Cafe De Paris Piccadilly

Everyone needs to go to a fabulous cabaret at least once a year. With a brilliant presenter whose name escapes me I felt like I was in a British version of the Berlin based film Cabaret with the wonderful Liza Minnelli at Cafe de Paris, Piccadilly, London last night. I have now been down to Piccadilly three times in as many weeks when normally I keep away from this scene of noisy mayhem, licentiousness, red lights, fancy Art galleries, neon lights, drunkards, street people, Chinese restaurants, bordellos, strip joints, Fortnum & Mason's, Lillywhites, the bustling, crowd of scantily clad girls in supersize killer heels,stranded and confused tourists with suitcases trying to save a taxi fare and find their hotels, suits, business people, young old and infirm, crowds of tube travellers and so on and prefer to stay at home listening to Radio Four and catching up on reading my Guardian Review before a new one is printed. And maybe a nice walk on the Heath to look at the  woodpeckers and swans and newly leafing oaks and beech trees.


Having read in recent years several brilliant books featuring London in the nineteenth century, every street I walk on in this area ures up an imaginary melee of toffs, opera goers, ladies  of the night, ladies of all times of the day and night, dandy's, vendors, buskers, musicians, throngs of people shouting, yelling, fighting, drinking, toting for business. Of course the recent biography of Dickens by Claire Tomalin, illustrates these ribald, noisy scenes superbly. If I ever thought this particular area of London was heavy and intense and smelly, I finally realize that back in the day, with cobblestones, horses with lead shoes, rackety carriages, people constantly shouting above the hubbub, tons of rubbish from the Covent Garden fruit market, that you would have to go back probably at least five hundred years to find a time when this 'manor' was in any way quiet, peaceful and buccolic. Maybe a bit buccolic from all the ale, wine, beer, porter, gin, whisky and so on. Drinking water was not something anyone did, so in fact most people were a little over the limit most of the time. I think of Hogarth in St Giles, gin soaked mothers dropping their babies accidentally, pick pockets, pimps and prostitutes and the rest. But also an area of exceptional cultural experience, with a profusion of coffee houses where talk was of politics, philosophy, new theories and ideas and where poets, writers, artists, diarists, travellers, explorers, musicians used to live and where Charlie Dickens wandered on his twenty mile daily night time walks. You wonder just what he would have seen and why he was drawn over and over to the young girls or 'fallen women' of Covent Garden and St Giles just up the road and to eventually forming a place of refuge for them, with the financial help of the spinster Coutt's heiress and paying for them to have a passage to a new life in America. This whole scenario is featured in the book The Scarlet Petal and the White where the prostitute Sugar scrapes her way out of the gutters of this area and ... oh I shouldn't give away the ending. Sad to say we have to perhaps accept that the sex industry has thrived and is still thriving in an even more insidious way in the form of sex trafficking as I speak. I often wonder just who exactly the punters are who gladly avail themselves of underage, scared, frightened, kidnapped girls and even more awful the thought that perhaps this actually does something for them. Making them feel powerful at the sight of such vulnerability and helplessness comes to mind. You then wonder what the follow on might be from the girls if they manage to survive, what kind of people they will be, if they then abuse others. Personally I would like to see a gang of them capture a few of their abductors... Let's say Girl With The Dragon Tattoo meets Prime Suspect meets Tenko. 


The compere last night was from  Australia, he had black eye make up, a trendy hair cut, a tight dapper suit and was the very dandy on the stage, coming into the audience and embarrassing the hapless people who sat too close to the stage. My friend Cathy who took all the photos and the videos, came up for a meeting and wanted to go out on the town and escape from a healthy provincial life. I am not a city girl but somehow I found myself checking through the few bits and bobs in my wardrobe and managed to assume a sort of dressing up. 


It was easy to find the Cafe from the Piccadilly tube going down Coventry Street, passing Shaftesbury Avenue on the way, especially since Cathy had an I-phone and we could track ourselves as two blue blobs from the map on the built in GPS system.  I was almost expecting to bump into Charlie Dickens, Eliza Doolittle selling violets outside the theatres, stacks of rotten veges on the streets plus unmentionables and having to pick our way through all the sodden debris on the streets. 


The neon velvet palace that opened to us as we passed easily through the main door was a vision. Red lights, blue lights, golden sculptural orbs, the ubiquitious red, velvet curtains concealing little private back rooms, the gallery encircling the old dance floor, big sofas everywhere, plus stools and chairs. Standing at the balustrades and looking down at the dancefloor made me think of an old fashioned luxury liner, with their chandeliers and wood panelling.This place built in the twenties, was now more a kind of modern jumped up baroque, Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen would have loved it, very effective in the mix of faux antique, real antique and ostentatious decorative lights and colour. A veritable wonderland, a theatre,a pantomime of life, In the words of the disgraced News of the World newspaper, All Human Life is Here. 


A lady in a long, tight clingy green dress belted out some torchsong melodies. A pair of comedians did awful things with vodka and orange juice, a woman in a sequinned t shirt swung fire around her body and jumped over the burning pots. a burlesque dancer in huge red feathers teetered onto the stage in massively high stacked heels, covered in balloons, fitted out in corset and so on and proceeded to do a staggeringly active teasing dance.  bursting balloons that sent out clouds of white powder to the audience. She chose one man to selectively annoy. Somehow this man was chosen by most of the acts to single out. Whether he was the owner, the backer, somebody rich or important I can only guess. I wonder if the performers were told to give him 'special' attention. He seemed game enough and his wife smiled all the way through and even spoke a few words into the mike at one point. She looked like old money. He looked like a businessman; a perfect marriage.


So we have this amazing dancer and you think it can't get any better. Then a guy comes on in tight grey leather pants and proceeds to do the most amazing gymnastic and athletic dance you have ever seen. Pulling himself up onto this square metal frame, that continually spins round and round,  I guess the boy's version of a pole used in pole dancing he performed the most beautiful arabesques and upside down splits and feats of strength and control that I wondered if in fact he might have been or still is an Olympic gymnast using his training to entertain us thrill deprived audience. We all gasped, yelled, clapped and applauded. It was stunning and beautiful and I welcomed the fact that we had a male being the centre of attention and showing off his beautiful body and muscles in this way rather than the ubiquitious female. It was all done in the best possible taste. So, dining over, cabaret over, the compere herded us off to the various VIP lounges and we trundled off to a burrow of funny little rooms, with a small bar and at the end a room entirely    upholstered in red velvet with about eight red velvet divans dotted around the room. I felt like I was in one of the Big Brother bedrooms. Immediately a couple of tipsy 'suits' dived onto the beds with their various female companions and proceeded to simulate sex in a wide variety of positions. Everyone was smiling and having a bit of a laugh. So far there had been no cheap thrills and it was just a little shall we say 'sophisticated.' My friend and I kind of looked around a bit dumstruck. Loud Tamla Motown music played and I danced around a bit. Some young guy came up until he realized I was old enough to be his grandmother and smiled and moved away. For one minute...


After a few minutes this all got rather stupid and boring. Outside there were preparations going on for dancing. A  cool looking black guy arrived carrying a small briefcase. That has got to be the DJ Cathy said. Of course I said. A palpable change of atmosphere came about, crowds of young hopefuls came in, rather the worse for alchohol, the suits and diners seemed to ebb away as the next crew came in. A few bouncers placed themselves  strategically and assumed very serious expressions. Still nobody was dancing, the music thundered in a kind of metallic and brutal way. I started to lose my mojo. Around 11.45 we finally decided to quit. It would have been nice to dance but I could see that this crowd weren't going to let rip for probably about two hours and even more booze.  We staggered out onto the street where more cool looking bouncers in suits with wires on were holding back a couple of drunk slutty girls. Sorry but's that's the only way to describe them.Girls in teeny dresses and ridiculous heels appeared like moths drawn to a flame. Two came along with belts on and a strip of material across their bosoms with nothing else, no coat, no handbag, nothing just four pieces of outer clothing and again the over the top shoes. You do wonder sometimes. Why buy the cow if you get the milk for free?


I was interested in seeing the interaction outside the door so we lingered a bit. I wished I'd filmed it. We walked towards Trafalgar Square, up Long Acre to Covent Garden, then across the Piazza past the old fruit, veg and flower markets, passing the fancy new bit of the Opera House, then back onto Charing Cross Road and onto the Northern Line Tube, High Barnet Branch. I felt like I could have wandered around for hours in the footsteps of Charlie Dickens, seeing through eyes that he had partially opened for me. Previously this would not have happened, I would simply have been horrified by all this dense population. Now it was a fascinating melee, a living breathing drama, like Chinese Dragons snaking around the streets at Chinese New Year.  And so to bed as Sam Pepys used to say after a good evening out. Tomorrow I think I'll have a nice long walk on the Heath and maybe a swim in the Ladies Pond......hmmmm.

A Bigger Picture


Got down for the second time this week to Piccadilly. First time was to St James Church, designed by Christopher Wren, in which William Blake was baptised and now hosts Alternatives, a Monday night lecture and talk series that spins off into workshops and many wonderful things. Mainly of an esoteric and new age slant. For me just going out on a Monday evening in London was a breakthrough. I usually can't take the noise, the crowds the stress of making my way through a thundering crowd and traffic. It just has felt too painful.

Friday night even though three friends had already dropped out of going to the Hockney show I decided to just bloody well go anyway. It was very amusing going to an exhibition in the evening. I left the house about 6pm so I would be going in the opposite direction of any remaining rush hour traffic. But in fact the tubes are just getting more packed as if the more you have running, the more people will be on them. I reached The Royal Academy, Burlington House just up the road from St James around 6.30 and joined a huge snakelike queue of people doubled up on itself several times like a huge colon in the courtyard of the illustrious Academy. It was originally started by Charles II                 Owned by Dukes of Devonshire in 1753 but had no need of it apparently as they had the massive Devonshire House further down the road. The only part that survives of this are the gates at Green Park and interestingly the old wine cellar is now the Green Park Underground Station. 


Burlington House is not only the home of The Royal Academy but also the Society of Antiquaries, The Linnaen Society, The Geological Society (that originally started as a dining club at the Freemason's Arms), The Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Society of  Chemistry. The buildings are made out of Portland Stone from the Upper Jurassic period. So we have a lovely link there for the Geological Society.


Surprisingly the layout of the fountains in the Annenburg courtyard, in front of the academy on which we stood in the slowly moving queue, reflects the pattern of planets in relation to the stars at the birth of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. This is otherwise knows as his astrological horoscope but I would imagine we are not supposed to mention astrology in the same breath as astronomy although they both aim to study stars, planets and their behaviour. I imagined the seventeenth century when this place was built, there would have been horses and carriages racketing on the cobblestones, braziers burning, men selling hot chestnuts and  hot potatoes, all sorts of bustle and activities going on, old soldiers begging, cripples asking for alms at the gates, women with babies asking for a penny or two and probably people trying to shew them away to keep the place looking noble and divine. I was surprised that buskers, performers, jugglers hadn't picked up on the work opportunity given by the huge queues for this show, we were after all sitting ducks as we waited to get in and would have been grateful of the entertainment. I am sure young bucks in earlier centuries might have lampooned famous artists, landed gentry, Lord this and that, to make jokes and entertain and provide satire. Where is that open satire anymore? All tidied away on TV in closed lounges everywhere, everything taken off the streets and sanitized, controlled,licensed and destroyed, sadly. I have a feeling that
the streets of London where a lot more entertaining and ribald than they are now in 2012.


We have special, cordoned off and controlled places in which entertainments happen. There is the Covent Garden Piazza, where the flower market used to be and Cockney flower sellers would yell and brawl and pick up their flowers to sell outside the Opera House close by and perhaps those flower sellers might chuck in the day job if a dapper young gent fancied a roll in the hay with a fresh faced flower seller and give more money than the honest day job provided in two weeks of hard toil, for a few moments of lascivious behaviour. I mean most married women know what that's all about, the lying back and thinking of England bit, forgive me if I'm wrong.


I have a long and detailed conversation with Professor Dr. Joost Vander Auwera from Belgium, or Flanders from whence derived the Flemish language and painters. I mention Bruges and Princenhof. He tells me that this was where the Duke of Burgundy used to live,  when Belgium or Flanders was under his rule. Belgium has a checkered history. He says that it came under the protection of the English at one time to protect it from France our traditional enemies. At this point I wished I'd got my recorder with me as this is just from memory and liable to inaccuracy.  They have a checkered history, I know nothing, he speaks four languages, English very fluently and has given lectures at the Society for Antiquaries to our upper right in the Burlington House Quadrangle. He has a nice friend with him who is very patient with his friend and myself as he can't understand much English. We entertain ourselves by conversing, a cheap and totally non technical activity not relying on paper, phones, devices, mobiles, nothing but our own voices and the words we remember. It is fascinating, we ramble through many subjects like a long hike in an interesting place. I ask and ask, he answers and answers, he loves to lecture and talk,  he has not too old but very portly in a grand and opulent kind of way like a good burgher of Bruges who likes very good food. He briefly describes the extremely high cuisine of Belgium, how the restaurants make everything they use and take ages and how expensive and good and special and fancy it is to go. He says nowhere but in England would an almost mile long queue occur, with people talking quietly, being extremely patient, no one pushing in, an all pervading atmosphere of gentility, all of us united by desire and curiosity to see our very own hero, who lives in our lifetime and not some artist or painter from the past. Of our lifetime, of our culture, of our times. And who happens to come across as a very down to earth Yorkshire man now returned to the land of his birth but whom I suspect still likes a few trips to the sun. Now living in Bridlington on the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire having been born in Bradford to a radical working class family. I am so enraptured.


A young man joins in, dapper, contemporary, well spoken and well dressed. His father turns up from Shaftesbury, Somerset in a Country tweed jacket and a cap and talks in a posh, drink haddled voice, you know that kind of mellifluous alcoholicvoice that some people have like they are permanently in a state of drawling intoxication from whisky, slurring words, like Prince Charles and that somehow it is posh to sound like this. He does but his son, I notice, detaches himself a little, wants to seem street wise, one of the people.


Closer and closer, colder and colder, but getting warmer and warmer. The staircase is in view, I can see inside and still no impatient surges from the crowd, not Titanic this, we all wait our turn and all are served entry. At last we're in, bliss, it's warm I don't know what to do first. It is 9.30pm. I have till 12 midnight. Hordes of people linger and browse in the shop, tills are doing very good business, Hockney mugs, socks, aprons, books, bags, I pad cases, scarves, prints, cards, books, catalogues all selling like hot water bottles.


There is so much to take in. After the long meditation of the queue, the extraordinary focus that gave and the intense energy of the full moon I feel like I am almost hallucinating as I am overpowered by the colour, the nature, the trees, the humanity, the warmth of the work. I don't like all of it. At some points to me he seems to go crazy with a kind of surrealistic madness when he gets overwhelmed by hawthorn blossom and makes strange crazy objects in an almost alien landscape. He spends hours outside painting, drawing, filming, using charcoal, dozens of lovely watercolours, acrylics, small paintings, large huge monolithic ones, forests, roads, logs, a few from California, in a riotous celebration of the beauty of nature, all done harmoniously and nicely in a nice secure rectangle or portrait with a tasteful aesthetic and with a focus on drawing and objectivity and in that he finds his own added style and interpretation. Some are almost naive, with strange shapes and things that seem to be going out of control with minds of their own jumping around in the otherwise calm landscape.Everything wants to come to life, move, dance, grow and change.


This devotion to nature and the landscape and returning to the familiar places over and over again in some of the work is interesting as his Mother died recently and she gave a focus to his life and a point where he could return to in his life. Now he returns to the place nearby, the landscape becoming a friend and familiar as he sees it over and over again. Now that his Mother is gone. And he has come back and lives there. But of course he can't ever go back to when she was alive except in his mind. I feel that she was a very important and powerful, if hidden person in his life.


I think I even miss some of the work. I walk straight through the strange 'Sermon on the Mount' work which doesn't interest me at all.Why this sudden strange religious theme? I don't see the films he made with nine cameras mounted onto the front of his SUV. He mentions in the text of the catalogue that you can't always portray the entire tree, that our eyes see more than we can put on a canvas or in a photograph, that they are selective so he uses several cameras to capture a wider and A Bigger Picture. I think I may have missed some of the winter trees although I have a memory of them somewhere.


I am so high and turned on by these paintings, the whole experience being somewhat other worldly and very special that I don't realise that it is almost midnight. I have been queueing, looking at paintings and on my feet since six oclock. I took one rest in the largest gallery and there were 70 portrait shaped pictures about two and a half ft by about four. I kept staring at them. They were quite simplified. The woman next to me says they were all done on an I-pad. I am so astonished. I cannot believe her, I disagree and it takes me a full half hour and her giving me a detailed analysis before I can take it in and believe it.She has been before, this is her second visit, she is in almost as much of a daze as I am.


Once again I have to say only trust in what your own eyes tell you. Don't listen to what other people say, make up your own mind, look for yourself, respond with your own senses. I had several people who put me off this exhibition, several cancellations and let downs by a woman who then went with someone else and let me down again. Another said she wouldn't spend 13 quid on it. Another who said it had nothing for her. Again these people were all just playing their part and testing out my commitment or curiosity. I did honestly go because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about and see what people were talking about. Always the best way. I am not interested in the Damien Hirst at the Tate or the Lucian Freud for that matter but maybe the Turner. I feel my entire morale being has been given a lift and a pat on the head.

Ranting and Racism in North Islington

Monday 2nd April 2012

Sadly no posts in March but I have just found something that gives me an intellectual buzz, I have finally copped to Will Self. I'm not sure how long this 'affair' will last, I will probably take offence at something he writes or says or some kind of attitude I don't like, however, given his acerbic, witty, sardonic performance on 'Any Questions' last week and the obvious distates some of the panel had for him, which I relished as those people don't usually let anything touch them, I find myself rushing up to Archway Library and reserving several of his books. I didn't realize he was so prolific, so well read, so involved in Contemporary Thought and lo and behold he has suddenly become a Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University. I am almost starting to think of Philip Roth in the setting of a University which he used in his novels. I am almost scared for the 'youngsters' he will be teaching there and also for him when he mesmerizes his students and they all want to have affairs with him so that he will write a novel or short story about them. I can understand the delight of being 'in touch' with new thought aka young people, new ideas, new energy and so on but I truly hope he doesn't get mired in accusations and broken hearts and scorned students. But then, of course, will come his novel/s on the subject which will no doubt be very readable with probably a mix of high cultural thought. satirical remarks on 'modern' life, observations of people in their early twenties, a lovely shambolic mixture of ribaldry, we hope, intellectual teasers, well grounded comments that can cut through bullshit like a razor blade and so on. Well done Will! I am so glad I have found a new and intellectually stimulating author. And he is very funny to watch on TV too and very good value in interviews. What a guy!

Meanwhile the state of my intellect otherwise is kind of jaded, sad and I am sure I am becoming more and more of a racist. I go down my local road in Archway and am pushed, jostled, intruded upon constantly by people from 'other places,' as it were. I am in the Library and a young African girl, very pretty and well dressed virtually pushes me and everyone else in the queue out of the way like she's is something special and has no need to queue, she is more important than everyone else. She stands so close to me I can hear her breathing down my neck, I am talking privately to a librarian she just continues to stand there and I can't help thinking of the word insolent. There are no pleases, thank you's or excuse me's. I talk to the harried Librarian who gets so stressed and wound up dealing with and trying to be sensitive to the needs of about fifteen different cultural groups. He tells me hardly anyone says please or thank you. His blood pressure is high, if he puts a foot wrong he will be accused of racism and yet he is treated badly himself, almost aggressively by people, he tells me. He is terrified and intimidated by many of the groups of people he serves and tries to help with hardly a thank you. I have a short chat with him. I try to sympathize. He is a middle aged white man probably with a bad heart and he is paying some kind of price and no one seems to have any gracious behaviour but him. What an incarnation he has chosen! But we commiserate briefly and when

the pretty African woman tries it on again he manages to make a boundary, 'join the queue' he says, 'there are other people who are waiting as well as you.' She leans on the counter with disdain all over her face. I wonder what her parents would think. The Library sails grimly on through its never ending process of trying to elucidate education, enlightenment and entertainment to the masses. Most of the youngsters just want to go on the free computers and say things like :) or (; or >;< or ... and so on, a whole world of language that is purely punctuation marks but when it comes to writing sentences, of course the punctuation marks are left out, of course they are. We're the younger generation, we do things differntly, you old people you fxxxxx up the world so fxxx off.

My world has changed from quaint incidents on public paths in Cornwall to the frontline melting pot of certain areas of London with high 'new incomer' populations. I go from the South West of England which is so white you are almost blinded to a metropolitan situation that is so broad, colourful and mixed that I feel I'm in the wrong country. Hundreds and hundreds of people constantly flocking in and competing and surviving and watching out for any way they can of making  money, saving money, finding money, getting money. places to live, schools, hospitals, doctors, dentists and all the rest. It feels like we are Noah's arc and we are about to either sink or tip over. Where does everyone live? Why is it so hard for working white people to find homes, why is it so expensive? How do all these other people manage? Where do they get all their money from? Do they really get Housing first, am I a total racist, are we just too scared of confrontation that we let these situations develop? An Asian man I know in Birmingham said that England wasn't England anymore and that there were too many Asians in this country. There, I've said it, he said it rather. I know its all great for culture and food and so on but how do the teachers cope with all the foreign languages, customs and so on, all the insistence on carrying out different religious practices, the banning of Christmas, the way anything of England in the past is being overruled. But again, am I being racist? I hear people talk of their work situations where they cannot complain about someone because of their race, colour or religion for fear of losing their job. I read of an Asian couple who murder their daughter and try to accuse the Police of racism, If we don't try to tell the truth what have we got left? If we avoid any kind of confrontation don't our standards of behaviour, lack of respect, lack of undertanding and everything else fall down.

I know England, Britain is a nation that has endured wave upon wave of invaders. But there is such thing as an indigenous culture, a native Britain, whether black or white who has lived here, who respects the place, who have some kind of manners instead of the gruff, harsh, taking the piss attitude that many recent arrivals have for white British people. People on the street don't seem to have either self respect or respect for others. You get people just cutting you off walking infront, pushing you out of the way as they say 'sorry, sorry,' when we know the word is 'excuse me.' Why does everyone say sorry before they've actually done anything anyway? On the radio the other day I heard an American woman call what we speak in the UK British English? I mean where the hell does English come from anyway? Then I hear a French woman on Hampstead Heath say that England is going to the dogs. How everyone seems to be feasting before the inevitable. Of course it won't go to the dogs. It might go further down, but it will survive. But I can't help thinking that we are losing something very valuable because people don't interract, parents don't bother talking to children and public servants, like teachers, librarians and so on are not allowed to make comments about certain behaviour because of being accused of possible racism or anti religion. Well I for one like the nice old fashioned way that people used to behave and yes we were a mainly Christian country only a few years ago. I am not a practising Christian but I appreciate many of the progressive ideas of that religion. You helped poor people, you treated neighbours as you wish to be treated. You were not suffering and left on the street because of karma, you were taken care of because of values instilled into the culture that people fought for hundreds of years for in order to make life more bearable. Hospitals, Schools, Libraries, Social Services, Human Rights, Unions, Co-operative Societies all producing a Social System that was fairer and kinder but produced from a lot of sacrifice and bloodshed. Isn't this all being taken advantage of? The wars my ancestors fought in and suffered in to create a beneficient social system, the protests, the strikes, the demonstrations to produce what we have now, that is just used and abused by people who don't have the faintest idea where it all came from, like it fell out of the sky fully formed? Like all white people are the enemy, that they are well off, spoiled. I get the feeling that it is regarded with jealousy, that we do have something to be proud of here and that we could easily lose it, the way things are going. I do not feel particularly grateful to the wave upon wave of economic refugees who don't appreciate how hard it was to create this society. It all seems too much, too overwhelming, too many different languages, too many customs, too many things for public servants to have to be aware of, too many imported problems, too many  

problems laid at the door of this country as if we are responsible for the welfare of half the world's population. Some people say sorry because of the British Empire, other people say they had the best time under the British. Where would you like to live, here or Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Poland, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Nigeria?? Will everyone eventually develop some kind of manners and gentle behaviour instead of what I see on Junction Road, Archway. Can the UK carry such a load? Can we all get on, knowing that there are many  people here brought up on the welfare state and all the benefits of the education system and so on who hate this country, who go to learn bomb making, and who when captured the first thing they say is that they are British and doesn't that mean something, that they will be treated fairly? I mean it works both ways doesn't it?

Last February Weeks in Cornwall

There seems to be a steady stream of bright young hopefuls still moving down to Cornwall. A bit more sussed than the Summer of Lovites, in the sixties.  They come with skills, experience and education from various cities and places in the UK, trying their hand at surviving in the country by the sea and the ones I’m meeting seem friendly and open.

Paul Gillard and Joana work on internet based projects. He does computer graphics, she sells stuff and dispatches it all over the place. On her website she has paintings and jewellery, under the name of Joana Poore. Then yesterday a couple picked me up in a fancy black car, the guy with a kind of cowboy hat on as I was walking up the road to get the 1a bus. They are trying to set up as Tai Chi practitioners.  I wished them all the best. Couldn’t help think of Taos and how many people seduced by the beauty and just have to come and live there and so destroy the beauty. Or am I being too cynical?

 I end up in St Just in a bus shelter talking to other grateful Freedom Pass holders. It’s a bit bleak over there.  I cannot help thinking, do I look the same as them?? Am I old now? The couple that picked me up’s daughter goes to school at St Leven school. Kids come from all over to the little school. It’s peculiar in that it looks actually like a large school but there are not many people living around it. Of course, people bring their kids in cars. Even so, when it was built there weren’t that many cars and you wonder how kids got there. Of course from Treen they would use the Public footpath, which is now blocked and covered with mud, gloop and excremement at Ruben’s Mutant Farm that nobody can pass through unless they are wearing fishing waders.  It is impassable which probably is what is intended. Kids would go along that path straight to the school at Crean in days gone by. I would imagine they would come from other directions also, converging on the school at the centre of the footpaths and bridle paths around here connecting places like a spider’s web matrix. Now it’s all road traffic. And cars always seem blind to me like the Orcs in Lord of the Rings. Powerful but visionless.

 I found another path the other day from Sparnon,  BillyChapple’s house, to Crean Bottoms, across the fields and a stone stile and along the tops.  Makes it a lot quicker. The path up to Tresidder used to be the main route, big enough for animals, carts and so on, which people used as their road until ‘tarmac’ roads were built. I am slowly discovering the web of old pathways. I love to think that I am walking on the same places as people have walked for 7,000 years, from Mesolithic times if I have my Archeology right.

After several days indoors I got out finally for a hike in bright cold weather, sun out, all bundled up hardly able to move my arms in my coat wearing two fleeces underneath. You could say I don’t like getting cold. Felt loathsomely lazy and unmotivated this am, yes and laggardly.

Saturday 4^th February 2012

A nice cliffside walk but weather got very stormy and not so many seaside walks now with so much rain and wind and proper cold weather has hit finally. Up country a lot of snow is falling. Icy puddles frozen over, funny globby patterns appear in the ice, where air is trapped underneath. Jack Frost is here powdering the bushes with white crystals until it eventually melts as the day gets warmer. Last year we had weeks of this kind of weather.  Outside the barn today many vehicles are going past, splish splosh ing along the muddy track up to the Val Bakers place. I was invited to a party there but didn’t want to walk up in the dark and mud.  I would probably have ended up in the ditch at the side of the road. They can certainly raise a party. Stephen Val Baker asked me.  Genevieve Val Baker has gone away for a week to Morocco.  I saw Stephen the day after and he was very hungover, getting too old for that kind of caper. Maureen who I saw in town yesterday says Genevieve needs a break, Jess 88 the Val Baker matriarch,  apparently ruling over them still. Seems Jess is not so domesticated for want of a better word and the result? A place that needs a man to sort it all out, although it goes against all my instincts to say that.  Junk and clutter everywhere, in such a beautiful setting and squalid and dirty and no one taking care and maybe that is some kind of a feminine function that the liberated Jess doesn’t like doing, a kind of neglect even though there are all these amazing things there. I got shown round Genevieve’s pole house that Stephen built on poles as the ground was bumpy. Beautiful place and he obviously is very skilled.  Great idea, got burned once, they got insurance money and rebuilt.  It is very nice but dirty and uncared for inside. Typical kind of a hippy look to it. Just a couple of hours cleaning would totally change it. According to Stephen, the males were put down and poor Dennis died young.  Perhaps a kind of misguided feminism.

 Stephen says with a baleful face that he just goes along with things, with all the women bossing him around and said it doesn’t bother him.  About ten black and white ducks, white ducks and hens and a timid cockerel wander around freely. I guess cockerels have a job to do and timidity isn’t going to much use to that end. Which reminds me, I saw one of those facebook videos of a rabbit chasing round about ten sheep, so easily upset and terrified. The collie was just sitting watching and this rabbit was going apeshit, you wonder if it’s real though, whether it was done by computer graphics or something like that

Bumped into Karen or Rachel on the cliffs above Pedn Vounder, who was home educating and a vegetarian, another new arrival in Buryan, moaning about her sister who wanted to cut her son’s hair when they visited them in London. So much for being in the bosom of the family.  She had a good vent and then we walked together up to Penberth and onto the road and went our separate ways. She was actually going to take the public path to Buryan, I thought I was the only one!  I was late for the market last week and today didn’t get a Guardian, but I dam well will go and get The Observer tomorrow. Anything I want or need I have to walk at least four miles to get it but I kind of find that satisfying, if time consuming.

In faceboook land a lot of activity around Gemma Ra Star in Taos and Horse caravans in South America with Nomads Reunited. A very appealing way of spending time . They travel round like a circus and visit villages and so on. Then Bea posted about  Horse stuff in Mongolia with Julia Roberts. Then a girl called Mandy Blann about renting Treglyn. She wants to stay at Treglyn for a while. Mandy tells me how she used to ride horses on the South Downs and go to villages and anywhere she wanted when she was young and her parents let her do it and people would give her cake and cups of tea. She wants to come down to Cornwall and gave me a special meditation to do at Logan Rock. I think it’s a meditation just being there but the meditation bit or at least the closing of the eyes does help to ‘tune’ in to the landscape and the energy of it. Just by closing one’s eyes you feel a wonderful world inside and it does feel so peaceful in there.

                I had an interesting experience yesterday. I was late as usual, getting the 1pm bus from Buryan to P Z. I was coming up to the gravel pit and thought I’ll close my eyes, ask, open up and reach up higher, I hate to say that higher thing but I tried to open up my head beyond all thoughts and worry and negativity that seems to get in the way of bringing in positive energy through the top of the head. I asked for a friend to come along or someone because I needed help to get to town to take care of my basic reality, that is, financial situation. I had an appointment at Nationwide. As I turned round I saw a car, a taxi in fact and cheekily put out my thumb for a lift. He stopped. Took me to Buryan and we were having a nice chat, he used to drive for National Express all night from PZ to Victoria, can you imagine it, what amazing guys there are around who will work so hard at things, I suppose that is male honour.  He said sometimes you have to be cheeky to get anywhere and smiled.

I saw several buzzards, a sparrowhawk and a youngster sitting in a tree, not sure what sort and my first Dunnocks, that look like sparrows but are bigger and stripier with a patch of grey. I Saw a flock of birds with black tipped bodies, white belly and sort of dark brown coloured wings but I couldn’t id them. Also on my way to Buryan I saw a fox trotting through Lord Falmouth’s or Lord Trengothal’s    land, with a large, white tipped tail, he didn’t hang around to say hello. I think a male.  If they are still hunted they probably don’t let humans get too close. I don’t know what I think about foxes. People say they kill all your chickens, whereas someone else might say the chickens just have a heart attack and drop dead. I don’t know if the fox just takes one of them or whether as some people say they kill for the sake of it. Somehow I doubt that. I met someone called Andrew who lives next to Jeanette in Crean near where I think Julia lives. I saw the ‘hunt’ gathering in St Buryan twice this winter. I believe both ‘drag’ hunts or at least that’s what the hunters say. I cannot help but be impressed and excited by this rite. The horses are outstandingly beautiful, with plaited main and tail, eyes and ears flicking everywhere as they get excited at the prospect of galloping and chasing across the fields. They probably get very bored standing around in fields and stables. They are bred for this and most are at least sixteen hands high and very strong and powerful. I spoke to several of the people I’m sorry to say in a fawning kind of a way. They were very friendly and not snotty. But how can you not feel superior all dressed in immaculate hunting gear, whiter than white cravat, 22 carat gold pin, beautiful boots, old fashioned black velvet  riding hats, hair in a net, impeccably and gorgeously turned out in traditional costume but the highlight is the five or six men in red jackets. You have to be invited. The red is so unbelievably blood coloured and the men so proud. The master of the hounds has his dogs well trained and they come to his commands. The master is a big square built Cornish farmer, the sort that make good rugby players. The sort that you would want to be on your side in a battle.  He looked red faced and robust to match his jacket. While I stood around gawping he actually blew on his horn!! Unbelievably the dogs responded and gathered close around him and off the whole entourage moved southwards out of St Buryan, all rising very well, to the trot. There was a mixture of followers. Two small children about nine or ten on their gallant ponies all ready for anything and as tough as old boot leather someone said. Good way to toughen up and have fun at the same time. I thought of these little tots jumping hedges and fences. Can they do that? Or do they go round? The logistics of galloping across fields fazes me somewhat. How do they do it? I walked after them and saw two red jackets gazing across the fields watching the hunt progress in the distance just outside Pendrea. The chap told me that he was there to prevent the hounds from crossing the road and I suppose going the wrong way. I walked into the field and several people were standing and watching and I chatted to them briefly. One of the older men looked pretty hostile towards me as if he thought I was an anti hunt protestor. I don’t know the full story so what could I say. I was just friendly and smiled. I saw various groups about a mile away going along the edges of a couple of fields and realized that probably for the most part it is exciting but a lot of time would be spent on simply trying to find the trail and trudging, albeit on horseback through fields and gates. I imagine the galloping bit would come when there was an actual chase on and I also imagine that would be highly exciting after several hours of searching. I have no idea how long an average hunt takes. They also only hunt during winter, probably because the fields would not be growing crops and so on and of course the foxes would be bringing up their young.  This winter I saw another badger ambling along close to the hedge at nighttime and sadly a dead one at the side of the road. Recently I heard that Wales is going to vaccinate rather than cull badgers. Hooray for Wales! Any wild animal needs all the help it can get.

I can’t help thinking again of what Bea Dobson said about ‘cultural experience.’ We were talking in the context of fine art and how she responds to different paintings. The paintings in question, being David Hockney’s recent exhibition of trees and landscape work.

“I've been trying to work out how to explain my use of the term 'devoid of cultural experience'. I can only 'hedge' around it by referring to the aborigines and their belief that they sang their world into existence. For them every inch of land has its particular story and is revered and refreshed through song, story, dance and art, all this at the appropriate times. Now I know I'm not an aborigine but I do have a sense of feeling for nature and an awe of what it holds. These 'Sunday painter', paintings of the Yorkshire landscapes give me no indication of what may be stored in the landscapes. 
They don't 'speak' to me......so there is no cultural experience there for me.” Quoted from Bea Dobson on facebook sometime in winter 2012.

 Now that I am attached to and very fond of this landscape and have been so for nearly forty years,  I understand what she means. It’s a relationship you develop in a way, a knowingness and in fact for me I sometimes feel closer to a landscape than I do to some friends. I relate to what she says with regard to Hockney’s  what I feel are perhaps ‘sterile’ paintings, despite their beautiful colour and subject matter. I will definitely have to visit the Royal Academy and see for myself and I must look up what Brian Sewell said in this regard also. Scathing I believe. I think Hockney goes so far but only so far and I think his work is clever, bright but for me lacks depth and in some cases any painterly understanding of trees for example and I do think it takes years to develop that kind of understanding or sympathy. And I might hesitatingly say that there perhaps is the lack of a spiritual, more feminine quality.

So I am talking to Mandy, who originally called about renting ‘Treglyn,’ the cottage next door. I. She is the goddess earth worshipper sort and is often called ‘Sprite’ as a nickname. Her email name is ‘Happy Primrose’ and in subsequent emails she addresses me as ‘Daisy’ which I find very endearing. My name of Margaret translates to Daisy or Pearl. She says her mother went into Wicca really young after having four children by the time she was 19. She does massage. She comes down this way for guidance and spiritual stuff. I know I am also drawn to places.  She told me about her Guardian Angel who has dark peacock coloured feathers, dark green and so on and she says there is a being at Logan Rock and tells me where.  Go to the dip, clamber up through rocks, left pathway looking towards Penberth Sit or stand, imagine feet having roots going down, tap roots going through the core, the vagina, deep deep down and wrapping around the rock and then bring white light of Universe down through the head a sparkly white light aura around me, then a blue light which stops other energies, Ask being for guidance and need inspiration. Bring out a blue cloak pull over head till cocooned. Wait and see. Give thanks and walk away.

Anyway I did get a small picture of a male person in my head with big blue sheltering wings around me and me feeling safe within the cocoon of feathers. The feeling that there was someone protecting me, probably the need I have of a real human like that, that I haven’t had since my dear ole mum died really, of being held safe, of someone saying they will be there for you always, just that ecstasy of being with someone who loves you and cares for you. What bliss it must be to sink into someone’s protective embrace, like coming home from war or a dangerous journey, leaning your head on their chest and hearing their warm beating heart that says over and over again, that you are not alone. Well to be honest it’s not so easy finding any place on earth today where you can be alone!  I also got a picture of a kind of an Egyptian woman with a cobra headdress that flashed through my head. I would love that cobra to protect me also. To actually go infront of me and prepare the way. I am not sure why they wore those possibly to represent the third inner eye. I am so used to seeing that image represented everywhere that it doesn’t look especially unusual or weird. When I came back from Logan Rock I was grounded and deeply relaxed and I felt good.

Tuesday 7^th February 2012

Yesterday evening turned out quite nice, no bad moods or words with C and a pleasant and convivial evening. I can get quite nervous with him. We chatted about this and that and watched the Queen and I read and so to bed as Samuel Pepys used to say, with regularity. I tried to clear all my stuff out of the way. Hard to know where I can actually sit and work. Will stay with Jo a couple of nights and then to flat. Then maybe over to France if I can fit it all in and of course be able to afford it.

Went for long walk with Richard Hindsbergh around Gulval, a nice little village with a central kind of area a very large pub and some kind of a community hall, an open area in the middle, a church and church yard right in the centre. I was spending a couple of days with him and Maureen at Gear Farm, Newmill before they took off to India for a couple of months. I believe they are going to Rajasthan.There are so many lovely places around that I’ve never been too, in coming down to Cornwall for 43 years and really it is shameful to be so stuck in the same little area. What Maureen calls the ‘bit at the end of the sock.’ It’s so refreshing to visit somewhere different

We went along a lot of bridle paths looking out towards St Michael’s Mount but you could see the road and hear the traffic so I didn’t think it was as beautiful as around Penberth. There was a lot of stuff between the fields and the sea but honestly where can you go these days without modernity being in your face. It was very bitingly cold but we warmed up as we gaily chatted and walked along. We’d picked up some wine and food and stuff from Tesco’s. Richard had already made a spinach curry with rice. We called in on Joe at Trader Gray’s old place. It’s being closed and Joe has to find another place to store and sell antiques and all that stuff Trader kept there. He was lucky to have that place for so long. He had some nice old chairs with upholstered blue velvet seats, obviously imitation antique but almost like Queen Anne chairs. They were fifty quid each but then costs of transport to London. Joe definately looks like Trader. Maureen tells me her Dad was quite posh and drove horses and so on and her mother was Irish and not so posh but probably very pretty.

Richard a bit more grumpy and more belly than he had but pretty healthy and robust and still chuckles and so on. We all talked rather a lot. Richard went to watch tele and Mo and I did some Yoga and I put my leg up and stretched and we spent quite a while in the kitchen doing ballet stretches and so on.  She was quite impressed by how high I could pitch my legs! She apparently did a lot of ballet and a lot of horse riding and actual hunting, the two things I adored as a child. Funny how the two things go together, the horses for confidence and fearlessness and rhythm and the dance for poise, strength, line, bodily beauty and the awareness of making yourself into a piece of art. I wonder if that was the intention.

Had a lovely room with a French bedstead and a view over to the sea and St Michael’s Mount. Imagine how it would have looked before cars and warehouses, urban sprawl and all that, just pastoral, clip clopping horses, traps, coaches, all seen from the windows of Gear Farm which stands higher up than Marazion. She’s always coming out with funny sayings that her Mum used to pronounce. All day it was fun and giggling and relaxed, they were so nice and then the next too and so kind of chaotic and disorganized although they both do a lot. Anyway I spent the morning darning three sweaters, Maureen found her sewing box with lots of old stuff in it, Richard was battling away online and I called up Nationwide or rather Legal and General about the Stocks and Shares ISA that Richard could not believe. We had gone to the Dock, which seems to be where everyone goes for Spingo beer these days. I think I went there with Jill for a birthday meal last year. I went with Richard and met the ex publican, and another of his mates whose Mum’s house was burgled and she is 91.

Strangely C and his crowd were in the corner with Jay/Jason and Moon and Jesse holding a pint of beer, he seems to have fallen quite happily back into the old beer routine. Chatted a lot about ISA’s and nobody would believe that I could make 30 quid in two months on 500 pounds or that in fact I could double my money in a year.

The house, bathroom and so on, are  beautifully decorated but there is a tile floor in the kitchen which is probably death to anything that falls on it.  I would have to put some rugs down there. Richard dropped me off in town and I got some food, went to Morrab Gardens, birds going crazy, spring on its way. I love the way you can see the sea from between palm trees in Morrab gardens and the way there are little alleyways running through Penzance that remind me of all the little  paths and bridle ways out in the countryside that people used in days gone by before proper roads put in. Shortcuts seem to be a Cornish speciality and it takes what Bea calls ‘cultural experience’ to get to know the paths as intimately as you get to know the back of your own hand. That kind of knowledge that the country people used to have is in great danger of being lost forever.

at that place where the barns were for sale in Gulval, there was a little pen with a big ewe and several little lambs about a week old, really tiny cute lambs already. So fluffy and white and a few other sheep were there and some fairly young calves I guess being kept inside until strong enough and the weather warmer. At least I hoped so.They seemed fine. The ewe looked very nervous at but the calves came forward as they probably think humans are going to give them some food. In a documentary I saw that evening, apparently animals recognize people who have harmed them  and run away. Bonobos can actually communicate what they want from a page of symbols for things and tell you want they want to do. There is an American research place where they keep them and its horrible, man made and the animals behave like fat, spoilt royalty but it was interesting to see this male bonobo peer anxiously through the opening to see who his guest was. Best bit of this programme was the horse, mustang bit with Monty Roberts and seeing the horses communicate in their EQUUS language. They nuzzle and use their mouths, tongues, ears and bodies to communicate and gesture. I’ve watched the horses in Reuben’s standing around and they spend ages nuzzling and standing close and just kind of bonding and commiserating with each other and somehow comforting each other in that awful  muddy place

Saturday 18^th February 2012

So ends the low tide, new moon week (which is kind of like no moon as you don’t see the new moon crescent for quite a while and quite a busy outdoor week therefore. One day taking in the low tide beach near Pedn, a long hike from Land’s End with Paul Gillard, a walk up to Boscawen Un stone circle from St Buryan and today a walk up to St Buryan for the Graun. The hunt was out again. The same Master of the Hunt as last time, he blew on his horn and all the dogs rallied to the call and followed his horse and did what he said. I chatted to one man who was ‘bringing up the rear’, and his horse 16 hands was called ‘Woody’ a gorgeously well behaved horse who smelled me but didn’t bite, clipped and very very alert about what was going. Anita George Publican of The Logan Rock was there, her son Nicholas is the Publican of the St Buryan pub.Ann and John Mackie were there. I got my bits and bobs from the shop and post office and started walking briskly as a storm was sweeping in, with a lot of mist from the North , coming in across the sea just like yesterday. Another man was standing on his horse ‘Sethi’ on the road keeping a look out for the hounds. His horse was also very alert and eyes and ears going all over the place. Very well behaved and very excited,

The walk to the circle yesterday was great. I went round to Cassandra’s to check on directions and to ask why they hadn’t returned my email. Cassandra said they had sent three.  I was doing well following the markers when there were two ways to go next to a yellow arrow. I went straight on but should have veered to the left. With the result that I got to the Ash Grove too soon and not where the path was. I followed what I thought was the trail but got stuck, as usual in the brambles and overgrown tangled up trees and stuff near the stream where it is marshy and fun for kids but my hair got all caught up in twigs and I felt like Gulliver. I battled on but not before I got whacked right on the face and nose by a bloody branch. I yelled and screamed and then carried on. Eventually I got to the little kind of bridge thing and was on the right track Yay!! I went up along the green path through the bracken and overgrown whatever and I was getting further towards the heathland where these places often are, kind of at the highest points in the area. To the left you could see a few craggy rocks jutting out which I’ve seen before and a couple of the fields to the left had large boulders in a line in them. One wonders if they hadn’t been especially put there to mark the circle.

Always the circle appears when I least expect it, it looms, appears and I never see it before I get there it is so well hidden in the tangle of bramble, hedgerow and so on. There seem to be a couple of small hawthorn or blackberry bushes there I hadn’t noticed before. I walked around anti clockwise. Two young girls there, I just smiled, so did they. I walked round, didn’t speak and went straight to the white quartz stone and looked at all the huge crystals in it. One wonders how on earth it was moved here and for what purpose. Crystals are natural amplifiers, so perhaps to amplify. It is opposite the large pointed phallic stone in the middle and there are twenty stones including the quartz one and two smaller ones at the entrance. I don’t honestly know about the placement. I love the way the grass is all soft and worn down and mowed by people walking on it and no weeds or brambles in the area. I keep thinking of fairy tales of brambles and tangled bushes that fairies and princesses get stuck in and prick their fingers on.

I spoke briefly to one of the women. They went. I sat next to the white quartz stone and closed my eyes. I have mainly an energetic response. I haven’t seen any ‘angels’and haven’t actually asked to. I might ask that I be given guidance and inspiration or visions that I need for my journey or something like that.  I wonder if these ‘vision’s are actually projections of the unconscious to be honest. I was very impressed visually especially of the white quartz stone and was interested in all the detail of it, like an abstract painting.

Then I walked back and saw a girl with two dogs and asked her the proper way. She was really sweet and told me about the bridge and markers. I could see a figure silhouetted in the distance in a dip in the hedgerow, a square shape with a head shape and obviously it was a man looking through after the little girl. I wondered why he didn’t come for the walk with them. I followed the path and came to the dip in the hedgerow, which apparently was because of horses jumping through in the last hunt, in November I think it was, they run from September to March .The man in the dip was the girl’s father a good looking outdoor chap with one of those recreational bike/car thingies. He was typical Cornish, said he had plenty of fresh air in his job and didn’t need the walk and that he and kids had been out horse riding that morning already. Kind of put me in my place. Not many smiles but obviously we all humans love a chat about this and that and it passes the time. Quite a young man, curmudgeonly already, annoyed with anyone who doesn’t know the lie of the land like he does and probably judgmental about me probably visiting the circle, ‘all them ‘hippy types.’ Why are farmers so gruff in such beautiful places? He should have been all happy and smiling. I thought he looked funny from a distance obviously making sure his little girl was ok. She was very nice and polite and well behaved. But it’s a hard life being a Farmer they say but they mostly seem to be grumpy at all times. And so got back to Crean Bottoms.

Thursday 16^th a walk with Paul Gillard. Jo dropped us off at Land’s End and would pick us up at the end. It was another gorgeous day and I wasn’t familiar with this stretch of coast line. Very bulbous and characterful boulders decorating the headlands and a lot of erosion of sandstone I think and a lot of sand dumped on this side of the coast this year. I have got to know the stretch of coastline from St Loy and Lamora all the way to Land’s End, Sennen, Gwenvar, St Just, Pendeen and Trewellard, St Ives and Zennor rather well.

We scrambled quite close to the edge and came to some rocky ledges where the seals like to bask and fish. We saw five altogether, a  pair hunting, and several quite large looking ones cruising from Land’s End to Nanjizel and sometimes up to the cove at Penberth to do a bit of fishing, usually when the tide is coming in as it shakes up the sand on the bottom and the sea bass can find shrimp and so on released from the safety of the sandy bed.

I spotted my first properly identified Stone chat actually sitting on a stone looking at us and posing and I swear the seals were looking up at us with curiosity about what we were doing but were trusting enough not to think that Paul’s massive telephoto lens and monopod weren’t agents of death. Such a similarity between ‘shooting’ guns and shooting film. And paparazzi being labeled a pack of hounds chasing stars and so on is very aggressive actually but only because the public want that and will pay to see the photos, just like the drugs trade. Is it the chicken or the egg that comes first?

Walked happily along several new paths, Jo picked us up and we went to eat, but the place we were going to was closed. I don’t know how they expected to eat lunch when we started out so late anyway. They took ages to get here and I walked up to meet them on School Hill. I don’t know but after several hours in the wind I get damn hungry although when we found a chip shop in Sennen, it wasn’t the best fish I’d ever had but hunger will do that to you. Locals go to another place. You live and learn. Could have gone to the Minack. I was a bit awkward as I didn’t just want tea, but should have just gone along with it and not been so bossy.

Paul quite funny and we were both taking a lot of pictures.

I went on Wednesday along the cliffs to Logan Rock and had a good feast of my favourite bit of sea and coast. A good drop of sand at Green Bay, almost as large as Porthcurno. I walked to the left on the rock and there was a place where someone had had a fire earlier which might have been the place where Mandy  Blann goes, also known as ‘sprite.’ I sat down to a meditation and got grounded and energetically it was good. I think its doing me good. Through these low tide days my energy level has been good, I’ve been positive and then  one night my mind raced like a film show of all the beautiful places I know and have imprinted on my brain and I was looking at them in my mind’s eye like a fast moving documentary show as if the images were embedding in my brain and mind and helping to make new wiring and healing and the beauty was washing through my brain and mind’s eye and staying there to show me how fantastic life is or something. How lucky I am to have the freedom and time to bathe my eyes and brain in such a wonder of nature. I will try and show it to others. I have been drinking it all in a lot this week as the weather has been quite good and I will be leaving for London very shortly andat this rate I will want to stay another night but I bet C will make me pay a lot.

He apparently first came down age ten to St Just, I think through his Grandfather or Father’s work as an engineer. Moved about a lot but then went to boarding school at 8 and went to Africa also. Quite an unsettled childhood but obviously has lived in Cornwall most of his life although he doesn’t sound in the remotest sense Cornish and no accent has rubbed off. I met his mum and brother and wife this week. He takes after his mother, who is 88 and very intact and lovely complexion and beautiful thick curly white hair and probably a beauty when young. Such a difference in how well cared for she is and my own mother,  who had a strong spirit but physically wore herself out. I guess she taught me a lesson in compassion but too late although I did my best, I really did. Why am I so in love with her even now and my dad too, probably because they put up with me for so long? I love them so much and when mum said you never get over your parents I know what she means, I wonder if she ever regretted anything? Is it Catholic guilt? But I do have some good times and images. Julie said that my family probably hates me because I’m free. Really? Are they jealous

Julie said many things to me. I went over to hers when I was distraught. She said I could have a room there and was very kind. She popped over yesterday and I had biscuits and chocolate and made a nice fire but I was a bit agitated about C coming back and minute. She said she could handle Charlie, she goes a bit gee gaw and giggly around him. Why do women do that? I suppose its lack of male energy. Funny because Fiona who is house sitting at Tresidder went like that when Stephen VB and I were walking past. And invited us in and told us all sorts when she had been quite closed with me and gave him a pair of wellies. I suppose she trusted me by then and I kind of guaranteed that he was alright more or less. People here weird about being seen with someone as the news gets round. Even John Mackay said when I got out of his car in Buryan that everyone would see and wonder who this woman, me was and it would get back to Anne. I don’t suppose she cares that much.

F. Her son and family is staying at hers. Good job I’m not there or he wouldn’t have been able to visit. I may try and go down there tomorrow and take Jaqueline’s torch back. She called and C sounded bossy and she put the phone down on him. I think there are little adjustments and changes he might make now but never admits to any mistakes and he always puts blame on others, holds himself above everyone.

Set off to walk to Penberth but saw Julie and wanted to say goodbye and thanks and she whisked me off to Sennen to the First and Last for lunch, more beef. No walk on beach just inside stuff. She just didn’t even ask if I wanted that kind of food, just said let’s go to lunch and offered to pay. It was nice but a bit heavy.  Would have liked to walk a bit. She is very pale for someone living so close to such stunning coastal scenery. She was going off to a sacred well or stream to get water and when I got home later she had left me a nice big bottle of stream water, really sweet. I walked along the cliffs bumped into Scratch and we walked back to the white house in Treen. He showed me inside his ‘gaff’. Lovely and warm with an aga, nice couch and lovely views, all free,  lucky guy. Nicer inside than seeing it on the outside, belongs to Ann who was married to a Swiss. Saw Adele’s husband in there before maybe he was checking it when they lived next to John Mackie or whatever his name is. I walked down through the woods to Penberth and up to see if Nathan still there, but not. All very spic and span inside.

Then down to see Jaqueline. She was talking to Vicky with the two kids but the kids looked a bit bored and tired. I chatted to Vicky also said I was looking for a house sit or whatever next winter.  She said Julia Bryant and hubby often have house sitters and are in Africa for the winter. But how do I get in touch. I stupidly said isn’t she a bit demanding or scary? She had after all thrown out S and made it difficult for J to move into a National Trust cottage, according to J. I don’t think V is so bright anyway, but I guess I could send them a card or something. How do I get in touch with them? Send a  note with my address and email on I suppose. Worth a try. Did meet Mr Bryant briefly. F later told me they were arrogant and capricious and to keep a wide berth of them.

Then J offers me more spag bol and I have a big pan of it at Crean also. So much beef. We talk and chat and have a glass of wine, I feel a bit uncomfortable. Not easy as she is deaf and doesn’t listen or hear much of what you say or answer but I try to have a conversation as I think she is nice and probably enjoys it and as she says she doesn’t have many friends and doesn’t trust people although she is happy to chat, has a sister and some nieces she chats to regularly. I walk back in the beautiful dark night with tons of stars everywhere. It’s wonderful and then I find the lovely water that Julia left. I’ve a good mind to ask her if she’s going into PZ tomorrow. I get in Jesse is here and they are watching the Sopranos.

Then out of the blue C says would I mind cleaning some smelly stuff out of the fridge, emphasizing smelly.  I say why do you assume the smelly stuff is mine? I have cleaned that fridge more times than he’s had hot dinners but of course I don’t say anything about that. What a stupid time to say that. I say he is rude and that it’s not appropriate to talk like that to me infront of Jesse, who promptly leaves Jesse is the son of the American Academic lady next door. He says his usual rant, how I am a pain, how he wants to punch me, I say I would punch you back and probably I am stronger than he is. I throw my spag bol away and root through the fridge and there is nothing there.  After a while I say ‘Are you happy now?’ He was swearing and shouting about nothing. It’s like he has to moan about something. He squeezes every last drop of life out of you. It’s like he just has to keep demanding, attacking, being rude, talking about ‘dirty girls’ and so on and is wildly inappropriate and out of order. I am going to ask Julia if she is going to PZ tomorrow and maybe just get a taxi on Tuesday. He offered to give me a lift. I don’t want anything from him, fuck him, must allow the universe to decide the result and not get revenge. I have to get money, more money, he never stops, he would hardly let me see the phone bill, he is so controlling. Take books back, take stuff to charity shop. Maybe go on the 3pm bus after cleaned house and so on and call Julia if I have her number anywhere still.  I am gripped by siege mentality. Some people are never satisfied till they see your corpse drained of blood.

I am glad I kept my centre and didn’t feel attacked. Meanwhile they are watching the Sopranos where a women heals the gangster with the over masculine attitude and there is C and J watching it and C leading J down the road of woman hating when in fact it is up to him to make friends and break away from his Mother if that is his problem.  It is so nice here when C is out!!

Haven’t done a blog since C got back or written or worked. It is not always a good environment for me. Managed a few watercolours. Didn’t like Lucian Freud film much. He reminded me of Dracula with his mad wild white face and strange deranged eyes that look like they have just seen the Devil himself. All those empty victim women who got even more emptied out by him. It’s like the Universe gave them themselves multiplied. Did he live off their energy as well as their bodies? Very strange man, but became super rich. Same old, flesh, genitals, blotchy skin, untouched by sunlight, pink round the edges, very white and lardy looking, speaking of mortality, such depressing art like Stanley Spencer, Damian Hurst, Francis Bacon, horrible, ugly, tortured, why is this considered the best of British? Is it a Death of the masculinist phase? I  prefer the French Impressionists , who portrayed life just as well. When I first got up to London I was with Jo in the garden of the Kalendar café and who should be there but one of his models, one of the last ones, a small, upright, painfully natural and simple, voice like cut glass who is a painter in her own right. It’s true she looks a bit ‘touched’ like some kind of tragic Victorian heroine and very petite. He said he thought the women had this ‘empty space’ and thought he could fill it duh!! How Freudian is that? He had sixteen children. How did he manage that, did he refuse birth control? Couldn’t they go on the pill or use the cap? Very articulate models and girlfriends nevertheless.

Often the case that artist’s took models off the street and screwed them but actually a well spoken and educated woman would make a far more interesting companion in the studio than an illiterate whore I guess. Though I’ve never met one and probably there are upper class women who are far more ‘whorish’ than poor women desperate for money to feed a child.

Tuesday 28^th February 2012 London

I came back to London on 25^th February, fully expecting a huge dose of painful and scary reality. Well I’m having some dreamy days also as I do have the consolation of my own bed and am sleeping rather well. Yesterday dull and grey and depressing and I took my documents down to the Neighbourhood office for Housing Benefit, enough said. There is an awful lot of work to do here. Most of the flat will have to be re-painted, a lot of cleaning, unpacking, finding things, endless dusting, two cupboards and a shed to sort out, windows to clean, garden in a total mess, the grass is full of moss and almost impossible for anything to grow plus two years of leaves and nobody doing anything at all except fucking around with stupid window boxes, which I think Lucy does to keep Ushy or whatever that old bitch’s name is with the old double barreled snobby name related to royalty or whatever. Same people here as for about 15 years now and probably we will all end up old and lonely here but at least you do see people coming in and out and say hello and we can probably look out for each other too.  Poor Lucy and Karen will be the youngest ones while the rest of us grow old. What is it about this house that has attracted so many single blonde females, on my side all Pisceans too! And I’m the only one who doesn’t dye their hair!!

Today nice, got the windows done. I haven’t done the blog, or book or paint for ages but am ready. First I have to take care of this place. Went to Literary café and felt so relaxed and enjoyed it being there whereas before I’ve been very uptight and critical and short tempered and worried about money. Am I really a progressed Libra ascendant now? If so it feels bloody marvelous. I’m tired, I’m going to bed. I’m in a different world now, so far from Penberth, Truro and Crean. Maybe F will invite me down for a week. She is very wise about not seeing a lot of people and just walking and chilling, does you far more good. I hope I can have another week or two in Cornwall before I go back to Taos

Must have spoken to about ten people today who went past as I was cleaning the windows, I should have filmed them all, it was kind of a gathering of goddesses of the hearth, all celebrating Spring and cleaning and removing the dirt so the light can get in. A sacred act.

No blogging since C got back at beginning of February, so much for being in an inspiring and creative environment with an inspiring and creative person. I am fascinated still by the attitude to the ‘other’ that so called creatives have, particularly males towards females. Unless you were the Queen or Margaret Thatcher you will get no respect from him.

21^st March 2012

My 62^nd birthday came and went. I was pleasantly surprised that Peter Connor’s son Frankie and his girlfriend is now living at Peter’s old flat next door.  (Peter was very kind when my Mum died and he had also lost his wife so we commiserated). I met Jane again, Peter’s daughter,  we will try and visit Peter and Dee’s graves in Highgate Cemetery. Jane must be a bit of a fighter as she also managed to keep Peter’s flat for her son. Good to have some continuity. Also bumped into Geraldine playing tennis at Parliament Hill, haven’t seen her for years.

After the first couple of weeks back I began to relax a bit and am enjoying walking on the Heath again and getting re-acquainted with the lovely oak and beech copses. Thank god I feel some connection to nature there, but it still is a shock after spending four months in Cornwall. Researching ancient history in this area turns up some outstanding information such as there were Mesolithic settlers that came here over 7,000 years ago probably from the Siberian Steppes region and Iberian people also. I discover the link between our culture and the Native American one and how the Roman and Norman invasions destroyed our ancient ways and worship of nature and the earth. But the old sacred places are still there, underneath in London, all over the west of England and they cannot be destroyed. I am very interested in the Druids that came later and their practice of ‘teaching’ outdoors underneath oak trees.

For that is where I went when I was grieving. The land is the link to our ancestors. In my case I connected with ‘the land’ in a way to connect somehow to my Mother when she died. Or at least it was the only place where I felt safe or free from fear, or that gave me what I desperately needed at that time and still do. I became so conscious of my need and dependence on ‘nature’ as a salve and healing balm after my Mother died. Perhaps that was where her spirit had now gone. And I was led to beautiful places and connected to the huge spirit of the planet after the loss or even because of the loss.  It makes me wonder if my friend John Nichols developed his special love for nature and all its pristine grace through the loss of his mother when he was so young and tender.  And if he found a perfect virgin purity in the white frozen snow in winter and the sacredness of water,  finding a new mother in the land all around him and that that is why he is so terrified about what we are doing to the planet, that he will lose his mother all over again. The mother of all of us.

Gypsy Horses from St Day Cornwall

 Friday 20th January 2012


I love these two gypsy horses, one only
six month's old, I was told, bought at the St Day Horse Fair. But so far I cannot find any such thing.They are definately gypsy type horses known as gypsy cobs. As far as I remember when I was about five, our bread and milk was delivered by a huge horse with feathering around his/her fetlocks. But I thought it was a Shire horse as all large horses with furry fetlocks I thought were Shires. I fed them a slice of bread or carrot and was amused by how they would have a nosebag of food fitted over their heads to feed. They would also walk right onto the pavement over the curb to see if you had any treats for them, dragging the entire cart with them while the breadman or milkman was delivering loaves and bottles. I've looked up St Day Horse Fair but haven't found anything. Most horse fairs seem to be up North and close to links to Ireland. I am not sure if what people mean by Gypsy relates solely to Ireland or whether it includes any of the gypsies elsewhere in Europe. It amused me that every Horse Fair I checked out on the web was always 'the biggest, oldest and most important Horse Fair in the whole of Europe. Could those Irishmen be yarning it a bit? 
I had no idea that there were still old Gypsy Horse fairs in Cornwall. But I still haven't found one. The only one I actually know of is Appleby in Yorkshire where the horses are walked into the water of the river Appleby, young lads show off trotting around bareback looking very precarious probably trying to impress the young  ladies and stand out from the crowd, which of course they do and caravans are dotted about everywhere.


I read about the one in Bannisloe in Galway, which turns out to be very close to Roscommon where my Great Grandfather Michael Fuery came from. He was married to Georgina in 1839  in Boyle Roman Catholic Church. The next census has them on the outskirts of Birmingham in the Midlands. In the summer, while I was in Taos, New Mexico I met Enda Walsh the famous Irish playwright who was kind enough to inform me that in fact, Roscommon, was a right dump of a place! Always good to find out your ancestors didn't come from the most beautiful place on earth and weren't King's or Queen's, which of course one would prefer. When people talk about 'past lives' and reincarnation they never were slaves in Cleopatra's palace or on some other humble level or other but nearly always the High Priestess or the Lord High Chamberlain. 


I love the red coat that the adult horse is wearing and he seems very proud of it, almost standing to attention. They are not the prettiest of horses, but very strong and tough and able to stand up to all sorts of weather with their thick furry coats. I like these two almost have Roman noses, slightly curved and I

imagine able to bear a harness and so on. If
they were used to haul longboats on the canals full of coal, as well as pull the little gypsy caravans it would obviously help to have a very strong facial bone structure. They
seemed very curious about goings on around
them and almost like they were expecting someone to come along and put them in harness and make them do work! 


Had a lovely friend visit from Truro on Friday the 20th January and proves to me what a boost a bit of congenial company can be. Especially someone you've known for 42 years and counting. 


We managed a good walk, a sit down in Penberth, a playful encounter with Brendan the Irish sea dog who is huge, red brown coloured, with a coat like a sixties Afghan coat turned inside out, a funny face and a good friendly temperament. He gambols around outside the cottage that Moira and Neil live in right next to the sea about two yards from the sea! I saw Moira and Neil in their little boat going out of the cove one full moon night looking very sweet and romantic.
Reminded me of 'The Owl and the Pussycat.'

On the Sunday following I managed a game
of tennis with David Beamish and Darren down at the courts at Porthcurno. Then I decided to have a bit of a cycle ride on the wonderful Motobecane that my neighbours have allowed me to use. I was coming along past the Crean turn and up to the ponds where the ducks are by the turn to Polgigga and took the turn to Porthgwarra and cycled about two miles along there, although it seemed to be a lot longer. Past through a large farmyard with a group of bullocks standing glumly in one of the sheds who looked like they would prefer to be out in the
fields. 


I was astonished by how tiny and small 
Porthgwarra cove was compared to my 
favourite beach at Pedn Vounder, with only one brightly coloured blue and white fishing boat tied up on the slip, when several boats used to go out from there. This one is the only one that still does lobster fishing. The quay  had similar huge boulders that they have at Penberth. A couple were sitting and peering at the sea and there was the rounded black shape of a seal's head
popping up every now and then from its pursuit of catching fish. They always seem to be as curious about us as we are about them. Such a wild and tiny little cove but with a nice
little sandy beach. 


Finished the wonderful Clare Tomalin biography of Charles Dickens and of course I am astonished at his behaviour and treatment of his wife Catherine Hogarth. Really I think some of these 'genius' authors should be kept as far away from women as possible for the protection of the women concerned! Over and over I read and hear about the poor treatment that some male writer's, artists, poets and musicians enact on their often long suffering wives, partners and girlfriends. I think the problem is a lack of strong willed and calm
women who have strong self esteem and who are able to stand up to these men without all the emotional shenanigans. One thinks of Picasso,Rodin, Tolstoy to  name a few. Claire Tomalin is a prudent writer that doesn't preach or nag in her books. But it seems Catherine wasn't allowed to voice an opinion or do much but comply totally to Charles Dickens.  When she did finally she was put out and set apart from her own children who sided with Dickens. I find it perverse that her own sister Georgina preferred to stay with Dickens after her sister was formally separated from him. Obviously the status she derived from being Dicken's handmaiden was far superior to any kine of loyalty she had to her sister. To me this behaviour is very innapropriate. It wasn't till  Dickens died that Catherine saw her sister again, after twelve years. It is not clear what exactly Catherine did to exact her treatment except that a new woman had entered Dickens life who was also sidelined and kept apart whilst Dickens could nestle in the comfort Georgina and his daughters provided. Apart from Catherine's fertility the words castration and impotence come to mind regarding her life inasmuch as she was expected to be extremely passive. Somehow this genius was excrutiatingly sensitive when it came to his wife and did not want an equal or a challenge. This is so different to the relationship that existed between  Charles Darwin and his wife Emma who regularly discussed and critiqued Darwin's work and whose opinion was sought out. Darwin seemed also a lot fonder of his children than Dickens was. We also learn that despite Dicken's mythic standing, he enjoyed being flattered.


My theory regarding famous narcissist's is that their narcissism is the counter balance or opposite of their greatest fear which is abandonment terror. Thanks to a friend in Taos called Val who pointed this out to me. Dickens wanted to be loved. Towards the end of his life he performed readings from his books. He was both excited, elated and minted from doing this. He loved the approbation and applause from the audience. He had to be helped on and off the stage, he almost killed himself performing the Death of Nancy over and over again.  Earlier in the Tomalin biography we hear how his Mother wanted him to go back to the blacking factory he was sent to aged 12 when his Father went to the Marshalsea Debtors Prison. He was put into a lodging house aged 11 alone with no family protection and left to the mercy of the landlady. In his later writings he mentions these kinds of situation where children as young as 10 years were put in lodging houses and sent out to work. One can't help thinking of Oliver Twist and of how Dicken's himself sent four of his sons to boarding schools in  Boulogne from the age of 8, thinking this would make them more aware and appreciative of their privileged position. Several were subsequently sent to  Australia and never seen again. He admitted he didn't want these sons. One has to think would birth control have been better? Would he not allow his wife to use it? Did he not make the link from his sexual appetite to the production of babies? Is this a genius or a madman?? At least he didn't have Catherine committed to a Lunatic Asylum as did  many other fine upstanding Victorian Gentlemen. But one of his daughters was determined to put the record straight about him and said he was not always a 'good man.'