Picnic

It was my turn to drive and the girls wanted a picnic so I chose Porlock Weir – one of the prettiest places I know and an easy drive – apart from the bendy narrow road betwixt Porlock and Porlock Weir. It was a glorious day so I wore t-shirt and skirt and didn’t don my anorak all day.

The day before I vacuumed the car – hateful job - and cleaned the windows. I was not best pleased to find my bottle of Windolene useless – it left the windows smeary but Mr Muscle – Window and Glass - did the trick (their Shine is great for keeping showers sparkly.) Like the good consumer I am I tried to contact Windolene but it was too difficult.

I asked the girls to bring a small deck chair each and packed coffee and biscuits and a bottle of Shiraz for them and diet coke for me. We each took our own picnic – all healthy salads although I felt distinctly under water-cressed. Has it got some rare quality that I’ve missed?

We stopped in a leafy lay- by for coffee and the gods smiled and we travelled behind the local bus on the tricky bit – so all the oncoming traffic gave way and we sailed through.

The car park opens onto a grassy sward which becomes the beach and there are picnic tables so in the end we didn’t get our chairs out of the car. It was early so we set off on an amble. It was sad to see the lovely hotel where MTL and I have had many anniversaries had closed, but there is still a decent pub and a good restaurant with rooms.

Engrossed in snapping - the girls shouted to me and indicated that I should join them where they were chatting to some young builders - I have to keep a close eye on them but apparently the boys were converting an old building into a magnificent house for letting and they wanted to show off their handiwork.. They didn’t seem to mind us stepping over them as they carried on working and it was going to be fantastic. With the hills behind and the beach and harbour in front the setting was perfect. There were lots of skylights, pillars, super bathrooms and great floors. I was hesitant about taking photos but they didn’t seem to mind a bit.

Eventually I dragged the girls away and after a browse round the gift shop it was time for lunch.

More later

A reason to be cheerful

Aside

In the forties – as I remember with great sadness – to be told your child had leukaemia was to receive a death sentence. How things have changed – a real success story, thanks to magnificent research, massively helped by noble individuals who have doggedly raised money to support Leukaemia Research. The work continues so I’m going to join Sir Ian Botham on October 10^th – along with hundreds of others I’m sure, to do a sponsored 4 mile walk. Trouble is he does walk rather fast so I hope I can keep up, but I’m doing it come what. And having mentioned it here I can’t weasel out of it.

Tomorrow I have a long bus journey to Warminster to visit # 2 son and am looking forward to sitting and doing nothing. Hopefully after I get back on Friday, I can get back on track – house wise, blogwise and book wise. Chaos reigns but we are taking my step-daughter to eat Chinese tonight on a table near the fish tank apparently. Should be soothing.

The Giddy Heaven fell.

Story contd.

The Definition of Love

My Love is of a birth as rare

As ‘tis, for object strange and high:

It was begotten by despair,

Upon impossibility.

Magnanimous despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing,

Where feeble hope could ne’er have flown

But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended soul is fixt,

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves; not lets them close:

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel

Us as the distant poles have placed,

(Though love’s whole world on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embraced.

Unless the giddy heaven fall,

And earth some new convulsion tear;

And us to join, the world should all

Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines so love’s oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet:

But ours, so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars.

Andrew Marvell 1621-1678

After the phone call from Jamie I was shaken out of the dreamy state I had been in since his letter. There was no problem about the date – it was one of my days when I didn’t need to go into the shop and I had often spent the day in London – not so often recently as I became less enamoured of city life. But the thought of Jamie seeing me as a middle aged woman unnerved me a little. Thirty years ago I had been young, gauche, quite pretty and innocent. Now I was middle aged. Two years earlier I had visited a health farm and started to take my own health seriously. I stopped smoking, ate healthily, cut down on alcohol and took up Yoga.

I let my hair go back to its natural colour – deep honey- and now looked more healthy than glamorous. I don’t care if it was vain: I wanted him to see me looking my absolute best. What to wear? As an actress I knew how one could so easily change the impression one gave. I had a very pretty pale orangey- coral, fine wool dress I had bought for # I son’s first girlfriend’s wedding. It was feminine and showed off my figure. It was a very cold January so I just stuck my mink on top. This was the seventies remember, and I had earned it by years of hard work in the shop.

I had mixed emotions travelling on the train and kept trying to curb the sudden thrills of wild excitement. Just remember, I told myself, the years of unhappiness and guilt you have felt because of this man. You are in charge, you are your own person and you have managed to live a perfectly good life without him.

We met at the Charing Cross Hotel - right next to my station. He was leaning against a pillar – apparently absorbed in a newspaper just like he had been when Maddie and I met him outside his college in Oxford– decades earlier. He looked nice in a blueish suit with a blue and white checked shirt. His hair was still dark and curly but when I looked closely my heart went out to him and I could see the lines of stress and grief etched on his face. (When I first met his doctor he told me Jamie was a saint and he was Saint Jamie for some time after that.)

We repaired to Eleanor’s Bar in the hotel, where he was staying. He had a gin and I had a scotch or two. He said he liked scotch too much. We talked – he said I would find he didn’t talk much and from then on I could hardly get a word in edgeways. He had a quaint habit of using a note book to illustrate what he was saying and I could tell from the tremor in his hand that he was even more nervous than I was.

We had lunch in the large formal dining room and both had fish but it might as well have been cotton wool. We were in a sort of bubble - cocooned from the rest of the world. Still talking we walked down to the river and when Jamie was greeted by an acquaintance, I could see by the man’s face that he was aware of the bubble even though we weren’t holding hands. There were no silences and we flitted from the present to the past, carefully skirting round potentially difficult subjects. I do remember saying that I believed it hadn’t been the right time for us or one of us would have tried harder to keep us afloat.

After tea we went to his room to freshen up: he told me he had to shave twice a day and we continued chatting through the bathroom door whilst he shaved and I powdered my nose. All we did was talk; there was so much to catch up on. Neither of us were hungry so we continued walking and talking until it was time for my last train.

At our meeting we had given each other an ‘old friend type kiss on the cheek’ and at the end of the evening we again exchanged an O.F.T.K.O.T.C. but he hugged me and held me close and sighed ‘Oh Pat... ’ and as I rested my head against his chest I felt a momentary panic. Supposing it all went wrong again. He was so vulnerable. Was I about to leap from the frying pan into the fire? I knew this was not an ending but the start of something.