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Hope
Cove Diary 1995
An
occasionally poetic commemoration of an extended family holiday
in
Sunday
July 9
Yesterday
we arrived at Hope Cove
in brilliant sunshine. The temperature has been in the low 30’s (very
hot)
though it’s a bit windy. I have been for my daily run, but have noticed
that
the hills have got higher again, just as they did last year. It’s
something to
do with global warming, I expect. Today it was the end of Wimbledon
(well, not
the end of Wimbledon, as such, I mean the place is still there, or at
least I
hope it is or there’ll be another impossible day at Clapham Junction on
Monday,
I mean the end of the tennis), but we entertained ourselves on the
beach digging
irrigation systems. There were some Germans (they got there first, of
course)
who insisted on sullenly breaking down every dam we built but with
reinforcements in the shape of Nicholas and his brother from Rossendale
we soon
saw them off. This evening Tessa, Marie-Noelle, Emma and Joel have gone
up the
hill to look at the view, while Adam is asleep and a little sunburned.
The
journey from
Bull
on the motorway?
Sitting
in the car
can be very dull,
and to brighten things
up
along came a bull.
We saw it
standing
by the motorway
with two policemen
trying to get it away.
They were
poking at it
with a long brown broom
stepping away
to escape their doom.
What
would have happened
if he got onto the
road?
All the cars would
have to stop
or he’d be a dead toad.
to brighten our day
we’d be sitting in the
car
with nothing to say!
A bull
nearly went on the road one day—
it stopped right at the motorway!
Daddy,
of course, provided
insights into the deeper significance:
Ah,
bull!
I saw thee in one moment’s
fleeting grace
proud and defiant (and
quite clearly out of place),
and yet, reflecting on
the incident just now,
I reckon on the whole
you were probably a cow.
And
from Tessa, the
practical approach:
Join the
police, keep a bull at bay!
What better way to
earn your pay!
And
the last word from
Adam:
Look, Adam, its a bull...
NO!!!
Monday
July 10
Overnight
there was a tremendous
thunderstorm. Everyone woke up except for Emma. No-one was frightened
by the
thunder, but every few minutes all the lights went off for a few
seconds, and
Adam didn’t like this, so he spent the rest of the night with Mummy
while Dad
slept in Adam’s bed. Today Daddy spent as much time as he could asleep.
Or tried to.
In
the morning Mummy,
Emma, Joel and Adam (“the nuisance” - Emma) went to get a newspaper.
Joel bought
a little boat. Adam didn’t want to get his feet sandy, which is
something of a
challenge when you are walking across a beach. Then when Mum washed
them he
didn’t want to get them wet. Later we went to Mouthwell beach where we
dammed
the stream with the boys from Rossendale. Then Daddy went and bought a
BIG
boat, as Emma had been asking him to every five minutes and this seemed
the
best way to try and get some more sleep. The boat was a black and
yellow
inflatable dinghy big enough for two to sit in, with two oars. This
evening
after supper, Emma and Joel rowed from the jetty to the beach, while
Daddy
followed them along the shore and stubbed his toe regularly on the
underwater
rocks.
Today’s
poem, requested by
Tessa, is about Adam’s favourite cuddly toy.
Adam
likes to play with cars
and eating lots of
chocit bars
and building castles
in the sun
and shouting NO!!! at
everyone
but most of all he
likes to be
with one out of his
special three:
one’s just ”Bunny”,
one’s called “New”
but “Different Bunny”
heads the queue!
Different Bunny used
to be
white and fluffy (just
like me!),
now he sags and flops
about
as if his stuffing had
come out.
His fur is rough, his
coat is faded,
his grubby ears are
limp and jaded
but it would take a
special rabbit
to break Ad’s
Different Bunny habit
Tuesday
July 11
Today
it was muggy and
miserable a lot of the time so the beach was a non-starter, at least
until late
afternoon. We ate our Golden Grahams and about eleven o’clock set off
to
Ivybridge to the South Devon Leisure Emporium. Well it was actually
called the
Centre but a true Emporium it was. Two swimming pools, one in, one out,
the
latter large and entirely empty due to a brief onset of the Ice Age.
This
though did not deter Emma, who in her charming, gently insistent way
ensured
that two lifeguards were despatched out of doors to supervise all
members of
the tribe making free with the facilities. In fact it was pleasant
enough
outside (in the water at least) with the result that getting back into
the
indoor pool had the effect of entering a sauna. Tessa once more
assaulted the
Tourist Information Centre, returning triumphant with another clutch of
leaflets and the knowledge that the legendary Sea Tractor had been
sighted
between 10 and 1 making its way between Bigbury and
The Portable
Loo
(after
the manner
of
Thomas Hardy)
We drove
from Kingsbridge on the road -
The A329,
And car after car
drove sullenly by
In an endless line,
And the the road ahead
was wan and gray
While I in my heart
tried to be gay
As we drove along that
dismal day
The A329.
The road
was shrunken, like my heart
Though it was an “A”
With
barely room for two to pass
That
holiday,
And looking up the
track ahead
The trailer lights
burned brightly red
And began reversing
back instead
Right
in our
way.
Oh, had I
known what that vehicle was
In the bitter
queue
I might not now look
back upon
Such waste with
rue,
For we were too
preoccupied
To reach the swimming
pool (inside)
And so impatiently
decried
The Portable
Loo.
Ten
golden minutes there we sat
And
yet knew not
This was the zenith,
all afterwards
Would go to pot.
Now when our loo is
blocked, I think next
Of the time that our
life had a simpler text
When the Loo blocked the
road, and we were vexed
On the
A329.
This
is Joel’s more
literal interpretation:
Portable
Loo on the road?!
One day when we were
going to the swimming
pool
to brighten things up
it was portable
(portable means that
you can carry it).
The road was blocked.
It took about 10mins
to get past.
Wednesday
July 12
The
Day of the Tractor. We set off
to Bigbury at 11 following the information supplied by the Ivybridge
Centre.
But we were misled. The Sea Tractor ventures out only at higher tide,
so we
would have to wait until late afternoon. The Beast itself lay sleeping
at the
foot of
Mont St Michel
was all very well
but clearly lacked a
Sea Tractor.
Thursday
July 13
Today
was the day of the Famous
Devon Artist. Each Thursday he takes up residence in the Reading Room
at Hope
Cove. For weeks Joel had been planning to take him a picture of
Thurlestone.
This was finished (with a second copy for Mum & Dad) this
morning, and we
made our pilgrimage (30 yards up the road) to the FDA’s studio. Joe
gave him
his picture. He showed Joe how to paint shadow onto rocks, and gave him
a laser
copy of a photo of
The Artist Song
Words and music by E and J Rust
We’re going to see the
Artist
with paintings in each hand!
Friday
July 14
Today
we went to Pennywell Farm,
where the following activities were undertaken by Emma and Joel, with
Adam’s
occasional intervention:
Feeding milk to lambs
Sitting on a tractor
(Adam)
Egg hunting
(Joel took one home to eat for
breakfast next morning)
Sitting on a tractor again (Adam)
Milking a cow (Joel 2 spurts, Emma 1)
Ferret racing (learning that ferrets are very smelly)
Want to sit on tractor again (Adam)
Spinning wool (Emma and Joel)
Holding pet ducks and rabbits
Riding ponies and donkey
(Emma twice, Joel 3 times, Adam twice)
Final ritual sitting on tractor
Going home
Saturday
July 15
At
noon Mary, Colin, Michael,
Judy, John and Anne arrived to take up residence in Eddystone next
door. Hope
Beach House has six flats, all named after local rocks, and we’re in
Thurlestone, which is the bottom left. Eddystone is bottom right, so we
now get
to hog the front patio and the flowers in the low wall between the two
front
doors are taking a terrible pounding. Colin and Mary are the
Grandparents, the
other four are Great-Aunts-and-Uncles, except that John is Colin’s
cousin as
well as being his brother-in-law, which makes everyone related to
everyone
twice, including being his own second cousin, I think. We had a Grand
Lunch
prepared apparently by someone called Al Fresco who I suppose is a
local chef.
Adam had a good afternoon shouting “NO” at everyone, and then we went
to order
fish and chips from the Lobster Pot. Eleven portions of cod and chips
were
obviously the culinary highlight of Hope Cove’s weekend and stretched
its
catering resources to the limit. At 8.30, as we played progressive
table
tennis, Julia’s little red car drove up. And Julia was inside it.
Sunday
July 16
In the morning an expotition walked to Sawmill Cove.
Everyone except
Daddy (childminding
Adam) and Colin and John (reading the Sunday papers and talking about
Important
Things). Daddy drove to Bolberry Down with refreshments 45 mins later
(stamina
takes time to build up on these outdoor pursuit weekends). Everyone
wanted to
continue to Sawmill Cove, except Mary who insisted she had been sold a
dummy
and that there had been many Frightening Drops on the way, so Daddy
took her
back with Adam.
An
hour later, all the
stay-at-homes drove back to Bolberry to meet the Long Marchers for a
drink.
After lunch we took to the beach for an Epic Game of Rounders, which
lasted
several hundred innings. John’s catching ability showed that his choice
of music
over sport as a career was probably sound. Adam ran round very fast at
every
opportunity. Daddy made a series of breathtakingly athletic catches at
back-stop [how did this stuff get in here? - Ed].
The preponderance of
lefties among the teams caused Emma and Marie-Noëlle to run several
miles in
between balls as the cry “Left-hander” rang out across the sandflats.
Tessa and
Colin propelled the ball great distances. Emma’s team finally won
18-16. Later
the grown-ups (well anyway, the bigger people) went to Salcombe for a
meal.
Anne got cramp so Colin massaged her leg during the first course. The
leader of
the jazz band insulted Volvo drivers. All in all a highly successful
evening.
Monday
July 17
Michael
and Judy couldn’t take the
pace and slipped through the police cordons back to
Emma’s
team Joel’s
team
Emma
Joel
Colin
Daddy
Marie-Noëlle
John
Joel’s
team began
unstoppably, and then unaccountably stopped, after Tessa had hit three
consecutive rounders and led them into a 5-0 lead. Julia demonstrated
great
ingenuity by successfully bowling, batting and fielding while being
apparently
surgically attached to a two-year-old (that is, Adam). However, her
rounders
did not, unfortunately count double and Joel’s team hung on for a 6-4
win
before the tea interval was called. (I’m not quite sure what it was
called,
though “Gerald” seems a nice enough name). Colin has been helping
Marie-Noëlle
with her translations. With such a tutor, of course, you would not
expect
mundane material. Anyone walking in could hear excerpts from
Tuesday
July 18
Dull
weather. Weaving Day.
Everyone aching from Rounders. An expedition was mounted back to base
camp
[Somerfields in Kingsbridge] for supplies. Julia was chief
entertainment
officer. She helped Emma set up to weave a wonderful “E”, and then took
Emma
and Joel out to run up and down the beach to wear off this excess
energy that
the rest of us dimly remember.
In
the evening Joel did
some equally successful weaving. Colin and John entertained each other
by
testing each other with snatches of classical pieces whistled or hummed
more or
less in tune. Godfrey’s early enthusiasm for the game waned quickly
when he learned
that mid-60s Beach Boys’ songs are not technically considered to be
Early
Music, so retired to bed complaining of being unwell (or perhaps just
complaining). Marie-Noelle is now translating excerpts from Becket and
some of
the lighter parts of Bertrand Russell’s History Of Western
Philosophy.
Wednesday
July 19
The
scene then changed to
an old railway, but with strangely the same people hurrying onto a
carriage. At
the back were what seemed a group of Grumblers, regularly muttering “Do
we have
to rush? Do we have to rush?” The train vanished into a tunnel,
and
emerged
in a place
remarkably like Blackpool, at which time I was attended by a vision, I
know not
why, of one of the party (a man with grey-white hair who regularly
affected an
air of mild bewilderment) seated, mouth open, in a deck-chair with a
knotted
handkerchief on his head. All around him ran small children
with table-tennis
bats, while an indeterminate number of women miraculously each holding
several
different simultaneous conversations with themselves and each other
stood to
left and right. I was overwhelmed by this vision and fell down as if
dead”. I
then awoke, and am left pondering its significance, and continue to
pray for
enlightenment. This evening, Marie-Noelle translated fourteen chapters
of
Dickens, Eliot’s “Notes Towards A Definition Of Culture” and, for
dessert, a
selection of James Thurber.
Thursday
July 20
Colin’s
69th birthday. He
was well booked: Sebastian Faulkes’ Birdsong (“Magnificent
and deeply
moving”, Sunday Times) from John, Anita Brookner’s Incident
in the Rue
Lougier from Marie-Noëlle, Rachel Cusk’s Saving
Agnes from Mary,
along with a kite (unclear if there is any connection at this point),
shirt and
socks from Tessa and Godfrey, and the following poem from Godfrey:
Tessa,
Julia and
Marie-Noëlle walked from Salcombe around the coast path back to Hope
Cove,
liberally punctuated with refreshment breaks. Emma, Joel and Adam spent
the
morning burning on the beach with Dad and Mary on hand with the sun
block.
Daddy went for a run up to Malborough and kept going up all the hills
(well
nearly). Colin read things, and in the evening was taken for dinner at
the Lobster
Pot. The evening began inauspiciously. The pub had not reserved a
table. John
could smell drains. But we took over the tables outside, with
a little
structural rearrangement, and the drains turned out to be seaweed.
Sitting
outdoors in the balmy (that’s with an ‘L’) evening, things began to
look up. As
in some Mediterranean cities the local youth parades itself up and down
the
main thoroughfares in the evenings to be seen, in Hope Cove they seem
to parade
their dogs. A whole contingent of Crufts’ also-rans came by, again and
again.
We ordered, several lobsters (Colin wisely having steak and kidney pie
in
deference to his white shirt). All that the al fresco scene lacked was
a
harbour view, but this feature could be gained, however, by jumping up
from the
table and travelling some twenty yards round the corner of the Post
Office to
look at the impending sunset over
gave
logistic support to
the Semillon, while Mary and Anne completed the crustacean rout. Tessa
returned
just in time to eat her lobster pavlova, and find a candle for Colin to
blow
out. The evening was a great success. Back at home, Marie-Noëlle had
translated
War & Peace and would have completed the
third volume of Voltaire’s
Letters had Adam not wanted her to read Big Trucks
again.
Friday
July 21
The
day started, as all last days
of a holiday should, with progressive Tabletennis. Both Emma and Joel
have improved
dramatically here, though Joel’s “in-off-the-roof-beam” shot has been
referred
for legal judgement to the Chinese authorities. Tessa, Julia, Anne and
Emma
then went to
of
the beach (Adam
having lost all his clothes again), Colin flying his kite (well, what
else?)
and Mary and Anne, well, being Mary and Anne and making sure that
nothing got
wet that couldn’t be dried and that someone would be in a fit state to
make
tea; and later, John did just that, recapturing the glories of the
empire by
appearing on the beach with a tray, teapot, mugs and glasses of orange
juice
for the kids. Then there was supper, with a remarkable plate of
lettuce, and a
really good sunset. The end of a splendid holiday is always a little
sad, but
it was clear that the time was right to leave. Marie-Noëlle, having
exhausted
all available literary resources, was reduced to producing Chaucerian
adaptations of the South Devon Tourist Attractions leaflets, and
Somerfields
had been stripped clean of Golden Grahams. So, goodbye Hope Cove. For
now.
