We have empty bed syndrome. Our Grandchild quota has been cut by 2/3 over night. No longer a family all in the same post code and soon enough not in the same time zone.
Peace in our duvet as the sun rises. Somewhat artificially we have arrived in late summer by mid-August. The summer we prepared for is done, over for another year. Ahead is the bonus summer, the scrag end of summer admittedly, but one where anything might happen.
Because we have had our imaginations reset by a five year old and our joy in the mundane enhanced by the wonder of two under-twos.
A quiet duvet is just the start to new adventures.
Without any planning this week is turning into a low tide kind of week. Hannah did the late evening walk and caught this beautiful image, which is exactly as it presented itself to her. This is an unused wharf,which again we rarely photograph. In fact, just like an old fisherman tale, it is the site of the ‘ one that got away’ We were here last summer with our granddaughter VV, who was visiting from Hong Kong. She,at 3,was a very diligent dog walker, taking complete care of Lola’s needs for the whole walk. This, in turn required us to be hypervigilant so no chance of a quick smartphone photo. The tide was in and the day was very hot with no shade. Something was going on in the water, there was a lot of fishy activity. We all looked intently into the water. Basking in the shade of floating seaweed we spotted a small shark or a large dog fish. Most likely the Lesser Spotted Dogfish which is common in these parts,where it is also called a Murgey. Just like fishermen, this one who got away from our photography, was larger than average. For an excited 3 year old there was no Murgey or Dogfish about the find. We had gone on a dog walk and found a shark. A Shark! At the end of the road!
These were harvested from a friend’s garden yesterday. The vibrancy of my harvestings is a reflection of the wonderful weather we’ve had in Cornwall throughout the Pandemic, that, and the green fingers of my friends Ed and Mel who are currently in Turkey, Lotus eating.
Lotus Eating fascinated me as a child, there was a TV programme, broadcast in 1972 , the story evolved around expats living on Crete. I was too young to take in the nuances of the plot, but watching the programme from a small Essex market town, I was enchanted and the glamour of Crete wormed its way into my head and has never left me.
The link above takes you to the Wikipedia page of the TV Series.
Lotus Eating has been a life long escape for me. For a long while the bookish Essex Girl that I was and am only did it with imagination. Then foreign travel became easier, and my diligent reading of books gave me a career that could facilitate actual Lotus eating. Just as my childish imagination had shaped it permanently in my head. Lotus Eating in this Essex woman’s head requires travel to anywhere in Greece or Turkey, hopefully not too touristy . Sunshine and swimming are the two essentials that the location needs to provide, I will bring a mountain of books and painting materials.
The reality of becoming my own version of a Lotus Eater has shaped me. I spend way more time imagining myself as a Lotus Eater, particularly in the brutally wet Cornish winters than I ever do actually basking in Mediterranean sunshine.
Our interior design and storage is influenced.
The whole extended family yearns to be owners of goats.
My love of rust and palimpsest probably started with that TV programme. Both are more vivid in sunshine and better preserved in a Mediterranean climate.
Lotus Eating is not, of course, expats living a hedonistic lifestyle or me reading in the sun. In fact it was only ever a myth. See link below to a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
theoldmortuary.design 