Caravan, August Bank Holiday

The entire population of the rest of the United Kingdom was clearly headed for Pembrokeshire for the pointless August Bank Holiday.  Well, a lot of cars were heading west down the M4.  This wasn’t a problem, until we got to Bristol, Junction 19, and the Smart Motorway.  At that point the signs lit up and the traffic slowed down.  The variable speed limit dropped to 50, then 40, then up to 60, then 40 again, then 50, all within about six miles.  For most of that way, we were doing 10 to 30.  Once we’d got past Junction 21, the Smart Motorway turns dumb, and the traffic gets back to normal.

The exact same thing happened around Newport, between 24 and 29, also a Smart stretch.  Are you detecting a pattern here?  (Clue: it happens on the M25 too.)  And they’re busy turning the M4 from Slough to Reading into yet another one – I don’t know the cost, but judging by the size and timescale it must run into tens of millions – whereupon, in 2022, a perfectly adequate motorway will turn into yet another traffic jam.

That’s quite enough about traffic, isn’t it?  So I’ll leave out the part about the A48 time-saving detour which added another hour or more to the trip, and my anxiety about running out of petrol before we could reach Carmarthen and locate the Tesco filling station.  Z was monitoring the satnav and warned me that there might be a slight delay around the Red Roses turnoff on the A477.  I didn’t think this would add much to the six hours we’d already clocked.

We’d presciently decided to stop at Pont Abraham and grab a bite of lunch (sandwiches, crisps and drinks).  We chose WHSmith’s rather than Costa, for reasons of morality.  I’ve probably written here before about the aptly-named latter company’s approach to their business, which can be summarised as ‘price up, quality down’.  Mind you, WHS can’t be absolved either: we paid over £13 for exactly the same stuff we’d bought at M&S two days previously for £8.40, the only difference being location – one on a motorway, the other not.

Once we got here, everything was fine.  Nothing had changed except the grass, which had grown a bit.  The six hour journey had made it too late to do anything with the rest of the day except have a drink, eat again, and absorb the sight and the smell of the sea.  That’s why I still come here, against all logic.

Sunday was a fun day.  We walked into Saundersfoot through the tunnels, had a pint at the Royal Oak, walked back.  That’s actually quite a lot of walking, especially for Z, who has a recovering but still slightly gammy foot, but also for me – I need to do something about my fitness level.

In the late afternoon, the usual bank holiday Sunday entertainment started up down the pub.  I usually hate being subjected to music I haven’t chosen, but these guys were pretty good.  I flatter myself that the guitarist sounded a bit like I might have done fifteen years ago.  (That’s high praise, in case you weren’t sure.)  And after that there was a classic Welsh boozy singalong, which politely finished well before lights out.

Today (Monday) we went for a walk up the valley then crab salads down the pub.  I‘m going to give the Wisemans Bridge Inn a free plug here – great location, superb service, good food, decently priced.  And they manage to satisfy up to a hundred customers all at once. 

Back to Reading tomorrow.  Back to, or from, the real world.

Oh, and I even managed to get a lot of work done.  That’s what happens when you don’t have internet.

No rabbits.  But the local wasps are very friendly.

Benefits of Brexit

It has been pointed out that there needs to be a Government publication to counter the leaked Yellowhammer report about the dangers.  They’ve had a good 45 minutes to come up with it, but they’re clearly not up to this simple task, so I’ll do it for them.  I don’t have any spads to help, so forgive me if I’ve missed some out.

1. 1.     We will all become free.
2. 2.     We will trade on equal terms with the US, Mexico, China, Brazil and India (as long as they trade on equal terms with us).
3. 3.     However, we won’t have to trade with any frogs, krauts, eytiyes, dagos or spics. Or micks.
4. 4.     We can have our own faceless bureaucrats.
5. 5.     Our Parliament will be able to take back control of whatever it is they didn’t already have control of.  (Nobody knows.)
6. 6.     The Red Chins in their millions
7. Will overspill their borders
8. And chaos then will reign in our Rael (©Pete Townshend)
9. 7.     Unless we fight a war against them.
10. 8.     Which we will obviously win, because we won’t be vassals.
11. 9.     We will compete with all the other offshore islands and principalities in the world’s greatest industry (moving money from place to place without spending any of it).
12. 10.  Except Singapore, of which we will become a colony.
13. Technology will solve all our problems.

I've left intact blogger's weird interpretation of a Word numbered list. It seemed apt.

Caravan Diaries, latest

There wasn’t a lot of activity this time, due to Z’s broken leg.  (All right, foot. Oh, all right, toe.  But you can’t prance around on the clifftops with a socking great surgical boot on.)

So instead we concentrated on eating, drinking and sitting.  The eating is the only interesting part, so I’ll tell you about the three pub lunches.

The first was at the Dragon in Narberth.  It’s one of at least six pubs that are still alive and well in this small Welsh town.  (There used to be about 165, I’ve been told, though that was by a Welshman.)  it doesn’t look much from the outside – indeed, I’d never been in there until a couple of years ago – but it has a lovely scruffy garden and does perfectly decent food and beer.  We had calamari and chips.

On Friday, we drove across to Angle.  It’s a remarkably popular nondescript village at the end of nowhere on a muddy cove on the south side of the Milford Haven sound.  There was an extraordinary amount of traffic on the increasingly tortuous road from Pembroke – quite a lot of it going the other way to us. (Of course, you don’t see the traffic that’s going the same way as you, unless you’re stuck behind a tractor, which happened a few times.)  “Have they already had their lunch?” Z wondered.  It was twelve o’clock.
Our target was the Old Point Inn.  This is a little 16^th century pub that can only be reached at low tide via a very car-unfriendly track.  You have to find the right right turn in Angle, which is clearly not that easy – I’m a good navigator, but I’ve got it wrong every single time I’ve tried it, so far.  It’s worth the journey, though.  Excellent (though expensive) food, and a fabulous setting, with great views of the oil refinery across the sound.  I think I’ve put pictures on here before.

Lunch #3 was, of course, dahn the pub.  That’s the Wisemans Bridge Inn, which is the most popular pub in Pembrokeshire.  It’s an easy walk down to it, a less easy walk back up.  Z struggled a bit in both directions, I think, but she’s pretty resilient, and wasn’t going to let a mere broken leg/foot/toe keep her from a decent pint.

So that’s the lunches.  Shall I do the dinners?  [Ed: No.  Me: O alrite.]

In other news, the mirror door on the bathroom cupboard had managed to fall off and break in half.  I had to smash up the remnants with a big hammer to bin them.  That was fun.

Jersey

We’d both been there before, and had our own memories, so I thought it would be interesting to go back together, compare and contrast, maybe explore the areas that didn’t overlap.  That’s what happened.

My plan was to revisit beaches.  Z’s strongest memory was of Plemont, mine was probably St Brelade.  So we went to both.  I have to vote for Plemont – it reminds me of Traith Lyffn, a low tide beach in Pembrokeshire with flat hard sand, rocks, and a challenging climb down and up manmade steps.  It’s unspoiled, and not even the worst efforts of Jersey corporate avarice can touch it.  St Brelade, although I have childhood memories of picnics and obscure family reunions, is now a strip of sand fringed with places to eat and drink (both of which we did, very nicely and not always as expensively as I’d anticipated).

I also had to visit St Brelade because my paternal grandparents are buried in the churchyard there.  I’d found their grave when I last visited with my sister in 2008, but I felt an atavistic need to do it again.  We wandered around for an increasingly thirsty time – there must be more than two hundred graves in there, spread over twice as many years and ten times as many square yards – until I finally said enough, started to walk down the path between the graves  towards the lych gate, glanced to my right, and there they were.  Frank and Emmeline, 1939 and 1960.

We managed to take in the four main tourism destinations, which I’d managed to evade during about fifty years’ worth of previous visits – so here they are: Jersey Museum in St Helier (entertainingly spooky); the Botanic Gardens (beautiful, lovingly curated, great flapjacks in the café); the Durrell Jersey Zoo (confusingly organised, loads of invisible animals, but we found the orang utans!); and the War Tunnels (sorry, no comment, I can’t take on that much emotive content about the War).  I meant to provide links, but frankly, it’s too complicated.  Just goggle them if you want to know more.

Oh, finally, the Ommaroo Hotel.  I’d booked us in there on a whim: having stayed there several times, I thought its whimsical, lightly tatty charm would appeal to Z.  They’d refurbished, but enough of that charm remains.  You still have to watch out for the trip traps in the corridors, where one level ascends or descends to a slightly different one on the same floor.  And there’s an outdoor swimming pool: if you ever stay there, see if you can find it.  I did, on our last day.

It Was Sixty Years Ago Today

Well, yesterday actually.

I’d wanted to mark the anniversary in some way – not because anniversaries matter particularly in themselves, but more because it was an excuse to recall some Young Emotions (that was Ricky Nelson, btw) and share some superb music.

But it had to wait until today; I would gladly have shared Buddy with everyone, but it doesn’t work that way unless you’re prepared to selfishly hijack a family get-together, which I wasn’t.  

So here are the five tracks I chose for us to share this evening (you’ll have to find your own spotilinks):

1. True Love Ways
2. Rave On
3. Learning The Game
4. Everyday
5. and of course That’ll Be The Day (That intro was the first thing I ever learnt to play, after skiffle chords).

Christmas Card Audit 2018

Executive Summary:

·         Many species of animals and birds have become extinct.  I have allowed camels to debut in this category, even though they are being ridden by magi.

·         There are a few more snowflakes than last year.

·         The continued reduction in the volume of glued-on glitter is, as ever, to be welcomed.  I expect making it illegal to be a high priority of the next Labour government.

·         I have felt it necessary to introduce a ‘Politics’ category.  One of them (self-created by its sender) says ‘Happy Brexmas’; the other is a highly sentimentalised picture of the Houses of Parliament.

The full figures (2017’s, where applicable, in brackets):

Snow/Snowmen/Snowflakes:                6 (4)

Santas/Reindeer:                                   3 (3)

Animals/Birds:                                     10 (12)

of which          

Robins:                                     3 (2)

Free-range reindeer:                  1 (3)

Horses:                                    1 (1)

Camels:                                    1 (0)

Sheep:                                      0 (2)

Wrens:                                     0 (1)

Owls:                                       0 (1)

Penguins:                                 0 (1)

Dogs:                                       0 (1)

Nuthatches:                              0 (1)

Deer:                                        1 (0)

Turtle doves:                            1 (0)

Landscapes:                                         2 (3)

Nativities/Wise Men/Angels:                5 (6)

Christmas trees/Baubles:                       4 (4)

Abstract:                                              1 (4)

Mail-letterboxes:                                  1 (1)

Booze:                                                 0 (1)

Flowers:                                               0 (1)

Forests/woods:                                     1 (3)

Cute children:                                       1 (1)

Houses:                                                3 (1)

Holly/ivy/mistletoe:                              4 (0)

Skaters:                                                1 (0)

Townscapes:                                        4 (0)

12 days of Xmas:                                  1 (0)

Everything secular *:                               1 (0)

Special categories:

Homemade/designed:                           3 (4)

Cards with glued-on glitter:                   5 (8)

Wonderfully weird:                              0 (3)

Posh yet restrained:                              5 (1)

Card Of The Year is this picture of some people walking along a footpath in the snow beside some woods:

If you turn it upside down –

It’s a goods train going over a viaduct.

* This 'Everything secular' card depicts, amongst other things, a Santa, a plum pudding, mistletoe, baubles, a snowman, a Christmas tree, bells, holly, a star, snowflakes, and, weirdly, a mug of cocoa - but no booze!!!

Fundaments of Music – Rhythm

Heart, Lungs and Feet.

Feet probably came first, because we tend to walk in 4/4 time (although see below for the waltz).  Breathing is two to the bar – in, out – and the heartbeat is tempo rather than rhythm (it’s no accident that the catchiest riffs are at around 120 bpm, twice the average pulse rate).

So the breathing would tend to synchronise with the footsteps, and sooner or later sounds – grunts, probably, to begin with – would naturally get uttered.  In pre-agricultural societies, there was a lot of group walking, so the grunts would get synchronised within the group.  Once they stopped for a rest, someone would still have those grunts and that walking rhythm persisting in their head, and eventually they’d start to slap their thighs, or clap their hands, someone else would laugh and join in… and you have the start of music.  The roots of rhythm, as Paul Simon beautifully captured it.

Oh, and that 3/4 – I don’t know about you, but that’s how I tend to get up a steep slope.  One leg does the heavy lifting, then it’s the other one’s turn.

The Fundaments of Music

I was sent towards this by a friend’s quiz asking us to name some young rich musicians, which took us via a fairly long route to musical styles, which led Z to nominate ‘techno’ as one style she couldn’t deal with, which pointed me towards Underworld and then, back from there, to Terry Riley and ‘In C’, five of its intriguing 35 minutes’ worth we listened to….  And now, here I am, wondering what makes some sound into music.

I used to think there were three fundaments, but I’ve just expanded that to five.  Here they are:

1.      Rhythm

2.      Melody

3.      Harmony

and the two new ones:

4.      Structure

5.      Texture

It’s not impossible that I might expound on each of these in the future.  After all, what are blogs for if not to burble away to oneself?

Clue: ‘In C’ exploits 1 and 5 at the expense of the others.

Did you know that 100% of your calls last month were successfully completed?

That’s an extract from a text I received today from my beloved mobile phone provider, who are also, they inform me, consistently voted the best mobile phone provider in the universe, exactly by whom or how is less than lucidly clear.

Anyway, the above quote intrigued me purely from a semantic point of view.  To take the easy bit first, what do they mean by successfully?  Assuming they’re not actually listening in, it’s more than possible – nay, it’s probable – that my attempt to contact the right department at the local council to ask them why they hadn’t swept the leaves from their trees from the pavement outside my house, even though it’s December and the rotting leaves are a pedestrian skid hazard, was entirely unsuccessful.  But they clearly assume that the mere fact that the call had a beginning and an end – the latter not caused by them – equates to success.  They obviously don’t include the ones that didn’t even start because there was no signal.

More substantially, 100% of what?  100 is a very big number, so I could be tempted to imagine that I’d made a lot of calls, all of which were ‘successful’.  Actually, there were probably five.  100% of five is still five.

And finally, why are they so needy?  This message had zero value to me – it was entirely and only about them and how wonderful they find themselves.  Why do they need to tell me so?  I’ve met blokes at parties who do that, and I tend to nod, smile and after five minutes look over their shoulder and catch someone else’s eye.  Is that what whodavone (for it is they) want me to do?

“They can talk too, but they won’t.” *

Hello, remember me?  My blogging mojo has been on strike for a while now, but I’ve resolved to resuscitate this dying art – in fact, I’ve so resolved many times over recent months, but I’ve always been stalled by the lack of anything to actually write about.  Unlike more prolifically creative bloggers, I find it hard to just start writing without a topic, or a story, or both.  But this evening both landed in my lap.  I said to Z: “You should blog about that.”  She said: “No, you should.”  So here goes.

If you’ve visited the Zeddary, you may recall that between the dining room and the hall there’s a window.  It was actually part of the original Tudor fabric of the house, formerly an external window up in the roof space somewhere, which had been bricked up for many years.  It had been reinstalled where it is now, years ago, as part of a major extension/refurbishment.  It serves no particular function, apart from being beautiful and entertaining the cat.

Eloise Cat loves ducking through this internal window, flaunting her prowess at avoiding any delicate objects that might be stood on the sill.  Usually this isn’t a problem, but a while ago we put up a pair of heavy curtains on the hall side, to prevent her doing this when we were away and triggering the burglar alarm.  They’d been left closed last time, though they didn’t need to be.

This evening, as we were eating our dinner, Eloise Cat decided to investigate the corner cupboard where the best glasses and crockery are kept.  The door was open a crack, but she obviously couldn’t get in there.  But she was amusing herself, and us, by trying.

I remarked that we should open those curtains.  “She used to love going through there, and now she can’t.”

Eloise Cat turned away from the corner cupboard and looked at me.  “You reckon?” she said.

*A quote from Clive James, originally about dingos.

The Caravan is having an early snooze

It usually gets put into hibernation in October: the site is officially closed from the end of October until Easter, although Joseph has been known to mutter, in a diplomatically deniable choice of words, that were someone to turn up during the officially closed season, ‘I probably wouldn’t notice’.  About ten years ago, his mother celebrated her ninetieth, in the January, and the site was apparently packed out.  (I wouldn’t know for sure – we weren’t invited.  Sniff sniff.)

This year, for reasons too complicated to go into here, the shutdown had to happen last week.  But for other reasons, equally complicated and even more boring to relate (think plumbing), it couldn’t completely get done, so I’m relying on Joseph to complete the job – and then, of course, reinstate everything in the spring.  I’ll probably phone him sometime before the first frost, just to pre-empt my anxiety – an unworthy thought, but which comes first: his promise or my anxiety?  I know my answer; and of course I’ll do it very diplomatically.

So that’s Pembrokeshire taken care of for yet another year.  Long term followers of this blog might recall that I’ve been going there since about 1949, so can claim to be an older inhabitant than many people who were born there.  But it wasn’t until relatively recently that I really got to know the county.  When our parents took us to Saundersfoot and Wisemans Bridge for those family holidays, it was all about the beaches of south Pembrokeshire – Barafundle, Broadhaven, Marloes and the others.  The west and north coasts were largely foreign lands.

So it was a surprise when I finally began to discover those parts, about twenty-five years ago.  They’re very different.  A bit more rugged, wilder, perhaps a bit more dangerous.  I remember randomly driving down a ridiculously narrow winding tree-lined road to emerge at a dizzy view of the Irish Sea; and equally randomly down another to fetch up in Porthgain.

If you ever go to Pembrokeshire and don’t visit Porthgain, you have missed something unique.  Is it possible to be unique in many different ways?  If so, this place achieves it.  I’d taken Z there a couple of times before, but we managed this time to climb up the steps at the end of the quay and wander across the cliff path, past the intriguing brick built industrial ruins and the disused slate and granite quarries, almost as far as the great low tide beach at Traith Lyffn, (about which I’ve blogged here before).  We didn’t go down the steps.

Toothsome

Although ever fewer.

We’d run out of bread (how?), so Z suggested muesli instead of toast.  I haven’t eaten muesli for about twenty years, so I was clearly happy to try a drastic swerve away from habit.  It was delicious.

About a third of the way through, I thought ‘that isn’t a nut’.

It was a tooth – or to be more exact, a metal cap that had, many years ago, been glued onto what had remained of a tooth after the dentist had filed it down to a thin but firmly rooted spike.

Unfortunately, whereas usually if a cap comes off the peg is still in place and so the cap can just be simply glued back on again, in this case the peg had snapped off too.  I knew instantly that nothing could be done, so of course I phoned the dentist to book an urgent appointment to confirm that.  They offered me 11.15.  Z kindly drove me to Norwich, on the grounds that a) if something unlikely could in fact be done, it might involve anaesthesia or sedation or anything that might render me incapable of driving and so entailing inordinate complexity and expense, and b) parking’s really difficult around there.

Andre, our brilliant expensive dentist, confirmed my self-diagnosis – nothing can be done – but filed off a little rough bit anyway.  No charge!  But it was a wake-up call, or a heads-up, or a JFDI.  I’ve been procrastinating for nearly two years now, mainly with the excuse that, hey, I won’t be able to chew on that side, will I? – but now I can’t anyway.  So starting next month, I’ll be getting two whole decks of new teeth, or more efficient and durable equivalents.  I’m not sure whether I want to distress you with the details of this ‘procedure’ (as medical people tend to euphemise major invasive surgery), but I don’t see why I should be the only one to suffer, so here goes.

Firstly, the remnants of the old teeth are pulled out, and holes are drilled into the jawbones.  Threaded implants are then inserted into these holes, and the whole thing is left for three months to settle down.  If that all goes well (I haven’t conducted a risk assessment, yet), pegs are screwed into the implants, synthetic teeth are glued onto these pegs, and after another settle-down period chomping can recommence.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, given the cost of a decent small family car, I hope the answer is ‘nothing’.  But I’m going to check out any relevant insurance cover.

Supercaravan

Z showed me an advert, disguised as a news story, about an American, um, thing that claims, for financial or fiscal reasons, to be a caravan but is in fact an incredibly badly designed almost uninhabitable shack.  Sleeps six.  She’ll provide a link to the details if you persuade her to.

My caravan is four feet wider than the American thing.  It also comes with the benefit of Joseph.

I was awoken at 1.33 am precisely by a roaring noise.  Usually that signifies stormy weather, but I knew that wasn’t the case.  So I forced the pace and got out of bed.  The noise seemed to be coming from the bathroom, but when I went in there it seemed not to be.  ‘Ah ha,’ I thought.

Of course, it was outside plumbing, yet again.  I turned off the mains supply tap and went back to bed, thinking dark thoughts that can’t and won’t be retailed here.  ‘Enough’ was the softest.

Next morning, I managed to bump into Joseph.  Once he’d finished his complicated conversation with Brian, he came over in his Lan Rover and fixed the problem in minutes, once he’d found the necessary parts.  I can’t explain the process in detail, because that would require me to imagine lying flat on my back in a brambly ditch underneath a caravan, doing fiddly things with plumbing.  All I can say is: he’s a hero, and worth every penny of the £(fillinyourownnumber) rent I pay him.

In other news, we went to Carew (pronounced, I still firmly believe having been so taught by my mother in 1952, Carey) Castle, which is about as good as ruined castles can get.  And then to the Creselly Arms, a very basic pub on the beautiful Cresswell estuary that used to sell just local beer but has recently moved upmarket by offering cheese and pickle rolls too.

The New Highway Code

Test your knowledge with these six easy questions:

1.     A stationary vehicle has both its indicators flashing.  What does this signify?

2.     When should you signal to indicate a turn?

3.     When should you NOT signal to indicate a turn?

4.     What is the rural speed limit for motorbikes?

5.     On a dual carriageway, when should you pull in from the overtaking lane?

6.     On a smart motorway, what does the sign ‘QUEUE – CAUTION’ mean?

Answers:

1.     The vehicle is illegally parked.

2.     When you have begun to make the turn.

3.     When there is a vehicle waiting to emerge from the road you intend to turn into.

4.     Whatever the speedometer goes up to.

5.     Generally, when there has been no vehicle to overtake for half a mile; however, you should pull in when a) there is a car’s length gap between two lorries which you can enter in order to immediately pull out again, or b) you are undertaking.

6.     A queue has been caused by the sign being switched on.

Fish Supper

Z was going to be out for the earlier part of the evening, so it fell to me to cook.  Paul the Fish calls on Monday mornings; we usually have a debate about what’s best today, what do we fancy and so forth.  This often becomes the ‘you choose’ ‘no, you choose’ dialogue, where Paul ends up as the adjudicator; but in this case it was obviously entirely down to me, so I just went random and said ‘hake’.

We had a batch of leftover cherry tomatoes, so I invented a recipe that Z told me I should write down, as I could be the next Nigel Slater (who specialises in making a lot* out of whatever’s available).  So here it is.

All the chopping is best done in an electric grinder/chopper.

Finely chop a fat clove of garlic and put it in a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil.  Let it just turn light brown over a medium heat.

Meanwhile, smash up about 20 cherry tomatoes (no need to skin them; if using bigger ones, you might choose to) and add them to the pan.  Add a small glass of dry vermouth (or whatever white wine you have to hand; vermouth is best though).  Season with salt and plenty of pepper.

Cook for about 20 minutes until fairly concentrated but still liquid.  Halfway through, finely chop a small bunch of basil leaves and add them to the sauce.

Cut the hake fillets (any firm fish will do; monkfish or turbot would be great) into large chunks and add them to the pan.  Stir gently to coat the fish, cover and simmer until the fish is just cooked through.  It was about 5 minutes for the hake.

If the sauce seems a bit wet (the fish will have added some liquid), remove the fish and boil hard for a minute or two.

We served it with the season’s first marsh samphire (not local yet, from France, but tres bon).

 *Including money

Learning Norfolk

I am, slowly but surely.

We had to go to something called Reedham Ferry for lunch.  For reasons too devious to mention here, Z drove.  The satnav said it’d take 45 minutes, which seemed s bit much until we worked out that that included the ferry crossing time (see below). Anyway, after a couple of U turns we got there.  That is, we got to the south (I think – the only compass points that seem to matter in Norfolk are east and, if you insist, west) side of the Yare.  But the pub is on the north side.

So what you do is cross the river on the eponymous ferry.  We’d done a bit of research and established that the thing to do is park on the south side and cross as pedestrians, which would cost us much less than taking the car over and then bringing it back again, which would anyway have been pretty pointless.  (My brother and sister were both already on the right – I mean north – side of the Yare.)

So we parked up and got onto the ferry.  It’s a very small chain ferry, crossing about 250 yards of river.  A chain ferry drags itself across its stretch of water by winching a pair of fixed chains through cogwheels on the ferry and so dragging its cargo across and safely discharging it on the other side.  There are ramps that enable roro.  R opined that the chains were a bit shorter than they used to be and so higher in the water, which would make it a bit riskier to drive a boat over until the ferry had fully completed its voyage.  But the boat drivers seemed to manage. 

Z and I stepped aboard.  The price list said ‘PEDESTRIANS 50p’ and ‘MINIMUM CHARGE £1.50’, which was a bit confusing until the young man manning the ferry asked us if we were going to the pub, in which case it was free – at which point I remembered that I was in Norfolk.

Afterwards, I remembered the previous time I’d been on a chain ferry.  Sandbanks to Shell Bay.

The caravan evolves

We’d taken a circuitous route rather than the usual boring bomb down the M4, because Z had arranged to visit someone in mid-Wales for business reasons, which seemed, from my perspective at least, to offer the possibility of revisiting the scenic route my father liked to take on family holiday journeys back in the fifties.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, mainly because the satnav refused to take us up the A417, over Birdlip Hill, and through the Forest of Dean; nor did I get to see that Black Mountain view down from a dizzy height to a reservoir with a toy train running alongside it.  But the company and the lunch were compensation enough.

Very few of the people I think of as my ‘old caravan mates’ attend frequently nowadays; indeed, some have given up their vans completely, and others I know have health issues.  I can’t expect to relive heady occasions like my 60^th birthday, when I happened to mention it to a neighbour in the gents (no in-van plumbing in those days) and an hour later was joined on the newly-laid patio by a tipsy horde of about sixteen glass- and bottle-clutching Welsh party-makers.  Nor can I expect again to stagger glass- and bottle-clutching up the hill towards Dave and Marilyn’s and fall over halfway under the influence of an unaccustomed cigarette.  Just as well really.

Of course, the next generation has mostly inherited, as well as the property, at least some of the behaviours (though I don’t think they’re as good at them as we were).  I can’t expect or want to be drawn into that.  Watching the little ones will do now.

And the rabbits, which are back in force and still burrowing under the front of my caravan.  Joseph assured me they can’t excavate a big enough sinkhole, but I noticed that a bag of cement had been left behind the van, and was tempted to tip it down there just in case.  Probably just as well I didn’t.  I’m not sure that the insurance covers failed attempts to fill in undermining rabbit warrens.

 

St Edmundsbury Cathedral

On a whim over breakfast, I suggested that we go for an outing.  The choices were the coast or Bury St Edmunds, and I was pleased that Z opted for the latter.  I used to collect cathedrals.  Failing memory and neglect mean that I can’t name them all, but I can recall a few favourites – Winchester, Salisbury, especially Chichester – and now I can add this one.

It’s quite austere as cathedrals go.  Its main nave dates from 1503, so probably the cathedral as we see it was born too late to be too much of a victim of the Reformation depravation.  The relatively low-key flashy bits are mostly later add-ons; though my sole source of historical information, a little brochure handed to me by a charming greeter, of whom later, is confusing to say the least.  The showpiece stained glass Susanna window, for example, is dated around 1480, so must have been recycled from somewhere.  And it’s called St Edmundsbury, which makes one wonder which came first, the saint or the town?  I’ll have to look it up.*

The man who welcomed us proved to have Yagnub origins, to have been slightly acquainted with the Sage, and to have a few bits of Lowestoft china which he might want to sell at some time.  Z was quite moved by this reminder of the power of coincidence, I think.

Next time we go there, we will take a picture of a commemorative wall plaque that manages to write the history, from tragic to happy, of several generations of a local eighteenth century family; find out more about the project (comparable in scale to the Fishguard Last Invasion tapestry) that resulted in hundreds of uniquely embroidered kneelers on the pews, one for each and every parish in the diocese and well beyond, as far as we could make out; and walk in the cloisters.

Afterwards, we wandered out and around the town, admiring how graciously ancient buildings have mostly managed to absorb modern commercial functions, and unsuccessfully looking for non-chain-outlet food, before we took off and found a well-concealed but deservedly popular lunch venue at a vineyard just off the A143.

*Or await a clarifying comment from one of my many readers…

Caravan Diaries – Rules?

There are rules.  I’d always known this, of course, just never knew what they were.  Joseph has remedied this by publishing a long list of them, mostly aimed at preventing and penalising sub-letting.  He assures me that they don’t really apply to the likes of me.

If I didn’t know as much as I do about how Pembrokeshire works, I’d find that slightly patronising.  As it is, I decide to find it amusing.  He’s a nice man whose spirit and skills are in practicality – mechanical problem-solving, farming – not in commercial rental management, and some people have undoubtedly been taking advantage.  But he really should have had someone check it out before publishing.  Some of these so-called ‘rules’ are absurd, not to say self-contradictory, and a lawyer would have a field day if it ever came to it – not that it will, Pembrokeshire law is mostly about how to avoid itself.

Some things called O-rings in the shower mixer unit have been damaged, probably by my insufficient unscrewing of the tiny grub screws when removing it for over-wintering, resulting in a slight, steady drip.  Joseph might have some spare ones, or can get some, and will fit them.  A list of the rescues he’s performed for me over the years would bore you to snores and probably overflow the internet.  I have to allow him a few stupid rules, don’t I?
 

The sea never changes, and is never the same.

Rules Are Made To Be Broken

We were discussing Picasso the other evening, and how he needed to learn the fundamental skills of his craft, and the understood rules of his medium, before he could afford to ignore both of those imposters and become a true artist.

I’m now listening to Cecil Taylor doing something comparable to improvised jazz.  The first track on ‘The World of Cecil Taylor’ (Candid 9006, 1960) is called ‘Air’, and could easily be discounted as just a bunch of, let’s say, well-enhanced would-be’s plonking around on their piano, drums and bass to demonstrate their undoubted mastery of the skills without ending up making anything approaching real music – until you get halfway through, and the age-old jazz trick of ‘fours with the drummer’ kicks in.  At which point you realise that Cecil on piano and Dennis Charles on drums are actually playing the same phrases, competitively bouncing them off each other and winding each other’s last shot up to the next level, and that they know the rules too.  At which point you – or at any rate I – burst out laughing.

But it’s track two that really proves my point (if I have one).  It’s a corny ballad from South Pacific called ‘This Nearly Was Mine’.  Taylor mischievously tears it apart and stitches it back together like a child playing with a dressing-up box – but the song never gets lost; and I imagined that he was feeling, and expressing, a variant of what Rodgers was after when he tried to catch Emile’s emotions when he thought he’d lost Nellie.

But I’ve stretched this far enough, so I’m off to antidote with a chunk of The Clash. Who also knew how to break the rules they knew.