Reflections on a short holiday
Friday, 26. June 2009
The first thing I’d like to say is that holidays are disruptive: you get thrown out of your usual routine which if you have a great little life like I do is a drag; then you lose your privacy and have to rely on people who can’t cook and think synthetic sheets are OK; plus you have to endure the sheer agony of travel, with all its expensive and irritating privations; then finally you come home, somewhat relieved but plunged back into missing the blazing beach yearning for excitement that was awful while it was happening.
Having said all that, I very much enjoyed my break in Cornwall: I enjoyed driving down at unreasonable speeds; the sea air was refreshing and pleasantly tiring; the sea was stimulating and the sun blazed. My heart held up reasonably well, though the experience underlined the fact that I am almost an old man with a bad heart.
On one beach we sat on rocks in the sea watching the sunset and eating mediocre fish and chips while some Latvian surfers gambolled in the waves. At Tintagel we watched the sun set over King Arthur’s castle while eating supper in the eccentric restaurant of a wacky hotel numbering movie stars among its ex patrons, the most exalted of whom was Al Pacino, impossible to imagine in one horse Tintagel but never mind. At St Ives we shouldered our way through the narrow streets and cheated cloudy weather up the rest of the coast with a burning day on Porthmeor beach at the foot of the Tate Modern where surfer dudes compete to be cool and girls hang around showing their wares to the cool dudes who pretend not to notice. You can also buy a pretentious Italian snack from the most expensive beach cafe in all of Europe but we didn’t do that…
I am a snob but I’m not a toff. I like my proles to be good hearted and know their place but I don’t like sitting among show-offs from the chattering classes. So what I look for in a beach is kind of distinguished ordinary: people who are kind to their children and not too obese; wholesome snacks that could be worth the money, washed down with a decent cup of tea; yes some rockpools for the homeschooling mode dads to show off their parenting but not so many that you cut your feet on them.
I like a beach that’s not quite tame but not too dangerous, not deserted but neither crowded, a few geriatrics toasting away their speeding-by years but also some gauche teenagers trying to bury each other in sand to dissipate their lust. I like the odd mysterious beauty in a skimpy bikini, head in a book, ignoring the stares. If possible I like to see dogs digging up the sand and barking at the surf. I like the beach. In fact I could spend the rest of my life on the beach, quietly observing people not in cities or workplaces or shopping malls…
We found that beach, on our last day, the final town before you quit North Cornwall, a place of traffic jams on the lame bypass where I’ve been stuck for hours so many time before so never turned left into the town. We found the perfect beach, which I must return to, more and often, now I know where it is.
Cora Says:
My first acquaintance with Cornwall
So, I’ve seen a bit of the coast, from Bude to St Ives and villages in between, like for instance Tintagel. How strange these beaches are: all these rocks. Dutch beaches are always flat and consist of sand, nothing else. And how omnipresent is the movement of the tides…especially when you’ve chosen a place to sit in this tidal area.
And why don’t the English deep-fry their chips twice, instead of only one time…although the seagulls don’t seem to bother when they try to steal your food out of your fingers…
Apart from these new experiences, there were beautiful sunsets, breakers with a nice temperature, a fantastic landscape with magnificent glowing green hills, a bright, intense light, tiny narrow (quiet) roads and tracks…
Living in the UK, is this: living on an island, or is it living in an island…
bashi Says:
After reading Stevens blog last night I felt I had been there … and through Cora’s eyes something different
although everything looks better when you are in love
umm will have to think about that?
like get another dog, find a lover and go to Cornwall! lol
Vincent Says:
I remember well the beach at Tintagel: a steep rocky path, I think, and a cave which fills with the sea at high tide, so that you could be cut off and drown if you didn’t get away in time.
But what I remember best is being taken by my host there with a dozen or so teenage girls who all stripped naked for their swim. Whether he (my host) and I also stripped, I do not remember. I was visiting communes for somewhere to stay in 1971. This one ran a summer horse-riding school and my host’s wife, who had extra-marital pleasures of her own, permitted this one (and who knows what else?) to her husband.
Steven Holmes Says:
I think that’s more or less what teenage girls should be doing, sharing their incredible “beauty” with other human beings, who long for it. I am taking cover now.
sally Says:
It’s 10 years since I last lived in England and of course, I almost forgot exactly where Cornwall is. Perhaps it is time to come back and spend a summer hiking around the country while writing a Bill Bryson type of book in reverse. After all, fish and chips is the most wonderful food to a Brit when you can’t have some. It’s probably very soggy, salty and vinegary in reality.
Still, on cold, wet miserable days like we have had for the last fortnight in new York, my spirits have been sustained by the thought of hot crisp fish and chips. Funny, isn’t it?
Steven Holmes Says:
Not much decent fish and chips left any more, Sal. I only found one, after much searching.