I’ve always liked ferries. There’s something romantic about a ferry trip.  When on a ferry you’re not just messing about in boats, you’re connecting with an old mode of travel on ancient routes, crossing a physical and psychological divide, taking a journey to the other side.

Some of my favourite holidays have featured ferry rides: the Scottish Islands, the Isles of Scilly, the Cyclades, Thailand. The closest I have ever come to a near death experience occurred on an illegal ‘ferry’ - travelling to an island off the coast of Malaysia in a badly stabilised converted fishing vessel crammed with young backpackers - in shark infested waters, in a tropical storm. *We really thought we were all going to die. A few years later a similar vessel went down in much the same circumstances with the loss of most on board. On the other hand, part of my honeymoon was celebrated on a ferry, from Plymouth to Santander. One day, I’d love to do the Hudson Bay area, ferry hopping.

Perhaps my fondness for ferries goes back to childhood. There are lots of them around here: the King Harry Ferry, the Bodinnick Ferry, the St Mawes/Falmouth Ferry, Torpoint.  I grew up in an area where the two largest centres of population were divided by an estuary and joined by ferries. Ferry journeys involve tide tables, timetables, waiting, huddling, the smell of the sea, the taste of salt, feeling the wind on your skin… that ferry rides are unpredictable adds to their appeal.

Until recently, though, I’d never taken the Cremyll Ferry.

It runs from Stonehouse in Plymouth (where a friend lives), across the Tamar river, to a ‘forgotten corner’ of Cornwall on the edge of the Mount Edgcumbe Estate.

Here’s the history:

….records of a crossing date back to the Norman Conquest, and Cornish mail flowed through here until 1794. The turn pike ran up the hill to Crafthole and on to Liskeard, and the toll house still stands beside the road, now, the Cremyll car park. The Edgcumbe family owned the ferry rights from 1493 until 1944, and built the Earl’s Waiting Room in the mid-19th century.

This quiet bay has witnessed Viking ships at anchor, the wrecking of the Catherine von Fleshier in 1786, and the embarkation of American troops for the D-Day invasion of 1944.

The Italianate Tower House which stood beside the boatyard was reduced to rubble by german bombers in March 1941, the same night that Mount Edgcumbe House went up in flames. Three residents died in the attack, including the ferry skipper and the engineer; after this the Millbrook Steamboat Company stepped in to help with the crossing.

On the other side, you can stroll through the grand estate grounds - where lady walkers might fancy themselves as characters in a Jane Austen novel - follow that with a cream tea in the charming Orangery -

before striking out for the wooded Rame peninsula - full of copper beech leaves at this time of year - past the fantastic Gothic folly on the point,

along the edge of the estuary beaches

to the picturesque twin villages of Cawsand and Kingsand, with pubs - for fortification - and a bus back to Cremyll for the return ferry ride.

A perfect winter day out.

Soundtrack? Cripple Creek Ferry by Neil Young, of course.

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* Ed: What is it with you? Always the sex and death thing…

Anyhow - I’m deviating - back to hobbies, obsessions and mania.

A few miles from here there is a small roadside house, the otherwise modest frontage of which has been covered entirely in shells. Around fifty years ago, the owner seized on the heinous notion of pebble dash, munged it up with traditional mosaic design, went beachcombing, and came home armed to make a statement. This house is different from the others in the terrace; the owner even spelled it out. Above the door jamb, although the colours of the shells have faded and weathered, if you look closely between the muted browns and greys, as with an Ishihara Colour Blindness Test, you can still pick out the words, ‘The House of Shells’.

The pattern is wonky, the arrangement rather amateurish and the shells are decidedly grubby now, but in its own way, this is a frontage which says, ‘I am a piece of outsider art, love me or hate me, here I am‘.

I love it - and I hope they don’t knock it down. It’s a testament to freedom of expression and eccentricity, and there are many other equally bizarre and individually unique pockets of human endeavour up and down the land. But even as you pass them and smile, don’t you ask yourself if what lies behind the choice and positioning of the hundredth gnome is not simply a channelling of excess time and energy, but something more disturbing?

Imagine the spouse. A hobby?

‘At last. Now you’re done with those bloody shells you can wipe your feet and come in for your tea.’

An obsession?

‘Shells, shells, shells, that’s all it is with him. He’s up there again, on his bloody ladder with his tub of grout, swinging his bucket of shells without another thought in his head.’

Or mania?

‘It’s a bit short notice, mother, but she wants to move again. No, she’s not pregnant. It’s the shells. Yes. We’ve found a house with a nice flat frontage, twice the size of the old one, we just need…’

Which reminds me of the Coral Castle.

As you know, I like quirky museums. When we were in Miami a few years ago, I read about a lesser known attraction on the outskirts of the city on the way to the Everglades - The Coral Castle - and one hot afternoon I decided we had to go there.

Although it draws small numbers nowadays - what’s to see? - a bunch of old rock? - where’s the shop? - the Coral Castle has been compared in scale to another testament to lost love, the Taj Mahal.

When he was twenty-six, and his sweetheart just sixteen, Lithuanian immigrant, Ed Leedskalnin, was engaged to be married. The day before the wedding, his child-bride, Agnes, called it all off. Ed never recovered from the loss. His love had turned to stone.

It is said that Ed staked a claim on his unusual coral-coloured patch of America years later, in 1936, and single-handedly spent the rest of his life sculpting and refining the entire structure of the peculiar, other-worldly habitation of the Coral Castle in almost total isolation.

The afternoon we visited, the sky was cloudless, there was no wind, and we were able to explore it virtually on our own. There were: thrones, one for him, one for her; sundials and little gardens; shaded arbours and corners which caught the sun at the perfect time; baths and grottos; it was a fortress but also a prison, open, yet oddly claustrophobic. The sculptures reminded me of the paintings of Marc Chagall - primitive representations of suns and moons - strange and haunting - and clearly echoed back to the myths and fairytales of Ed Leedskalnins childhood. It also felt oddly lifeless, like a salt mine.

Ed had dissected the chassis and mechanism of a model-T Ford to create an impressive array of levers and bits of equipment, including an oven. What struck me most forcibly, though, were two areas in particular; Ed’s living quarters, which were austere in the extreme, and an area set aside called - if I remember correctly - ‘punishment corner’ - with seats facing the wall - for his imaginary wife and child.

In some contexts, unrelenting sunshine can be as bleak as moorland gloom, and as I moved through the spaces inside the Coral Castle, it became more and more clear to me they had been created by a man in the grip of a deep, unheathly, but utterly compelling mania. Whatever else it did, the Castle saved and sustained him.

A psychologist would have a field day at the Coral Castle; to be inside it was a fascinating and moving experience.

What sparked all this off, then? Remembering stone carving? Recalling the Minack Theatre, I think. The woman who built it, Rowena Cade, was another driven obsessive with a fragmented, troubled family background. There’s something in that.

Tennessee Williams wrote some fantastic roles for older women, so it was no surprise to hear that Brenda Blethyn, one of our current leading mature female actors, had won the part of the faded Southern Belle matriarch, Amanda Wingfield, in a recent production of The Glass Menagerie. I saw it on Saturday.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the plays of ‘The Glorious Bird’ - as Gore Vidal called him - since I featured him in my undergrad dissertation. Before I took my seat, though, I did wonder if my memory of this play, written in 1944 and one of his earliest, might not turn out to be touch rose-tinted. Would it be all breathy histrionics, swooning, slow action and dated dialogue? And would BB live up that other theatrical glory - the Glorious Sheila Gish (R.I.P.) - an ‘actress’ if ever there was one - who played Amanda when I was a barmaid at the G.Theatre and sneaked in at the back?

Never fear. Of course there were histrionics, but the Director had decided to highlight the humorous element as a way through any cultural disconnects, and this worked well in the context. Brenda was perhaps a little stouter and more emphatic than your stereotypical southern belle, with nary a chiffon scarf in sight, but her solidity was strangely apt, she complemented son Tom’s restless, flyaway energy and created a powerful centrifugal force for the limping presence of her fragile daughter, Laura.

It was good. A fine night out. Ultimately, The Glass Menagerie is still staged because its themes endure. At a time in which the ability to handle mass communication, PR, HR, pitches and presentations is an essential ‘life-skill’, this play resonates.  So, too, do the cultural imperatives of the Thirties - rapid social and economic change and the need to adapt in order to survive them. Against the forces of such psychic Darwinism, Williams asks, where do the dreamers and shrinking violets go?

Writing as one who cannot cope with predictive text…

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It began well.

The record to beat was 147 Elvi.

As the moment of the attempt approached it became clear that they were a few Elvi short of a record. A woman produced an aerosol can. She ran around rustling up extra Elvi, styling hair into quiffs, spraying it, adding some sideys. But before long the possession of a good head of hair became immaterial.

The Elvis count on stage reached 170. Then it was time to sing.

Knowing the words ‘Viva Las Vegas!’ is not the same as knowing the words to Viva Las Vegas.

Even with a vivid imagination…

The attempt was ruled at 110 Elvi.

(I haven’t smiled so much in a while.)

Well, the Olympics are over. Hurrah! I don’t understand competitive sport. Never have, never will.

Now here’s an exercise in the futility and transience of human endeavour that I do understand; at least it has a sense of humour.

Tomorrow, in a pub nearby, there will be an attempt to break the world record for the most people dressed up as Elvis gathered under one roof since the last time there was an attempt to break the world record for the most people dressed up as Elvis…

What a fine excuse for a group of humans to compete, to sing, cheer, drink beer, laugh and be roundly entertained (whilst also being strangely saddened and disappointed at the same time).

‘According to the rules, you do not have to be a professional impersonator. However, you must be dressed as Elvis as he appeared in one of his films or stage shows, and you need to know the words to Viva Las Vegas.’

Can you imagine?

Since we first heard about this event, we’ve been talking, on and off, about Elvis wigs and costumes. Jnr believes we’re entering. He believes that our friend (a costume-maker) is constructing an Elvis costume, complete with spandex cape, for Dog.

Jnr has refused to be seen dead with us.

‘There will be trophies for the best hips and lips.’

Watch this space.

This weekend I went to visit an old friend. We’ve kept in touch since we were knee-high and there’s not much she doesn’t know about me, or I about her. Usually, when I visit and we have somewhere to go in the car, I drive. If I travel up by train, she’ll just hand me her car keys. We don’t explore the reason. We both know it. She’s a terrible driver (she failed her test four times). I’m a bad passenger (I cannot remain calm).

Because of the Passat debacle, currently I’m only insured as a named driver on one vehicle. This time, I decided to go by train. No driving for me, then…

Saturday went something like this:

Her: Er, which lane should I be in here?
Me: Left. That one. Left. [jabs finger at windscreen] That one.
Her: Which lane?
Me: Left. Left… THAT ONE… back there.

I needed something to take my mind off such exciting urban adventures, so I ended up day-dreaming about maps.

I’ve always found maps interesting.

When you can read them, maps reveal vivid stories about the lay (and the lie) of the land, its upheavals and settlements. I remembered two of my favourite maps: 1) the Mappa Mundi, tracing an early understanding of the wider world, and 2) Grayson Perry’s imaginary psychogeographical map, Map of An Englishman. I’m a big fan of Google Earth, too.

At one point, when my life flashed before me on a particularly tricky junction, I thought it might be fun to recreate a personal map evoking all the criss-crossing journeys I’ve taken across the U.K. I imagined a holographic version of the Tube map with separate yellow, blue or red lines (happy, sad, angry trips) and all the major landmarks and intersections raised in 3-D. The lilliput journeys of childhood, (Look, a bee! The sweetshop! A flat deadsquirrel!) would appear as tight little scribbles; adolescent forays (London, the Colston Hall… Wookey Hole - ‘lots to do whatever the weather!’ - yeah, right) would spread outwards in tentative loops. Finally, dull daily commutes, the duty visits of adulthood, trips out to ‘get stuff’, to Tesco or IKEA, would unskein in spaghetti strands, some tracking the same boring-but-necessary routes over and over again, others, the bids for escape, the holiday trips, would look like lassoes flung out across the globe in hope of snaring some sunshine.

Her: Aaaargh, I’m in the wrong lane.
Me: It’s okay, just indicate and pull across.
Her: There’s a lorry coming.
Me: Just indicate. Indicate now. Then pull… I would… [covers eyes] INDICATE!’

Maps are generally a very western thing, they signify an empirical understanding of the known universe, a secular interpretation of one’s place in it, order and control. Perhaps it was a practical joke, but I heard that one summer in York, the tourist maps were muddled up. The German version was slipped by mistake into the English speaking slots and vice versa. Tourist chaos ensued.

Her: [Car scrapes kerb] What was that? Was that the kerb?
Me: [Whitefaced, gripping the car door handle. Thinks: YES! LET ME OUT HERE] Maybe. Anyway. We’re nearly there now…

In places where maps have less meaning, like Thailand, if you try showing someone off the beaten track a map, hoping for directions, you’ll end up holding your map limply in your hand, feeling foolish, and going nowhere. The Aboriginal way of making a journey relied on songlines, or the oral retelling of important events and features on that landscape, passed down through the generations. The vast, inhospitable, uncharted Red Heart of Australia killed many a colonial explorer before the continent was finally mapped in the western way. Evidently, you can rely too heavily on maps.

My friend thinks maps are overrated.

She has her own way of getting around. Hers is a tried and tested method which has evolved over time. It involves going via parts of the city where she has lived previously, past her old places of work. The trouble with this mapless mundi is, often these landmark routes take us to our destination via places that could not remotely be considered to be en route. I might not know the city as well as I used to, but I do have enough of an overall picture in my head to sense that not everywhere can be reached via Easton and the Ashley Road. The hours she must spend…

Still, although some journeys might have taken a little longer than they could have in the most perfect of all possible universes, we weren’t in a hurry. The traffic lights gave us time for a good natter. There were some sticky moments here and there, for sure, but we reached our destinations eventually, and unscathed.

Far from driving our friendship to the edge, we managed to have a laugh about our respective batty foibles and failings, and a good time was had by all.

Other tenuous connections:

1. My friend’s husband came back from his didgeridoo weekend pleased at having won a new didge in the raffle… we were given a… er… generous demonstration of its tone…

2. I bought a moleskine notebook in the Arnolfini. The moleskine was the notebook favoured by Bruce Chatwin, author of Songlines. Apparently he swooped up a hundred of them before they ceased production.

3. We made it to IKEA and I bought four new mugs and a dish-scrubber with a sucker on the end of it. How about that?

This is the tale of a strange-looking Moth which turned up recently in the garden of a provincial town and appeared in the news.

The woman whose garden it was, had never seen a moth like it before, not one so ugly or so large. She became alarmed; the moth looked like it could even be poisonous. She went indoors, made some phone calls, and eventually tracked down a group of amateur local lepidopterists. One paid a visit and examined the moth. It was identified as a member of a prolific sub-tropical species. The lepidopterist contacted a journalist who worked for the local paper. (’ists’ often stick together, I find.)

Not very much happens in the provincial town, so the journalist drove to the garden to take a picture of the moth. It was a fine specimen of insect life, but for a tear in its wing. The journalist Photoshopped the image when he got back to the office and by the time he had finished, the moth pic was perfect.

The following day the moth had its moment in the sun. The picture appeared in the local paper alongside an article speculating about how a sub-tropical creature such as this could have made its way, against all the odds, to a provincial garden in the south of England. Experts muttered darkly about global warming, about migrant species threatening the habitat of our indigenous wildlife. Then the moth was forgotten.

But not by everybody, though. Three miles away, in an ordinary terraced house, reading the newspaper, was a woman with a guilty conscience*.

On her shelves are a substantial collection of butterflies and moths artfully pinned out under glass cases. Since childhood she has been something of an amateur entomologist and belongs to a postal club for insect enthusiasts. Her neighbours have no idea that when the postman calls and asks her to sign for a series of regular small packages, these often contain the eggs or larvae of, among other things, sub-tropical moths.

It was in this manner that the strange-looking, briefly famous moth had arrived in the provincial town. Its larva was placed in an empty aquarium, converted for the purpose to a vivarium, and hatched by the warmth of the radiator. As its wings dried, it was much admired by the woman and her daughters. They named him Waldo Jeffers III, petted him (from a distance), took snapshots of him on their mobile phones, sketched him and fed him with sugar water until he grew sleek and plump, ready for the ammonia jar, fattened for the kill.

The youngest daughter, in particular, was mesmerised by the huge, odd-looking lepidopteran, and would sneak back to watch it when her mother was elsewhere. Once, she put her hand into the vivarium and allowed Waldo to crawl onto her finger. She liked the slightly sticky sensation of his tiny, feathery-soft legs clinging to her skin. One of her prized possessions was a magnifying glass. She wanted to look at Waldo through it, up close, in detail, whist he was moving, and still alive. She didn’t want Waldo to die.

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help!,

So one day, when her mother was upstairs and her sister was in the bath, the youngest daughter fetched her magnifying glass, went to the vivarium and let Waldo fix onto her finger one last time. She lifted her hand carefully clear of the tank and pored over him. She watched his antennae scope the air for scents, she examined his mandibles and saw him clean them, she looked closer at the feathery scales on his six spindly legs and noticed them quiver. Who knows what Waldo saw, looking the other way, through the myriad lenses of his compound eye (attempted murder? certain death?), but the scrutiny spooked him. He flew away.

The youngest daughter called her mother; her sister heard and jumped out of the bath. Before long, all three of them were chasing Waldo Jeffers III around the small terraced house, until, exhausted by his efforts, he landed in the corner of the window pane in the kitchen. They were about to scoop him into a cup and return him safely to the vivarium, when Shaun - their cat - jumped up onto the window sill and swiped Waldo with his paw.

Waldo lay there fluttering, looking weak. They thought he was a gonner. He wasn’t, but his wing was torn. No good for the display case now. Disappointed with the state of her investment, the woman of the house made a snap decision, there was nothing for it but to let Waldo go. She opened the window without a second thought, and off he flew.

Up, into the cold air he went, over the rooftops, past green hedges and gates, on and up for three miles, until he saw an exotic looking camellia flower in the provincial garden and landed on a waxy leaf nearby.

What happened to Waldo Jeffers III? Who knows? Insects don’t live long. Perhaps the alarmed woman kept him for a while, in spite of his poisonous look. Perhaps he was boxed and despatched to the Ministry of Environmental Health for further study. But whatever happened to him, his destiny did not take quite the same sad turn as as that of Waldo Jeffers I or Waldo Jeffers II; no ammonia jar and glass case for him.

Waldo Jeffers III had his flight over the trees, he had his moment in the sun.

* According to the terms and conditions of sale, specimens are not supposed to be released into the wild. The entomologist’s club’s activities operate under a cloak of semi-secrecy; this is one of the unwritten rules.
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Here’s some back story from earlier in this blog.

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theriddler,

Things by Fleur Adcock

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

……………………..

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. this morning. My night had been restless and filled with disturbing dreams. At one point I was in a nightclub, walking along the tops of the furniture, oblivious to those around me (allies? enemies? which step in the story structure?) lifting the pictures away from the walls in search of hidden doors concealing batteries (?) for some hand-held device which was vital to my getting out of there (a mobile phone? a vibrator? a remote control? It was hard to tell).

The scene was a little like that early game for Macs, Myst, which I first played years ago, with dashes of Samorost*. Problem solving.

I didn’t find any batteries and I didn’t solve the problem. I just woke up, and couldn’t get back to sleep.

Fantastic sunrise, though.

*Here is a link to Samorost. If you haven’t played it before, it’s an enchanting problem solving game which won many awards when it was first developed. Keep clicking until you work out the cause and effect chain in the correct sequence (or try an online troubleshooter/cheat site). Samorost 2 is fun, too, and features ‘gnome’s’ little dog.


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Exercise, we are told, is good for the body and balm for the mind.

I’m not naturally a peppy sort of person, but I’m prepared to take advice, so, once a week, I grab a bottle of water and a purple carrimat, and I drive to a chilly outbuilding on the edge of town to take part in a dance-fit class. The music is usually an eclectic mixture of dance and pop, but today the session had a special flavour…

Linda, the woman who takes the class, is a statuesque ex-professional ballroom dancer of redoubtable stamina and co-ordination, who also happens to be something of a raconteur. Usually, we, ‘her ladies’, get a naughty story along with our pliés and push-ups; Linda knows it sweetens the pain.

The weekend just gone was a land-mark birthday for Linda. Her husband, she explained at the start of the class, bought her a nice present (’which I paid most of, but he put towards it‘) and took her for dinner (’which I paid for, but he’s going to pay me back‘) but she’d been expecting more and (’husbands being what they are‘), was feeling a bit disappointed, a bit flat.

Something cheered her up, though, she said, smiling. And at this point she pulled a packet out of her handbag and hid it behind her back. She was given a lovely present by one of her dance students. She produced it with a flourish, (’She gave me these!‘) and held out in front of her two small, sparkly, pink, cup-shaped objects, each topped with a long black tassel. Yes. Nipple tassels. Linda twirled the tassels. (’Aren’t they great? I can get them both going at once, but not in different directions. Not yet, anyway.‘)

After that, things went with a bit of a swing.

And the music? Well, if you’re in the mood…

She Works Hard for the Money
A Little Less Conversation
You Know, Pump it Up

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The Hairdresser’s Salon

MsAnn: [Already feeling like the squashy sofa is swallowing me, and bored with waiting after five short minutes, I pick up a Style magazine. Two minutes later, I find myself conforming to a well-known statistic relating to readers of women's magazines. I become quickly dissatisfied with everything: my weight, my hair style, my wardrobe, my skin-tone, my relationship, and, of course, my bad, bad attitude towards Christmas. No, Charles! I put the magazine down irritably. A woman approaches.]

Mrs: Do you mind if I sit here?

MsAnn: No, sure, go ahead. [The weak suspension on the sofa forces us into an uncomfortable proximity.]

Mrs: Are you waiting?

MsAnn: No. Well. Yes. Not for a stylist. I’m waiting for him. [Gestures at Jnr, who is having his hair cut on the other side of the room.]

Mrs: I’m waiting. They couldn’t tell me how long.

MsAnn: They seem busy.

Mrs: I don’t mind. I mean, I don’t mind how long I have to wait.

MsAnn: Oh?

Mrs: I like waiting.

MsAnn: [Thinking, why me?] Oh?

Mrs: If I sit down at home I just think, ‘Oh, I’ll just do this, or, I’ll just do that,’ and I never get to sit down.

MsAnn: Mmmn.

Mrs: I like waiting at the doctor’s, too.

MsAnn: [I'm thinking: Actually, I half-agree with this - there are always colourful wall charts at the doctor's with lists of symptoms for things I haven't thought of yet - but I'm not quite sure what to say. So I just nod, in what I hope is a friendly way.]

Mrs: Sometimes I don’t even have an appointment. I can sit there for a whole hour.

MsAnn: [There really is no correct response to this. Christ. What now? I smile wanly at the woman and...]

Fortunately, at this point, the stylist, resplendent in full make-up, approaches the squashy sofa like a vision of loveliness come alive from the pages of a magazine. She holds a cape aloft to summon her next customer. It’s Mrs.

Phew. And yet Mrs seems quite happy. Happy waiting. Happy not to be at home. She walks off chattering cheerfully to the stylist.

It occurs to me that perhaps waiting rooms are the female equivalent of ‘men in cars’.

Mmmn.

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