To those reading this in sunnier climes than Dear Old Blighty, you ought to know there was a time – it seems a long time ago now – when Britain had summers. This hasn’t happened for a while and this year has been no exception.
The Gordon-Smith troop gave Cornwall the once-over this year. It actually did stop raining long enough to register but there is a reason why the countryside is so beautifully lush and green. Plenty of people have written about Cornwall; here’s one of the reasons why.
Gorgeous, isn’t it? It’s Mullion Cove, near the Lizard. We stayed in Carbis Bay, near St Ives of cat fame. (“As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sacks and in each sack were seven cats…” etc) The reason why there were so many cats in St Ives is that the upstairs rooms in this predominantly fishing village were used to store nets and sails and mice loved nibbling away through the ropes. It was biological warfare up there. So much so, there was – ages ago – an official cat nurturer who rejoiced in the sobriquet of “Pissy Willy”. This was your basic, Victorian-style neutering where a couple of bricks and a tom-cat with a pained expression featured. Apparently Willy also manufactured ice-cream; and was never known to wash his hands. I mean, it makes you think twice about the nut sundae, doesn’t it!
My holiday reading was Louise Penny. I had the pleasure of meeting Louise and her husband, Michael, a couple of years ago, and we got on like a house on fire. Gosh, she’s a good writer. She brings such a sense of place to her stories that I’m sure I could find my way round the fictional village of Three Pines. Gamache, her detective, is such a nice bloke to spend time with as well, that you feel, by the end of the book, that you’ve made a friend.
St Ives is, of course, known for Art. There’s lots of hobby painters - it’s so picturesque that it makes you long for a paint-brush - but real artists live/lived there too. The most famous is the sculptor, Barbara Hepworth. She had a studio in St Ives with a garden attached. The garden is fascinating. It’s fairly small but full of these amazing sculptures that are positioned against the plants and the settings she chose. I can’t honestly say I’m a huge fan of abstract art, but I fell in love with that garden. It’s interesting, too, that her sculptures are so easy to copy – many a town centre is disfigured by its pointless obligatory lump of Hepworth-style Art – but the real thing has got life and magic all of its own.
Across from Barbara Hepworth’s house is the old Palais de Dance. It’s been unused as a dance-hall for years and now, empty and silent, it’s used as a store-room for Hepworth’s sculptures. Some of the figures in the garden look like Easter Island figures and it’s odd to think of those stone giants waiting on the dancefloor. There’s a story in there somewhere; stone music to breath them into life. Maybe – in the story – they are dancing but their life runs on such a different scale than ours that we can’t see them move. Rather like the kids in the morning!
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