You can never tell

They’re digging up the road in the village. I am assuming the ‘they’ is someone official and not some random group of road vandals. The process inevitably involves lots of ‘tractory noise’ and juddering just outside my open windows. Part of the spectacle involved a rounded foreman type, wearing the standard bright green tabard, who sat the entire lunch hour, in the drizzle, on the war memorial. This is about as exciting as it gets in Mawnan Smith.

The village notice board has a few other excitements advertised. Not least is our attempt to celebrate the Royal Wedding with hog roast and beer (no matter the weather). The WI is still going strong, as is the rival ‘Mawnan Wives’ group – goodness only knows what culinary rift precipitated such a public divide.

There is one notice telling me I can go to Pilates on Tuesdays but I have to decide whether I am needing a gentle or for the ‘slightly fit’ class. I will of course be mortified if all the elderly are hyper in the front row and I pass out at the back.

Thinking of being mortified I made the biggest blunder this week. A very important managery sort of person, in a suit and painful high heels, flew down from Newcastle and then hired a car to visit me in my little room for those who hate school. I was able to offer her a canteen sandwich, made by a very cross, red-faced canteen lady who quite frankly terrified me into choosing a smelly egg sandwich. Anyway, after our ‘working lunch’ my motherly nature kicked in and I felt sorry for the poor love as she was apparently six months pregnant, had been up at 5am to catch the plane and was heading ‘up North’ imminently.

My little room not only has Classic FM on most of the time, but I have three comfy chairs (mostly for drug counselling) but I also use them for those 11 and 12 year olds who have started smoking in their break-time and come over all queasy and need to ‘gather themselves’. They lie down and I talk of poison and how a 20 a day habit cost £2,500 a year. They of course don’t listen because they prefer Classic FM and nick all their tobacco anyway. I digress. The dear lady from up North was looking post-lunch sleepy and I, being imaginative, visualise some medical emergency in the clouds above Birmingham. So I said, “I expect you are really tired, I really don’t mind you having a rest for 20 minutes if you need to, being pregnant……”

“I’m not pregnant,” she said!

This is the moment when I wish I was a heartless, cold, not caring a bit about anything person. Of course I grovelled and apologised and said something like,

“Who am I to talk being ‘Mrs Porky’”. My colleague, later, reassured me by saying, “at least you didn’t say, ‘are you sure?’”

I have never seen anyone look so six months that isn’t six months. Oh well you live and learn. At least she didn’t look as pregnant as the road-digger man sat on the village green this lunchtime.

Do you have any strong thoughts on the following?

Today I went for a walk along the Helford Passage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helford_Passage as it is a fantastic place to reflect and gain some peace and clarity.

It would be easy to assume that Cornwall is a place of constant idyll, where the only terrible thing to happen is a hard frost or the fox getting into the hen house.

However, this last week or so I have been feeling a little disturbed. I am months behind time, primarily because I don’t read the Daily Mail or Mirror and somehow missed the saga in the West Briton.

Only recently I discovered that an old school colleague of mine, in his 50s, left the school I was teaching at about the same time. He then went on to have a relationship with a 16-year-old pupil (despite being married for the third time already). Apparently they were just within the law because she was 16 and he was no-longer a teacher.

I’m not sure why this has had such a profound effect on me, but I feel like I have seen a very nasty road traffic accident and every so often have flashbacks.

I suppose the difference in the country, as opposed to the city, is this kind of scandal effects so many people as we all know him - or his family or her estranged distraught parents or her cousin’s cousin. I used to sit and watch him eat his sandwiches in the staff room and think someone who loved him very much must have made them, as they looked sumptuous (perhaps he loved himself just a little too much).

I suppose I empathise with the girl’s mother, unable to bring her home, because of the Children’s Act: her will reigns supreme. It is a similar situation as when a young adult become infatuated with a guru and joins a cult. I have two daughters who are young women and I would have been horrified if they had gone to live with a man 30 odd years older.

Believe me I l have nothing against 50 something men, I have many friends who are and much older. I appreciate schoolgirl crushes and the Police’s “Don’t Stand Too Close To Me” was an ‘80s fave. Jane Eyre is my favourite book and the age gap in her eventual marriage was considerable.

I think what distresses me most is that the girl had no opportunity to reflect away from the situation. Let’s face it if a young woman is told repeatedly that she is beautiful, loved, unique bla, bla she will succumb to the intoxication of being adored, especially if she doesn’t hear that kind of affirmation from any other place. She would be vulnerable and susceptible to persuasion.

My opinion for what it is worth is that she should have been taken to a place of safety, away from all influences so she could have some intensive therapy and be totally aware of the life choices she was making. There should be a clause in the Children’s Act to allow a multi-agency decision to be made concerning the well-being of a schoolgirl prior to her taking exams and still in full-time education. Obviously the law, as it stands, didn’t allow any caring adult to step in and protect her from what could be a catastrophic life choice

Now, two years on and she is in a marriage that apparently is totally ‘fulfilling’. Having many married friends and from personal experience I know married life is a battle – ‘for better for worse’. Without the love and support of family this couple are going to walk a rocky road.

I had assumed that in other cultures that this kind of situation might be commonplace, but having carried out a bit of research 18 is the average age for marriage in nearly all countries worldwide. Yet shacking up with someone is perfectly law-abiding as this case shows.

Looking at recent photos of the couple they appear to be in that euphoric first phase of most relationships and they have presented a normalised front to what is extraordinary.

My hope is that the young woman has someone she can turn to in the future when she will inevitably face tough times. Work stress, sickness, money worries hound every marriage.

I know the village she comes from well. I used to horse ride weekly around its lanes and fields. It is the kind of seaside village where everyone greets you – everyone. It just goes to show that the forces in a man’s heart and mind are just as at work in a picturesque rural place as anywhere else.

Old fashioned remedies

I have been ill for several weeks now, which is very boring. It started with the flu and progressed to a chest infection. Now, as I come out of my ‘fug’, I feel as if my ribs have been punched by someone with very sharp knuckles.

I have of course tried a range of remedies, but have discovered that Baileys is the best. I think that the Irish cream marketing team should stop trying to sell it as a sophisticated after dinner treat (as we all know it is the Babycham of liqueurs) and place it on shelves next to cough mixture. I’m convinced they would make lots more money. It should have a similar advert to Calpol but with adults sleeping instead of babies and then running around feeling much better afterwards. The voice-over could say: “Mrs T, a proper rural wife, recommends Baileys for those nasty chesty coughs.”

During my remedy seeking time I recalled some of my late Granny’s. She was born at the turn of the 1900s, came from a family of 12 siblings and was the first married woman teacher in Cheshire (she only had one child herself!)

Apparently if you had an earache then her mother would boil an onion and put it in a sock for one to hold against their head. She washed her teeth with bicarbonate of soda, used lavender for headaches and considered a warm vest to be essential.

“Eeeh, you’ll get crompus on the mar,” she’d say if she caught you without one in winter.

“Feed a cold and starve a fever”, she’d say.

Every morning she ate porridge, every evening she had a bottle of stout (for iron). For those times when she had a ‘funny turn’ she would take a sip from a flask of brandy in her handbag. The handbag was the size of a small suitcase and made long car journeys more pleasurable for me as I was allowed to tidy it. Inside there were:

Hairnets, hair pins, a plastic rain bonnet in a plastic pot, eau-de-cologne, bright red lipstick, face powder in a compact case with mirror, white cotton hankies, diary, leather purse, Parker pen, toffees, silk headscarf , sewing kit, silver brandy flask, horn-rimmed sunglasses and her crochet.

I was allowed to watch her get dressed in the morning, which involved a lot of huffing and puffing. She wore an amazing bra that had about half a dozen hooks at the back and was built like armour. Her thermal vest went over the top. Her French knickers were made out of a similar fabric to airtex and on top she wore a girdle. Attached to this, with metal clips, were her suspenders, which held up support stockings. They simply don’t make underwear like it anymore.

Then came a full-length petticoat and then finally a smart easy-care dress or a two-piece suit, leather brogues and then her jewellery (gold watch and necklace).

Finally, a top tip for those who are on a tight budget after Christmas, she would exfoliate by using a rough towel.

My dearest has a really bad topical remedy for acne – turmeric. It is effective, but stains the skin for a few days and has unfortunately been tried out on one of daughters!!

My favourite remedy of all (for every kind of illness) is a pair of baggy pyjamas along with a duvet, hot Ribenna and the kind of book that you would never tell anyone you had read for fear they would think you half illiterate (these can be found in most supermarkets). I have read the most naff books imaginable over the last few weeks. My granny would be dismayed, no doubt. I have her collection of Dickens and Thomas Hardy but somehow they aren’t quite the balsam for a fevered brain.

So having beaten the bug with Baileys, I am going to attempt my first braising walk in the morning and in memory of my granny I shall wear a vest.

Wellies and slippers

At this time of year, living in the country, my feet are either in wellies or slippers. I am fully aware that some people rarely wear either, which I find hard to comprehend; they must only walk on clean pavements and have very warm houses.

My slippers are especially stupendous being the pink ‘Bo’ pair from http://www.moshulu.co.uk/ladies/slippers They were last year’s Christmas present from my beloved and have survived the washing machine twice. What makes them especially useful is that because they have rubber soles, I can wear them on the vegetable patch when I need to dash out to pull a leek or do a spot of driving and dropping off of teenage daughter.

I realise that neither of these items of footwear are remotely cool or sophisticated, although my eldest daughter has a photo of Kate Moss, at Glastonbury, looking both in her wellies (she was looking particularly naffed-off with my daughter incidentally), but I am psychologically and emotionally attached to both pairs. Wearing them is quite ‘self nuturing’. Wellies enable me to go anywhere (along the coastpath, through snow drifts, muddy fields and streams) and slippers mean once they are on my feet I am truly home. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact I have been wearing wellies and slippers since toddlerhood (woolly tights and cardigans have a similar effect on me). Wilf is delighted by both pairs; wellies mean walks and slippers either smell wonderful or he just enjoys seeing my searching for the one he has stolen.

When I used to read the News for Bath FM, I often had to do a Saturday shift on my own (well with the DJ too). Slippers on my feet meant that the 6am bulletin was slightly more bearable and I could almost convince myself that it was a day off.  Similarly, the fact I always had wellies in the boot of my car meant I was able to clamber across field gates and get to the scene of a farm fire and interview the fire-officers way before the BBC got there!

 I am fully aware that women all over the British Isles love shoes; they collect them. They all look impossible to walk in and desperately painful but I am in awe of their grace as they totter about. The last time I wore anything remotely glamorous was to a party, however this was in a marquee in a field. Before I could greet my hosts I was wiping my heels with tufts of grass and looking longingly at someone else dancing in a shift dress with wellies.

This reminds me, you can now buy white wellies for brides, for when they go stomping across the grass or beach for photoshoots. I think that is quite a positive indication of a bride’s character – it means she is prepared for better and worse.

I am intrigued if anyone else has similar attachments to items of clothing?

Something and nothing

For those who have been eager to know the outcome of the abandoned car in the village, it was a bit of 'something and nothing' I'm afraid. I am reliably informed that the driver was spotted driving away, but we don't know who they were as the eye-witness, behind the post office counter, was serving a customer at the time.  They weren't 'local' (which was said with a slight sniff) and all that was seen was a mysterious shoulder.

It rather reminds me of another 'something and nothing' time when the burglar alarm in the post office went off in the early hours of the morning. I jumped out of bed in order to spy on the dastardly culprits from behind a crack in the curtain (I could see myself being quoted on Crimewatch) only to watch a completely deserted lane and then the alarm stopped. Apparently, it was a large spider that triggered the alarm off!

The whole village is turning out for  bit of 'something and nothing' tomorrow evening. We all gather for the Christmas tree lights to be turned on. The sea scouts are selling hotdogs, the hardware store offers free sausage rolls and mince pies (next to the bird food and pet food) someone heats up the mulled wine and we sort of warble a few carols along with the brass band. The smithy fires up his furnace and the potter and printmaker open their doors. The main excitement is that Cornwall's very own Father Christmas lives in the village (in a bungalow). He looks and sounds exactly like Captain Birdseye and each year grooms his super white beard and does the whole 'ho, ho' act.

I am just a little sad that this is the first year that I have no children (grown-up ones even) to share in general lighting-up jollity. The pull of a free ticket to see Pixie Lott in Plymouth is rather stronger than Father Christmas. Oh well, we have our twinkle lights ready on the tree outside the cottage and the Parish Church has set up the stable scene on the green next to us (Wilf will have to wee somewhere else for a month). I daresay we will squeeze into the Red Lion and strike up a chat and join in the banter.

My Christmas tree this year is a branch from Sancreed (from my three weeks on the moor). A farmer was cutting down a dangerous overhang, in the wind, so I stuffed a bit into the Landrover. It has lots of lovely lichen on it and with some lights and creative sparkly things will satisfy my 'child within'. If it was in an art gallery I would entitle it a 'bit of something and nothing'.

Nature loving

I have taken this rural lark to a new level - the Somerset Levels to be precise. Call me and old hippie if you will, but I would prefer sleeping in the great outdoors to negotiating some floral patterned, air-freshenered, greasy mealed bed-and-breakfast any day. It also saved me 90 quid. So I slept in my car for a couple of nights in two different fields, overlooked by Glastonbury Tor, and have returned home to Kernow.

The purpose of my visit was to minister to a broken heart (young love) and as said individual has ADHD and plays Xbox until the early hours, I thought it best to deliver my healing coffee and walnut cake and then sleep soundly in the Somerset countryside instead of in his flat amidst a cyber war-zoned nightmare.

My first night was in a gateway with a handy ditch (please don't ask for details but a lady needs to do what a lady needs to do). A full moon meant I could change into my 'jammys' and bed-socks without a torch and then snuggle down on a foam mattress, on goose down pillows in a caterpillar-style mountaineering sleeping bag. I awoke at 4am, needing to visit the ditch, with ice on all my car windows. At this moment I realised that nasty bed and breakfasts, with plastic-framed prints on the wall, and custard creams by the kettle exist for a reason.

On returning to my bag I consider dying of hypothermia: "A heart of gold who died of cold". I put on my Scottish cashmere cardi' and cover myself with the National Trust picnic rug, with plasticated bottom, in an attempt to survive and then breathe my own doggy, sleepy breath into the bag (how I've stayed married so long is a mystery).

I awake to a frosty start, have a light shower near the ditch, and outbreaks of sunshine which makes washing in cold water mildly bearable (I used to read the weather on Bath FM).

The second night is wet and drizzly and has the added bonus of me seeing a Tawny Owl catching its prey. In the morning, the farmers tractor chugging up and down, in the next field but one, makes my lady's toilette slightly 'nervy', but my Celtic ancestors would be proud of my techniques.

Of course in Glastonbury loadsa people are doing it - sleeping in vehicles. However, most of them need to take mind-altering substances before such an idea seems sensible, which is a bit troubling really as I am on Yorkshire Tea.

Well I have pampered my nurturing nature, and soothed a troubled soul with some hearty cooking and a prayer or two. Tonight I shall retire in relative luxury, underneath the thatch, to the sound of a developing Cornish sea storm.

PS. I shall get to the bottom of the village abandoned car asap (see previous post for details).

Intrigue in the Post Office

A car hasn't moved in the village for two days. If this happened in a town then it would barely get noticed, but here in West Cornwall such things provide fodder for endless tales of intrigue. So this morning as I entered the post office, to buy a newspaper, I was unaware that I was one of the central characters in one of these mysteries.

"Is that car anything to do with you?" I was asked by the assistant behind the counter.
"No"I replied, looking at a black estate car that seemed to be cramped with what looked like camping gear.
"Only it hasn't moved, not an inch, for two days. We thought it must be a friend of yours."

This of course was an easy assumption to make as we live next-door-but-two to the Post Office and have a whole range of vehicles, and their occupants, visit our cottage on a regular basis.
"That settles it then. I'm getting onto the local lads to trace the number, as it could be someone who went on a walk and has got into trouble." I at this stage imagine someone in their walking boots, wrapped in their pac-a-mac nibbling on their last sandwich crust lying on the coast path. I then imagine our local Police Officer (who last time he paid a visit stopped for a full hour, by our fire, and used his time to suggest a whole range of security measures whilst keeping a keen eye on the telly) becoming a hero in next weeks' paper for heading up a successful cliff rescue.

Obviously awful things do happen down here, people drown or get their limbs caught in farm machinery and the air ambulance is called into action. However, today's front page news, in our local weekly paper, consists of a dog "Cherry" having been bit by another dog and there is a rather pitiful picture of her with one of those lampshade-style-collars on her head. The headline reads, "Pet dog needs emergency surgery after attack".

For those who read my previous blog and may be concerned, as I was, by the fact one of my elderly neighbours is walking around with a watch telling the wrong time. They will be pleased to know that I met him again and adjusted his time-piece. Hopefully he won't miss "Strickly" or a bus in the near future.

After spending yesterday afternoon sitting with friends and pot of tea in the garden, basking in the last of the late summer sunshine, we had our first frost overnight (well as near to a frost as we ever get down here). It means I will have to wrap up my banana tree before it's too late, but the good news is that now the ground has had a freeze we can start harvesting the parsnips. I am now off in search of my spicy parsnip and apple soup recipe.