First it's your parents........

Is there no-one in my family that can act their age? enough dealing with the kids; you expect your octogenarian parents to set an example although I don’t know why. Me, I take any opportunity going to spend free time catching up on sleep or laying around with a book. I have to force myself to be active. The only term in today’s language that I’m really drawn to is ‘chilling out’. It makes dossing about seem infinitely more acceptable. I work full-time at an age when I should’ve been rescued from such purgatory….paying the price of being a feminist for all those years. I swim 3 or 4 times a week and seem to spend a lot of time driving from here to there and meeting myself on the way back. I’m entitled to relax so why don’t my mother and father feel the same?

My mum is not too bad but must be thoroughly exhausted by my dad who likes to have ‘a project’. Not that he ever uses this terminology. He’s just always looking for the next big thing and an accompanying excuse. It used to be my son who offered all the opportunities for an active life. Now he’s grown up, they’ve moved on to my eleven year old grandson: kite-flying, tree houses; go-karting. Eighty-three years old and he’s go-karting after a round of golf! Then wondering why he’s tired. Re-furbishing the house which is always immaculate; re-painting walls that are already pristine; painting portraits of the village community; and changing the bolt on the upstairs’ bathroom door.

That last one doesn’t sound too energetic. As long as you don’t manage to lock yourself inside. It’s a wonder my mother heard him; sitting downstairs engrossed in her embroidery, it’s a wonder she chose to. He was definitely trapped but made an escape by clambering out of the bathroom window onto the flat roof. Mother was dispatched to the garage to locate and carry back a ladder which she duly propped against the front of the house in order that he could clamber down. Can I just remind you they’re 80 and 83? ‘Your mother has a lot of trouble these days with her arthritis’ he says in passing. ‘Some days she has a real problem mixing the cement’.

Digital identities: it's too late to stop now

Before joining something such as Match.Com, it’s possible to have a free perusal of the folk available in your region. OK; so you have to extend your immediate area to a radius of about 9000 miles to make it interesting but there are some quite nice looking, reasonably sane sounding potential partners out there. As I suspect I’m possibly a little difficult (which is a euphemism for mouth works prior to brain engagement), but not that strange, I assume that, whilst there’s likely to be some odd folk around, most onliners will be in the similar age bracket where it’s difficult to meet other free spirits. Let’s face it, you know no more about someone you might meet in a bar than those souls out there in the ether. Not that I go to bars. Further, my children, or one in particular, is always telling me that everyone I already know is weird. The trouble is that once you’ve parted with money, all the decent looking people disappear from cyber space and you’re left struggling. I gave it all up as a bad idea; and now find that it’s less expensive and taxing to sit tight and wait for your past to catch up; which, if you have a digital identity, it will.

I was contacted by Bob.

I first knew Bob when I was seven years old. Allegedly. Bob found me quite easily via my digital footprint. About seven years ago, I joined Friends Reunited which involved me leaving a four line biography: past schools; marital status; number of children; current place of employment. Having failed to find anyone I either remembered or wanted to contact, I lost interest after about three weeks. But the information remained extant. So Bob, who was searching for old schoolmates, found me. Then he ‘Googled’ me and at the first attempt up I popped accompanied by a handy photograph that my place of employment had usefully posted.

This is a dilemma. On one hand, there is an issue of vanity: it’s quite nice to think that one is so important that one’s work & achievements can be published world wide. On the other hand, there are all sorts of implications associated with being so readily ‘available’. For a start, when I joined the dating agency, it took a long time to select a photo which I was happy to share with the unknown world. The image on my work website is NOT one I’d have chosen. However, this isn’t really the point. What if I don’t want people to know what I look like? Or where I work?

Bob pointed me in the direction of a class photo of us that someone had posted on Friends Reunited. Here we are: each a literal child of the sixties, there for harmless posterity and for our families. Are people currently posting innocuous photos of today’s children? Who is looking at them? Why? When you or someone else writes on your Facebook wall, what does this say about you? Is this creating an unwanted identity?

Too many questions. I think Bob’s ok. He sounds like someone who doesn’t think about the seedier side of cyber life. Also, fortunately, I’m not really eleven years old. Watch this space that I’m sharing with the world.

And you stop worrying when?

August bank holiday weekend: the weather’s not ideal but good enough for lunch outside an attractive country pub if you don’t mind an avalanche of wasps. You enter the bar, fight your way to the counter which is four deep with other wannabe diners and place your order only to be served by an otherwise smartly dressed young man sporting a black eye, gashes down one side of his face and an unpleasant oozing blob where his chin should be. An obvious scrapper if ever I saw one. There’s hundreds of unemployed folk out there. Is this the best they can do? It’s the parents I blame. Actually, I am the parent.

Every time he goes out I say ‘do be careful son’. I’ve had years of this. He’s an accident waiting to happen; a walking disaster zone. And he never seems to know exactly how things occur. I used to dread collecting him from school if he’d stayed behind to play rugby or football. Other mums just had muddy kit to wash; ours always comprised the blood-soaked remnants of Armageddon. On arriving there one day, the game seemed to have terminated early and a large group of boys, teachers and parents had formed a huddle on the field. I thought it was the post-match discussion and asked a couple of lads on their way back to the changing rooms if they’d seen my beloved. ‘He’s on the ground in the middle of that lot’ one replied. ‘Don’t worry, they think he’ll be coming round soon and there’s a doctor with him’ he said, cheerfully dismissing me.

He was desperate to go to one of these summer activity camps where parents are not allowed to telephone every five minutes. No need to really as they phoned me. Bungee jumping or white water rafting was not involved but blood was: all he was doing was riding a bicycle. He couldn’t just fall off. He had to tumble in such a way that some unremembered part of the machine went through his thigh necessitating a rush to the nearest hospital for stitches and more scars. Should I come and collect him? ‘No thanks mum; we’re doing target shooting this afternoon’.

Then, having undertaken the CBT, he got the first of a succession of ill-fated mopeds. It didn’t take long. The first call at work came from a helpful passer-by who had witnessed the accident, taken details and wanted to let me know that he looked reasonably comfortable in the ambulance. I arrived on the ward to find him prostrate on the bed with his head in an iron brace. The major problem for mothers is trying to behave and look as if everything’s normal. I’m an abject failure at this I’m afraid. Luckily, on this occasion, we were ably distracted by the other calamities around us. In the opposite bed, a woman was being asked by members of the Spanish Inquisition whether she knew who the current prime-minister was and who had won World War Two. Next to us, hidden behind drawn curtains, the questioning was even more sinister: ‘are you really sure you want us to revive you next time?’

Mopeds were subsequently replaced by motor bikes on which he fared no better, coming a cropper on the slip road onto the Upton by-pass in a fit of ill-temper. Although I felt sorry for him, I was secretly pleased when the beast was later stolen. Not that it made much difference as he simply borrowed someone else’s scooter and was horrified to be stopped by the police at a customs road block near the ferry terminal. Not that he was illegally importing anything…just didn’t happen to be insured.

Is there an illness going round? Oh yes, I’ll have some of that please. Naturally, he’s already had Swine Flu; choosing to develop it at a time when everyone else was away leaving him to deal with it lonely and alone. Glandular Fever knocked him for six at an important point in the first year of A-levels and weakened him to the extent that every other passing bug settled happily upon him. The only thing that surprised me was the receipt of a letter from the school saying that he was unlikely to attain his projected grades due to prolonged absence caused though conjunctivitis. So when did you have conjunctivitis son? When I was at work and he was lurking indoors with a bad case of Fantasy Football addiction.

French rambles

The world is so small: in one day we have woken in Poole, been shopping in Bromley, arrived in Marseilles and driven to Rognonas. All this and experienced the delights of Ryanair – the uncaring airline who, by some illogical train (or plane) of thought, expect you to book in online AND wait in an ill-tempered crocodile at Gatwick to do so again. I imagine this to be so they can demonstrate a diverse range of baggage scales none of which are set the same. Everywhere we look there are harassed holiday makers, including us, unpacking and re-packing suitcases and hand luggage in an effort to meet the weight deadline on a second or third attempt. Eventually squashed into our filthy plane seats, we wait for a sweaty young man who arrives at the last minute clutching a huge rucksack and twelve bulging M & S bags which he has somehow managed (irritatingly) to get past the ‘one small cabin bag only’ Oberfuhrer.

Thankfully (in some respects), Leonie drives through the black French night like a woman possessed and I go through the strange transition of experiencing forty minutes of white knuckle terror and ten minutes of feeling that I am coming home as we travel down the lanes to the Mas where I lived for six months in the not too distant past. Whilst Leonie hides behind the locked loo door, I must remove a very large cricket from the bedroom in order that we can sleep.

The next morning…..
…..a tortoiseshell cat appears on our small patio and Leonie assumes her apprentice cat lover’s voice to speak to it: ‘halloooooo’. My daughter is practising for old age. In Bromley, a neighbour’s cat visits frequently and Leonie dons an apron in the hope that it will sit on her. Not being a cat lover, the witch’s familiar naturally sits on me. Later, we go to the Alchemist’s Garden. This is a place I have written about elsewhere extolling its virtues which, on a previous visit, were many: secret magical glades of lavender; copses of wild flowers; the journey through the black/white/red gardens replete with so many roses that I once lost Beverley amongst the blooms. We arrive full of anticipation about three months too late. This is Provence in August and roses die around the end of June. No-one has even bothered to dead-head. We retreat and head towards the nearby village of Eygalieres, one of the most beautiful settings in the south where the rich and famous vie for property. Last year, for example, it was rumoured that Brad Pitt and Nick Sarkovsky were in competition for the same pile. We are to browse chic boutiques and partake of an expensive cocktail. Unfortunately, it’s the annual festival of the local saint and the whole village is drunk: not just pleasantly merry but full on, shirts off, chucking alcohol at passing strangers drunk. It’s worse than a Friday night in Bournemouth. We have a quick ice-cream and escape, circumnavigating a multitude of drainage ditches strategically placed to un-nerve those unused to driving vehicles with steering wheels on the wrong side. Leonie drives and my mantra is ‘you’re too close to the ditch’ which proves irritating. I drive and Leonie, who has secretly decided never to mention these words, immediately says ‘you’re too close to the ditch’.

People watching
The ideal English family-or not- are pool-side: a well-behaved child, an apparently loving father who appears to dote on her and a beautiful mother with blonde shoulder-length hair and a horribly perfect body which she displays in a range of miniscule bikinis all of which are smaller than my collection of dusters in the box under the sink. It’s a French woman’s figure – the kind you get from being paranoid about your man buggering off any minute now; the type of body which involves very little intake of food, little or no alcohol and a heavy regime at the gym. A body which feeds only on neurosis. Ever looked at a French (excluding Parisiennes) woman’s hands? Callouses don’t come into it. Neither, for that matter, do nails. Years of waiting hand, foot and all other bodily parts on French men bear the scars and tell a tale or two. This mother, not being French, had the shape but nothing else: the husband and daughter fetched and carried water whilst she spent the duration reclining on a sun-lounger nourishing and nurturing her tan. I even heard the charming husband ask permission to swim. This was denied as he hadn’t spent the regulation two hours playing with his daughter. They are leaving two days early as the child has an appointment at Pizza Hut.

News arrives from home: Jack has pig flu! Having been abandoned by his family, the sister who is not in France has helpfully assumed the mantle of flu buddy. It’s all most untimely. Due to copious notices warning us of impending staff and student shortages in the autumn term, Leonie and I have reserved the third week of September for our bout.

St. Remy……
……on market day and the usual scrum prevails: nowhere to park and an endless stream of cars full of folk anxious to pay the extortionate prices that this possibly once delightful but now ridiculous little town demands. I have a cunning plan. I will place the car at the back of beyond where I used to park for my French classes. There are a few unpleasant bends and turns to navigate but we will have the last laugh. The bends and turns are made more difficult by a large number of cars coming in the opposite direction, some backwards, having failed to secure a place. Plan B: back on the road, Leonie notices a van about to leave a tiny space which I steer into arriving about three feet from the kerb. Leonie offers muted instructions regarding reversing and I shout. In all my extensive travels in France my experience is that most holiday arguments are related to driving. Knowing this, the perfect Virgos leave both the car and the argument behind. Shopping (of the cheap variety) calls.

At the very first stall I see a brown top that I might like with ties at the sides. As it’s the first stall, I do the usual thing of not enquiring about the price and not trying it on in case I see something nicer further on. Some hours later, we pass by this stall on the way back to the abandoned car. Of course, the top won’t be there but, surprisingly, it is. Madame is ebullient and pulls it over my head demonstrating a range of ideas for the side ties. She informs me that it is trés flexible, lightweight and usefully, given that I do not have a French woman’s body, not transparent. It will go particularly well with a brown pair of trousers. Leonie says it looks nice and as the two of them have now ganged up on me, I buy it. It’s a purchase which I have been cajoled into: I think it looks verging on the bloody awful but, in the heat, I have lost the will to live. In any case, I have bought a nice pair of orange shoes which I chose in the face of Leonie’s preference for the red ones with roses but no backs.

Nature day
Several Brits crowd around a corner of the pool to watch a spectacle of nature. A large number of half drowning wasps have been removed from the water with the aid of a pair of goggles and deposited on the side. Whilst still in their death throes, an army of minute predatory orange ants the size of pin pricks have arrived to push and pull the ingredients of this surprise lunch down the crack between the pool edge and the terrace. Along with the contingent from the Isle of Man, Leonie and I watch for a good half hour. Apart from three year old James, who will appear promptly at 4pm clad in a full length costume, peaked hat with a foreign legion flap down the back, water wings, goggles and a rubber ring, entertainment is on the short side here. And you don’t get much shorter than James who, after his ablutions, is further wrapped in a hooded spider-man towel and taken off for his omelette. I imagine wasp watching to be the holiday highlight of anyone from the Isle of Man although this may be unkind as I’ve never been there. For all I know, it may well be the entertainment centre of the universe.

Later, at Glanum, I am, as ever, overawed by the concurrence of two cultures and of the unknown. This well-sized Roman town sits uniquely at the literal foot of the Alpilles remaining undiscovered in its French habitat until less than a hundred years ago; and only properly excavated in the last fifty years. It’s this sense of being hidden and lost for so long that continues to both thrill and mystify. How could the French peasants (and anyone else) journeying along the road from St. Rémy and Les Baux for hundreds of years not have had an inkling of what lay to the left? It’s not as if there were no clues: on the right of the road is a massive triumphal arch which historians have visited since the seventeenth century. Didn’t it occur to Pierre or Pascal to wonder aloud what the purpose of the carved arch might be? As Michel was staggering up the lane, did he never say to Serge ‘don’t you think that arch looks a bit like a gate-way? Wonder where it leads to?’ That’s what Pastis does for you: nothing on your mind save the price of melons.

This being Leonie’s first visit to Glanum, I anticipate her taking a lot of photographs. And she does: three of the Roman ruins and forty-three of a cicada in an olive tree. There’s a wildlife photography competition at her school. First prize is a trip to South Africa and she’s going to win it. To be fair, spotting a cicada is not easy to the untrained eye. Their perpetual clicking/humming/buzzing resonates throughout Provence but you try finding one in a bush that’s clearly full of the things. The minute you creep up on them they are silenced. It was, therefore, quite a coup to actually see one land. There are two temples, a forum, a sacred spring, numerous wells and untold numbers of houses in Glanum but cicadas rule ok!

Visiting hours
To St. Paul Trois Chateaux to see old friends who, this time last year, were new friends. In England, everyone is buckled down indoors hiding from the BBQ summer that never arrived. In France, tout le monde has burrowed away inside to escape the intense heat which, today, hit 40C. Gareth and M.Jo enquire whether we’d like to eat on the terrace. Of course we would: we’ve come from England and relish the warmth. We are extremely well-looked after by our hosts who, having prepared a wonderful lunch, also devise innovative ways of keeping us cool. A small fan is placed on the window-sill but, proving ineffective, is quickly replaced by a larger version which must be balanced on a wooden table placed lengthways and potentially precariously across the ledge. Gareth, forever the artist, is now in full creative mode and sprays us intermittently with one of those plastic bottles of water that we used in the bygone days before the advent of steam irons. Subsequently, he decides that aiming this at the large fan will imitate the heat relieving effect attained in more affluent cafés. We look on with some trepidation as M.Jo reminds him that electricity is involved. Gareth is, however, almost French. C’est la vie.

On to see the delightful Annie and Michel, my ex-neighbours. Their car is in the drive and the garage door is open indicating that they are chez eux. Shouting does not raise them and there is neither sight nor sound of Lunette the guard poodle. Annie and Michel are hidden in the dark behind a metal screen which shelters them from the day. Luckily, we eventually alert them to our arrival and are ushered indoors as if they were Bedouin rescuing us from the Wadi Rum. I am very happy to see them. When I arrived in Rognonas a week ago I had a half sense of coming home. When I reached St. Paul, I realised I was truly there. Strange to think one feels drawn to the Avignon environs only to find one was meant to be elsewhere.

Lastly to Valence for an overnight stay with dear Cathy who sports a head of new, short hair having thankfully recovered fully from her illness. She is still indoors doing the ironing: rien change. We are taken up in the hills, chez Martine, to watch a glorious sun setting over the Ardeche and partake of a four hour dinner spent in the company of rabbit breeders. Les francais pass most of the evening discussing problems associated with rubbish disposal. This is a surprise move away from the price of melons. Finally, a quick visit to Monoprix the following morning to see Beatrice who, due to a misunderstanding, we sadly missed the previous evening. ‘Le prochaine fois’ says Beatrice. And already I long for the next time.

Here's one I wrote earlier

Amongst other things, I write a column for a county website. Generally, all goes well but we had a slight hiccup on arriving at Beaminster...the piece was rejected for being too negative. Not wanting to totally discard it, I've decided to place it here on the assumption that no-one from that hidden corner of the world will ever read it.


I have to own up: I might have reached an impasse. I am charged with making all the beautiful towns and villages of Dorset even more inviting by recalling or researching persuasive and interesting features that might make the reader want to stay a little longer. Thus far, this has been an easy task because our county is truly wonderful and full of living history. However, I now reach Beaminster, a civil parish at the head of the River Brit with a population of 2,800. Had I the right to do so, I would, at this point, set a competition in which the winner would come up with at least five good reasons to visit the place. In fact, Dear Editor, this could be the best creative writing competition of the century.

The first problem with this quaint market town in the west of Dorset is that folk keep trying to burn it down. This is not a good sign. The first of these incendiary events took place in 1644 and was started by the occupying Royalist forces. It doesn’t bode well: if they were in charge of the place, why were they setting it alight? Having put that behind them and presumably done a spot of rebuilding, Beaminster again burnt down forty years later; allegedly, by accident. How does a whole town get demolished by accident? Where was everyone? I’ve lost track of the third fire but I think it was in 1781: it doesn’t matter because many Tudor and Georgian buildings were thankfully saved, over two hundred of which are listed. Or listing.

We are deep in Hardy’s Wessex: Emmanster to be precise and as this is THE town in ‘Tess’, all is forgiven. I love Tess, even care of the idiosyncratic Polanski who chose to film most of his enigmatic version in France. Let’s face it, everyone loves Tess and the town is therefore redeemed with a little imagination even if avante garde film directors gave it a miss. Let’s ignore all the combustible links too and look at the town’s heritage: for a start it’s famous for its sackcloth which brought it prosperity. Hang on…doesn’t that go with ashes? Well, there’s plenty of those from all those fires. Wearing sackcloth and ashes is, incidentally, a sign of penitence for past sins. Possibly those involving matches. Time to bring the place up to date.

Beaminster is home to the children’s’ author, Lynne Reid Banks which offers the place a heightened sense of importance. It’s always good to have a living author in town and Dorset is a real draw for them. It’s also the birthplace of Martin Clunes. Someone had to claim him I guess. I’ll say no more as I know he’s a popular guy in some quarters. I can’t quite understand why the school website claims the institution to be optimistic about its future. It’s full of young people; why wouldn’t they be optimistic? They might, of course, have caught sight of the list of clubs available in Beaminster which starts with Age Concern and is followed by the Allotment Association; not too promising for the youngsters. That’s as far as I got in the list: tentatively perusing the ‘A’s’ I had a horrid suspicion that next in the list was going to be Amateur Arsonists and could bear to look no longer.

A bit of a grin

Another day and another journey; which this time seems to involve a quest to use as many different forms of transport as is possible on one trip. We leave early to take the car as far as Bath railway station. Onwards via train to Brissle where we catch the number nine bus, asking the driver if he will kindly announce our destination when we arrive. No need: everyone else is going to the same place and the bus duly empties at the Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery. Along with the rest of the world, we have come to see the Banksy exhibition. The final transfer is by Shanks’ pony as we join the soft shoe shuffle that comprises the queue.

We ask an attendant how long he thinks it will take to gain entry to the museum; the line, if it was such, and not in its current incarnation as a snake, would probably reach Portishead. ‘Oh, in excess of three hours’ he replies happily. We join the end and consider the worth of waiting and possible alternatives. Whilst we are musing, there is a sudden spurt of action and we find ourselves at the ‘two hours from this point’ notice within twenty minutes. We decide to stay as any concept of time is clearly meaningless in this city. A bit like Falmouth really where the stock answer to anything temporal (apart from how long has it been raining?) is ‘ten minutes’: how far is it to the docks? How long will breakfast be? How long have you lived here?

The queue has taken over a side-street and is six or seven lanes in width, much like those in airport check-in’s but minus the luggage although not the push-chairs. There is limited entertainment: the People’s Front of Stoke Croft issue blank cards and pens and encourage us to create an artistic impression of our experiences in the Banksy queue which may or may not be displayed in another exhibition. Jack declines the offer being heavily preoccupied with a biography of Brian Clough and claiming to be uninspired by the hordes. My picture is of numerous matchstick people in rows (us) with a van at each end. One van belongs to an enterprising ice-cream sales person who will, apparently, be able to retire by the end of the exhibition later this month. The other van is an ambulance which has been called to attend to a woman who has collapsed with what, to my untrained eye, looks like a panic attack. ‘At least she’ll get into the museum straight away now’ says a rather uncharitable woman ahead of us.

After two hours and twenty minutes we reach the door of the museum which makes me smile. And I continue to smile the whole time I’m inside. You can read professional reviews or watch video clip below; no point me describing everything in detail. I’ve never had so much fun in a museum: the actual Banksy rooms are brilliant but my favourite bit was searching all the usual exhibitions for pieces that he’s hidden within. It’s all ‘laugh-out-loud’ and everyone looks so happy. Even the attendants, who have so far helped over 175,000 punters to enjoy this free exhibition, continue to grin. If you’re physically able to stand in a queue for two and a half hours I commend this to you and defy you to be disappointed. It’s a grand day out.

http://www.banksy.co.uk/

At the end of the world

Feeling a sense of responsibility, I alert my new landlord to the chicken outside my window. ‘That’s fine’ says Sean. This is a B & B in Falmouth and not a hotel in Torquay so at least he can’t ask whether I expected to see the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. At breakfast there is no menu so we ask for poached eggs. Tessa is momentarily taken aback but says she’ll have a go even though she’s not used to poaching. The people at the next table have spent the previous day battling through gales which, apparently, is compulsory if you’re a) in Cornwall, b) German and c) on a walking holiday; although not necessarily in that order. As a reward they have been given an interesting and healthy fruit salad with yoghurt and we must applaud their fortitude.

The business with the egg poacher is not a success and the following morning we ask for bacon sandwiches. Some unintended confusion arises when I enquire whether I might decline the Cornish butter in favour of an alternative. Flora perhaps? ‘Do you mean marge?’ Tessa recoils in amazement. She will have to question Sean as to whether he has any to spare. The Germans, meanwhile, have been replaced by a Dutch couple who are asked, with a detectable hint of urgency, whether they’d like a full English. They want pancakes. With lemon and honey. The air is heavy with silence. As Tessa turns to face us, we catch the last of the despair-laden raised eyebrows as the July smile is quickly repainted. She launches herself through the kitchen door and all four of us remain silent as we attempt to discern her subsequent conversation with Sean the chef. A small dog arrives unannounced.

In the teaching room, home to sixteen large windows, none of which appear to allow sufficient light by which to write, and all of which resound with the constant splatter of rain, the atmosphere is one of eager anticipation. We are learning how to include all cortice-inducing experiences and I believe I have just succeeded.

Beverley, intent on making the most of the bracing sea air and a change of scenery, drags me along a cliff-top in a force ten gale with a promise of food at the end. Due to low cloud and sight impairing, rain induced stair-rods, we can see about as much of the bay as we could of Bodmin Moor on the journey down. Nothing. However, there are numerous large ships anchored off-shore which, I presume, are sheltering from impending meteorological doom. Later, I will learn that they are there awaiting orders. Inexplicably, I spot a Roman soldier on the beach. Perhaps he is doing the same. As the fish in the beach café is excellent, we invite several of our new friends to join us there the following evening; when, as is generally the case, there is a new chef on duty and the food is at best mediocre. I spot Tessa huddled on a bench outside and commiserate with her about the pancake incident. Assuming the puzzled look at which she is so well practised, she assures me that there was no problem, her freezer being stocked full of the things courtesy of Tesco. I become immediately suspicious of her home-made jam which accompanies the morning toast.

Rosemary asks us to apply some of our new found knowledge to a favourite book. Unfortunately, our cortices have become so over-loaded that no-one can remember a single story fully enough to comply. Ever adaptive, our lovely leader sets a new task wherein we play consequences and construct a dialogue based on the results. Our team, having also lost the ability to read words written by a colleague who can no longer write, manage to compose a never to be forgotten story about a burning horse.

We make the most of the initial and only opportunity to sit outside in this rain-sodden town. Four days into the course and like gnomes encircling a toadstool, we are gathered around a circular wooden table outside the pub. It’s our first glimpse of Falmouth Harbour and it seems as though half of the town’s inhabitants are also there to celebrate the temporary cessation of the eternal, infernal precipitation. Obligingly, a large seal appears for our entertainment dispatching itself from the water at regular intervals to perform tricks. There are no hoops of fire or bouncy balls but a genuine native of the fisher type engages Sammy with the odd mackerel from time to time. Cameras proliferate. Folk who are currently going about their business in other parts of the world and who will forever remain unknown to us are, as we watch, becoming unwittingly embroiled in this seascape. They are the chosen ones: those who will have to subsequently discern the seal-coloured blob that is Sammy from the equally grey waters in someone else’s holiday snaps.

As it’s our last evening, some of us fall into a vat of wine and decide to eat in the Thai restaurant. I like to think of this as a cultural transition: one step up from several pints of lager and a Chicken Tikka. In this respect I find affinity with Beverley who instigates a search for a florist, insistent that Rosemary’s gift must not originate from the pancake emporium. Finding a florist is futile. Folk whom we ask along the way look at us in much the same way as Tessa might and I wonder whether this apparent incomprehension of anyone devoid of a pasty is a consensual local affliction. The solitary person we find that once remembered seeing a flower shop thought it might be near Tesco. This is not helpful because, as with most English towns there are at least ninety-eight versions of shops carrying this name. We decide to charge Bridget with the task in which she will triumph. Opposite the restaurant is an establishment claiming to be a music shop. The economic climate being as it is there is little in the window apart from a Jim Morrisson anthology and a ukulele against which is propped a sign stating ‘hundreds more inside’. I visualise the next big thing on Britain’s Got Talent: the Falmouth Ukulele Orchestra’s version of Light My Fire. It’s quite late and I ask the taxi driver what happens here after ten o clock. ‘Much the same as before’ he replies. ‘Nothing’.

Our course was delivered with expertise and I learned more than I know what to do with. For me, the most important thing was that I’d managed to let something slip: I’d forgotten how good it feels to laugh so much. Thank-you fellow scribes and most excellent teacher.