Letter to my dad.....written in March 2010.

This is the last letter I ever wrote to my dad. He was never to read it. It was returned to me by the staff of the residential  home where he was living. The day after I sent it we had a call to say he was in hospital. So we left immediately for the long journey home.      

Versailles on his 83rd birthday weekend. September 2001 

Saturday 20th March 2010.

Dear dad,

I know someone else will read this to you, but I wanted to send you something from the "Housel Bay Hotel" so here it is!
I am sitting in the lounge having had my breakfast, overlooking the bay. The waves are heaving, and crash all round Bumble Rock. It was misty when we arrived yesterday, and the foghorn from the lighthouse sounded eerily through the gloom.
This morning the mist is intermittent and when you step outside, the wind is howling around the foursquare stone building.The seagulls are all wheeling round.
It is supposed to clear a bit later on, what mum would've called "fairing up a bit"!
But, for now, it's good weather for old smugglers!

We'll most likely go over to St Ives, as tomorrow looks as if it will be a better day, when we can do some walking along the coastal paths.

Dad on the cliffs at Lizard Point. 2004 

  There are daffodils out on the cliffs just below the hotel, and when we were eating breakfast, a rather fat rabbit was foraging in the garden here.
 Alfred and Iona at the hotel were asking after you.
It is the quietest here that they have known and we are the only ones staying at the moment. It's the result of the recession, which they said took longer to take effect in this area- hard to believe  but there it is.
I will try and phone again soon, as we are not in an area where our mobile phones work!
  They will work in Mullion.

We had our lunch in Mullion yesterday, before coming here mid-afternoon. We stopped at the complex next to Trenance Farm Cottages, where there is a nice café, and also the Trenance Chocolate Shop, if you can remember that.
It never alters on the Lizard, apart from the odd new houses being built. We love it, all weathers, from the warm and sunny, to the stormy and wild!

It is a unique environment.
Well, I'm running our of  this sheet of paper so I will end here.
Hopefully you will be all out of quarantine by now.

I'll be coming to see you before long,

Love Vivien and Stephen
       xxxx

 

March. 2014. Today it feels like spring!

Birthday daffodils from a friend. 

 I was writing in my journal this morning, and I'll echo the words here in this blog.
"Sitting here just after my breakfast, looking out at the back garden  through the expanse of the patio window.
The sky is clearing from it's overnight rain.
Grey clouds mingling with white, and tints of veiled blue beginning to make their presence known.
The two magpies,who are building a nest a couple of gardens along, have been here looking for twigs and small branches. Cocky, strutting birds, with a swagger, and a sheen of black and white plumage.
Mother blackbird, of our garden pair, is digging up worms in the bottom lawn.
She now overturns clumps of moss in here search.
Father bird sitting on the pinnacle of the summerhouse.
A fat wood-pigeon balances on a branch of our ancient apple tree, trying to reach seed from the feeders, but I have already placed them where the pigeons cannot reach.
The light is returning to this part of our hemisphere, and a sense of spring after the wettest winter since records began.
  Father blackbird is now singing his beautiful song. A glimmer of sunshine brightens the green of the shrubs and box hedge, until it reaches the far boundary fence.
A plane glides round in the sky on it's gradual descent to the airport several miles away."
                 

After breakfast I went to buy a new pair of garden secateurs from a nearby centre in order to complete the spring pruning of the roses. The centre borders on some fields. As I was walking back to the car, I heard the liquid notes of a skylark, soaring up into the clear blue. The first I have heard this year. Such a joyful sound. I stopped to listen.

To a Skylark

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?

Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye

Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?

Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,

Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;

A privacy of glorious light is thine;

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood

Of harmony, with instinct more divine;

Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

      

 I came home and began to prune the roses, not needing a coat or jacket, with the sun warm on my face. Spring is beginning once more in that great cycle of seasons and life, with it the season of Lent, which began this week with Shrove Tuesday.

Tiger on my birthday in February.

      A group of us spent Ash Wednesday evening in a time of reflection, and shared Communion together. It was very special.
   So another season of the year unfolds................................................................