Scallop, Fish and Chips

This week Hubby and I have been cat-sitting for friends outside Bury St. Edmund while they tend to affairs abroad and so, we too have been enjoying a change of surroundings. It's

always lovely to stay in a beautiful place and Suffolk's rolling acres of farmland and forests gave us different vistas as we drove one day through to the coast.

Aldburgh is a pretty fishing town whose cottages and shops today are painted in charming pastels of every hue, their small gardens bedecked with pots of flowers where once nets, lobster pots and the other detritus of fishing livelihoods might have been stored. Like every other attractive coastal town, its houses have been gentrified, (no real complaints about that) but it nevertheless had a feel, at this late end of the tourist season, that it had been semi-abandoned by second-home owners domiciled elsewhere for the coming winter.

We naturally had a delicious fish and chip lunch before crunching along the shelved, shingle beach to view Maggie Hambling's sculpture that sits above the high-tide line. It caused controversy when erected in 2003 as many people thought the beach should be left unadorned and wild, it's very bleakness the beauty and attraction. I have some sympathy with that point of view, noting as I walked towards the sculpture that parts of the high beach-line had their own natural adornments of sea grass and plants growing in abandon out of reach of the waves.

At about 12' high, the sculpture imposes itself on the vast open space with its metallic shells cleverly counter-balanced so as to be able to withstand winds of up to 100 mph. Rustily weathering or scoured and gleaming, it truly is a point of interest set against the bleak horizon and I liked it.

The Scallop is a tribute to the composer Benjamin Britten who lived in the town for thirty years. Cut into the outer rim and illuminated naturally by the sky beyond is a line from his opera Peter Grimes, 'I hear those whose voices that will not be drowned,' the interpretation of which I suppose will be different for each viewer and particularly poignant for those who have suffered loss to the ocean.

So, in reflective mood we headed back past the boats hauled high up onto the beach in front of their little black huts-cum-shops selling fresh or smoked fish, and made our way back inland to take charge once again of two geriatric old ginger gentlemen and their much more boisterous younger tortoiseshell sisters, none of whom sadly likes fish...

There are other attractions on the beach...

https://www.visit-aldeburgh.co.uk/

A Summer Sunday in Grasmere

A Rainy Day in Grasmere

I just came across a page in my notebook that held so many lovely memories of early summer. Hubby and I were holidaying in the Lake District with friends and while the boys did what they liked, Suzanne and I spent happy times, deep in thought, writing poetry.

She had been on a creative writing course and said that this was one of the exercises they had been given. I was to make a list of meaningful words or phrases and with a few more additions, create a poem. So I had a go.

It apparently is called a 'Lunch' poem written using lunchtime observations which must include a name, place and time. So here is my list of words that inspired my Sunday poem.

Rising mist, drifting rain, smudging cloud erasing mountain tops. Black lambs with grey mothers.

Ferns, shades of green.

Aimless tourists.

Reasons.

Gingerbread.

Lichen-covered branches. Scudding clouds. Waterproof clothes.

Foxgloves. Drystone walls.

Open-top buses empty in the rain.

Working farmers weaving tractors through dawdling tourists. Resentful or grateful?

Admire the human sheep in synthetic woollies.

Ode to Grasmere

Throw back the bedclothes and what of the day?

The garden outside lies muffled beneath

Its own rumpled blanket of drifting grey rain.

Raggedy clouds hug mountains,

Scudding, bumping, smudging,

Softly blending granite, bracken and grass.

Sheep bleat as they wander low meadows,

Curly black lambs suckle patient grey mothers,

Innocent beginnings to their first and only years.

Waterproofed against the weather,

Fred and Doris dawdle aimless,

Window-shop woollen tweeds in their cheap synthetic fleeces.

Crowded tea-shops, steamy mirrors,

Rain-slicked pavements on a

Summer Sunday in Grasmere.

It certainly is evocative of the Grasmere I hold dear and it was a very pleasant way to while away the time.

Over the week we wrote several poems but I haven't done any since. Might start making written observations again, ready for enforced 'indoors time' this Winter. I did say my diaries were eclectic, so room for some more poems perhaps?

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It certainly is evocative of the Grasmere I hold dear and it was a very pleasant way to while away

the time.

Over the week we wrote several poems but I haven't done any since. Might start making written observations again, ready for enforced 'indoors time' this Winter. I did say my diaries were eclectic, so room for some more poems perhaps?

Granny Bonnet

My Idea of Heaven

Hubby and I have been leaving our holiday home early each morning for a walk round the valley that to me resembles one of the places I think Heaven must look like. Elterwater in the

Lake District.

On a clear, windless day it is place of outstanding beauty with calm waters reflecting mountainous surrounds in perfect upside-down symmetry.

Over the years it has acquired a beautifully-laid path for easy walking and is a very popular place that can get quite busy,but well before 10 a.m., we have had the place almost entirely to ourselves. My first sight this year of its familiar, loved contours lit by soft morning light was of dew-laden grasses and mist-softened mountains in silence so profound, it brought me to tears.

The next day was entirely different. Still and windless once more, peerless blue sky mirrored the sharp-edged Langdale Pikes to perfection until a gathering of Brent geese noisily disputing ownership, stirred the waters into sparkling eddies.

Each day we visited in homage and each time the surrounds brought a different aspect to our bliss.

After each of our leisurely walks we returned to where those same tranquil waters flare in foaming crests over Skelwith Force, its and our movements directed down towards the vegetarian restaurant that graces the edge of the river at Brathay Bridge. A lovely friendly place where we sat outside on the terrace overlooking glinting waters threading through downstream rocks.

Another type of heaven altogether, freshly-brewed tea and home-made scones!