Something Better - From the Lost Blog

“Gulls cry.

Strangely dressed folk pass me by in the streets.

Wreaths of herb & holly intertwined & woven.

Masked faces.

The sound of an accordion – melancholy & haunting, echoing down the street.

A man dressed as a silver winged pony.

A great orange sun made from paper & willow.

 

-The anticipation.

It’s still light –

 

By day these are just ordinary people. This is just an ordinary place,

but when the sun fades,

the place transforms.

a veil is passed

and we go into darkness.

 

A world of fire & drums,

of magic

where mysterious creatures dance about in their fleshless bony cloaked forms,

and anything can happen.

For it is midwinter.”

 

Excerpts taken from my notes whilst sat on a bench on Market Jew street observing the Montol festivities. 

I changed the decorations. But we’re not all there yet… I’ve stripped the wallpaper and moved to WordPress. I felt I ought to keep up with the times, or maybe I got bored. One of those.

But hello again, and welcome to my new blog. Salt & Sea Stories. It’s kind of bare right now because I’ve still got a lot to do but time is a hot commodity for me right now – you see, I have barely any to spare – so decorating my pet-project has had to take a back seat.

It’s not just my blog that has changed. I have changed. This year has been transitional & transforming. This time last year, when I was sat on the edge of a quiet, dusky quay on the riverside with my friends, I knew things needed to change. They had to change. But I couldn’t quite foresee just how much they would.

To say that I did a lot of growing as a person this year wouldn’t be entirely accurate. I would say it was more self exploring and testing my limits. Sometimes, for certain life situations or certain people you can squash yourself down in a box because it’s just not convenient for the world if you’re you in your full you-ness. You make so many compromises on your personality that there’s really not a lot of you on the surface. Sometimes you just put that box away somewhere to get dusty and sometimes you send it down a stream altogether.

People ought not to live in boxes.

I escaped mine this year. I have had precisely 2 very brief and contained anxiety attacks in the entirety of having escaped my box (almost a year now) and I think that’s a record for my entire life. I’ve learned to let go of my guilt for living in the place I love, I’ve pushed myself to exist in other places and love them too. Places far beyond my comfort zone. I’ve made more memories this year than I’ve made in a long time – small ones, big ones. Anything from drifting around a salt water lido on a giant inflatable fruit staring at the blue sky to marvelling at the highlands as I snaked through the winding roads in my little blue car. I think 2017 has been one of my favourite years to date and I’m really sad to let it go because I’m not entirely sure 2018 can quite live up to it but I suppose we’ll have to see. Patience is no virtue of mine.

But I didn’t mean for this post to be one of reflection – more a catch up. I’ve been putting off posting here until my new blog was finished but I realise this isn’t going to happen for a while so I’m hastily posting out my winter memories into the void, logged, immortalised.

(That is unless we have some sort of zombie apocalypse where the internet is lost and forgotten about.)

Sir Humphrey Davey isn’t above getting into the spirit of festivities. Below is the best coffee you’ll find in Penzance from the jazz-blasting coffee van on Causeway head.

I think it’s time I talked to you about Penzance. I’ve really grown to love this place in the last couple of years (this year in particular).

Two of my best friends are from this area and over the spring and summer I’ve spent a lot of time backing and forthing to this little seaside town visiting a certain somebody. A certain tall, curly haired, green eyed cinnamon roll. Yes ok, we all know it’s Jon 

So many memories have been made in this place so I really wanted to write about it. Places are extremely important to me as I have a profound sense of belonging to spaces and there’s something about old Pensans (beyond my friends) that has been drawing me in and igniting my imagination.

I’m including another excerpt from my journal which was written while exploring the streets at Montol Festival, I feel that the best way to talk about a place is from that place itself.

 

o l d   p e n s a n s

 

Curious happenings in this stooping & sloping wuthered town on the sea. Midwinter means something in this place of history and lore. Known for pirates and storms, at first glance Penzance bares the face of a tired, former tourists town, slightly grubby and crumbling and having more than is entirely bearable share of kitschy pirate themed stalls and restaurants.

But look closer.

The buskers are always playing. Never are the cobbled streets without the sounds of a penny whistle here and a fiddle there. And here at the Solstice, folks in masks stroll about with herbs and foliage woven into their hair, austere and ethereal costumes, greetings of merry midwinter on their lips.

Almost every narrow backstreet leads to a glimpse of the sea, and the view of the unmovable castle perched steadfastly upon its humble island is visible from many of the steeper streets.

The shops here are eclectic and quirky. Independent book stores, fresh delis and local butchers litter the streets. There’s nothing fancy and pretentious about Penzance, there’s no feeling of gentrification. It has an identity that is all its own.

Chapel street homes a fascinating Egyptian themed town house and a myriad of arty boutiques. On rough days, the storms anger the sea and it paws at the road on the promenade leaving behind great piles of seaweed and sand. You cannot pass here in the storms as the waves could sweep you away, just like they did to the lost land of Lyonesse that is rumoured to lay in the bay beyond Penzance.

At sundown, there will be a procession to the beat of drums and the spirit of the vibrant community here. It’s an enchanting place; of artists and creatures, the town at the gateway to Penwith peninsula and its mysterious rock formations, celtic settlements, quoits and pale sandy hidden beaches with aquamarine waters.

We’ll end the evening with a bonfire and celebrate the shortest day of the year together. I’m so glad to belong to such a place as Cornwall. I feel a kin in this place of myths and lore, in this place that celebrates and retains its fascinating legends.

 

Chapel street is my far one of my most favourite streets in Penzance – not only is it home to the Benbow and the Cornish Barn (currently my number one coffee & free internet exploiting spot) but it boats some of Penzance’s artier and most interesting shops.

Then there’s the art deco Lido. This lido. My love. The thing that little Sarah’s dream of. A beautiful feat of swimming pool with arguably the best cafe in Penzance attached to it. Jubilee pool cafe does the best vegan bap you could ever hope for (I’m not even Vegan) and all their profits are ploughed back into the upkeep of the swimming pool. I can also testify for their great pizza. How they manage to produce the delicious treats that they do out of such a small kitchen always utterly mystifies myself and Jon and we’ve quickly earmarked it as our number one spring/summer/autumn food-with-a-view stop.

Unlike Falmouth which has been largely gentrified since the opening of the university, Penzance is still a poor seaside town. This has both its good points and negative points. Good because there is this quirky, unique town perched right up on this beautiful aquamarine bay that is seriously underrated meaning the rent is much lower than most other seaside towns in Cornwall. There are some truly incredible independent shops littered about – not many chains have moved in yet and so Penzance has a beating heart of quirky local retailers (And I really do mean quirky). It has some brilliant local festivals around the year like Penzance literary festival, the famous Golowan festival and Montol. The late 80’s and early 90’s seemed to have milked the ‘pirates of penzance’ theme cow for every last drop which means that there are more than a tasteful amount of pirate themed gift shops, restaurants and random town decorations. This can be both good and bad depending on your sense of humour. I personally find it endearing.

The negative side is that it isn’t the most prosperous town by a long way. A lot of buildings really do need some TLC and a good jet-wash, it’s the end of the line for trains which means that the town does have more than its fair share of ‘interesting folks’ and in my not so humble opinion, it needs at least one pretentious hipster coffee shop so I can sit there with my laptop and exploit their free internet and immaculately tasting filter brews.

Two pirates just strolled out of the Benbow. Not all of these images are from Penzance, the harbour ones were taken whilst on various walking explorations on the rare drier days we’ve had this winter. I really have made my peace with winter this year however I would be grateful for more of the dreamy, weakly sunlit afternoons with tiny crescent moons hung in the sky and less of the blustery, thickly grey and wet days that seem to be a little too endless for my liking. But I’m not complaining. I’ll take a grey day by the sea any day than living far in land because I need to see the ocean to even remotely feel that sensation of ‘all is well‘.

These coastal scenes were taken in Mullion. I love the light here and the colour of the sea. Sometimes I feel nostalgic for life on the Lizard peninsula but I know it’s only a car ride away to visit all of my favourite haunts.

 

I’ve been dying to visit Montol for the last few years. A huge part of me is desperately attracted to all things mystical, slightly weird and magic. Being surrounded by people in costume and folk music, gathered up in a torch lit procession can almost fool me into believing that things like fae folk could be real. It’s a place where lore and imagination touches reality and encapsulates it, making it real for one evening.

As a non-Christian who is far departed from childhood, practicing Christmas myself feels slightly empty and hypocritical. Christmas means different things for so many people, even those who don’t practice a religion and although I’ve tried in recent years to make it about the spirit of selflessness, family and closeness, I still feel like I’m far removed from it somehow. Like I just haven’t discovered yet what Christmas means to me. I really don’t like the pressure of gifting obscene amounts and buying into the commercialism and then receiving gifts because materials things just don’t matter to me as much as time spent with treasured people. As I was sat at the Christmas dinner table this year with my family, listening to a particular individual complain about how they hadn’t received enough expensive gifts from their parents, it broke my heart to see how the spirit of Christmas had been warped into greed. meh. It really hurt me.

For me this year, Montol was something tangible and exciting that I could partake in. It combined so many elements of things I love; story telling, music, community & art. It was a celebration to make the longest night more bearable and joyful and seeing the town unite together in this display of creativity really created a festive vibe that Christmas just wasn’t able to attain for me this year.

At the end of the evening, the procession gathered around the bonfire where the different key characters of the story of midwinter performed a dance that unfolded a narrative. The atmosphere was so ethereal and exciting. I just wish I was a little bit taller for events like these! Afterwards, we all marched back into the town where various events continued throughout the evening. We met up with one of my best friends Jack who is back from travelling around the world as a musician on a cruise ship and went for a meal at the Cornish Barn only to have our dinner interrupted by a visit from a cloaked horse skeleton character (the Guise beast) who was accompanied by some drummers as they made their way around the pubs and restaurants of Penzance. It was so much fun and it really was one of the highlights of my winter home here.

Darn it feels good to be back home. It feels good to be me again. I’ve never once regretted by decision to come back this time. My last bit of news is that we’ll be moving again soon! Over the winter, Jon & I have been renting a little room in a cottage near Redruth and if all goes well with financial checks etc. we will be moving into a pretty little place we’ve found in Penzance! I feel like its one of those things where it all feels too perfect and too good to be true and something is going to come along soon and trip me up, but I have my fingers and toes crossed that all goes well… because if I am anything, it is ever filled with hope.

So here you are, another unstructured and jumbled, hasty post. I’m really hoping that after the move, I’ll be able to get my life a little more organised as I won’t be living out of a very small and compact space and I’ll have my life a bit more settled. But then again I’ve been saying that for the last two years so… has life ever been settled?