Colder cold feet...

I watched the first episode of the new Cold Feet last night. Somehow I managed to avoid the first series almost entirely, despite having some of it filmed in my road plus a whole two seconds when one of the male stars – I forget which one – stopped outside my house and my front door appeared on TV.

Of course this was in the nineties and maybe this tale of everyday, upwardly mobile, middle class folk rang a little too true with my own aspirations at that time, or maybe I was just being me.

Back then if everyone was loving and talking about something I would hate and deride it simply because I could. Oh, I so loved being differently the same and of course I was a tiny bit older than the stars of the show and already jaded knowing how their hopes would all shatter and turn to dust in their not too distant fictitious futures.

Only Robert Bathurst was born in the same year as I and those short ten years or so can make such a difference to the world you inhabit. Yes, I lived through the Kennedy assassinations, the Cuban missile crisis, and rickets.

Of course by the time the nineties rolled around I had failed relationships, my optimistic youth had de-optimised itself, I had a divorce behind me, new relationships to deal with and no doubt living in Manchester in a middle management, middle class, position where image was everything (what car do you drive?) made Cold Feet far too close to home. Right outside it to be exact. I guess you might call it highly uncomfortable watching for me back then.

So why, almost twenty years on, am I watching the new Cold Feet?

It’s a question I struggle to answer. But I guess one answer is for the uncomfortable comfort it gives me really. I knew back then that these wunderkind were all heading for a fall despite their aspirations drawing them to a perfect life. We are all going to fall in one way or another at some point. It’s never perfect for long and I guess that’s one of life’s big lessons; it doesn’t stand still. You can plan it, you can even begin to make it happen, but real life has this way of shitting on your head whilst you are trying to live your dreams and that tends to fuck things up completely. Ultimately a fall is coming and there’s no avoiding it.

Kerplop!

Sometimes I think about running away and starting over. It wouldn’t take much to make me happier and, as long as I stayed away from the fairer sex, I could live a happy, peaceful and hopefully short and much fulfilled life. My chasing days are over, and if there’s anything left to chase then I’m buggered if I know what it is. What car do I drive? Who gives a flying fuck?

I watched the new Cold Feet and enjoyed watching that group of friends who have lived through the waves and storms, but don’t seem to realise that the hurricane is probably yet to come. Some of their careers have gone, some relationships have soured or become becalmed or emptied, and each character has transformed into an individual living in a world of his or her own making. It seems to me that they seem to be trying to maintain a semblance of belonging, but really they are each lonely and worried about where they are, who they are, and what is coming next.

Perhaps I was better off not watching the first time around and I suppose I really should stop watching this new series now before it poses too many questions. Even after all this time it remains uncomfortable watching and the lives of those characters echo too strongly in my own mind. Of course, I wish them all happy endings, but I can’t see it and I miss not having my future in front of me too.

I can see the fear in their eyes, the boredom, the desperation, the realisation that not very much of before really mattered and even less will matter in the future. I can feel the habit that’s become a responsibility to bother with the needs and opinions of others when really there are needs and opinions of their own to address.

Or is that just me?

What great acting it is though. By the way that’s my daughter in the picture with the stars of the show. She did work experience on the original series set; God knows how, but perhaps that is what made her such a middle class, gin-slinging, upwardly mobile, career person. She really could be a character in Cold Feet ;-)

Struck by moonlight...

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gazed at the moon hanging above the mountain in Wales. Below it, over to the East, is the sea and on a night like this it will be crashing on the rocks at the beach, scurrying up the pebbles and tumbling them to roll with that slightly hollow sound they make as they are swished backwards and forwards by the crashing waves. Of course I can’t see or hear them from here, but I know that it’s happening just as I know that a fox has come down to the beach to watch a seal roll in the moonlight.

As usual after a spell of hot weather it is raining and the wind has got up. My tiny roof room is rocked by the gusts of wind and the rain thumps on the glass of the windows asking to be let in to whip and soak the curtains. Behind the glass the fields are black despite the moon and the sheep huddle in corners under the hedges. I can’t see them either, but I know they are there just as I know that the hares are leaping in the field as they catch raindrops in their wide open pink mouths.

The chimney stack looks so lonely made stark by the moon. It’s a lonely night, so it fits in well, and I can hear the plings as the raindrops fall on the new tin roof of our neighbours new shed. They must have put it up while we weren’t here and it sits invisible in their garden below. I can’t see the shed any more than I can see the fox or the seals, the sheep or the hares, but I know it is there just as I know that on a night such as this the villagers from long ago go about their business on the lane beneath my window.

Yes tonight, just as on so many nights, I am struck by the moonlight and my head turns. Reality and imagination become one as I drift on the wind – one minute a leaf tossed and scattered, the next an owl seeking a vole for my dinner. I become part of the landscape as I drift, a raindrop running down my window watching me as I doze under the covers, a gust of wind as I whip around the chimney stack and am blown away to the mountain, then on to the moon.

This place always does this to me. It makes me open, that is why I came here and I wonder what it will be like when I leave? Will the hares still leap and the seals still roll? Will I still tumble and toss on the wind and find myself in every drop of scattered rain that smashes against that window? Will I join the villagers in the lane stoically going about their business?

Will I?

A new reality...

I don’t know what you think, sometimes I don’t even know what I think; that’s the thing isn’t it? Presented with all the evidence it should be easy to make your mind up, but what if new evidence presents itself which makes you reconsider?

Thank god I’m not in prison for a murder that I didn’t/did commit. Years of proclaiming innocence with nobody believing me until new evidence presents itself?

Think of all those wasted years.

Of course most of us aren’t in prison but we often go along proclaiming that we are perfectly content and then, quite suddenly sometimes, new evidence presents itself and that bubble is suddenly popped. Often it’s a relationship thing (I’ve had that one more than once), or it could be a job that we thought we enjoyed that crumbles to dust under ‘new management’. Maybe it’s a hero that turns out to be not so heroic after all (can you tell what it is yet?) or just a belief that is proven to be false - and all of a sudden the world is round and not flat or vice versa.

It’s all about evidence, the clearing of that smoke that has got in your eyes, the hushed up conspiracy that is suddenly whistle blown, the certainty that is not only made uncertain but turns out to be a lie and becomes dust. Nothing is for certain – well maybe death and taxes, certainly taxes.

I thought I wanted to live in a certain world where I knew what to expect next. A nice ordered place that I could control and make ‘in my own image’ or at least modify it so that I could find it vaguely tolerable. As I get older I realise that is not the way things work. I am going to be presented with new evidence all of the time and that evidence is going to change what I think and do and believe. I’m not living in a certain world, it is showing me new aspects of itself all the time and rather than me trying to bend the world to suit what I want I’m going to have to go with it, because that is the new reality.

Did I commit that murder?

A new reality every day? Kind of exciting isn’t it.

Grasshopper hunt...

I had decided to have a day off from the blog today. Well, there isn’t much happening and the garden seems to have reached that stage where it has decided to become static before it tumbles into luxuriant madness and gasps its way out of existence for another year.

The birds aren’t around either which, according to an article I read recently, is perfectly normal as there’s plenty of rich pickings away from the garden bird tables in the countryside. I like the idea of the robins and finches packing a suitcase and going off on holiday for a few weeks. They’ll be back when things get tough again, but it the meantime enjoy your vacation.

Today is very still. It’s that stillness of a warm Sunday afternoon where there’s no sunshine and whilst it is warm and dry enough to barbecue nobody does. I don’t know where everybody has gone, but it’s very quiet - nobody is cutting their lawn or hammering or using a drill perhaps that's why I heard this little chap. It took me three goes to get him; he's a quick mover I tell you.

Sunday afternoons in the market town where I grew up were a little like that. Nothing happening, the streets still, shops all closed apart from Annie Saunders who was always open although she didn’t really have anything to sell. If it had been an American town the tumbleweed would have tumbled down the empty high street and disappeared into the distance.

Sunday afternoon was a time to take long walks; just to get out of the house and away from the shouting. I used to walk for hours sometimes; down to the rec along to the old railway crossing and then along the line even though you weren’t meant to. Sometimes I could walk for hours without seeing another person.

Back then the railway line was a mass of summer cow parsley and grasses. There were thousands of butterflies in the air and hordes of grasshoppers chirping in the grass. They were like jewels glinting in the sunshine; bright greens and yellows, deep browns and ochres and some almost on the verge of blue and tinged with red.

Chirrupzzz… Chirrupzz…. Chirrupzz…

Sometimes I’d take a jam jar with a paper lid and see how many I could catch. They were quick little critters, but once you actually saw one clinging to a blade of grass you could sometimes bring your cupped hands down like lightening and catch them. Again and again I’d swoop, usually missing as the grasshopper hopped, but sometimes getting lucky and feeling the hard carapace of the little creature between my hands. Carefully I’d drop it into the jar then swiftly replace the lid and secure it again with a red elastic band. Often I’d catch four or five, occasionally more, but I’d always set them free when I’d finished with my hunt before going back home to the shouting.

It’s a long time ago now, but I still look for grasshoppers when I hear them in the grass hoping to catch a glimpse of one. I rarely do, but I know they are there and that's why I was so surprised to find my grasshopper today. Don't worry I've set him free in the long grass out back.

Chirrupzzz… Chirrupzz…. Chirrupzz…

The Prosecco phenomenomenom

It used to be Babycham, these days it’s Prosecco. 

Yes, it’s National Prosecco Day, although you may want to pour a glass with your left hand whilst eating a fillet mignon at the bowling alley after holding a garage sale; because it’s all of those days too.

Prosecco; just how did it suddenly become the ‘must have’ drink with the ladies? It seems to be everywhere and packs of drunken women clutching empty Prosecco bottles roam the streets of most towns on a Saturday night. Yes, it’s refreshing in an uncomplex and simple way; one of those drinks whose enjoyability is more about in its simplicity than flavour; all bubbles and zing and a bit of a laugh. But then the tears start, the mascara begins to run, the high heels come off and the Prosecco blues begin.

‘I reallly love you mate’, ‘it’s all his fault’, ‘he doesn’t understand me’, ‘what’s my name?’ used to be the territory of drunken males on a Saturday night. But now it’s the litany of women from eighteen to eighty, out on the razz and out of their minds on prosecco. Why do they do it?

Prosecco; it’s not even that good. Basically, it’s an average Italian sparkling white wine, generally dry, made from Glera grapes and before 2009 a wine producer could make wine outside of the Prosecco region, using the Prosecco grape, and put Prosecco on the label. It’s certainly not as good as Champagne or even a reasonable Cava. But in 2009 it was upgraded to DOCG (Definitely Open to Crying Girls) because the producers from that region wanted to eliminate other winemakers from using the name. So now, if a producer makes sparkling wine from the Glera grape, but it doesn’t fit the DOCG specification, they can’t label it Prosecco.

Of course the main reason for its popularity is that the bubbles tickle the noses of the ladies at a quarter of the price of champagne. It also mixes well to make anything from a Bellini to a very complex cocktail and the simple flavour works with pretty much all food as well – chips, pizza, curry, breakfast cereal, low fat yoghurt - so it has a universal appeal in a way that most wines can’t compete with because they actually taste of something. Yes, it’s really just grape fizzy pop with added alcohol for people in bras who don’t really like wine but can manage fruit flavoured ciders.

Strangely its rise to almost universal approval is not as a result of huge, costly advertising and marketing campaigns. The girls have spread it through word of mouth and by posting millions of pictures of them smashed out of their minds through swigging it on social media sites. Interesting side effects of the Prosecco phenomena are that evidence suggests that Prosecco is the cause for the rise in births over the last six years, has led to an eighty percent drop in lager and lime sales, and is responsible for bottle banks always being full.

The only other drink that comes close to it with the ladies is gin. 

But that is another sad and sodden story.

Above the clouds...

It looks like the skies are going to be overcast tonight so not much chance of seeing any shooting stars. Yet again I’ll miss the Perseids meteor shower at its peak and this year the normal 50 to 75 meteors per hour is set to double according to NASA.

Of course they will still be there shooting away high above the clouds, the Earth will still cross the orbital path of Comet Swift-Tuttle; it’s just that I won’t see it.

There is so much going on that I don’t see. I know that there are bats flying around at night, but I don’t see them. The sea teems with fish which I never even glimpse from the shore. There are creatures in the ground wiggling and burrowing away that are outside of my vision. In fact most of what is going on in this world escapes my attention although it is happening every minute of the day all around me.

I consider myself to be a fairly observant person; maybe I don’t observe the right things – if you were to walk past me I might not recognise you – but I see more than most. Most of what I see I’m interested in and those things that don’t interest me are sometimes invisible to me. I guess we are all the same more or less; noticing things of our particular interests and ignoring or simply not seeing the things that bore us. Take football as an example. I don’t see it even when I’m watching it, but stand me in front of a painting and I’ll see every colour and brush stroke, notice where the artist got a little lazy and fudged, sometimes I can even see what the artist was feeling as he or she painted.

We all live in different worlds, all of the time based upon what interests us and what and where we are at the time. If you are with the right person they may be able to give you a glimpse of what they see; I’ve certainly known a few people over the years who are very good at this. Teachers, writers, painters, musicians, these are the people who do it particularly well for me; but I’m sure that footballers, accountants, scientists have the same effect on others.

We are all looking for those shooting stars in our daily lives. The things that excite us, grab our attention and get our hearts beating a little faster and our minds ticking over more quickly. We keep looking even if they are behind the clouds. The clouds have to clear some time.

Oh well, I expect I’ll still sit out for a while tonight hoping that I catch a falling star. 

Cliff Garden...

Have I said enough about the Minack? Well I don’t think there are really enough words to explain how this place can grab you and fill you with such a sense of magic. So you’ll forgive me if I say just a little more.

I’ve talked about the theatre with the mighty Atlantic below, but I don’t think that I’ve said much about the gardens and there's plenty to say. The gardens at The Minack are like no outdoor garden I have ever seen before.

When I first visited about thirty years ago I don’t really remember seeing the gardens, certainly not as they are today. Rowena Cade landscaped the cliffs below Minack House to create the theatre, but the gardens at the Minack have been created by two local gardeners, Niall and Jill Milligan. It’s not on the scale of The Lost Gardens of Heligan and it isn’t quite the Eden project, but it comes all in for the price of admittance which with a performance was only a fiver. I’d have happily paid that for the quirky gardens on their own.

They’ve transformed the cliffside into an incredible coastal garden featuring an eclectic array of plants from around the world. It’s all rocks and plants, the best rock garden I’ve ever seen, lush but at the same time almost arid - at least on a sunny warm day. It's an oasis on the cliffs. Of course the Gulf Stream is at its warmest below and the sun does shine in Cornwall, but even so it’s an incredible achievement what with the salt spray, gales, damp and foggy winters and the occasional baking summer.

It’s a full garden, just the way I like it. Crammed with rare plants that you are more likely to see in the Canary Islands, South Africa, Mexico or the Andes and not the UK - even if it is Cornwall. There are aloes, silver trees, bird of paradise plants, cacti, my favourites the aeoniums and they all seem to be thriving. There’s hardly an inch to spare and at the very top of the theatre, as you go in, the upper gardens are home to echiums, lampranthus, a wonderful selection of irises and of course masses of massive broad leaved agapanthus which seem to be everywhere in Cornwall. I could have spent all day wandering around the top gardens but the beer was calling and we had some maidens to meet.

I left determined that one day I would try to grow some of the plants I’d seen, particularly the tree aeoniums which were everywhere, some of them two or three feet high and every colour from purple blacks to pale blue sea greens. They were selling them at the shop and I so wish that I’d bought one, but I didn’t. I was worried that our climate back home wouldn’t suit it and then I would have felt like a murderer. It would be a sin to take such a beautiful thing away from its home to languish and die.

Okay, that’s if for the Minack. I shall never mention it here again I promise (crosses his fingers behind his back).