Favourite spaces and places

There are many for me: Hampstead Heath ponds, in fact, a lot of London in general; Cerbère, a particular stone bench in a tiny hamlet called Aspro in Crete, from which you can see the mountains and the sea, Pamphill in Dorset, the lanes of Wirksworth in Derbyshire; Canford Cliffs, the woolly hills across from where we live, our garden, and amongst many other places - Wingreen, in Dorset.
This small wedge of beech trees atop a rounded hill of grass and wild flowers kept cropped by sheep is an oddly magical place to me, and probably to others. Odd, as in there isn't a great deal there - rabbits, rabbit droppings, cowslips in the spring, and, nearly always, larks singing that odd twizzling little song as they rise into the sky (which always seems blue in my mind's eye - a remembered/possibly imagined, blue of my childhood days).
We, (Mum and I), would make a pilgrimage there fairly often to walk, picnic and just sit looking at the vastness of clouds and the smallness of the distant ridge where, somewhere, if you had super binoculars, you would be able to make out the stile at the end of her road.

                                    

Building no 39

One of my strongest childhood memories, along with the one of sitting in the Launderette with a copy of the Beano and a sherbert fountain, and the time I took my three mice into the chip shop with me and a woman fainted, was our daily trip down to the beach at Canford Cliffs, when we were on holiday.
The trick was to go down when everyone else was leaving, all sandy and tired, clutching stripy windbreaks and rolled towels. Then there would be space to park, the beach deserted apart from a few intrepid old folks taking their regular evening dip, and gulls picking over ice-cream wrappers.
On the few times we got down there earlier, this curved, 1950s? treats place would still be open. If Mum was feeling unusually flush, she would allow an ice-cream. I can remember seeing the blue and white facade looming each time we walked onto the promenade from the steps down the cliff, and wondering if this might be a 'flush day' or a 'make do with a wrinkly apple' day.

When I was very young I would choose a Fab. I don't know if these are still in production, but I have fond recollections of the fake strawberry taste and the crunchy 'hundreds and thousands'.
If gran took me to the beach, she would get a cup of tea and ask me to choose between crisps and chocolate (an agonising choice for a seven or so year old). Then we would sit on the sand, backs up against the promenade wall; gran with her skinny legs under a tartan blanket, pale lilac perm blowing in the sea breeze, fag, tea and the Daily Mirror.

Life number 2

Back from it - in the UK.
I'm so very lucky to have lovely relatives to stay with when I visit the homeland; the thought of turning up to a lonely B and B every two and half months when I visit mum, is not be a pleasant one.
So, I hired the car, turned up at my cousins and was welcomed into their cosy cottage.
Odd, the two-life thing: all the familiar smells of the other place, my pairs of shoes where I left them, the book I was reading last time, marked and waiting.
I made a cup of tea and automatically reached for the radio: radio 4, old friend - desert Island discs (superb one featuring Hugh Laurie this week), the news quiz, midweek, even the shipping forecast (thought they had moved that?) and news, and news . . . ninety percent depressing: cuts, cuts, whinging politicians and whistle-blowers trapped in the 'high seas' of airports.
Of course, we can get Radio 4 back in the land of horse meat but I never want to listen to it there: just doesn't seem right. Sadly there isn't really an equivalent; France Culture is . . . just that, incredibly informative and full of cultured people who speak in wonderfully unhurried elegant speech, peppered with 'la la la, le le le, en revanche, errrrrr, etc. But where's the John Humphries person, or 'Sorry I'll read that again'? France info is informative but manages to be racy and dull at the same time, so I rely on Tele Matin for news and enjoy radio 4 when I slip into the second life for a week or so, along with fish and chips and people moaning about the weather, which they are doing here this year of course.
Here are some snaps from my travels:

The beach at Canford Cliffs: a very favourite spot, almost completely empty despite the fact that it was two days away from July.

Me, proving that I did get in the sea. Really I did; it was about fourteen degrees and there was only one other person in it: a man in a wetsuit. Bracing, darling.

Boring photo, yes, but I had to take it: a shop selling only mobile phone covers . . . where are we at on this planet!



A perfect piece of topiary. I would have taken more pictures, but a slavering Doberman came and asked me what I was doing.