Tremenheere

Yesterday was our first opportunity to look around Penzance. We were too early to check into our hotel, having just gotten off the overnight train, but they were happy to store our bags so we could explore unencumbered. We decided to head to the Tremenheere Sculpture Garden, a secluded ravine just out of town filled with artwork and exotic plants.

We caught a taxi just in front of our hotel and wound through the streets of town and then rural roads past hedgerows and farmland. St Michael's Mount was visible offshore, a tidal island topped by a medieval castle (much like the famous Mont-Saint-Michele in France).

The park was just opening when we arrived, and we might have been the first guests of the day. We wandered up and down the hilly terrain, checking out artworks like David Nash Ra's "Black Mound" (above).

The ravine is its own little microclimate, with a burbling brook at the base and lots of tropical or semi-tropical plants like bananas, palms and even gingers. I was astonished by some of what I saw growing there. I kept telling Dave, "We need to bring our avocado tree here!" Maybe they'd take it as a donation.

The kniphofias, which have been finished for weeks in our garden, were still blooming brightly.

More tropical foliage surrounding Sheila Williams' sculpture "Heliotrope."

There's a surreal oval structure called "Skyspace," a chamber with smooth, white walls and a cobbled floor, and an oculus in the ceiling allowing observation of passing clouds. (Or a blanket of clouds, in our case!)

Here's Lisa Wright's "Three Graces."

After winding along the pathways, boardwalks and steps of the sculpture garden, we descended to the restaurant where we had lunch -- Cornish mussels for me, dressed crab for Dave. Then we called our taxi and headed back into town, checked into our oceanfront hotel room and lay down for what we thought would be a brief nap.

It turned into a two-hour nap, which meant by the time we got up it was too late to go to Land's End, which had been our plan. (We could have done it if we had a car but we are subject to the vagaries of public transportation.) We may try to squeeze that in today.

This curious seagull landed on our windowsill and tapped gently at the glass with his beak for several minutes. Whoever had this room before us must have been feeding him. I was impressed by how mannerly he seemed and I wanted to give him a cracker but Dave was against it -- and it is true that if I put so much as a crumb out that window we'd probably have about 400 of his friends there in three seconds. They would have been smashing through the glass like Hitchcock.

Last night we went to a mediocre restaurant where dressed crab was on special. I thought about getting that with a side of rosemary-dusted chips (french fries), but then I noticed there was a dish called "crab-loaded fries" and it was cheaper. I asked the waitress, who was possibly still in high school, what she'd do, and she steered me toward the crab-loaded fries, which turned out to be dreadful.

"This is what happens when you ask a teenager what to order," I told Dave.

Those Pesky Pirates

5:30 a.m.

I’m sitting on the train, rocketing through the pre-dawn darkness. I can see nothing out the windows — just velvety blackness and my own reflection. I’m having coffee in the cafe car, and although the train allegedly has internet, I’m told that it’s spotty so I’m writing this offline and will cut and paste it into Blogger once we get to Penzance. Of course I left my glasses in our room, so I’m also typing blind! (With greatly enlarged font size, though it will hopefully look normal by the time you see it.)

So far, it’s been a good trip, and I did sleep for a couple of hours at a time in my upper berth. It’s long enough to stretch out and the cabin is surprisingly quiet — just a few creaks and squeaks as we move.

The cabin is ridiculously small, though. Dave and I have just enough room to both stand up next to our berths, and God forbid we need to change clothes or put on shoes. Our elbows and knees go knocking into everything, including each other. It’s a study in economized space, with a sink beneath a tabletop and a closet just deep enough for a single jacket. We barely have room on the floor for our backpacks. It’s a good thing Olga isn’t with us because she’d never fit, although as Dave said, she would have loved it. I guess if we had bigger bags they’d go in a luggage car somewhere.

This train is officially known as the “Night Riviera,” which sounds quite elegant, but I’ve seen no one in evening clothes, drinking champagne or playing baccarat.

(In fact, a guy just came into the cafe car wearing a sweater and an orange toboggan covered with enamel pins of trains. A trainspotter! He’s carrying a camera on a tripod.)

We seem to be moving quite fast, but maybe that’s an illusion. We left Paddington Station (photo above) at 11:45 p.m. By 2:48 a.m., we were here…

…somewhere near Curload, just west of High and Low Ham, and south of Chedzoy, Middlezoy and Westonzoyland. (Henceforth known as “the Zoys,” at least by me.)

After a few more hours, we were here…

…so the tracks are hugging the coast, not following the middle of the Cornish peninsula. Still, I had the sense lying in bed, rumbling along, that we might mistakenly overshoot Penzance and sail right out into the ocean.

Speaking of which, our conductor asked us when we boarded, “are you continuing on from Penzance?” And that gave me pause, because where would we continue to?! “The Isles of Scilly?” she clarified. And now I wish we’d thought to go to the Isles of Scilly.

(The trainspotter just got off in Plymouth.)

The most tedious part of the whole trip so far was sitting around all day yesterday waiting for our train’s departure time. I mostly read “Auntie Mame,” which I am really enjoying. I know the movie well because it’s one of Dave’s favorites, and it’s fun to identify lines in the book that were carried directly into the script. But there are big divergences too. Claude Upson, for example, is much more viciously anti-Semitic in the book, and there is no scene in which the Upsons are victimized by Mame’s modernist furniture. And Agnes Gooch does not belatedly discover that she married Brian O’Bannion in a drunken wedding ceremony — in fact he disappears entirely after impregnating her and she marries a faculty member from Patrick’s school, St. Boniface. And on and on.

8:55 a.m.

And now we're in Penzance, sitting in a waterfront cafe, eating scones fresh from the oven and listening to Elvis Presley sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

When we were pulling into the train station, we looked out the window and saw the beach.

"Oh, I didn't know Penzance was on the water!" said Dave.

"Of course it is," I said. "How could there be pirates if it was inland?"

"Butt pirates," said Dave. "And you know someone's made that movie."

We laughed really hard about the Butt Pirates of Penzance, but I'm not going to Google it.

In Which I Am Mysterious

These people had the same idea I did for decorating their front steps -- but they went whole hog, with big pots of chrysanthemums and too many pumpkins to count! Granted, their steps are more spacious.

Yesterday was almost terminally boring at work. I had a trickle of parents come to check out books or ask how to sign on to our institutional subscription to The New York Times, but otherwise I was pretty much just sitting around. The cafeteria hasn't been serving food, since there are no kids, so lunches were brought in by our parents' association -- falafel on Monday, calzones yesterday. That calzone was as big as an elephant's ear; definitely more lunch than I would normally eat, but good.

And now we are on October break until Monday.

I'm a bit distracted because an opportunity has arisen that may mean big changes for us. It's not something I can write about yet, but it would mean upending our lives in England and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I am very settled where we are now, and I'd hate to give up our garden and all our plants (especially the plants!) and start a new life elsewhere. Nothing is certain, and I hate to be so mysterious, but I just can't say more because we are only in the earliest stages of exploring this possibility. I am simultaneously excited and depressed about it, and I'm kind of hoping it won't happen in which case we can just stay put. (Although in some ways it's perfect timing.)

Do you realize we have lived in this flat longer than I have ever lived in any other residence, save my childhood home? We've been here 11 years, we've transformed the garden and we are definitely settled, but at the same time, it is a rented property and I've always been aware that we will have to move eventually. This opportunity would force our hand on that, and maybe that's not such a bad thing, but I'm not thrilled about it. It would be a bit like taking medicine -- perhaps better in the long run but painful in the short term.

Well, I'm going to pull a Scarlett O'Hara and think about it tomorrow at Tara -- "because tomorrow is another day."

And meanwhile, we are off to Penzance tonight on the overnight train! This is going to be an interesting and somewhat challenging travel experience, I think. The train doesn't leave until just before midnight from Paddington Station, and frankly, I think the hardest part of the whole thing will be keeping ourselves awake until then. We normally go to bed before 10 p.m.!

We have a private cabin on the train with two sleeping berths, so we ought to be able to get fairly comfortable, but I have no idea how deeply we will sleep.

I may be posting later than usual tomorrow, depending on Internet availability. I suppose I can always post from my phone. We'll see what the options are!

The Green Woman

I haven't done a random photo post in a while, and I don't have much to say today. Yesterday was pretty uneventful for me, given that all the teachers were in conferences and there were very few kids around. So let's see what pictures I can scrounge up from the last month or so that I haven't already blogged.

First, I came across this little garden ornament in Canonbury a couple of weeks ago. The light was just right!

I took this when preparing to get into bed one night. Doesn't it look like breaking waves full of baby sea turtles? I bought these bedsheets in Florida when we were there for Christmas a couple of years ago.

Some fun stickers found on Finchley Road.

And finally, I have resisted blogging these pictures for weeks because I didn't want to be seen as making fun of this woman, whose outfit I found pretty mind-blowing. But then, she was wearing it proudly so who am I to judge?

There's a whole story here: She was very agitated and yelling at the traffic. Right after I took these photos she got on a bus and went in the same direction I was walking, and about five minutes later I passed her again standing at a second bus stop farther down the road, still very agitated. For some reason she'd gotten off the first bus and was now waiting for a second. It was all very mysterious.

Molting

This gnarly-looking parakeet showed up on our bird feeder yesterday. Dave saw it first and said, "That parakeet is filthy!" It's only when we looked closer that we realized it wasn't dirty, but was instead missing patches of feathers.

I think we're seeing an annual or biennial molt, when the bird loses its old feathers and grows new ones. For a while in between it looks pretty awful and apparently can be quite cranky. It surely must not feel good to have spiky pinfeathers coming through your exposed skin.

The funny thing is, you'd think they'd all be molting at the same time, but this is the only one we've seen looking this bad. Maybe the others are on a slightly different schedule.

I did some household projects yesterday, mostly cleaning, and trimming the monster on the patio. I collected a bag full of garden waste. (Look how open our patio looks in that linked post -- we have so many plants now, and big ones, that we can barely move around out there!)

I also sealed our green cherry tomatoes in a paper bag with an apple, in the hopes that at least some of them will ripen. (JayCee mentioned using a banana for this purpose; apparently apples have the same effect because they both exude ethylene gas, which promotes ripening.) I have no idea how long I'm supposed to leave them in there, but maybe I'll check back in a week or so. Eventually I'm going to want to eat that apple.

Today our property managers are supposed to visit the flat for "an interim visit report." I have no idea what the heck that's supposed to mean, especially since we just had our annual inspection two months ago. I suspect the managers, or possibly the landlords, want a look at a couple of things they've talked about fixing. Fortunately we don't need to be here.

Dave has parent/teacher conferences today and tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, since there won't be many kids around -- maybe more book weeding. Some of you expressed surprise that we're already going on a break this week (after conferences), given that the kids just came back to school relatively recently. We're on a slightly different schedule from the British schools, so our mid-term breaks come a bit earlier.

Autumnification

The dahlias are on their last legs, but a few are still blooming. The flowers are smaller, the bushes spindlier, but they are not letting go just yet. It's almost time to put them all back in the shed. Actually, I put one back yesterday -- one I cut down to the ground a few weeks ago. It didn't look like it was preparing to send up any more shoots. The others still have at least a few leaves but their days are numbered.

My mission yesterday was to "autumnify" the front entrance of our flat. I've had some petunias and a geranium out there for months, and the petunias were starting to look pretty haggard, so it was time for a change. I envisioned a bright chrysanthemum or two, and maybe a pumpkin.

I asked Dave if he wanted to go to the West Hampstead Farmer's Market with me to see what we could find. He wasn't enthusiastic because he took his Crohn's shot on Friday and it always makes him a little tired, but I talked him into it. I feel like I am always straddling a line between indulging his need to stay home and relax and prodding him to not become a recliner-bound hermit, which is his natural tendency.

The Farmer's Market is held every Saturday, and we don't go nearly as often as we should. I have often seen one of our famous neighbors there, and on the way I said to Dave, "Maybe we'll see Emma." The market is held on the forecourt of the train station, so we walked down there and crossed the road to join the crowds among the stalls. Somehow I got my toe wedged beneath the shopping trolley of a woman in front of me -- I don't know whether she backed up or I stuck my foot beneath it -- but when she turned around I was shocked to find that it was indeed Emma! "Sorry," I said, with that reflexive British apology that doesn't necessarily admit any guilt. She smiled at me and that was that. I gave no sign that I recognized her, which is the only polite way to treat famous people.

As you can see above, I found what I was looking for -- but not at the Farmer's Market, which had no live plants and no pumpkins. Instead we bought some big winter squashes from the produce shop on the high street, and then I went to a florist on Mill Lane for the chrysanthemums. I'm not sure how well those squashes will keep outside but since they're still whole I'm hoping they'll last a few weeks and then we can ultimately eat them. We shall see.

The Farmer's Market wasn't a total loss, though...

I bought a vegetarian Scotch egg (with mushroom and lentil filling) and some Gala apples, and had that for lunch on the patio. Scotch egg aficionados (you know who you are) will no doubt groan at the prospect of a vegetarian one, but it was pretty good once I put some salt, pepper and mustard on it.

We also bought a beautiful bouquet of dahlias -- so obviously someone's dahlias are still flourishing. I should have asked them for some hints.

I pulled up our tomato plant, which had been driven into a state of torpor by our cooler weather. The remaining tiny tomatoes weren't growing or ripening and although it still had some blossoms, this late in the season they'd never become fruit. So out it came. We planted it too late -- in June, I believe -- and it was a freebie from one of Dave's co-workers, so I'm satisfied with the handful of ripe tomatoes it gave us.

Last night Dave and I continued watching two Amazon shows that we're enjoying: "Monster: The Ed Gein Story," which is quite gory and a bit tawdry, especially at the beginning, though it gets better as it goes; and "Wayward," which features the always stellar Toni Collette running a reform school for delinquent youth. Both seem like appropriate Halloween viewing.

Ideas and More Fox Footage

Here's another view of Leon U's "Ideas" sculpture, on its pedestal on the housing estate I pass on my walk to work. I've blogged this sculpture several times, but this is a new perspective, showing it from beneath as a silhouette against the sky.

I think it captures the fleeting nature of ideas quite well. I can't tell you how often I have an idea for a blog post and then by the time I sit down to write, it's gone. Those figures seem to be leaping and stretching to grasp something ephemeral.

Yesterday turned out to be very low-key. Both the head librarian and the Middle School librarian were away, and many of the kids were gone too -- I think there are some school trips happening, as well as lots of people getting a jump on October break. We aren't officially off until next Wednesday, but Monday and Tuesday are parent-teacher conference days when the kids don't have to be in school, so I think some families may be using the week for extended traveling.

I found another cat sticker!

When I got home yesterday evening, I downloaded the garden cam. At two minutes, this week's video is pretty short. I'm sparing you almost all the cat, squirrel and pigeon footage and giving you mostly foxes.

-- At 0:35 there's a good view of one of them stretching. There are definitely two different foxes (at least), distinguishable because one of them has a white tip on its tail.
-- At 1:06, Pale Cat shows up with a blingy new collar!
-- At 1:48, I moved the camera onto the patio, and you can see that the foxes have no qualms about coming right up close to the house. Also you hear the owl (or whatever it was) that I mentioned in yesterday's post very clearly in this clip. My Merlin bird app still can't identify it.

Last night Dave and I watched "The Lost Bus" on Apple TV, the Matthew McConaughey movie about a school bus driver and teacher who work to rescue a busload of kids from the wildfires in Paradise, California, a couple of years ago. It's a very good movie, well-made and with all the nail-biting tension of the best disaster films. Well worth watching!