Life in the West: March to early May 2018

What have I been doing all this time? I haven’t done much studio work, which has put me into a very dark mood at times. Not that I haven’t had the opportunity – I somehow haven’t had the heart – I don’t know why, I have had a bad case of the ‘blues’! My dear friend Mary, who visited us from Kent a couple of weeks ago pointed out that I have had a lot on my plate, and a lot on my mind, and that maybe there just wasn’t the space to think about making new work. I suppose she’s right: when I add up the hours I spend on other things in the day, and when I think about the things I have had to do recently, there hasn’t been much space for creative ideas. I’m hoping this will change soon.

So what have we been doing? March was very cold, but when we had a fine day we spent some time on the waste ground opposite the house, clearing masses of brambles and nettles away. The pond is very silted up, too much for us to clear by hand, so that’ll have to wait, and it also needs a new liner, so it’s not a priority at the moment. But it was good to be working outside, rather than being cooped up indoors at the tail-end of winter. I have also been working on the garden. Having decided that I’d reinstate a ‘lawn’ I spent quite a few days clearing roots and stones, raking the soil and trying to get a flattish area to take the grass seed. I think I sowed the seed just after Easter, but the weather has been so cold and wet, it’s taken quite a while to establish.

At Easter we treated ourselves to an evening out to see the Man-Engine at Geevor Mine. This is a piece of performance art devised to celebrate the mining community: it’s a travelling show of a huge man-powered puppet of a miner, accompanied by a story adapted from the diary of a miner in the early 20^th century.

The Man-Engine, lifted with a JCB and operated by performers on the ground

We decided to see the evening performance, and thought that, as parking might be tricky, we’d leave the car at Botallack and walk the half-mile along the cliff path, counting on a full moon to see us back to the car safely. Best laid plans, as they say…
The moon became obscured by thick cloud, and although that section of path is quite wide, we had a tricky time of it, as it’s very rough underfoot! There was some ambient light, and using the torch on my phone we managed to negotiate the huge puddles and ruts that we’d taken note of on our walk earlier. Arriving home later, the moon sailed out to greet us from the mass of cloud!
We’d offered to help marshall the Gravity Buggy-racing at Tregeseal Hill on Easter Monday, so we were up early putting on the layers, ready for another long, cold stand-around. As it happened, the rain cleared away, and the event ran a dry course, which was brilliant. The entries ranged from the basic to the highly-engineered, with some wild ideas thrown in which looked as if they’d never last the course.
The cake buggy was easily the most impressive. The least aero-dynamic, it survived three heats, coming to a sad but impressive end on the fourth heat when it hit the straw bales at the finish line, soared up into the air and over the barricade, spectacularly hurling (real) cake everywhere – bloody brilliant!

Real (vegan) cake – tons of it! Children were not allowed to eat it!

The following week seemed a bit quiet after that. I had a meeting to prepare for, and various jobs to do, Pete was re-routing the electrics in Bedroom 4, and replacing floorboards. At the weekend he went off to Kent to collect new doors and windows, leaving me a small quiet space to contemplate why I was so blocked with my work. There was no answer. I just didn’t want to work! But I did finish the design for the mural on the barn, and I painted that during the dry spells.At the end of the month our friends from Kent came to stay for a few days. We haven’t seen them since last year, and it was lovely to catch up. We visited Tremenheere Sculpture garden, which is magical, and spent a day in St Ives (each time we go there it is sunny!)

Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens

Not having friends and family around now has left a big hole, and it takes a long time to make new and lasting friendships. This is probably part of my problem: whenever I was blocked before I could talk to other artist friends and something would always come up…now that support network isn’t there yet
The May Bank holiday weekend came and went, gloriously warm – followed by another week of changeable, chilly weather. Last Sunday we were having breakfast when we saw a cow at the end of the lane.

Pete went out to head her off while I called the neighbouring farmer, and between us we managed to corral her back into a field, after she’d knocked down a wooden prop to the owner’s chicken run and generally messed about – silly things, cows.

A few weeks ago I canvassed our neighbours about starting a book club, and the Dowran Women’s Book Club had its inaugural meeting on Thursday evening. There are six of us so far – maybe there’ll be more, but everyone seemed to welcome a chance to meet up, and we’ve given the local Library a list of books. Our next meeting will be early June, if the library can source the first book for us in time.

It’s raining again today.

The new grass is coming along nicely, a very bright green, and most of the plants have settled in. Pete has put the new small window in Bedroom 4, and I’m waiting for the weather to clear so that I can paint the garage doors and our new sign. Onward and upward!

End Feb/ beginning March Snow Days 2018

I wasn’t going to write another blog until we had got well into March, but the past week has been breathtaking. Blizzards, ice and Storm Emma, racing across the country from East to West, disrupting daily lives and reminding us all about climate change and the increasing extremes of weather to which we’re slowly becoming exposed.

Wednesday 28 – Kent had already received plenty of snow when our share arrived as I began work in the studio on Wednesday morning. Within a couple of hours the hamlet was transformed into a world of white.

Despite the blizzard warnings I had to get out and take a look for myself. I wasn’t disappointed. I walked along the old river bed at the bottom of our hill, disturbing pairs of Oyster Catchers who had come to shelter on the still-flowing stream. The gorse and hawthorns lining the way were weighed down by layers of snow – the freezing wind transforming everything into a Narnia-landscape.

In Narnia

Thursday 1st March – After another extremely cold wind-shrieking night the world seemed calm in the morning, and I thought it was worth going out again, for a short walk around Bartinney. The hill was blocked with snow, and the bridle paths were heavy going (they’re rough at the best of times), being covered with a deep layer of snow that hid all obstacles.
The walk stretched out as I explored different paths, taking more photos, and eventually coming back round to the Sancreed road, which was fairly passable, unlike the roads where we are.
I took photographs of the snowdrifts on the hill, and watched our neighbours surfing down the hill. The fun way to travel when you don’t have a sleigh!
  

Friday was a miserable day – the snow on the roads had thawed overnight, but the air was freezing, leaving a thick layer of clear ice on the road outside. I stayed indoors.

The thaw continued, and Saturday was fairly bright. I went into Penzance for shopping, and it felt strangely exhilarating, after days of silence and slowness and cold, to be driving along: to be moving at speed.
The sea front at Newlyn was littered with pebbles and torn-up seaweed and Kelp. Foraging gulls rose protesting from the piles of uprooted material laying on the path and grassy areas as walkers disturbed them. Still very cold, I realized, even though I was walking briskly, and I dipped into the gallery to check out the new exhibition, Hummadruz, and get a coffee!

Hummadruz is an exhibition that brings together the magical elements of Cornwall’s present and past. Paintings and prints by Ithell Colquhon, who I discovered a few years ago, not realising at the time, her deep connection with this part of Cornwall. Magical talismans, performance, geology and pre-history, ritualistic objects and digital spells… it’s a corrective to the busy and pragmatic tourism that is so essential to the life of this part of Cornwall.
Coming in to the gallery from the cold stone-littered paths, with seaweed hanging from fence rails, the exhibition seemed like a natural extension of my thoughts.

Newlyn promenade littered with pebbles and seaweed

Painting – Ithell Colquhon

Later – I had to walk again, this time to one of my favourite places, the place where Spring always comes early. I parked at the top of the valley and walked to the cove, noting the light, the birdsong, the absence of snow, except for little patches here and there, tucked under a wall, or a hedge. The river was in full spate, but it had a different quality – it leaped and sparkled; where it dropped at each granite step, it seemed to be fighting its way up again, playfully, rather than rushing in a torrent to the cove. The sea, as it came into view, was luminous. But it was cold at the cove, there were thin sheets of ice on the rock pools, and lowering clouds.
Unexpectedly, as I walked back up the valley, the sun came out, and transformed the whole place into Spring. There are old hawthorns and willows lining the banks of the river, and in that golden light they glow with wonderful colours: purples, green-greys, bright greens. The birds were singing: I saw a bullfinch, chaffinchs, robins, tits…

the Reed Pond

I walked round to the reed pond, which is an old reservoir that held the water that ran the big wheel for the mine. Sat there for a while, amazed at the colour, and the difference between this day, and Wednesday. It didn’t seem possible.
Sunday – Pete took a day off, and we walked again. This time from Botallack to Pendeen Light. We were well dressed for the cold, and luckily for rain, because at the lighthouse the weather closed in around us, and lashed with rain. We made our way back to Geevor for a pasty (well-earned, we thought) and waited out an increasingly wet afternoon.

Here the spoil heaps from the mine leak out minerals that stain the cliffs

Sometimes we talk about our move here, and question ourselves. We’ve moved away from our family, and miss them, and our old friends, but what would life have been like had we stayed in Kent? We will always have these questions, and they’re unanswerable. But there is a variety and a life to this landscape that wasn’t available to us before, and it’s something we can share and communicate.

Going West: January 2018

Well – here we are in the New Year, and well in to our second year at Jacks House. Christmas came and went, with visits from children, friends and neighbours – an opportunity to slow down, to think about things other than the house and all the jobs that need to be done.
 The kitchen dresser we ‘up-cycled’ was ready for Christmas, and looked very nice, brightening up a sometimes-dark corner of the kitchen. We have other bits of furniture lined up for similar treatment, when we have a moment.
The weather was so poor that we were pleased to huddle by the fire and do very little except be sociable. (And what is Christmas about, if not that?) But we did manage a few days out walking. New Year’s Eve was quite memorable, battling 50 mph gusts along the coast path from Lands End to Sennen, and watching the sea roaring up and over the cliffs and the harbour wall.

It passed all too quickly, and we were soon back to sorting out a plan-of-action for 2018. Top of our list this year is to renovate the fourth bedroom and sitting-room, so that friends and family can stay in privacy and comfort. But before beginning that, just a few small jobs that had to be finished: the floor tiles in the studio (Pete), and sorting through as yet unpacked boxes (me). Jobs that neither of us looked forward to with any enthusiasm, but that distracted us from the bad weather!

The next bright day found us walking from Lands End to Nanjizal – in the opposite direction along the coast. It was quite a muddy wet walk in places because we’d had so much rain since New Years Day – and where the coast path ran uncomfortably close to the cliff edge we had to pay particular attention: all round the Cornish coast sections of coastline have been radically changed this winter because of the succession of storms, the gales and the rain.

       

It was a lovely walk in bright sunshine – nearly back to base, we made the acquaintance of the Lands End Cat.

 

In mid-January we went along to a meeting of the Ocean Pride renovation group, curious to know what will be involved in restoring this iconic fishing vessel. She was built in 1919, in Newlyn, and owned and operated by a succession of fishing families before ending her days high and dry on the banks of the Rother in Rye. The Ocean Pride has historic status, being ‘the only Peakes-built counter-stern lugger  left in the country’. She has now been brought back to Newlyn http://www.oceanpride.org.uk/News#OPhome051217
where she will be rebuilt and have a new life as a training vessel for apprenticeships, and for the community. What an inspiring project!

We’ve now begun swimming twice weekly, in the comfort of a private pool which we share with a few others. How lovely it is to be swimming again! I’m not a strong swimmer but the exercise is just wonderful! It will do us both good, and make us stronger – and we need to be, to be able to do the work that we set ourselves.

One other big job on our agenda for 2018 is to clear the overgrown land opposite our house, and on the first sunny day we had after New Year, we managed to get out there and start clearing brambles and nettles, and the detritus that accumulates on unused plots of land.

We managed two good days and then the weather closed in. Since then we’ve had a couple more: we’ll just keep snatching those fair-weather days until we finish the job. There’s a nice-sized pond that is perfect for a few ducks, although we’ve been told by more than one person that ‘ducks make such a mess!’ Alternatively we could keep chicken, but our neighbours have chicken, and we enjoy their eggs. Perhaps geese? But they’re quite noisy apparently. One daughter says that pigmy goats will make short work of the brambles and weeds, that’s very tempting! Our other daughter likes the idea of a pig…or even two…Lots to consider!

By the third week in January we were feeling the January blues, mostly because of the continual fog and rain that we get so much of here. On the one clear day we had, I spent a couple of hours in one of my favourite coves – trying to clear my mind and begin to think about painting again. The tide was a spring tide, and the waves were pretty huge, but at low tide I could scramble across the rocks and explore the rock-pools and the local geology.

Bathing Pool

Priest Cove is marked everywhere by the residue of its mining history, huge blasted boulders striped with veins of quartz and iron cover the shore around Cape Cornwall, and at low tide the adits and caves can be accessed, although it’s unwise to do so unless you’re very aware of the dangers, and very fit. I admire them from the outside, but I wish I was more informed about what I am looking at! As it was a chilly day, I’d put plenty of layers on, and became quite warm, climbing over the rocks. As I made my way back to the cove I was congratulating myself on not slipping (I had several small accidents last year). Then down to the cove came two women, one quite elderly, who proceeded to strip down to swimsuits and plunge into the bathing pool! I was so envious; of their ability to slip into the cold water so easily, and of their ease in their surroundings. I was reminded that I’m still very much an ‘incomer’.