full use of the staff flat (double bed, bathroom with shower AND bath! Kitchen area, sofa… more than the back of a van for sure).

Other things seem to have changed… back. I’m relatively excited about this, sad in other ways – for people who may be saddened – but I think excitement is good. But I shan’t go into this any more than this.

This past week or two I’ve been invaded by the Norweg’s again, they came down mostly for the annual Aberfest (this year it was stationed in Falmouth & surrounding areas, last year Brittany). Adventures were had, and we sung and danced until our throats required a bit more cider tipped down them, and our feet ached the mornings afterwards.

It was great to see so many people walking around wearing t-shirts with my design on, so hard not to leap on anyone I saw going “I DESIGNED YOUR T-SHIRT! ME!!” Instead I wandered around grinning to myself.
Annoyingly the weather wasn’t as baking as last year, but still – there’s always next year!
Lesson of the week: do not stuff a chicken drum stick and a chocolate cookie into your mouth right before the Breton’s arrive – they WILL kiss you on both cheeks, and you WILL feel like a pig. To avoid this, you should find the free food table at an earlier stage in the night. It was nice to see Mo again, though fellow Europeans Nele and Jaco were missed.
Some memorable events of the festival:
-Driving with Molly and Dan to the first night at Threemilestone, all three of us singing along to Spice Girls (Dan doing the best job, I reckon).
-Dancing with the band (Falmouth Fish) and other super folk side stage to Pentorr playing on the stage. Macarena, some version of the can-can, and head banging (!) amongst other weird and wonderful dances. I feel the dancing was made better by the fact that the space we had to do it in was so small, and there was at least 10 of us…
-Somehow almost managing to master some folk/Breton/Cornish dancing… I tried to draw diagrams of one of them, however got confused doing even that…
-Watching Dan playing with small French speaking children, traffic cones make excellent hats / trumpets / ice-cream cones for little folk. I hope he has at least 1 little Dan one day.
-Standing squashed in the crowd around the tiny stage in Chain Locker, trying to draw the people on stage but giving up due to the music being SO GOOD. Faces weren’t bad either, *pervert grin*.
-Everyone exiting Chain Locker to watch the big Bryl (mackerel god of Cornwall?) be thrown “dead” into the harbour. “Mackerel, my lovely mackerel, you make me happy, when skies are grey…” and so on. Outsiders must have been exceedingly confused, but us insiders? Na, well… no more than usual!

Oh why did it have to go so quickly?

Something I need to pursue further – geo caching.

It was never so fun doing it with Scouts, but with a small select group it’s super fun! Have found places I didn’t know existed, I may have to purchase a device that can help me with this new found game… (I even had thoughts to buy a new phone with the correct technology, but that would just be silly. I like my little dinosaur!).

HI AGAIN, this time, from a different cliff!
This cliff is just west along the coast from Tintagel (I’m in the Tintagel YHA, to be precise). Yet another view over the sea, and yet more surrounded by nature…
I quite enjoy this job at the moment, based at Perranporth YHA but sometimes “hired” out to other hostels (mostly Lands End, Lizard, and Coverack). As with working at the Lizard one I am the only person running the hostel itself, but that is barely a hard job – checking in a few people and cleaning it to make it respectable. The rest of the job? Staring out at the sea, reading a book, and painting! Not to forget nattering to the “inmates” (2 Swiss girls at the moment, and just had an older German walker woman in who asked for a mug of warm water… she was most bizarre. Complained (in the nicest way possible) about how bad the water tastes in Cornwall (it’s true, it doesn’t exactly taste great) and then pretty much forced 15p into my hand for letting her have the drink of warm water. Strange. Strange! But I like it.

I’ve driven a relatively long way to get here today, all the way from Carn Euny (an old iron age fort situated somewhere between St Just & Penzance). Am not so used to driving such a distance, especially not when I have snot constantly dribbling out of my face. It was a good time had there, though.

Yesterday I picked up Arnold from Falmouth and met Martin & Sophie, drove to St Just, went to a BBQ in the rain, then to Ben’s home (next to Carn Euny – literally! It’s pretty much his garden! Amazing little place down some of the best green grass Cornish country lanes / tracks you could ask for. Some folks hate driving those lanes, but I don’t like the big roads… I suppose it’s similar to my dislike of big built up areas…). At Ben’s we drank, nibbled, and played the Game of Thrones board game… this was fun enough, however the box says it takes 2-4 hours to play. No. Not with these chaps. Sorry if you’re reading this you lovely manly sorts, however you were dithering and dathering far too much! It’d be much nicer and less boring to play if it was faster paced. I reckon Sophie agrees (and it turns out the chaps have decided that they should NEVER play board games with girls again).
Waking up this morning, the weather was gawwjus! Perhaps a little too fresh (due to the pissing down with rain the day before) but good non the less. Boiled eggs & soldiers for breakfast in the sun, before exploring the garden (poly tunnel and all!). Time was spent peering into the pond at newts and tadpoles and nymphs).

But yes, now I am here at Tintagel. Tomorrow perhaps I’ll wander into the town to acquire some food as all I have to survive on are 3 bananas, some chocolate, and some throat sweets – didn’t have time to dash past Perranporth to pick up already existing supplies from there.

The girl who greeted me here (support manager or something, the more official version of me really! Working where work is needed in the South West YHA zone) was nice, we had a good gossip about the SW YHA’s (always fun) and it turns out that she, like me, has no real permanent address. We’re both tramps, of a sort! Though she is the sort of tramp who likes to wear nice girly dresses, cowboy boots, and fur coats where as I prefer tucking my green stripy trousers into my lairy orange/pink socks and shoving them into my “hippy clogs”, throwing on the normal green dress over this all.
Ahh… it’s good to have an actual room of my own to live in… though not as big and spacious as the staff accommodation at Lizard, I prefer this – I have my one room with tiny kitchen area, table (A DESK! A DESK!! This is really exciting you know), chairs (including a comfy soft one), bunk bed, sink, and chest of drawers. And a radiator which I have on low, so I can dry my hankie in between uses (yes, minging, disgusting, etc… but the amount I’m currently blowing my nose – NECESSARY!!).
Ahh! I like this space. It even has windows looking out to sea.
Why are the German girls making seal noises?

Being hungry for a slightly elongated period of time is most odd… due to my lack of food (supplies mentioned above) I got hungrier and hungrier. To some folks the limited food choice would be fine… after all, none of the things are boring or disgusting, however I do enjoy a variety! After a breakfast of a banana, a sweet biscuit, and a small chunk of chocolate I peered into the fridge and spied a huge pork pie and a mostly unfinished carrot cake. Pork pie! Carrot cake! Ohh, 2 foods I find totally scrummy! I prayed that they belonged to the two Swiss girls who had previously left, but was later saddened to find that they in fact belonged to the German hitchhiking girl… and she took them with her. I managed to hunt down a left behind pack of Thai rice noodles and ate a tiny bowl of them plain.

Definitely not enough food.
The decision was made that I had to wander along the cliff top into Tintagel itself, although I wasn’t terribly in favour of this decision due to my current icky snotty cold it was preferable over being a lazy shit and driving Hector over the millions of huge potholes on the track down.
Not a bad walk, rather pleasant really! It surprised me how silent the sea was – at Perranporth you’re always fully aware how close the big blue is, but here it patiently paws at the cliff bottom rather than gnaws and slaps at it. I wish I had enjoyed the walk more, however I felt so shoddy that I was doing the head down lope, almost zombie style. Coming to a wooden style I noticed a big fat pheasant, though he didn’t notice me; sadly I didn’t have any form of shooting device with me (not that I own one), and plus it’s out of season… and the National Trust may have killed me, also. So instead I shot him with my camera, closer and closer until he eventually decided to stop trusting me and flew away down into the valley.
Reaching the path at the bottom I was surrounded by the normal flow of tourists towards the castle, many of them complaining of the hill (me storming off past them, on a mission!). Reaching top I ignored the fact I was actually panting a bit and stomped off along, deciding upon a whim to make use of my National Trust membership and go have a look about The Old Post Office (ignoring my, by this point, ever grumbling stomach).

Flashing my flimsy card I wandered in with sketchbook and pencil in hand, drawing bits and bobs here and there and generally taking five times longer to look about the place than any other visitors. Most conversations I overheard had something to say about the state of their knees and how they couldn’t make it up or down the stairs in the building (steeper and more uneven than most modern stairs it’s true, but surely back in the day middle age and even old age folks walked up and down them? People are in some ways getting less hardy. In a LOT of ways… says she… who could have easily satisfied her stomach by the slightly lengthy task of catching that pheasant but instead chose the easier task of going to the shop… next time, pheasant! Watch out!

The property is interesting enough, it’s just an old house really… seems the post office part of it seems to have been turned into a shop. Originally built somewhere around Medieval times it has over time morphed into something slightly different to the initial thatched roof (not certain about the roof fact, but it’s likely). The most appealing part of the whole thing is definitely how it looks from the outside, all higgledy-piggledy with a wavy spine to the roof and windows at all different levels. I certainly wouldn’t mind living there with a few little modern updates (one being sealing the gaps round the windows!).
The fact which tickled my fancy the most would be the, well… I guess it’d be sort of like a female dormitory.
It was a small room just off of one of the bedrooms which was only accessible by a small steep slate ladder – this was to supposedly keep men out of the “shelf room” and away from the women and girls. This was not an uncommon thing to happen in houses, and is how older unmarried ladies were “left on the shelf” as they say.

By now I was starting to feel rather waif like (impossible for me in reality, perhaps… but I certainly felt it!) so I finally left the building and shuffled up the road to the little Spar shop.

FOOD.
Having previously told myself not to hunger buy (similar to hangover buying – where you buy only things that you want, generally things of a less healthy nature) I managed to buy a lot of tinned goods, a cucumber, fruit juice, butter (salted! Mmm), and CRUMPETS. Annoyingly these things put together weigh a fair load (unsurprising, really) but I pretty much sprinted back down the hill then up the other side again with some sort of energy which only appeared possibly due to the now in sight reality of eating.

Getting back onto the coast path I slowed down, the warmth from the sun reflecting off of the ground was nice… so comfy… it’d be so nice right now to find a little patch of heather and curl up on it, have a nap… no. Must carry on. I pondered upon the thought of sleeping on the ground, wondering if it was my body telling me that I was actually dying of hunger and that if I was to die I should at least do it some place with a good view.

Getting back to the hostel, after saying hello (the greetings coming out in strange dry squeaks) to passing walkers, I collapsed into my room and managed to cook myself a tin of (urgh) tinned Macaroni cheese. I should have learnt by now that this stuff is actually really rather disgusting, but somewhat addictive at the same time. But it seemed like a good idea in the shop (so perhaps I failed a little on the hunger buying issue).
Eating was followed by curling up in bed and dying (in the sleeping sort of way) for a while before some early newcomers arrived and I took pity on them and let them in.
Supper was 2 crumpets with the normal bucket load of butter, diluted (to balance out my dehydration caused by epic snotting) juice, and a Bounty bar which I was able to purchase with the change from one of the new Swiss guests (she refused to let me give her it, so I decided to cheer my stomach up).

So that was today.

Probably not really very interesting, but I liked how much more I felt “in touch with nature” when I felt like I was dying of starvation.
Please never let me be reincarnated into a person in a famine threaded third world country. I’d be so terrible at it.

The hostel feels very old fashioned tonight, females in their dorm one end of the building and males at the other end… right now has started up a chap playing the recorder / whistle in the living area / common room. Now… will they all help me with the chores before they check out tomorrow? Wouldn’t that be nice…


Guess what? I haven’t worn ANY underwear for a whole 2 days now… it’s rather liberating.


Ahh… there is not anything much better (well…) than sitting in a comfy chair, eating crumpets (the more expensive, fluffy sort…) absolutely smothered in salted butter (again, the more expensive, creamy sort…) with ones eyes shut (to make sure all senses are diverted to the tasting of the deliciousness). To make things better, I’m watching “Bright Star” (again) – a film about Keats, full of lovely girly romance. When I get older I’ll be great at being a reclining fogey.

23rd April. Butter cooked popcorn drizzled with golden syrup. Yes.

5
th May. Sat in Arnold’s room watching him pack up the remainder of his belongings. This room certainly looks odd with nothing in it (big damp patch on the wall). “Haha, you have a tit on your head… GET IN THE BACK OF THE VAN… ohh Mr Happy Tape, don’t need you anymore…” that was a quick sample of what he has just been saying.

This early afternoon I’ve been researching myself online, seeing where I can find myself. Here are some of the more arty farty related results:


http://www.bexbourne.co.uk/
 - my official website! As per usual needs updating…

http://www.relegacy.co.uk/bex.html
- I’m up in this gallery in Plymouth.

http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/tag/bex-bourne/
- an (online?) magazine noticed me at New Designers last year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/capn_bex/
- not updated overly recently Flickr page…

http://society6.com/capn_bex
- my most updated area, Society6.

http://weheartit.com/entry/22449536
- someone likes me on this copy of Pinterest!

http://pinterest.com/sunni_smith/my-life-my-lover-my-lady-is-the-sea/
- mentioned on Pinterest, too… exciting stuff…

Oh wasn’t that exciting.


Now, some bits of other peoples work…

Found this via a friend, but couldn't find where it was originally from! :(


Tobias Tovera, nice tide lines!


Leah Flores via Society6


Petter Almgren, gotta love a bit overkill sun.


Lan Truong, simple.


Dadu Shin fashion illustration.


Little tiny elbow / general fixing patches!


This sounds like a wonderful event, I follow the blog of Rima Staines... perhaps I'll go...