Nine green bottles.....

Actually, they aren’t green and neither are they bottles but I don’t know a song about nine old ladies sitting on a wall. However, if things continue in the same vein, I might have to invent one. To be truthful, I didn’t foresee a theme developing when I was back in Dorset the other week and came across the first lady sat on the wall outside daughter number one’s house. Come to that, I didn’t even see the lady until I tripped over her dog on the way to my car in the dark. Well, what passes for the dark round here. You want to see dark? Go to Cornwall. And why do people have dogs that clearly have a pedigree going back to the hound of the Baskervilles on those stupid elasticated leads? The dog seemed ok but its owner wasn’t looking too good. Green, actually.

Me: Are you ok?
Old Green Lady: No. It’s my back
Me: Can I take you somewhere? Home?
OGL: No. The dog won’t like it.
Me: I can get the dog in the car
OGL: No. He wants to walk home

I gave up. Couldn’t persuade her. Anyway, having got a good soaking at Worbarrow Bay today, I was on my way back via Wareham when I spotted another one sat on a wall with her sister and no dog. I pressed on, got struck by guilt at the next roundabout, did a complete rotation and at the risk of life and limb crossed the oncoming traffic. These two were ancient.

Me: Are you ok?
OGL’s sister: We’re waiting for the bus
Me: Yes, but is the other lady ok?
OGL’s sister: No. She can’t walk
Me: Can I take you somewhere? Home?
OGL’s sister: Yes. We’d like to go to the theatre in Poole to see the Mikado.

By the time I’d emptied the car of detritus, got the sister in the back (2 door saloon) whilst propping up the one who couldn’t walk, got the extremely old lady in and buckled up, the bus had been and gone. Off we set like a re-make of Last of the Summer Wine with everyone clinging on for dear life. There wasn’t much in the way of interactive conversation owing to the fact that two out of the three of us were deaf and the one nearest me was either mute or just couldn’t be bothered to make the effort. This didn’t stop the one in the back:

Are you familiar with the Mikado?
Birmingham’s a nice place.
We’re newcomers. Only been here twenty years.
The Sainsbury’s in Wareham is too small.
My sister doesn’t like Saturday markets.
I think things will change in the future.
Do you often have company in your car?
Are you a walker?

Unexpectedly finding myself at Poole Lighthouse, I nipped in once I’d unloaded them and purchased a treat: a ticket for the Messiah at student rate. Three down, seven to go.

From a distance

Whatever possessed me to think I could maintain this blog, let alone two of them? Life is non-stop down on the peninsula and I have to write the news from a distance…both geographically and temporally. Incidentally, the all powerful Google won’t let me use that last word. I mean of time and not of impermanence. That’s what comes of being an academic or at least having aspirations to. I might have invented an adverb for temporal and I’m just putting that in not because I’m writing in the footsteps of Proust but because I know how much the family like to make corrections.

Anyway, back to the prosaic. Yesterday evening witnessed the last supper. That is, the exhaustion of all the free meals won by the quiz team supreme: The Lodgers. As per, we set off across the fields for a free steak in a force ten, my good self in the lead owing to the fact that I now possess the world’s most powerful torch. Over-hill and down-dale and just as Ian decides we no longer need battery light due to the brilliantly clear moon, I step over a stile into a field of…what? Who the hell put these cows here? Bloody great brown things, disturbed by the flashing of lights they decided to up sticks and follow us. I clutched Ian. Josh, swearing they weren’t there two hours ago, was on the periphery as we launched into a cross-country sprint.

What is this place we call Cornwall? A desolate, foreboding land full of dolmens and menhirs. A place where I love the subject of my study but where I cheer noisily having crossed the county border on my way out. When I am grown up I will start my own course in homely Dorset. Here are my friends. Here is the stunning Jurassic coastline. Here are proper shops and the north wind fails to blow. Here there is more than one road of escape.

Life at the end of the map

It's been some considerable time since I last wrote...or it feels like it here in the hinterlands. Rather than being a solitary female, hated for stopping off for a glass or two of Shiraz on the way home, I am now accepted as a singular eccentric...so no change there....but part of a universally despised gang of four. Reason? We are the quiz team supreme! The recently eloped Lindsay and Ian, now residing in the piggery, the hair-laden music student, Josh, and myself are an unlikely trio, largely because there's four of us. But a mix of age and background is essential  for victory. Last night, we were greeted in the Seven Stars with hardly suppressed groans of dismay. They don't remember our faces from one Sunday to the next but as soon as we appear donned in useful outgoing gear and replete with torches, they know we've just yomped over the dark fields and circumnavigated the spooky churchyard in order to thrash them. Result? We won the steak dinner for four (again), the Sunday lunch for four and the two bottles of wine. Well, we students have to eat.

Bingo starts on Wednesday....the ever-resourceful Lisa having loads of ideas to 'get the village in'. Last time they had bingo in the pub, the caller dropped the number 29 ball behind the cooler from where it was forever irrretrievable. Henceforth, every game has to commence with the punters marking off number 29 from their cards. Ian's parents are arriving from Cambridge tomorrow and won't be going to bingo so it might have to wait as there's no way I'm walking across those fields alone. Being civilised, they've told their son they they're driving into exile. I know what they mean. It feels as if you're driving off the end of the map when you come here. When you arrive, it's another country. Literally. They all have the Cornish flag flying: it's a bit like France with pasties. Strangely, it's starting to grow on me.