HANGING TEN IN CORNWALL

We recently came back from almost 10 days in Cornwall. This visit coincided with Aisha's 12th birthday but also with some pretty abysmal weather. Mark & the kids drove down and on the way stopped in at Glastonbury to visit Valerie again. Fortunately her son Toby was there too. We last saw Toby, now married and a teacher at Rugby school, as a 15 year old when he and Valerie came out to visit our friend Rachel in Damascus some 20 years ago. 

Again Valerie was incredibly welcoming and, apart from cooking a yummy roast lamb dinner, gave William and Aisha custard cooking lessons on the Aga. 

She also made a group birthday cake for Toby, Rachel, herself, Aisha and William. She persuaded Mark to take the remains of the cake, which lasted to be served as Aisha's birthday cake, eaten after present unwrapping on top of the Hoe, in Plymouth. 









Sally organised a couple of days leave and trained it down to Plymouth to join us for Aisha's birthday. It was a logical place to meet up en route to Cornwall, but also the closest city to where Sally's grandparents lived and in fact where her Grandpa ended his days, so somewhere she wanted to see again. 




The day started with a family breakfast and then a drive up to The Hoe. Aisha enjoyed both the good weather and her presents. William enjoyed taking his shirt off! 




The Hoe is the spot where Sir Frances Drake spotted the Spanish Armada on its way to attack England in 1588. He reportedly completed his game of bowls before sailing out to face the Spanish. There are various statues and stirring WWII monuments on The Hoe. As a navy port town, Plymouth was heavily bombed and suffered greatly. We found this plaque which had some particularly poignant wording as part of a prayer. 
In case you can't open it up clearly enough the wording is, in part, 

".... I ask no help to strike my foe,

I seek no petty victories here;

The enemy I hate, I know 

to thee oh God, is also dear..."

While Aisha didn't have too many things she wanted, she has been declaring her need and desire for a mobile phone and was hoping to get one for her birthday. With her increasing independence here - she now catches public buses to & from school by herself - Aisha has made stronger arguments for a mobile. Mark has been adamant that a phone, while OCCASIONALLY handy, is in no way a necessity. He has long maintained that for kids they are little more than toys - ones that are increasingly used as a means to bully and be bullied. He suggests that the perennial safety argument is a furphy and that common sense would make one far safer than a mobile. Sally, however, is swayed more towards the benefits, so it proved a point of ...discussion... between Mark & Sally!  In the end, Aisha wasn't too disappointed - she didn't receive a phone, but the promise of one by way of the following poem Sally wrote as a temporary phone substitute!



We knew about the Mayflower & Plymouth but we didn't realise the very many connections to the founding of colonial Australia and to Australia during WWII.

 
There is also an impressively located, recently renovated &, unusually, free art deco 'Lido' overlooking Plymouth Harbour where we swam with many locals in very cold water, bracing wind but lovely sunshine. 

The next few days were spent at a very good B & B in St Agnes on the north coast of Cornwall. The weather had collapsed overnight and would stay wet, windy and quite cool for the remainder of our holiday. In fact the sun really didn't shine until the morning we left Cornwall a week later!


St Agnes also has Australian connections. Its surf life saving club is twinned with North Bondi's, we found a calistemon in a pub garden and......




...Mark's paternal Grandfather, Harry Strutt, owned the Cove Cafe and B&B right on the beach in the early 1950s!  Mark's parents, Elizabeth & Harry Strutt also had their honeymoon there.  


Mark didn't know much more than this. Staying in the town was not planned but just happened to be where he found accommodation. A phone call home to his mother reminded or told him that Grandad had owned a cafe '... as close as you can get to the beach there..'. On seeing the cafe he wasn't sure if it was the one. It certainly was as close to the beach as you could get but he had no recollection of the place from when he visited his Granddad in the early 70s as an 11 year old. We mentioned the vague connection to the B&B owner who brought out some St Agnes history books. Sure enough, flipping through the first one resulted in photos of Harry Strutt senior from the 50s. 

The Cove Cafe - 1950s

Schooners Cafe - present

Harry Strutt 2nd from the left in each photo.

This discovery called for our first Cornish Cream tea!

The beach disappears at high tide but opens up during the low tide. In 2008 the sea just about took Schooners Cafe away! 





Before leaving for Cornwall Mark had booked tickets for a performance at an outdoor theatre near Penzance. The Minack theatre ( The Minack link ) has been around since the 1930s when a local woman, Rowena Cade, had the idea for it and supervised the building of the  theatre, perched on a cliff top looking out over Porthcurno bay. 


We knew it was the last night of Hamlet - appropriate given our upcoming visit our friends in Copenhagen who live close to Elsinore castle where Hamlet is set. We didn't realise how popular it was nor how late it would run. We ended up arriving at 6pm just to check it out for the 8 pm performance thinking we would collect tickets and go off to eat nearby, but found the queue had already started because it was unreserved seating. The sky looked ominous and we debated just what we should do. We were unsure if the performance would go ahead, if it would stop part way through and if it did go ahead whether we should attend. How would the kids cope sitting in the drizzling (or worse) rain watching Shakespeare?


People in the queue were very encouraging and we found out later that shows are rarely cancelled. The theatre has apparently been attracting full house audiences from around the world for years. So, we decided to stay in the queue and ended up getting seats (stone benches  - Colosseum style) in the third row. Given it was a full house and some seating is way way up 'in the gods' our unintentional early arrival worked out well. We pulled out every layer of clothing we had in the car, including the picnic mat to cover and warm, rain coats & the all important bin liners recommended by our B&B owner!  We bought Cornish pasties and brownies on site and warmed ourselves as we waited with hot chocolate!  Others were far more prepared with yummy gourmet picnics - something we'll know for next time!


As the performance began we could see the rain forming and drifting in from the sea. While it came through periodically in sheets it was never really very heavy and the wind and cold was appropriate given the play! The actors carried on and, amusingly, wove the weather into their dialogue. Despite the complexity of the play the kids enjoyed it- especially William who chuckled his way through it and was still engaged when it finally ended at 11pm! 


 


This particular post is titled 'Hanging Ten in Cornwall' because, being Australians, Mark decided that the kids should have surfing lessons in England. Not only kids but parents as well (for amusement value on the first of the 3 lessons the kids had)! This was part of the kid surprises mentioned in the previous post. Not too long before we left Australia we all watched  a TV programme about surfing in UK, particularly in Cornwall. Indeed Cornwall has some spectacular long wide (when the tide is out) sandy beaches with surf. At low tide they actually could pass for Australian beaches. As mentioned earlier, the weather was bad - the archetypal British summer. The water was surprisingly warm though and with wetsuits on we were fine. The noise heard on the video is the wind that blew fairly constantly for the four days we were in Cornwall.

The only problem was Aisha was 'weevered' - she trod on a weever fish and was 'speared'  with its spines. Apparently Newquay beach has the greatest concentration of these small fish in Cornwall. weever fish . As you can see from the photo, these fish have small sharp spines that have a very painful venom. She was 'weevered' on day two and, although she didn't consider pulling out of the last session, the surf school gave both kids rubber booties for their last lesson. 


Here are a few shots of our surfing exploits.





 

RESTING AFTER AN TRULY AMAZING RIDE,
THE PHOTOS OF WHICH HAVE MYSTERIOUSLY
DISAPPEARED ....

 One of the other surprises was staying at a caravan park in Newquay, where we surfed. There was a water adventure park - indoor heated pools with water slides etc. While we knew that there was a modest charge for the use of the pool £2.80 per person as residents as opposed to £7.80 for 'outsiders'. What wasn't mentioned to Mark when he booked was the entry fee was for timed sessions of 1 hour 20 minutes. This idea of timed entries or sessions is not uncommon here and is used to try to control the large crowds that can overwhelm venues. 


Fortunately the slides were good and the kids and Mark had a good time, one session lasted almost 2 hours ! It was easy to see though, that there was potential for spending almost half the allocated 80 minutes queuing for the slides. All that after waiting up to 45 minutes just to get into the complex. Food for thought for those advocating an Australian population of 30 - 40 million by 2050. 

Before Sally took the 5 hour train ride home on Sunday we all went out to St Ives, one of the many harbour port towns in Cornwall. This town is spectacularly located with a large inner harbour. The extreme tides cause moored boats to be left high and dry for several hours each day. This allows for work to be done without the need for a dry dock. While strolling through the dry harbour at low tide we met the St Ives harbour master who was doing some inspections of the vessels moored in his harbour. 















On the way home we dropped into Romsey to  visit Jane, Nigel and Julian (the Big J mentioned in an earlier post). Jane was Mark's landlady way back in another life when he had hair and was a wise and brave traveller living and teaching in London. He was saving as much ££ as possible to head back on the road to ultimately and, unbeknownst to him at the time, meet Sally in Damascus. Jane has been a reliable friend since 1991 and has now become a source of travel advice, meals and a place to stay on the trips to & from Devon & Cornwall.

NOW 8 WEEKS OFF !

We are now starting our 6^th month at 10 Shakespeare Gardens, East Finchley N29LJ. We continue to be very happy - enjoying our house, the garden, our neighbours and the East Finchley area. We haven't been travelling around quite as much as we were earlier in the year, but do seem to see a lot more than many of the kids' friends do. 


The kids have just started their long summer holidays. The cycle of five weeks of school followed by time off has reached its annual climax with 8 weeks off. We will be heading off this week to Cornwall for 9 days dong a combination of chain hotel, fancy B&B and in true Strutt style 5 nights in a holiday park caravan. Mark has organised some 'kid surprises' again to make up for more looking at boring old English stuff.


This weekend just gone Sally organised a trip to Hampton Court ( King HenryVIII's palace) flower show. We had a good though tiring day. As it was the last day of the show most of the exhibitors were going to sell off their display plants at the end of the day. We didn't realise this until we were there. While half of London had arrived with collapsible trolleys we had not. Never mind. We ended up buying some spectacular Fushias and Pelargoniums and then getting them back home on the tube.


As with the Bath & West show there were some amazing exhibits of gorgeous flowers including some 100 year old bonsai trees.

Aisha decided to get a tattoo. Thankfully it is only a henna one which will wear off in a few weeks. 


We bought a digital piano a few months ago to allow Aisha to continue her piano practice. She recently performed at her school's piano recitals. It was not a competition and was nowhere near as big as the Miles Franklin Music Festival that is held each year in August. It was great to hear her play gain publicly and to see her steady improvement. Here is a video of her performance.

Sally won two tickets to Wimbledon in a work raffle. She still had to pay for them - just being able to buy some is very difficult.  Two tickets, 4 people.  How to decide?  Mark graciously stepped down.  Realising she had already had a chance to do something very special by reading at Westminster Abbey for ANZAC Day, Aisha agreed that William should go with Mum for his 10^th birthday!  Sally and William had a great time at Wimbledon. What follows is William’s account of the day. 


WHOSE SIDE IS HE ON ?

I had a day off school and got to sleep in !  I helped Dad arrange the backpacks because we could only have one small bag per person.  Dad took me to meet Mum at work at lunch time and we headed off on the tube to Southfields where we got a special bus that only went to Wimbledon.  When we arrived, I was feeling so excited.  A security guard checked our bags and then said he would have to confiscate the popcorn Dad had made for me.  He was very convincing and for a moment I thought he was serious but then I realised he was just joking!




MESSAGES ON MURRAY'S BAG.

Novak Jokavic signing my tennis ball!!

We went through and there was a crowd waiting to get autographs from players. We luckily got Novak Jokavic’s autograph but not Andy Murray’s because he was not looking very happy. 

From there we went to find Centre Court.  Everywhere was crowded with people – lots were on Henman Hill watching the big screen and there was cheering coming from all the different courts.  When we got to our seats, Andy Roddick and Feliciano Lopez were playing and we watched until Lopez won.  It was a really good game!  The next match was between Victoria Azaranka and Daniela Hantuchova and it was very noisy!  I thought their whinnying was very funny and so did the whole crowd!

DOES HE PLAY TENNIS ?

We left this match and went to see the awesome Aussie Sam Stosur playing doubles with wildcard Sabine Lisicki who had just knocked number 2 seed, Li Na, out of the womens’ singles.  The match was on Court 4 and there were no stands, just a row of seats on either side, so we were right by the side of the court.  It was an amazing match and they won. Jelena Jankovic wasn’t happy!  I ran around to get their autographs for me and Aisha and told Sam how well she played. 

As we headed back to Centre Court, we saw Ron Weaslie from Harry Potter and Mum took my photo standing in front of him!  

We were happy it rained because we got to see the roof on centre court go over and watch the precision work of the groundsmen getting the court cover on and off!  All other matches were rained off - including Rafael Nadal on Court 1!

Since moving in in February we have been told by our neighbours, James & Helen, about a fox that regularly comes through the gardens. It was only this week that we saw it – or rather them.  We also spotted a vandal in our garden. Below is a short video of English suburban wildlife.

The vegetative equivalent to foxes in the garden is the nature reserve we went into near Slapton Sands (where the tank mentioned in the last post was). Despite it being a reserve we saw mostly weeds – thistles, ivy, brambles, bracken, stinging nettles, dock and cow parsley. We had to remind ourselves we were looking through Australian eyes where these plants are considered invasive pests  - like the fox and rabbits. Here they are all just part of the native flora and fauna of Britain.


Margaret came back from her two weeks solo in Europe visiting France and Venice. She had a great time and had no real problems apart from hurting her back on the last day. We all received presents from Italy - Aisha & William have beautiful Murano glass lollies, Sally a Murano glass vase while Mark received a T shirt. It wasn't one of those " My mother in law went to Italy and all I got was this ....." . Mark has a variety of good quality, long lasting T-shirts, mostly Laos beer ones, that Margaret has given him over the years. This time Margaret gave him a Tshirt of Leonardo da Vinci's 1487 Virtuvian Man. 

He has worn it to school and is not sure whether he has had some odd looks as a result.  Margaret was a great help to Mark, particularly in the garden, helping to identify for him what is a true English weed as opposed to what looks like a weed to him but actually isn't. She also helped him make his first ever hanging baskets, evermore to be known as the 'Margaret Eldridge Memorial Baskets' - which are so prevalent here and done so very well. 

SMASHING THE APRICOT  KERNELS.

Margaret spent her 2^nd last day making apricot jam with the kids thereby making sure we are well catered for in the jam department until her next visit. 

Margaret monitors the smashing...
 from a safe distance.

HEALTH & SAFETY ALERT !

THE VIEW OUT OF OUR
BEDROOM WINDOW.

THE VIEW FROM
OUR DINING ROOM BEFORE THE TRIM.

Sadly the Eucalyptus in our back yard has had a major haircut. Apparently it was a gift many years ago from the son of the original owners of our house, before the current landlord bought it 5 years ago. For the last few years it has been casting long and increasingly dense shadows over our neighbour’s James & Helen’s yard and they have wanted it cut down completely. Luckily they understand our desire to keep it and we have agreed to give it a trim. It looks very forlorn and will do so for the next few years. Being a Eucalyptus though, it will bounce back fairly well - but it does look pretty sad. On the up side there is more light coming into both our and next door’s garden.

AND AFTER.

 After such a fantastic late autumn and spring we have had a much cooler and wetter June. The hot weather mentioned in the last post came and was pretty good – it was just like a Canberran summer’s day. The poms seemed to cope well with it – no reports here of people falling over. Interestingly though after the ‘heatwave’ there are now posters up on the tube stations advising people how to keep cool in the heat. Drinking water seems to be a good idea. Apparently June saw the weather go from a low of 12 one day to a maximum of 32 which was the warmest day in 5 years. While we have had quite a bit of rain last month it is not enough to break the drought.  See the link for a summary of the weather in June.  JUNE WEATHER

As we have just passed the summer solstice the days are starting to gradually shorten. Sitting down in the living room looking out at twilight at 10 pm is still a strange experience, as is waking to sunrise at 4:30am. We have had these long days and been in shorts and T- shirts for months now. We don’t look forward to the return of the bitter cold and 4pm – 8 am darkness we experienced when we first arrived.

The kids always enjoyed their school trips away – Warrambui, Barambula etc. In 2007 we sent the kids away to Tasmania to visit family on their own. We were hugely anxious but it all went well and the kids, especially Aisha, came back very happy and confident. Going into yr 7 here meant Aisha missed out on the usual North London school yr 6 trip to New York, (William will get to do this trip in 2013 ). She also missed out on the North London senior school ski trip to Italy in January this year. What can we say ? They are both booked into the 2012 Ski trip to France – 8 days without parents skiing for the first time ever.

As mentioned on the last post, the kids’ school had their annual fete. It was much smaller than the Miles Franklin fetes and, despite threatening clouds and heavy rain the day and night before, it was dry for the fete day. Aisha introduced the chocolate toss game (borrowed from Miles Franklin) which was a good little earner for the school.

There is  just one week of school left before the 8 week long summer holidays. Once the kids go back on 5th September William will be in Year 5 and Aisha will be in Year 8. A scary prospect ! Mark has just put the finishing touches to the next trip away  - 8 days in Cornwall partly for Aisha’s birthday. Sally will join them for just four of those days. He now has to sort out the two weeks in Europe for August......

The final match we saw on day 5 was Andy Murray playing Ivan Ljubicic.  The whole crowd was on Murray’s side because he was the only Brit left to win and Britain hasn’t had a men’s single winner for a very long time.  It was unfortunate that Ljubicic lost because he was a very good player and he deserved to win, especially since Murray wasn’t playing happily.

We went home after doing some shopping at the Wimbledon shop!  We got home at 12.15am!!  It was a very long but very good day!!  Dad was still up waiting for us and we had lots to tell him.  Since then we followed the tennis and watched the women’s, men’s and boy’s finals.  We were sad that Sam Stosur missed out in the finals, but really pleased for Luke Saville.  Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi Oi, Oi!!!