A Pasty Full of Memories

Thank you Cornwall for giving us such a delightful week of rest! For the next month I will be trawling the property pages looking for Cornish cottages to buy, once I've won on the premium bonds. The weather was perfect - most days were about 75-80F with a slight breeze and by the end of our week we were acquainted with the woman from next door, who helped us sort out what we could and couldn't recycle, the people from the tiny local shop, who stocked one of 'everything' in the world! I kid you not, if I had gone in and asked for a steel-belted radial tire they would have shuffled about and found one under the guinea pig food. We walked along the footpaths across fields and farms until we hit the coastline and, then, when we lost our way off the footpaths we trudged back up to our 17th century stone cottage inSt. Buryan via a muddy bog that was supposed to be a road. We went to Lands End and I was as close to the US as I could have been without getting on a plane bound for the States. I took one of the SO's nieces (they were staying in another cottage in another town) with me to St Ives - and SML, you're right there is something amazing about the light. St Ives wins its reputation for being an artists' haven for good reason. We visited Tate St Ives and saw the show pulled together to celebrate all things Brian Wilson...

I bought a watercolour painting in Sennen Cove. The woman makes the same mistakes I make in my painting - it was overworked, too tight and lacking in emotion. I loved it! Just to piss the SO off, I'm going to hang it in our bathroom in Brighton. It has an appropriate marine theme and what's a bathroom without fish, dolphins or shells? Don't answer that, it was a rhetorical question...though this painting is some boat rigging and rusting equipment

We ate far too many pasties (not the burlesque accessories) and drank a few pints of Tribute Ale, which was the locally brewed stuff - yum!

All in all it was a brilliant holiday. The very best part of it was that I managed to avoid a nasty visit from Sam & Ella. Last year's holiday in Kefalonia was marred by a bout of Montezuma's Revenge that we suspect was transmitted by one of the feral cats on the island - I'm (mostly) vegetarian and ate the same food as my veggie SO. The temptation to pet a tiny, scruffy feline, which lived poolside at the hotel where we were staying, was too much for me and little did I know that my compassion for skinny strays was going to cost me 10 days (out of a 7 day holiday) of recuperation, plus a visit to the Argostoli hospital, two courses of antibiotics and some very undignified days spent in the hotel toilet. Beware of Greek kitties!

I can't wait for the next holiday and knowing how quickly time is passing these days, October will be upon us and we'll be packing our bags for a week in Krakow, Poland...