Summer memories - the Minack theatre...

It's been a stormy August. The skies at the weekend reminding me of another August full of storms.

I’m off again - memory surfing as another summer passes without me realising another small ambition of mine.

It isn't much. I just want to see an open air production of A Mid-Summers Night’s Dream on a clear, balmy summer’s evening as I sip ice cold champagne and watch the clear blue Atlantic lapping the rocks far below.

That’s where she got the sand you know, the beach below – yes the sand to make the concrete that they used to build their open air amphitheatre high above the Cornish coast - Mad Rowena Cade and her gardener, Billy Rawlings – the builders of the Minack Theatre.

I’ve been there only once. Oh, it must be fourteen or fifteen years ago. A day trip out from my parent’s flat in Exmouth, Holly tucked safely into her car seat as we explored the most western parts of the British Isles. A long day but a fantastic one – all so tired when we arrived back at the second floor flat by Holy Trinity Church, almost midnight, Holly sound asleep as the church clock struck twelve.

We came across The Minack almost by chance and stopped to take a look and get a cup of tea. They’d stopped serving, well it was after three, but it didn’t matter as we happily wandered around this bit of the Roman Empire that never was.

Magnificent! Such a feat of determination and love.

We stood under the late afternoon sky and watched as a storm came in from the west, holding hands as the wind picked up. I only had film for the one picture, yes film, and by then the gift shop had closed.

‘We’re coming back.’ I said to Gaynor as we drove away. ‘We’re coming back to take more pictures and watch an open air production of A Mid-Summers Night’s Dream on a clear, balmy summer’s evening and sip ice cold champagne as we watch the clear blue Atlantic lap the rocks below.’

Of course we could do it any time - as long as the play’s performing (although any would do really), and the weather fine – but of course we never have. Small ambitions are like that. You have to wait for them to grow big.

Maybe next year it'll become a burning desire and then maybe I'll do it.