Unbalanced

[tamaranth]

Was in Plymouth at the weekend, sailing with pugwash and his charming crew: also visiting my father, who's been ill again and was somewhat indistinct (though still immeasurably better than in the hospital in February).

Saturday was rainy and cool in Plymouth, so we headed into Cornwall again. We were aiming for the elusive 'Spaniards', a pub which had been highly recommended and which we'd failed to find on the last trip. This time we reached it: it's the Crooked Spaniard -- according to the sign, though even the website has it as the Spaniards, which is waht we looked for in the pub guides / Yellow Pages etc!), and it's at Cargreen (not Callington, Calstock, or any of the other Ca* places we tried) and they insisted that we sat outside as they had a wedding party. Also, no food. Awarding them nul points for customer service, we took our business elsewhere ... to Calstock, where the annual Festival was being held.

We all fell for Calstock. It's on the train line into Plymouth, and there's a beautiful viaduct arching over the deep Tamar valley. There's a ferry service across the river, and (like most of the pubs) the ferryboat flies the Cornish flag. The Festival -- which we enjoyed from the terrace of a pub -- featured a couple of local bands, mainly playing covers. (Fields of Gold, Groove Armada's At the River (the one that samples the Patti Page song about Cape Cod), Portishead ...) We probably insult them by being surprised at their quality. We may be insulting the town by finding the evident community spirit, and general friendliness, unusual. We peered into the estate agent's window and were pleasantly surprised, too.

Back into Plymouth for a bracing seaside walk on the breakwater at Mount Batten, and dinner on board.


Sunday dawned grey and nasty. Nevertheless we headed out into the Sound -- closest I've been to an active submarine -- and sailed round to the Yealm, and the moorings at Newton Ferrers / Noss Mayo.



The river splits a mile or so inland, the eastward branch (dry at low water) dividing Newton Ferrers from Noss Mayo, the northern branch running between the wooded western cliff and the stepped houses of the eastern bank. There's something about the proximity of land and sea, the way that every house has a dinghy on a pulley on the foreshore, that reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's Ninety Isles, in the Earthsea books... The still water between the visitors' pontoon and the cliff is a rich, deep green: out in the estuary it was ultramarine, a dark greeny-blue, though the sky was grey and there was no blue anywhere to reflect.



Newton Ferrers is a very, very pretty village -- roses around cottage gables, wisteria, hanging baskets, gardens falling to the river ablaze with flowers. We wandered around the village, hearing evensong from the church across the water in Noss Mayo (you can walk across at low tide: there's a voss, or causeway, linking the two parishes). When we got to the Dolphin at its advertised opening time it was already heaving with nicely-dressed yachting types and -- possibly -- locals, though I didn't hear many West Country accents in there. Prettier than Calstock but not nearly as friendy.

Cocktails (G&T) and dinner on the boat, watching herons flee the camera, listening to owls in the woods. The atmosphere was playing tricks, so having texted ladymoonray to ask for ISS (space station) times, I couldn't get a phone signal again until the following morning. Devon seems full of these shadowy places; I blame the granite and the contours, of which there are many.

Worked out the space station times from the times at Greenwich, given 90-minute orbit and Plymouth's location 4 degrees west of the Greenwich meridian. One transit was too soon after sunset (rather later down there than in London) and I think we'd all succumbed to fresh air + red wine + dinner by the time it went over again.

Sailed back on Monday after a leisurely fried breakfast. Sailing uneventful. Disembarking from the boat, we ended up soaked due to motorboat wash, and pugwash was forced to change his trousers. Will I publish the pictures? Did I even take any? Do I want to sail again? Tune in next time ...

At least I have spared you all the weekend's crop of dreadful puns.

Plymouth seemed to be rising and falling gently. (When I was learning to pilot a glider, my teacher remarked that I had an extremely sensitive inner ear. Maybe that's why boat-motion stays with me for days, and why I get appallingly seasick on anything larger than the Serpentine without proper medication). Now London is rising and falling gently. Can only hope that it settles down soon, as I'm feeling rather ... imbalanced.

On a whim, I walked over to see my father on Monday night. (This has only very recently been an option; before that he was staying miles from the city centre). I'd had a fit of nostalgia for the boat he spent many years refitting, but never quite managed to get afloat. Ariel would've been about the same size as Sea Spear, 27': the interior is pretty much the same, though I think there may be slightly more headroom. He had to sell her when he left Essex: I don't know what became of her.

I still find it hard to believe that he persuaded my mother to elope with him by boat; she wasn't the hardiest or most pioneering of women, and I can't imagine her ever setting foot on a boat again after being stuck in the Crouch for two days, trying to make way against a southwesterly gale. Also -- my father told me -- she had toothache, which can't have helped. (Had it quite badly myself last week, but thankfully this was only a sinus problem). Nevertheless, they did sail -- all around Foulness Island, some of it by moonlight with the only noise being the wind in the reeds. All around Canvey Island in Ratty, and until he mentioned the name I'd have said I never knew what any of my father's boats were called.

I have a photograph of my mother somewhere, in trousers (which I can't recall her ever wearing), sitting on a tartan rug on the sea wall somewhere. Some time in the early Sixties. She looks so carefree, and very young, though by the time she met my father she was in her mid-thirties: younger than I am now. I have a vague sense of this time, from photos and early memories and anecdotes: days on the beach (whatever the weather), transistor radios tuned firmly to Radio Four, Neville Shute books from the library, flasks of coffee and roll-ups. That peculiar shade of pale grey-green which seems to have gone out of fashion forever. The late afternoon light on the Essex coast, relected back by the North Sea. Marram grass and driftwood.

I miss it so much, and go in search of it often. But I've never really seen it at all. By being born, I changed it.