weekending

This weekend we swapped our rural spot for urban Brighton, staying in the home from home that belongs to friends while they stayed at ours. We've been doing swaps for a few years now and it works perfectly. Only an hour's drive away, it's as welcome a change as any fancy hotel. Simply stepping out of our square little house and into their long, elegant terrace makes us live differently for a few days and allows for a type of relaxation that has everything to do with the small things. The certain pleasure of corridors. A cat again. Excellent radios in every room. Walking to a shop. More than anything, though, is just being away from those little obligations that call from your own home.

Our days moved happily and just slowly enough. We caught up with local friends, created a number of Lego magnificences, raced motor boats on the pier and wandered the narrow lanes of the old town. Two Easter egg hunts yielded Joel a full basket of eggs. I ate a lot of cinnamon buns. The local bakery is famous for its hot-cross buns but I'm a raisin hater and once you've picked the raisins out of a bun it no longer holds much pleasure.

There was a Sunday lunch at the cottages where I felt such fury for one of my extended in-laws that I actually shook throughout my body. It was an interesting moment in the middle of a maelstrom. I've never been as happy to get back to that comfortable house as I did that day. 

And then there's coming home. To a lovely bottle of wine; a fine wooden raft to float on the stream and the new buds and blossoms that have opened in our absence. All's well etc. 

dreams of flying

I have set up house in the hollow trunk of a giant redwood.

My bed is a mat of pine needles. Cones drop their spirals

on my face as I sleep. I have the usual flying dreams.

But all I know when I wake is that this bark is my vessel

as I hurtle through space. Once, I was rocked in a cradle

carved from a coast redwood, its lullabies were my coracle.

I searched for that singing grove and became its guardian.

There are days when the wind plays each tree

like a new instrument in the forest-orchestra.

On wild nights mine is a flute. After years of solitude

I have started to hear its song. I lie staring at the stars

until the growth rings enclose me in hoops - 

choirs of concentric colours, as if my tree is remembering

the music of the spheres. And I almost remember speaking

my first word, how it flew out of my mouth like a dove.

I have forgotten how another of my kind sounds. 

The Treekeeper's Tale - Pascale Petit

break

It was another brief weekend at the cottages. A perfect pair of spring days with a sudden warmth that had me stripping off my layers in disbelief. Arriving late morning, we unpacked and ate a hasty make-do sort of lunch before heading out and up to walk the forest tracks to the ridge of hills that give us a favourite view over the area. The snow layer has been slow to go so the ground was surprisingly muddy. Joel soon regretted his decision to mountain bike and there was not a little bartering about who would push the bike on the steep sections. Back home, in front of the fire, a few slices of intensely lemony drizzle cake with a good thick crust of sugar made the efforts worthwhile, and eased the hour or two until the grown ups reclaimed the evening.  

I woke the next morning to silence as the boys had slipped next door to have breakfast with John's mother. Cup of tea in hand and a stack of old Country Living magazines weighing down the bed covers, I listened to the birds calling happily through the window until the light forced me to get up, and get out my camera. It was a day of rainbows, scattered through the house and briefly cresting the distant trees. Football and more cycling, this time on the flat, before we had to pack up and make the journey home. The grind of unpacking made more palatable by the sheer pleasure of knowing we'd each be sleeping in our own beds with all the familiar sounds of home. 

la mer

On Sunday, John and I were thrown an unexpected couple of hours alone. As Joel disappeared on a hunt for flints with his visiting Italian uncle, we stood bewildered by what to do. Desperate for air after the celebrations of the night before, but away for the weekend without our walking boots, we struck out for the sea. 

Fiercely cold and intensely bright, it was a perfect day for a stomp along the promenade. The sea dazzled and the wind blew strong but - oh joy and pleasure - it miraculously blew behind us each way. So my long coat and untamed hair moved smoothly around me and we moved swiftly along together; discussing, looking and breathing in all that good air.

There are some days just made for fish & chips and this was one of them. Hurrying the short steps from our favourite fish restaurant to beach with our paper wrapped food, we settled on the shingle and dived in. Eating hastily, gloriously burning fingers and mouths, we stared in companionable silence at the surf and the gulls scudding and darting over the waves.  Denise's post beautifully captures how the sea can heal and settle. I've lived near the coast on and off for years but when living away it's the shift and swell and empty horizon that I crave. 

Refreshed and restored we retraced our steps, more slowly now, back towards the cliffs and to the cottage, where a ring of flints were joined by two perfect shells. It was a good day. 

rich rewards

There was bunting. There was fizzy stuff. There was lovely food and more wine and warm sun and presents. The crostata passed muster. All in all there was the stuff needed for John to have a happy birthday. Surreal moments included the assembled family stumbling their way through a deceptively difficult Italian children's tune about bells that Nonna is determined Joel will learn, with the reward that when he does 'we can move on to a lovely song about fruit'. Cricket played with sticks that shortened after each stroke. Dogon the sweet natured greyhound sighing and groaning with thwarted ecstasy at the chicken bones just out of reach.

I got lumbered with the washing up so rewarded myself with wine to sip after each water change. And since Dogon was my kitchen companion, he finally received his own reward for patience beyond the call of duty and had a little plate of meaty joy.

Lastly, coffee and eton mess and a bit of a relax in the warmth of the early evening sun. A gentle way to contemplate the fact that another year has passed.

travellers' tales

On Friday night, I slipped out of the cottage to listen to Colin Thubron in conversation with Paul Theroux, as part of the Charleston Festival. Discussing their respective new travel books, the similarities and differences between their motivations and methods were revealing.

The impetus to travel comes from a similar feeling that the world 'out there' is inherently more interesting than home and offers a bracing corollary to the writer's desk. Both men prefer to travel alone. For Thubron, however, the impulse to travel and choice of destination arise from a more complex and internally generated desire. Theroux takes a more pragmatic approach that stems from a need to see and to find out about the world. Neither carries more than a notebook.

As I listened, I considered what travelling without a camera would mean to me. And I realised that I 'look' differently with a camera in my hand. Seen through a lens, the world tends to distill to the elusive and the incidental: a moment, a colour, a pose, a shape, a texture. To catch what my eye sees reminds me what I value and adds depth to my memories rather than simply acting as a substitute for memory.

So the shadows on a tent roof, bunting fluttering in the darkening sky and the impressionistic blur of a flower bed at dusk evoke memories of a cool glass of sparkling wine, sipped in shivery haste amidst the blooms as house-martins swooped overhead. And a starlit welcome back to the cottage and the comfort of fresh mint tea and a very hot, very unseasonal but very necessary, hot-water bottle.

forest getaway

There is another little house we visit regularly, a tiny forest-enclosed cottage belonging to John's family. With no TV or mobile reception it offers a welcome step away from normal life. And that's where we were this weekend. Breakfast is early for the boys, before they take a walk to look for flints. I prefer to eat alone, a little later, after I've wandered through the garden to see what's happened overnight. A new set of blooms or piece of pottery unearthed by an industrious rabbit, perhaps.

Later, some football will be played, bikes ridden and more walks taken through the forest. The piano will get a workout and tea with cake will be eaten.  For the grown-ups, the day ends with a quiet supper, some reading and a nightcap. 

It does us good to take time away together and makes returning home, to our own beds and our own lives, seem so much more enticing!

reasons to be cheerful (part 3)

Rainbows. Fleeting and elusive, revealing the ultimate beauty and complexity of light, they seem like such a gift. I remember my 12th birthday, walking home from school with friends as a double rainbow appeared directly over our heads.  We stood awhile in awed silence, arms around each other. 

So here's to summer days making rainbows with sprays of water and hunting them down in sudden summer showers.