In The Devil's Cauldron Or In The Green Green River

We had a mini-heatwave at the weekend.

Saturday afternoon - I wish you could smell all the gorgeous flavours of our avocado crostini lunch in the garden - the basil and warm tomato and the triangular stemmed wild garlic I found at the allotment - imagining we were on a hot terrace in an old walled Italian village....

 I wish you could smell the peppery nutmeg aroma of the honeysuckle abandoning itself in a tangle on the fence, scenting the whole garden, a perfume magnet drawing me out of the kitchen on Saturday night.

The last of the apple blossom on the lawn and the daisies before I cut them.... and the  ring of bluebells fading now.

 Hot puse pink allium pompoms by the back door. I bought them as a gift for a friend but ended up keeping them when our supper was cancelled....

 It's hot, hot, hot on Sunday and we walk and  picnic at the National Trust's Lydford Gorge on the edge of Dartmoor.

 I wish you could smell this massed wild garlic blossom which scented our steep walk down the  wooded valley to the river below us.

 I wish you could hear the rush of this waterfall called White Lady, and the squeals of delight of the little girl splashing in the shallow pool below it with her parents keeping a watchful eye.

I fell in love with this tranquil green river as we followed its meandering path along the rocky bottom of the valley.

And looking down on the boiling Devil's Cauldron..... it reminded me of another giant white water  - bigger and louder - The Devils Cataract at the Victoria Falls in Zambia where you can't avoid being soaked by the exploding spray. 

Back at the top of the gorge we find a bench in the field next to the tea rooms and tuck into our boiled egg and humus picnic, but it's not till we finish that I look up and gasp at the beauty of 

this bell blossom tree which we have been sitting under all along,

but because the wind keeps blowing the branches I can't get a close up of the flowers in focus.

At home the sun still pours into the kitchen and I notice another orchid flower has unfurled in the heat  - it continues to amaze me that in spite of my total neglect and ignorance of how to take care of the three plants I own, they still produce such perfection from their dead looking tangle of roots.

Today the sun keeps away. It rains on and off and the weekend feels like another country. But what is staying with me is a conversation I had with my husband in the car driving to Lydford about the allotment and how he feels about it  - his despair and de-motivation - listening to him in a different way - in the way I learnt in the Conflict Resolution course - listening with the intention to understand, to empathise - listening with love.....instead of the way I listen sometimes which isn't listening at all really  - when it's disguised as attack and making wrong.... with the intention to somehow get my own way....

Like being in the dead end swirl of the  Devil's Cauldron instead of in the peaceful flow of the green  green river....

The Day I Didn't Want

Beautiful Devon at this time of year.

 The bunch of wild garlic I 'borrowed' from Killerton Estate last week,

and  the first horse chestnut candles.

Rape field at Silverton nearby.

Another sort of wild garlic/Allium? 

Next door's clematis on our side of the fence.

The papery flowers of this bush in a big pot at the bottom of the garden, usually only last one day.

Nothing goes according to my plans today. I don't get anything I want or when I want it - just constant internal conflict.  I try to unravel it in the light of everything I learned yesterday.....

My loose plan - tethered with firm expectations  - looks like this :

10 -12ish Healing session here with new healer.

12.30 Husband returns from painting class.

 Lunch  12.30 or 1.30 depending when husband has his

 lie down.

2ish go to garden centre to buy trailing begonias to plant up hanging baskets.

Followed by long walk along river bank in shade at Otterton, followed by possible tea and cake at Otterton Mill afterwards.

Home by 5.30ish, make supper, do emails while husband has lie down and waters allotment before supper at 7ish.

This is what happens instead of my plan:

New healer gets lost trying to find our house, let down by her borrowed satnav - still not here by 11am so I postpone. And  feel bad about not being more empathetic as I'm hopeless with directions too, especially on my own in the car, and feel terrible if I'm delayed or late for an appointment.

I cut the daisies in the lawn and water the garden instead ......and feel I've lost my precious morning while my husband is out.

Husband wants to sleep before lunch so it's at 1.30 and agrees we'll go out by 2pm but I'm really hungry and eat an avocado before our asparagus and egg and toast feast under the umbrella on the patio.

2pm I'm ready to go. Husband says he wants to have another lie down. I faff about and waste the hour.

Get to the garden centre by 3.45. Spend ages choosing begonias, husband mostly in the loo - wait for him to carry stuff to the car.

On way to river walk at Otterton he says I know a good place to have an ice cream. Turns out he means Sidmouth.

So we never get to the river and the shade and the tea and the cake but sit on the pebbles by the sea  licking enormous ice creams in chocolate dipped cones...... while I smell the vinegar on hot chips of the people eating them on the promenade and think I'd prefer that......noticing how I can't give up my pictures of how I wanted my day to be and so how grumpy I am with my husband even though it's not his fault.

We agree to have supper at 7.30. I cook rhubarb with orange zest, put chunks of butternut squash into the oven to bake and make a salad with last night's left over veggies in a garlicky tahini dressing. But my husband sleeps on and on and I'm not really hungry after the ice-cream so I don't wake him till  8.30  when we sit and watch the finals of MasterChef on TV.

So I didn't have the day I wanted but I could have wanted the day I did have instead...... and saved myself all that conflict.

Learning and Laughing

I've spent the last two days in the luxury of the Exeter Golf and Country Club attending a course with  twelve lovely people called Managing Conflict Positively run by a lovely man called Edward Canfor-Dumas. 

His definition is this  - 

"Conflict arises between and within people when they are denied or perceive a threat to something they care about."

I loved it.....loved the learning.....the sharing..... so touched by people's stories,  their courage and commitment.....loved the listening....and eating our  picnic lunches in the sunshine in the beautiful gardens.

 But most of all I loved the laughing.....how it bubbled up all the time and connected us while we dug deep into the questions...into the conflicts in our lives - the big and the little ones-  with our spouses, and our children and our colleagues and our neighbours - using our new listening tools.

 And how our laughing - and crying -  was the healing too.

You can find out about Eddy Canfor-Dumas and his social enterprise engi at www.engi.org.uk

I think if his course was taught in every school in the country we could be on the way to world peace....

Bluebell Anniversary

Yesterday was my parents Bluebell Anniversary which I've written about in this blog before when my father was alive. I took these photos in Blackberry Camp outside Honiton where my husband and I walked with friends and their happy dog on Friday. It will always be associated now in my mind with my parents and their bluebell story which is forever woven into our family history.

I don't know how to make a link to it so I'm reprinting the blog here that I wrote in 2010.

WEDNESDAY, 12 MAY 2010

Wednesday 12th May

Day 23

Bluebell Day

We sit in the car, my father and I, balancing plastic plates on our laps. Two thermos cups of leek and potato soup create little streaks of steam on the windscreen. Our picnic is round corn cake sandwiches - mashed up smoked mackerel and lemony avocado. A box of salad bits rests lopsidedly against the gear stick. By my feet is a foil parcel of Mejoul dates and flapjacks. Our view is a steep bank of bluebells and a sandy path disappearing over a mound into a clearing ringed by huge trees. It’s so still and cool - it feels like an open air cathedral for birds.

Later we walk slowly into this magic circle where the bluebells stretch in wide silken scarves under the new, new leaves of beech and oak. It looks like some of the low sweeping branches are bowing in homage to this surprise gift below them. When the sun comes out briefly they shine like a one colour indigo rainbow.

We are here in honour of a moment in our parents’ lives that occurred in another bluebell wood in another place 70 years ago. With a chaffinch and an oak tree too. Only they know the secret of what happened then but we know it changed everything. Started something. And so a family history is born which curls like smoke into the next generation rekindling memory whenever bluebells are mentioned.

I felt my mother was walking with us today, deep in the bluebells. She would have laughed too when we lost the hat. I stop to take photos, drop my father’s herringbone cloth cap from under my arm. We retrace our steps, searching on the path. And give up.

“I never liked that hat anyway”, he says. “Lets leave it here. For Ma.”

But in the car park someone has picked up his hat and left it on a post by the entrance.

He puts it in his pocket.

“ You don’t have to wear it,” I say. “Just because you found it.”

And I don’t think he will. Ma wouldn’t have liked it either.

Happy To Be Here

On Dartmoor this afternoon.....

Peacocks displaying in the gardens of the cafe at Dartmeet  where we pick at  a horrible lunch...... deafened by the pitch of their cries - mating calls which sound like death throes.

  Walking by the river we pass this mother goat, smiling in her sleep..... and these Dartmoor ponies..... I'm sure the dazed foal is new born -  maybe only a few days old.

The path by the river becomes deep rutted and boggy so we cut up towards Yar Tor. I say, 

Let's get to the top.

   My husband strides ahead - I love seeing him so purposeful.

The ponies ignore us -  they must be used to tourists in their feeding ground.

At the pinnacle, we catch our breath,  sit on a flat rock shelf, drink some water..... and drink in the absolute beauty laid out below us, above us, all around us  - a living gift.

 I could stay here forever on the edge of time, in this clear air...... but my husband says.

Come on, I'll buy you an ice cream.

Half way down the rough, tussocky path he turns back to me, and calls up across the spiney gorse bushes,

Are you alright, darling?

Yes I am, I call back. 

And then it strikes me that alright doesn't describe how I feel.

  No, I'm more than alright. I shout it into the wind. 

I'm happy to be here.

And in that tiny bright moment I know it's true  - for the whole of me.

My Cornwall Bubble

Diary Extracts from The Flower House, Penzance, Cornwall.


My mini -break....more of a maxi journey into a self I thought I was losing.....

Monday 28th April

 First sunshine lunch on arrival late afternoon sitting in the courtyard of The Flower House,

in the company of the owner's Chinchilla pussy cat. Restless evening - first night blues - watch a DVD, tired, uncertain - wonder what I'm doing here, afraid I'll waste this precious time for me.

Tuesday 29th April.

 Morning - dissolve into heap of tears during my yoga exercises - my knees hurt, the floor boards are too hard, everything hurts, it's too hard, I can't do, it I'm tired of trying to be good all the time, I want my mummy.....   I open The Course in Miracles and  read "God is the strength in which I trust and There is nothing to fear." I sleep for a long time curled up in a corner of the deep sofa.

 Much later I walk along the deserted beach at Marazion, with St Michael's Mount always in my sights. The last time I was here it was the summer I was 16  -  hitching round Cornwall with 2 girlfriends from school waiting for the results of our A levels - on the cusp of my life.....

I sit and watch the waves for along time  - no one waiting for me at home.  I walk into the sea and let the cold water wash over my feet in honour of my brother who says put your bare feet on the earth every day.... or in the sea if you can....and today I can. 

 After supper I open this gift of Booja Booja chocolates from my cousin and his partner - probably the most pure, silky, nutty mouthfuls of  heaven I've ever tasted and which make me feel like a goddess... 

Wednesday 30th April

 I stay in bed till noon reading Brene Brown's  book on  shame and how to develop resilience to it (by being vulnerable) .....It triggers me to jump into the maelstrom of my past....and back to how it is now.... and I write and write.....write it all out into my notebook with its cover of painted butterflies..

My late breakfast - a joyful juice of apple and celery, carrot, lime and ginger stained  pink by allotment Swiss chard.

I set off for St Ives but can't face  the thought of crowds or finding parking and it's raining so I divert to Hayle and buy this vegetarian pasty - vaguely cheesy, stuffed with gluey potato and onion but hot and comforting.

 I eat it in the car, dropping flaky pastry crumbs on the upholstery, watching the workmen dredging the river beyond the carpark.....watched by this crow hoping for some of my pasty crumbs.

I spend a wonderful leisurely afternoon wandering through Trengwainton Gardens taking photos of raindrops on the azaleas,

 transfixed by the grub-like unfurling of ferns, 

and the sun coming out briefly.....taking as long as I like with my camera and in the gift shop,

with just me to please.

Thursday 1st May

At Sennen Cove I walk to the far end of the beach and start scrambling over the rocks to reach the next bay which is totally deserted.

The rocks are huge and green with seaweed. I slip several times and my shoes fill with water.

 I'm fascinated by these sea anemones like fat burnished rubies and spend a long time taking photos so when I decide to turn back, thinking that if I fell no-one would know I was there,  I  find that the tide has come in and cut off my beach route. So I continue slowly over the rocks in my squelchy shoes and feel very relieved to finally put my feet on wet sand and see some families in the distance

and these birds wading in the shallows on their delicate spindle legs.

When I get back to the car park I find a yellow and black parking ticket taped to my windscreen. I know I parked badly with one wheel over the white line into the next parking bay but as there were so few cars I thought I'd be safe. I feel stupid and cross and upset. The fine is £100 reduced to £60 if you pay within 14 days. I open my purse to put the ticket in it and find a cheque for £40 tucked into one of the pockets from a dental insurance claim that I'd forgotten to pay in. It feels like a miracle and I stop feeling so bad about my mistake.

When I talk to my husband on the phone later he says he really wanted to talk to me today but he thought he wasn't supposed to ring me. I didn't say he couldn't ring me - just that I'd talk to him every day. After a while I stop feeling guilty but feel unsettled that it's my last day tomorrow and my precious Cornwall bubble is coming to an end.

Friday 2nd May

Wake up feeling sad and read more Brene Brown.....very struck by something she says about the difference between parenting and caregiving.

The energy we need to take care of children is fuelled by promise.

Taking care of another adult who is sick or near the end of life is steeped in fear and grief. Fear and grief don't fuel us they drain us.

I drive out to Lamorna Cove where a  small colony of artists and painters was based at the end of the nineteenth century. Yesterday I watched a DVD about a tragic love triangle between three of them  called Summer in February.

It's late afternoon, the cafe is closed and I'm the only one in the car park but I  still park very carefully between the lines and pay the fee.

It's bleak and windy and I only walk for half an hour following the very steep and stony path along the edge of the cliff,

wondering at the tenacity of the wild flowers clinging on to the vertical slope with the sea smashing on the rocks below,

loving it that bluebells have found their way up here too.

My last supper - a thin triangular slice of fried onion polenta from the Hen Deli in Penzance, and a wedge of chocolate almond cake - not as good as mine though.

 I don't want to go home and I do want to go home . I don't know how to knit the feeling of this peaceful respite time into the frantic busyness of my everyday life.....maybe I can't and I just have to hold it in my memory like a burnished ruby anemone and leave it there clinging to its rock till it's time for another visit.