Better late than never (Wed, 21 June)
Posted on June 25, 2006
Filed Under Outside Dublin, Summer, Cornwall, holiday |
Today was Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. Or rather, that day of the year which has the longest amount of daylight. And, boy, did I make the most of it. I left my hotel early to go for a walk on the local (imaginatively titled) ‘coastal walk’. The title was probably decided by committee. Starting at the Newquay harbour, the walk goes around the western fringes of the town’s pennisula, taking in Huer’s Hut, Towan Head and then back into town via Fistral Beach. It was a bit odd because, on the outward leg, the signs indicated it was a 10 mile walk but the signs on the return leg seemed to indicate it was only a mile or two. Shurely some misthake!
There was a seal snoozing underwater in the harbour so that delayed me a while. He was kinda snoozing upside down. He was motionless beneath the water and even a school of pilchards were swimming around him. Every couple of minutes, he’d drift motionless to the surface and poke his nose out. His nostrils would flare wide open, allowing him to breathe. I guess he was sleeping as his eyes were shut. Occasionally he’d open his nostrils too soon and exhale into the water. It was funny seeing and hearing a seal blowing bubbles. Made me think of farting in the bath. Oops, did I say that out loud?
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Towan Head and Fistral Beach are fully exposed to the might of the Atlantic. Anybody who’s been to the West coast of Ireland will be familar with the foamy white waves that come with the ocean swelling in on the Irish coast. But, here in Newquay, I could well believe that the waves started thousands of miles away before crashing, uninterrupted, in on Fistral Beach. And it was relentless too, crashing time and time again onto the rocks, exposing and wearing down the weak flesh of the coastal rocks.
A similar parellel could be drawn with the surfers. Time is a major part of the surfer’s life. Long term, it’s a ‘waiting game’, searching for the perfect wave. Short term, they have to sit in the water, exposing their bodies to the rolling waves, while they wait for the next best wave wave to take them home to the shore. Inevitably, the sea wears them down and to see a 30yr-old+ surfer is to see proof that the ocean does strip everything from the surfer. All that’s left is a gnarled, knotty, dried-out body with just muscle and bone remaining.
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And just as the surfer keeps getting back on his board, so does nature (Far out, man!). On Towan Head, there was a handful of different plant species surviving, and thriving by the looks of things. Admittedly, the kept low to the ground, keeping a low profile as they tried to keep out of sight of the ocean’s power to destroy. Yet, incredibly, I saw a tiny bee feeding on one of the plants. How he kept his balance, or how he got there, I have no idea? Another 2 metres and the sea would have destoyed him and the plant he was sitting on. It’s funny how memories intrude. There’s a derogatory Dublin phrase, ‘F**k you and the horse you rode in on’. It probably comes from 40 years ago when Irish children went to the Saturday and Sunday cinema matinee’s to watch the (earliest?) American cowboy films. 40 years on, I’m was looking at that bee and thinking, F-you and the horse you rode in on. How did you get this far?’
I’m leaving Newquay tomorrow. Would I recommend Newquay to a friend? Yes. I’m sitting in the bar of the Hotel Bristol writing this. If I want to eat dinner here, I would have to wear a shirt. That’s a bit stuffy but I like it. The chef has probably been working for 3 or 4 hours to get my dinner ready so there’s no reason why I can’t make a bit of an effort as well? For breakfast, they make proper scrambled eggs and you get 8 quarters (two whole slices!!) of toast. The staff call me ’sir’ (without clenching their teeth & cursing my grandchildren). All-in-all, the stuffiness does add to the charm of the hotel. If you can afford it, stay here. Across the road on the green, there’s a mixed group of twenty people practising their karate sparring skills in the open air as I write. To add to the flavour, every few minutes a gaggle of surfers, in full regalia, interrupt the spectacle as they head for the beach for ‘one more wave’. In other words, providing you have a car and/or a surfboard, there’s something here for everyone.
The one thing that detracts from Newquay is the lack of a vibrant artistic scene. St Ives, a few miles down the road, seems to fill that niche & it also explains the car comment in the previous paragraph. With the strong currents around here, you could probably ‘bodyboard’ down to St Ives pretty sharpish but where would one store one’s Panama hat, one asks? Anyway, back to Newquay. I wanted to buy a painting by a local artist that would remind me of Newquay’s wonderful ’space’ and, especially, it’s ‘pinky’ light. In the past few days, I spent far too much time just looking at the horizon - it’s totally hypnotic here. I couldn’t really find anything that captured my feeling’s for the place until I saw this piece by Michael Goodram. It might look flat on the computer screen but Goodram has used fused glass mirrors in a unique way to achieve a beautiful three-dimensional result. The colours and textures change as you look at it from different angles. It’s the sort of piece that should probably be hung at the top of the stairs (or the hallway), so that your perception of it changes as you get closer and closer. I also have paintings by Simone Walshe (Irish) and Lesley Whelan (English) and they express themselves in three dimensions as well. I only have prints by Fred Tomaselli but, while his work is 3-d, it’s also drug-inspired (hope I’m not libelling him) so it takes a bit more deciphering. I wish I could afford one of his works but there’s never any price displayed on the internet when you go looking. And, as the saying goes, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
Will I be back to Newquay? Yes but not for awhile. Emotionally, I’ve been really intrigued by the ‘light’ hereabouts. It’s a different ‘colour’ to what I’ve experienced before so I think the next step for me is to follow the artists (to France?). My favourite painter is William Leech and although my memory is failing me right now, but he was an Anglo-Irish painter (with the emphasis on Irish) who was active at the start of the 20th century. Some of his best paintings were drawn in France. I never attached much significance to the French connection but, blogging yesterday, I noted how nature had overwhelmed my senses when I visited the ‘Lizard Point’ (I couldn’t smell anything). Maybe artists are those who have a higher input-capacity/tolerance for nature/life than the average person and feel compelled to ‘record’ it for others to see. Maybe it’s not about technical skill, maybe it’s about communicating the message that, ‘here’s what I ‘feel’, can you ‘feel’ it too’? If that’s true, then graffitti is art??
Oh yeah, why is the Hotel Bristol named so? The original owner (three generations ago) travelled extensively, and stayed in a lot of Hotel Bristol’s around the world, and he enjoyed each one. Upon establishing his own hotel, he discovered that there was only one other hotel in the UK called the Hotel Bristol (& it’s not in Bristol!). ‘Well then, that’s sorted’, he may have said in a 1920’s sort of way (1927 to be exact).
I wrote this on Wednesday, 21 June 2006, but I couldn’t post it until today.
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