Achievements

Two completely different and unrelated events dominate our lives at this juncture. One concerns our son Ben, whose band’s first single “Little Love” has just been released and is available to buy on the Internet. After talking to him, any understanding we thought we had of the world of the modern music industry has been revealed as hopelessly inadequate. But this does not prevent us from appreciating the effort and skill that has gone into the performing and actually we love the music; it is played here over and over again. Success or failure of the enterprise that Bang Bang Romeo represents now rests upon the readers of this blog buying the music, or so I am led to believe. Just follow this link – SPOTIFY

The second event is a little closer to home. It concerns our living room and the stone monstrosity that we have made into something we like and can admire. At one point only a few weeks ago we came close to demolishing the whole structure, in fact the only thing that stopped us was the risk that in doing so we might create far more work for ourselves than by leaving it in place.

Investigation soon revealed that the massively built structure was only loosely attached to the wall behind; the reality is that it was little more than a folly. So began the job of changing this into something a little more functional which would not fall on top of and maim our first visitors. This has involved taking a risk and following a vision locked somewhere inside our heads, for better or worse, and now that it is complete, even alongside the bare walls in the rest of the room (which we cannot decorate until our builders have finished remodelling the rest of the room) we feel we have created something better than before. We are quite proud of our handiwork and also in some way surprised that we should feel this way. Perhaps this is because making things was not a part of either of our working careers so we are discovering for ourselves the sense of achievement that working with our hands can bring.

Outside the house autumn is beginning to show off in the Somerset countryside and there is much to admire just a short walk away. Not only do we live conveniently close to what we need for our DIY – we have no less than four plumbing suppliers within a quarter mile radius and our corner of Yeovil also happens to be the Mecca for screws – but a short stroll from the front door takes us into another world, a valley where the river Yeo trickles softly by and nature is busy producing its bounty – berries in all shades. Alongside this the landscape is gradually tinting from green to the reds and browns of autumn and a leaf carpet is beginning to form. We have discovered a little wonderland on our doorstep, somewhere we plan to visit regularly to watch the seasons develop.

Salcombe

Finally we could resist it no more. The strings attaching us to what has been our floating home for so long have eventually and inevitably pulled us back on board Cirrus Cat for a short, late-season break. A quick study of the five-day forecast tells us that there is nothing in the way of equinoctial gales in prospect so we gather the necessities, some food and a few clothes, then charge off west to Plymouth. Our son Mike is with us, which surprisingly is all it takes to tilt the economics of public transport away from trains and buses towards a hired car, still a form of public transport, but one usually thought of as expensive by comparison. Not so, it seems and certainly when you take into account the inconvenience of changing trains, missing buses and walking for more than thirty minutes up hill and down dale with luggage, the decision is an easy one to make.

We are not strangers to hiring cars and this time the hire company, almost apologetically and for the same price, gives us one larger than ordered and so brand new it still has that lingering smell of molten wax that is unique to all new vehicles. My only complaint was the colour, black, a rather obviously negative safety feature.

A fast but rough sail on Cirrus has taken us to Devon’s Salcombe Harbour, a place clearly reaching the end of its busy season for this year. We know this because moorings are available for us to pick up and there is space on the visitor pontoon. In the main street the town’s shops are well, to be brutally honest, rather strange in that they are all remarkably similar, being small and selling high fashion leisure clothing of one sort or another. It is the end of season and we find the word ‘Sale’ pasted here and there across the plate glass although obviously there is a ‘Salcombe’ way of doing these things. There is a shoe shop, for example, where a price reduction means that everything is reduced to a mere £100. We consider ourselves fortunate indeed that we have enough shoes between us so we can pass on by without being tempted.

So here we are lounging about at leisure on board as the sun dips behind the surrounding hills, entertaining ourselves as usual by observing the comings and going of others on boats and bemoaning the misbehaviour of our dinghy’s outboard engine which forces us to row ourselves ashore. We try in vain to persuade the thing to run for more than a few seconds without over-heating and leaving us stranded just out of reach of land or boat. I have cleaned it by poking its inner parts with stiff wire, replaced its little rubber impellor which is supposed to pump cooling water up from the sea and generally molly-coddled it by polishing various parts, all to no avail. We watch enviously as everybody else’s outboard engine chugs smoothly past. We end up contemplating ways and means by which we might casually exchange our non-working outboard engine for an identical but fully-functioning one we have just seen going past on the back of a small dinghy. Can we resist the temptation secretly to row over in the dead of the night and swap ours for that hanging off the back of this boat?

Maybe because of the influence upon our consciences of the Papal Visit (Deo Gratias) we are still bereft of motorised dinghy power when we depart Salcombe the next day. 

The light wind is now from a south-easterly direction so once out past the turbulence of Bolt Head we hoist our secret weapon, the multicoloured spinnaker, which brings out the sun and pulls us along for hours across Bigbury Bay towards Plymouth. Suddenly there are German voices on the radio warning all ships to keep clear of an area just three miles to the west of us. Loud booming comes echoing across the sea as warships start firing out to sea. This is not playing, it is live ammunition and only a few miles away from us! Strange, we think, didn’t the war end over fifty years ago? We hear the radio operator on the German warship Hamburg getting excited when a sailing boat (not us) sails too close beneath the guns and a rather alarmed and embarrassed yacht skipper replying over the airwaves for all to hear. All ends well for them while we escape unnoticed into the River Yealm, a beautifully sheltered, wooded chasm that has no less than three pubs at its head. It is a favourite stopping place for yachtsmen all along this coast. We can cope with a little excitement at sea but being this close to significant naval action is not really our thing and we are glad to be out of it. We leave them to their games.

Tying up to a convenient pontoon we suddenly find ourselves surrounded by large catamarans – Cirrus is amongst her big sisters between whose hulls we could almost slip unnoticed. 

The south-west just seems to have more multihull yachts per square inch than another other corner of this country and they are here in the Yealm because it is mid-week and end of season; the river is a little too overcrowded with moorings to attract them normally. This is a busy place but the fast-flowing tidal river is rich with life, much of which hangs onto the pontoon itself just below the waterline. Peer over the side and you’ll see a colourful world which is unnoticed by most of those who stop here overnight.

It seems we have had the best of the weather for our few days away. Our final night is quiet but the day dawns misty with rain floating in the air although just enough wind to enable us to sail our way past all those warships into Plymouth Sound. Hamburg is still there making trouble for small vessels but we ignore it and sneak stealthily back to our mooring.

Moving forward in our own way

Well that’s one job finished at least. It seems like forever that I have been labouring away in the smallest room, putting tiles over… well everything, the floor, the walls, even around around the window. And the job is finished at last. In almost exactly one month we have finally done all we can to one room in the house, getting it to the state we want it. All that remains is to fit the toilet, the shiny new beast that currently sits nonchalantly in front of our television, and putting this in its correct place is something our builders will do in a few weeks time.

So it is time to move on to the next job. I pick up my largest hammer and Kate points me at the thing we laughingly call ‘the fireplace’.

This substantial construction was built many years ago largely as a ‘feature’, we think, as the house currently has no usable chimney. It is a part of the house that has clearly undergone several evolutions in its lifetime, the latest of which was put together in the same way that one might a nuclear shelter, great blocks of stone cemented together with real intent although strangely the structure turned out to be barely attached to the wall behind. If weight were an issue, the house would be leaning in towards the end of the room where it all lies. As it is the feature just sits there and tries to look good. In reality, though, it is like a library without books; we have a fireplace without a fire at the centre, just a blank space that looks as though it is waiting for something to arrive. So, looking for inspiration, we have paid a visit to a local fireplace showroom and, with a minimum of modification…

…yes, we think we can fit something in there. The neighbours are less than impressed by the heavy banging (those bricks were built to last) which shakes our foundations and theirs but in the end we have a pile of rubble in plastic sacks which goes to join the old toilet in the garden.

Although we never think of our house as old, this particular job has been a bit like going on an archaeological dig. We find ourselves opening a way through one fireplace only to discover another lurking behind it then inside this, is that the outline of yet earlier fireplace, a piece of pipe leading away into the wall, some dusty wallpaper and even a narrow chimney ascending to the top of the house? We peer fascinated into the hole, brushing away the ancient cobwebs and try to imagine what sort of heating machine might have stood here once before. But we don’t linger as we know that this is the domain of giant arachnids who have been awoken by the modifications we are carrying out to what has been for so long, their house. More than once we have seen spiders as big-as-yer-‘ead lumbering away into dark unreachable corners, eight legs pumping energetically up the wall. The house spider’s body must be able to stretch itself thin, like that of an octopus, so that it can disappear from sight through the thinnest of cracks and then peer out at us, laughing no doubt. There are, of course, many metres of well insulated cavity space for them to live in behind our walls. And we are quite happy for them to stay just there.

Somerset follies

Even we, who have spent nearly all the last four weeks tearing apart the very house we live in, eventually decided we needed something of a break, or at least a change of scenery. Holidays, of course, are normally only the privilege of the working population; we retireds no longer qualify. But a morning out on our bikes, exploring Somerset lanes barely wide enough for a car and a bike to pass definitely felt like a holiday after all our time spent around the home.

Whilst browsing on the Internet for maps showing things of interest around Yeovil we had spotted a couple of NCNs nearby, numbers 26 and 30, running just to the south of the town. National Cycle Network routes are the motorways of the cycling world. Just as motorways serve to isolate legitimate from prohibited traffic, so the NCN routes seek, whenever possible, to isolate (or protect) the cyclist from motorised traffic. Sometimes a route has no choice but to follow a road and a common solution is to paint a lane for cyclists on the tarmac itself. Rather safer is where a separate pathway is built alongside or away from the road but from a cyclist’s perspective the very best solution is for an NCN route to follow a country lane which carries no significant motorised traffic at all so that a cyclist can use the whole road in safety. And squeezing their way through the Somerset countryside there are some amazing examples of this rarity, some sunken deeply into the bedrock centuries ago and barely wide enough for a horse and cart. The deep and dank sandstone walls flash past us as we ride along carefree and happy. Most car drivers would not venture here for there is no room for a car to pass another and the stone sides are unforgiving. But there is just room for two bikes to pass.

We are heading towards Barwick Park Hall and a local landmark known as ‘Jack-the-Treacle-Eater’. 

This is a folly, a structure with no purpose other than to please the owner who had it constructed, and one of four built on the estate at each primary compass point back in the 17th century. The statue on top is of the winged messenger, Mercury, and the story goes that the little room beneath it was once the home of the man employed by the lord of the manor, a man whose job it was to run with the mail to London.

So Jack was the postman. And the treacle? Well, this is what he sustained himself with en route, or so the story goes.

Then, as we stare at the arch we realise that we are looking at a familiar shape, one that just a few months ago was all around us. It is the unsupported stone arch, of course. In the Italian village of Torri, and indeed in much of that country, such structures are all around, over doorways, supporting whole ceilings and often tiered one above another in a way that challenges one’s notion of stability. The design, apparently first developed by the Romans, is clearly immensely stable with a key stone right at the centre of the arch locking the whole thing together. Unlike this English folly. in Italy many of the arches are constructed without use of mortar, just stones placed together over a timber former which is then removed to leave the stones hanging suspended on their own.

Back home again and on with the wallpaper stripping.

Ah, but who is this strange fellow hiding beneath the kitchen wallpaper and caught having a quick smoke? All in glorious colour too - well, red and blue crayon. Could there be some connection between this large-nosed man and Deb who was so cruelly libelled in our hallway? Once again we may never know the artist whose work we have revealed and sadly this masterpiece is doomed - the wall upon which he is drawn is soon due to be demolished. Currently it separates our kitchen and living room, an area we want to make into one. We have builders with big sledge hammers lined up and plans prepared by a structural engineer who has specified the strength of the beam needed to support the ceiling and wall above. Any day now they will begin work and this single change will transform our house giving us a large downstairs living space. The house is oriented east-west so that morning sun pours in through the rear windows while at the front we get the best sunsets Somerset can offer. We can’t wait for the day when the dust has settled and the sun can shine right through at last, from dawn till dusk.