talking to the sea

Since writing my little piece about whether or not there is anyone out there listening to what I'm saying, I have got to thinking "does it matter?"

You see, for whatever reason, writing is a burning need for me. It can't be stopped.

So, I thought about whether I needed an audience for what I have to say or not and decided that audiences can come in many forms and to be honest, perhaps there is something in speaking to the wind rather than writing it all down for some total stranger to throw brickbats at. A "guest" told me last week that I am going to rot in hell for the whole of eternity and that my only hope of salvation was to "embrace the one and only true Lord". Er right on - in fact, somehow hell seems like a better place to be than rubbing shoulders with this sort of nutter.

I decided that there might be a perfect solution. I could stand on the top of a cliff on the Coast Path and let the wind whip my words from my heart and soul. Let my thoughts be heard by seagulls, cormorants, sky larks, wild flowers, the wind and waves.

So, what to say......

Well, in order to make the effort of finding myself a perfectly remote spot, with weather wild enough to take my words and carry them away from me, I need something of value to say.

Can I write something in advance? Hmmm - I'm not sure I'm confident enough to consider my own words worthy of my wild listeners.

Can I recite someone else's prose or poetry? Well, I could, but where to start - I think the arena requires poetry rather than prose but I know so little poetry that moves me. In my somewhat limited education, the only poetry that I came into contact with was the First World War poets and despite Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth" certainly being worthy of such an audience, it's also just about the bleakest sentiment I can imagine and that's not good for my struggling soul, trying hard to find hope. Since then I've been stirred by poetry I've come across in other contexts, like a lovely e.e.cummings poem that I found quoted from in a book I was reading. My knowledge of this huge area of literature is, therefore about as limited as it's possible to imagine.

Therefore I revert to what some may describe as a lesser form of poetry and have found my perfect anthem for my cliff-top eulogy.

If you should find yourself somewhere on the 258 miles of Cornish Coast Path and you see a middle aged woman with her arms outstretched, a glint in her eye and a smile on her face, it'll be me. I'll be the one letting the rain hit my face and the wind whip the words from my mouth while I yell out at the sea......

#.........if we get caught in this wind then we could burn the ocean
if we get caught in this scene we're gonna be undone
it's just a simple metaphor, it's for a burning love
don't it make you smile like a forest fire......#

I may be a philistine where poetry is concerned, but this will do it for me. This will give me satisfaction for my soul. They may not be my own words, (they belong to that wonderful musician Lloyd Cole) but they are a start. Those who consider themselves students of poetry or indeed poets themselves may think this is a poor substitute for "the real thing" but it's very much a real thing to me.

Two nerdy anoraks!

....This post is made with my heartfelt apologies to Colin who has just been "outed" as a nerdy anorak alongside myself!

My dear friend Colin has spent the long weekend with us. Both Colin and I have been in need of nurture and kindness. You know at least a little about my reasons (and you can see more at www.pbase.com/lindarocks/2008 ) but Colin too has had a rotten year, in many senses much more so than my own trials and tribulations - his Dad died a few weeks ago, following a short but traumatic illness so he's understandably very low too.

Colin confessed to being a "borderline trainspotter" to me at the start of the weekend so I decided to give him some soul food and in the process some for me too by taking us off on a jaunt on the Tamar Valley train line. We drove to Gunnislake (for those who don't know this place, it's a town just inside Cornwall on the Western bank of the Tamar river, the border between the two counties), then we boarded a train that has a route that only the most cold-hearted of souls would consider anything less than spectacular. It trundles quite slowly along a track that hugs the side of the river, crossing the Tamar and the Tavy rivers, before arriving in Plymouth, the famous start-point of the Pilgrim Fathers journey to America. It's a beautiful, south-facing river valley that was once one of the country's premier fruit-producing regions. Sadly that is no longer the case, with most of our orchards having been grubbed up so the land could be planted with potatoes and grain in the Second World War. Apparently, it was once a popular holiday destination for Victorian people to come and see the fruit trees in bloom in the spring.

I was delighted to see a couple of small orchards still in existance and there are a few cherry and apple trees in hedgerows too. My own mini-orchard project was spawned from reading about this historical fact. At the moment, our mini-orchard contains two different Cornish apples, a Pigs Nose (no, I don't know why it's called that, all I can do is speculate and wait to see when it starts to bear fruit) and a Duke of Cornwall, which was the variety I found whose origins are closest to our home. The Duke of Cornwall was bred by a Tamar Valley breeder in a little village called St Dominick, very close to our own home. We've also got a Cornish Plum (Kea), a Devon Mazzard Cherry now planted alongside a heritage greengage and a purely self-indulgent Doyenne du Comice Pear, all of which were planted in the autumn of 2007.

Next winter, I intend to augment these trees with a few more Cornish plums, cherries and apples, along with a quince, medlar and blackthorn. They will sit alongside the sixty native trees we've also planted which are a mix of nuts (Cobs, Walnuts and Sweet Chestnuts) and other local trees.

Anyway, I digress. Colin and I spent a happy afternoon wandering around Plymouth's harbour area and its shopping centre, indulging in an al fresco lunch and an hour browsing the shelves of Waterstones. I reckon browsing bookshops is as good-a-tonic as it's possible to find. We wandered back to the station laden with books and both feeling extremely happy that we'd fed each other some quality peaceful time and indulged in our joint passions for trains and books.

This "being kind to myself" regime is bringing me quiet satisfaction and calm. I need both of these things to heal the rift in my psyche that depression has caused.

Post script: I was chuffed to bits to hear that a few of my pbase readers have found their way here already so hi to Teresa and to Karen (Karen - sorry I made you cry!).