The Hag

Chapter One.

The Sea is bewitched.

The waters on the foreshore rumbled and rushed, sending tendrils of iridescent foam landward, before streaming back to the main body of the sea. The constant cacophony of the rolling waves, the sands incessant grinding under the oceans action, made it almost impossible for the beachcomber to hear the Isles breeze that whistled about his woollen cap. Clothed against these frigid elements, he’s posed in a well-worn black pea jacket, beneath which resides a tattered Harris tweed suit with accompanying Isles jumper. His inner jacket is tucked away into his trousers which are covered by oil skin pants that buckle to his shoulders, stout oily hand knitted socks cover his feet which are rammed down securely inside battered sea boots. His jacket collar raised, coat toggled firmly shut, his powerful muscular neck rises from an old rough woolly scarf to a thrusting chin, firm mouth, blunt nose, and glowering brow ridges covered with greying twisting eyebrows.

On his right side the white sanded dunes, on the left the lively sea, and as he progressed along the no man’s land between dry land and the deep, his eyes constantly flickered over the sands in front of him and the restless surf. His eyes the colour of late winter briny, blue green with the merest hint of a sparkle which just maybe came from the winds driven salt causing an occasional tear to form at the corner of his eyes. Over years of this his ongoing journey, his skin had leathered into wrinkles around his sea-coloured eyes, the texture reddened now, but later in the shelter of his Croft, his skin would dull back to its natural nut browned tone. Over the last three decades, the summer sun had written its work upon his skin, his journeys along this lonely stretch, journaled by its rays’ raising welts over his exposed frame.

His hope, his mission of a morning, to discover gifts from his mistress the sea, maybe driftwoods from distant shores, riven fishing creels, even broken boats could come ashore with weed encrusted netting at this time of year. Twigs, trunks, both tree and man-made could roll inwards upon this shore, this shore trapped between two stark blackened headlands. Often nowadays, there was much evidence of man, where years before there’d been only sea-soaked wooden artefacts, now plastic also wended through the Bladderwrack. Plastic bottles with wording in many languages, even Arabic and Chinese script were to be found amongst the flotsam and jetsam on this shore, items from currents far flung from this isolated spot. Each plastic piece is meticulously removed from the sands by his hands and placed in a rough hessian sack that the man carried. Wooden items of interest were placed almost lovingly into a knapsack on his back, the flap with its stitched leather straps fluttered up and down behind him like a flag and would continue to do so until he buckled it down at the end of his progression across the sands between the heads. He examines each wood item, and if it didn’t warrant further inspection, it would join other wood detritus that rested in small piles just out of any encroaching wave lip. Later he’d return to collect these pieces, but the prizes that he’d wrestled from the weed, these would return homewards with him when he clambered back up to his Croft that nestled in the safety of the dunes.

Then, in the calmer waters just beyond the rollers, something caught and held the combers eye, a gleaming spike that seemed to tear through the fabric of the sea, then abruptly slither back, before then gliding back once again into his gaze. Attention caught, he now avidly peers through the stinging salt spray that’s whipped from the horses’ manes of the breakers by the gusting breath of the breeze.

There, and then gone, yes there, but gone, is this some oceanic beast hunting for some prey, or the arm of a man in his last dying gasp?

He’s sighted Orcas here for seals, Basking sharks, Dolphin, and Porpoise, and once, the behemoth shape of a Leatherback turtle as it heaved like a floundering rowboat through the froth of a running tide, but this is none of these. Something lurks beyond his sight, and for a moment the thought of climbing to a higher vantage, slinks insidiously through his mind, before being cast away to the need to progress in his morning chores.

The first is his passage from headland to headland, the second, to carry the plastic to a safe dump, the third to collect the wooden detritus in his now empty bag, only then, can he return to his Croft for a well-earned smoked Haddock piece.

Nothing more does he see, no protrusion from the uneasy waters to spear with his stare, and so he returns his consideration to his routine, and as his eyes travel listless from sea to shore, there’s an object before him that wasn’t there before. Along the wavelength to the headland in front of him, there appears to be a figure stooping away from his sight. It’s a vague shape no more, a brownish hump upon the sands, it’s difficult to discern if creature, or indeed just a large mound of weed. But then it moves, a shambling gait, and there appears to be an arm that momentarily waves waist height across the tide line before it. His solitude appears broken, although in all the history of his winters, is the first interloper that he’s ever seen upon what he feels is his sands. Summer yes, occasional tourists, sometimes locals beach casting for the Codling, but other winter combers, never.

Inside his ire swells, his daily routine broken, and maybe this person is stealing what he feels is rightfully his, his trade, his job, his time, his money. For here along the tides edge, is where he finds his materials with which to carve through these long cold winter nights. For in combinations of shells, carved creatures, and natural stone, he makes his trinkets for the tourist seasons. This is how he makes his life, a paltry sum earned, just enough to buy the essentials to live through winter, but no more.

With purpose now, the man drops his sack above the tidewater, and then starts toward this interloper, as he feels, on his beach. He’ll have some words, maybe some craic, no more, for he’s sure they’ll understand his reasoning and leave him to his solitary work.

The Sea Wood.

He strides across the sands, but the nearer he gets, the further away the hump appears, the impression he gets is that it’s as though he is in a tunnel with the stranger speeding away into the distance. He knew he was walking; he feels his legs moving, his increased breathing, the angle of his back as he leaned into his stride, and yet, this had no bearing on his progress. And then he believes he hears a shout, a call from behind him, he turns, his eyes follow his track back towards the opposite headland, nothing, and then he scans the dune tops momentarily.

He sees the Marram grasses waving, can imagine their clicking and rustling as his eyes turn back to the wayward figure, and it’s gone. Turning back towards where he thought he’d heard the loud ‘Hallo’, he scans the far headland, with then further scrutiny of the dune top, but no figure or indeed figures tarry there. He returns his eyes to the nearest headland, the wind can play powerful jests, maybe the whoop had originated there. But there’s no silhouette to see, no rambling figures to call, he’s baffled to say the least, as he’d half expected to spy a local hoping for a morning catch to supplement their stores.

Blinking against the winds bite, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and then walks to where he thought the apparition stood, and there in the sands, two slight impressions in the ground, slowly filling with the wetness of the sea swipe. He slowly turns on his heel inspecting the scene brought before him, there’s no sign of any figures, and he finally gazes up and over the rollers to the distant sea.

Nothing, not a thing, not a dropping Gannet or wheeling gull, the wave tops appear unnaturally clear.

Looking back over the ocean to where he’d stood and seen this vision, he once again thinks that he can see a bone white arm, which is raised up from the chilly sea. But as he cranes his neck, it disappears behind a wave, and after the wave top falls away, there’s nothing left but empty troubled waters. He suddenly resolves to leave mysterious thinking to others who like to gossip, and he returns to his hessian sack. Lifted in his grasp, he resumes his track, but now he no longer gazes out towards the horizon, not because he isn’t curious, but more that he’s marginally worried by just what he might spy.

He’s not a man of foolish fantasies, a believer in myths and local legends, but over the years he’s seen some weird and unexpected things himself, and over an odd dram, he’s occasionally heard a story from an indigenous Isles inhabitant. Tale tells at a ceilidh, were entertainment, no more, as was eating, drinking, singing, playing music and dancing, you may also find a single man with old women negotiating a suitable marriage. There’d always be vivid stories of daring do, lone fishing adventures and rescues, gruesome tales of whole fishing boats crews going down with not a survivor.

But then, there’s those rarer stories told of the lonely corners of the Isles, where mermaids lure youngsters to their graves in the deeps, or beasties rise to take their due. Scuttlebutt of sea witches and unseen forces play apart, along with fantasies of men seduced by over endowed lone succubae, which are intent on stealing the man’s soul through his seed.

Still, he’s wasted too much time on this silliness, and he’s a pragmatic man if nothing else, so now working fast, he arrives quickly at where the rocks reach down from the headland to barb the sea. Turning away from the tide, he then makes his way speedily inland to the leading edge of the dunes, here he removes his knapsack, before stashing it just a few feet up the dune’s.

For a moment he crouches so that he can catch all his breath, and then he heaves up, grips the sack filled with plastic waste, swings it up and on his back, and then with fortitude he begins his ascent of the rearing dune face. He has accomplished this climb every day for decades, but he’s older now, and has a particularly heavy sack weighing down upon his broad back today. The soft dry sands of the dunes run and slide from his feet, it’s a tricky climb, more two steps forward to one step back, and he soon feels the strain. His thigh muscles tighten painfully, his calf muscles ache, and nowadays he needs a halfway stop to ease his lungs. He pushes ever upwards until his legs feel stiff with his exertions, and it is then that he turns to look back across the surging sea, and from here, at a hundred feet, he immediately sees the nude rolling trunk of a tree in the ocean below.

Bark stripped by the action of the sea, inner wood bleached by a hotter sun than here, one branch left, which lifts and falls in the incoming rollers, as it rides the ocean just beyond the surf. This is what he mistakenly thought an arm, or some sort of sea beast, and inwardly he chuckles at his foolishness in thinking he’d seen something mysterious. However, should this large piece of driftwood make landfall on the beach below, it would be an enormous prize for him, if only he can drag it enough inland to save it from the tidewater.

He ponders, and then decided, he climbs higher, tired of this chore, once at the top, and without turning, he empties the contents of his sack down the other side of the dune. Looking down, he sees the ever-increasing mountain of plastic which he’s cleaned for the beach behind him. He knows he needs to start thinking about contacting the Isles council, having them come to remove and dispose of this rubbish, otherwise he’s going to be accused of ruining the dunes.

Turning slowly, he starts carefully retracing his steps down the side of the dunes, here if he doesn’t concentrate on his next footing, then falling and rolling down the steep sands could result in a broken leg, he paused to check what he now thinks of as his log. At the bottom, and with now an empty sack, he goes from stack to stack, and starts to fill the sack from each pile of wood that he had collected earlier.

This he feels is a much easier part of this chore, but now also he feels hungry and hurries as he wants to retire to the warmth of his Croft and lunch. All this wood, after he’s given a second peruse, will go into the hearth fire, or to power the cast iron oven, it certainly wouldn’t be wasted. Larger pieces would usually be dried, neatly stacked, and kept for next winter, if there was one thing that he’d learnt from living here, it was always be prepared.

Collected drift needed to be dry, otherwise when burnt, the rough fire hearth would fill the one room Croft with choking smoke. So, for those cold wind riven nights, he had a neatly stacked, tarpaulin covered stash, although it was mostly used for preparation of food, the dry wood burning although quicker, more hotly, if very wintry he’d use some for-heating fuel if desperate. Finally, he reaches the last pile, shoving it roughly away into his sack, he starts for the dune directly before him, from the top, it was a short walk across the sea of dunes into the hinterland to reach what he calls home.

As he climbs towards the top, and in a better mood now, he reminisces how easy it had been to collect driftwood when he first arrived here to live. It seemed that back then, that there’d been a lot more wood washed up on the shore, in fact, if he remembered correctly, it had been piled high, and that there was also so much more to be collected all year round, not like nowadays. The wood had pushed up to the dunes then, the nearest having dried over progressive warm summers.That was something else that had altered, the long hot summers had shortened until instead of warmer weather running from May until late September, it was a good year if it started in June and ended in the middle of September.

He topped the dune, it is all downhill now, and his consideration of some lunch makes his mouth water. He might have considered not only a piece, but also baking some tatties, but at the back of his mind, his ‘log’ needed some thoughts and actions now, before it might be washed away along the coast. Hopefully it would beach naturally, but even then, it would need to be saved before it might be re-floated by a spring tide, which would maybe drag it away again.

The Sea is a fickle mistress and could give and take with the same hand, she had the habit of a saucy temptress and had caught him out many times before. He’d experienced one of her contests and duelled with her when bathing on what appeared to be a calm tide, it was then that he’d encountered her treacherous nature in the form of a rip current that had come close to drowning him. Exhausted as he had dragged himself up upon the sands, and at last free from her turquoise nails that still raked at his ankles, he’d sworn he’d never match wills with her again. Of course, to ply his trade, or wrestle fish from the sea with rod and line, he knew it was only time before he’d feel her loving, but dangerous embrace and then wrestle once again with her desire. So, therefore he had no intentions of playing any tug of war with her, not unless he was well prepared and had the chance of getting the upper hand.

There among the humpback sands, a Marram thatched roof rises, the grasses have darkened with smoke and winter rains, but the inside remains dry and warm. The meandering breezing white coral and shell sands have been packed down like too much shopping in an overstuffed bag. His continual marching boots have worn an easily followed path, in places the salty earth even rises to the surface in patches of darkness.

The man follows this line, tacking securely through the sands, for here he is sheltered from the worst of winters inclement weather, the wind rattling the grasses and moaning overhead. Odd gusts still lift the fine white fragments of shell to sting his eyes in erratic moments, and to which his only real defensive act, is to squint his eyes almost shut, said grit then dusting his eyelashes, but it is still an eye watering assault. As he rounds one particularly large sandy mound, his eyes almost fast shut, he spots his hunkered house with its small deep-set windows pointing into morning.

Its stout door made from driftwood spars, dowelled, and hammered together by his own sweat and hands. The building of a whole, glowers with its gloomy shadowed entrance as he marches determinedly onwards to this his steadfast home. On reaching the harbouring of its heavy walls, it’s then he realises that he’s not brought home his real booty, that he’s left his knapsack on the ocean dunes face, and that his morning work is maybe wasted.

It’s not his way to curse, but in this moment, he lets forth such an expletive, and then turns guiltily as if he believes that there is honestly another to hear his language, but he’s alone as always. Turning back to this house’s sturdy door, he looks down at its stout doorstep, and there clearly marked out on the stone top, medium narrow set wet footprints facing inwards to the inside.

His brows knit in indignation, his calloused hand grips firmly the wrought iron handle, for even though there’s no lock to his house, who’d dare to enter in without his permission?

LEARNING TO SWIM Pt 2.

You would think that as I had decided to learn to swim, and the fact that I lived right by a huge body of water, and a had my father who was such a good swimmer, that all would be easy. How wrong you would be though, I managed to learn to swim in tiny stages, nothing as straightforward as you would have expected.
 
So, here I note the people who actually helped me to swim…
 
Dorothy Sweet.
 
Firstly, Dorothy Sweet, a bubbly large breasted teacher in the secondary school I attended. Affectionately called ‘Dotty’ by us kids, she was one of the teachers who accompanied us on the trip to France in my first year of being in Treviglas school.
So just before the summer holidays, off we went in an old coach, caught a ferry across to France and travelled to our first port of call ‘Dinard’. It’s a coastal town on a river, that was twinned with Newquay in the early days of the UK joining the Common Market.
I believe that there may be still a sign on entering Newquay that proclaims this alliance, but I haven’t been in or out of Newquay by that road in years. I guess now that Brexit has been accomplished, that the signage will be removed, and local councillors who enjoyed their trips across the channel, will have to make do with having their public paid for holidays somewhere else.
 
Dinard was nice, a bit like Newquay, but better, and in France. We visited the first Olympic sized swimming pool I had ever seen. On the pool side, Dotty soon discovered that my friend ‘Codger’ and myself, couldn’t swim at all.
Clad in a one-piece low-cut swimsuit, she had me to place my head between her voluminous wet breasts, and then hanging onto her rounded figure, I got to kick my legs as she dragged me across the shallow end.
I can assure you that the rest of the trip, I was teased unmercifully by my pals for having my face in such close proximity to her cleavage. However, Dotty did get me dog paddling before we left the pool that afternoon and was responsible for starting me trusting water again.
Without Dotty’s time and tuition, I’d never have sailed, swum, snorkelled and eventually dived in the ocean. The sea has given me constant pleasure nearly all my life and was with great sadness that in the Indian Ocean, on an island in the Maldives, that I discovered I could no longer swim due to my dystrophy.
 
I arrived home from France, and then it was suddenly summer holidays, and my father taught me to surf out in the rollers on Whipsiderry beach. Here in the soft summer sun, salt spray and grinding sand beneath my feet, I found a rare true happiness.
Catching a wave and having the rushing, crashing glistening white water caressing my sides as I thundered up the beach was a delight almost hard to put into words. The sound of the sand as it was dragged by the fury of the wave, the sight of its yellow flakes lifting in the water, and the sting of it on my legs and chest, this made me feel almost invincible.
At twelve, there were lots of exciting things ahead for me, riding motorcycles at speed, girls, sex and travel. Surfing, swimming, sailing and being in the water generally, has always stayed with me, and I found a calmness just by sitting and watching the ocean, hearing it, smelling it. To someone who maybe hasn’t had the same upbringing as myself, it is hard to quantify the Atlantic Ocean, and the peace that this mass of water brought me.
 
John Dyer.
 
The next person who helped me to finally swim, and I think they are largely unaware of this, was John Dyer, a lad who lived two doors from me. He was older than me, not by much, but nonetheless, enough to be ahead of me in all things. I liked John immensely, some friends you are in constant competition with, but in John I had a friend who I secretly adored. It is strange to be writing about my memories and finally realising how much I loved being with him.
 
He and I were on a cusp, me graduating from child to young man, and he already having risen over that ridge.
This particular summer, John started snorkelling, and I wanted to go with him. I was surprised, as when I talked to my father of my want to go snorkelling with John, he agreed immediately.
Now of course I understand that my father saw John who was older than me, as a sensible steading hand for me. John agreed I could go with him, and my father bought me a mask, snorkel and as I called them, flippers.
For the rest of that summer, a good warm, still watered summer, I was in nirvana. When the tide was in the right place, I would, with John, go snorkelling in a small cove that was set into the righthand side of Porth.
The bladderwrack would hand in the water, with small fish darting amongst its fronds as I watched crabs on the bottom. Large shoals of fish passed by the entrance to the cove, hanging almost within the touch of my fingers. With the tide in, the sands were magically transformed in an undersea wonderland, one I could almost imagine a mermaid inhabiting.
We never ventured out of the cove, we didn’t need to, but when John had enough of snorkelling, and wanted to go home, I always left the water reluctantly. By the end of the summer, with the aid of the fins, and Johns pushing me, I could actually swim fairly well. Just following John around exercised my legs, and I could swim fairly well in breaststroke.
 
Elsie Tucker – known to me, as Mrs Tucker.
 
Come the end of the summer, my father who had walked out along the cliffs occasionally and watched me, broke the news that he and two others were forming the Newquay swimming club. The idea was to teach as many twelve- to fourteen-year-olds to swim.
Newquay had no swimming pool of its own, the school I attended, had a very small one. So, lessons commenced at the school pool on Thursday evenings with my two for the sports teachers and my father teaching. When the weather got colder, the lessons were moved to a large indoor pool at a tourist site just outside of Perranporth. This pool was ten miles away, and we had to get there by coach, and there was a small fee. Apart from the rental of the pool, and the fuel for the old school coach, any monies left over from a small fee levied for the nights training, went into a fun for a pool for Newquay.
My endearing memory of those evenings was the smell of chlorine, the taste of Heinz oxtail soup out of a flask on the way home in the coach, and Mrs Tucker. When my father had formed the club, he had done so with a colleague, and at the meeting at the school when they had asked locals if they would support such an idea, they had asked for a female volunteer for the girls.
 
Not one woman stood up, not one, and there were plenty of mothers there. I knew from what I had overheard my father saying before the meeting, that they needed at least one woman who could go into the pool with the girls. If not, one came forward, it would mean that girls would have to be excluded from the swimming lessons.
At the main doors into the school assembly hall, where the meeting was being held, there was a bit of a commotion. I remember the woman who stepped through the crowd apologising that she was a little late that evening.
She had dark curling hair, and wore dark rimmed glasses, she looked a determined to me as a very young man.
My father invited her up on to the stage where my father, his colleague and some teachers were seated, and then heroically said she would be happy to fill the position. Her name Mrs Tucker, I only ever knew her as Mrs Tucker as young people were much more respectful of their elders back then, and to start with I was even a little scared of her.
 
I laugh now looking back, but I soon found her to be a really good laugh, and in the water at the pool, she taught me to swim the crawl, one of the more valuable styles, especially in the sea when it’s rough.
Mrs Tucker was always up for a bit of a laugh, and she never told us off too harshly for mucking around and left me with a very endearing memory of her in her black one-piece alongside the pool shouting encouragement to myself and others as we attempted to swim stronger under her tuition.
 
And so, summer came around, and my skill in swimming was much better, I’m thirteen now, and John and I venture into the cove once more. As the school holidays progressed, I noticed John’s attention wasn’t on snorkelling so much, and he had a hankering for a malibu board.
As the weeks slipped by, he got a board, and with another friend, started surfing. For me, the summer adventures in snorkelling didn’t stop, but now I ventured out of the cove.
Firstly, I turned to the right, and slowly over a few days made my way to the entrance of Porth. Here by the side of the low cliffs I encountered right red spider crabs, clinging to the rocks by the long spiny legs.
 
I spent a lot of time hanging in those deeper clear waters, lifting with the swell and falling back, watching large fish hanging in the entrance to the cove. The sea was maybe twenty feet deep out here, and I’d catch glimpses of sparkling flickers near the surface, eventually realising that these were fast-moving hunting mackerel.
One such afternoon, as I was just enjoying the feeling of almost flying above the sandy bottom, I saw a massive shadow on the sand that appeared to be approaching me. Looking across the water, instead of down, I had the shock of seeing a very large shark heading towards me lazily.
Here at the entrance to Porth, I encountered a massive basking shark as it flicked its tail, turned and then drifted past with his enormous mouth wide open trawling the sea for its plankton dinner.
As it passed, its eye rolled in its head to get a better view of me, and I swear that it looked quite friendly. I now wonder that I didn’t poop my swimming shorts that day, but I was so intense on watching the shark, that I never thought that its bulky body and powerful tail might harm me.
I’ve swum with shark since, in other oceans, but I never felt fear as they were well fed, and I stayed away from them. But that day, the feeling of flight, and on meeting what to me was a giant of the deep, I felt ecstatic, more alive than when I had entered the water.
And that is one of the things the sea did for me later in life, I felt it healed me, made me less stressed, and more at ease with my life.
 
Another week later, I slid through under the bridge across to the island on the righthand side of Porth. There’s a small island here, ‘Gull Rock’. A solid bit of volcanic rock, topped with sedimentary rock, and then a topping of soil.
It stands only a hundred yards from Porth island, but it is the last land until ‘Lion Rock’ halfway to Watergate. At high tide, the water is twenty to thirty feet deep, and it’s unprotected from Newquay bay. Around the island I saw different species of deeper water fish, rays, monkfish, large plaice, huss, red coloured pollack, hake, gurnard and wrasse.
 
Here in those waters, over a few years, I experienced a sunfish, a massive, short torpedo shaped fish, which I never saw again until I was in the Indian Ocean. I also, with a close friend, encountered a massive jellyfish as on its side it slowly pulsed its way back out to deeper waters.
I’m six feet six inches tall, and as I swam across its front, my fellow snorkeller told me it was wider than I was tall, a truly amazing sight. It was a plain white, no excitement of colour, and none believed us when we returned home, and yet recently, one has drawn the attention of the local news, and which was as big, if not bigger than the one we swam with.
 
Even today the ocean has amazing sights still hidden from us, and I remember my father explaining how he had seen huge black and white flying shapes as the ship he was in arrived in the Southern Ocean off South Africa.
Many years later, I swam and watched manta rays feeding and being groomed on a tiny coral atoll in the Indian Ocean, on returning to the land, I saw them jumping, and arcing in the sun, drops of silvered water flying behind as they left the water. It was then I realised what my father had seen in the early 30’s, and his tale, it was then I realised that his encouragement to go into the water, and to explore the world around me, had brought me full circle back to his tale.
 
Walking by the sea, or indeed a river, has been a constant in my life until I became too ill, and even now I like to trundle alongside the little stream in the gardens at Trenance.
I have climbed the cliffs of Cornwall with, and without rope, climbed the UK mountains in bright sunlight and in freezing snow, but nothing has given me such pleasure of being underwater. Snorkelling was my main source of interacting with the undersea world.
Not needing or relying on much equipment, just fins, mask and snorkel in the bright sunlight of a nice summer day, was my preferred way of enjoying the ocean.
 I was therefore sad to have to give up snorkelling in 2007, when I found that I no longer had the muscularity to hold myself in the water due to my speedily progressing condition.
When Sharon had helped me stumbling from the warm waters of Biyadhoo, I knew that I would never go back to the island to slip beneath those crystal waters, and that broke my heart.
It was especially hard because Sharon had only just grown to appreciate being under the water with me, and she now revelled in my lifetime hobby.
There can be no more of a cruel fate, than to have my passion at long last accepted by my beloved wife, and then have given it up forever, such is life though.

THE HAG…

Boy to Man.

He grew up overlooking the Atlantic, his playtime spent on the nearby cliffs and beaches, watching birds, catching fish, crabbing, playing chicken with the tide.

Taught by his father to swim, on top and underwater, practicing holding his breath, both in the sea, and in the winter months at home in the bathtub.

His father’s career, a merchant seaman, took him away from home for months at a time, far, far away to exotic climes.

On his return, he’d always bring the boy some gift to mollify him for his absence, for it was true that the boy missed his father, and that the father missed the boy.

Life was hard for the boy without his father at home, times were difficult, and his mother struggled with the maintenance of their home.

Calamities always seemed to befall them when his father was least likely to come to repair some ailing part of the house.

So, part of the young boys growing up, was seeking knowledge of tools and wood from an early age, therefore with hard work and the upkeep of the house thrust on his back, the boy became responsible at an early age.

His mother was good to him, lovingly feeding him, clothing him, and making sure that he didn’t miss his schooling.

He loved learning and was happy to read even more of an evening, but he was intentionally solitary, or spent time with older folk in the local fishing harbour, or maybe off alone along the coast.

If he had any true friends, other than odd school chums, they were the much older grizzled men, dour retired fishermen who sat around the nearby harbour.

‘Men of oak’, as the younger fishermen called them, because they came from harder times, when sail was the norm for fishing boats, not today’s modern Diesel engines.

They’re hands often missing fingers, their palms like sun bleached shagreen, made scaly from hauling rigging or lobster pots, these hard men who scorned him first, but grew to respect him as he did them small favours.

He was always, unlike the other lads, happy to filch a hot mug of tea from the harbour master’s office, or collect their tobacco from the town, and for these favours, these old men would reluctantly trade a yarn or two.

With waving gestures, these ancient mariners would tell tales of the sea, or when he enquired, explain what their tattoos meant for them.

The boy was fascinated by the wrinkled stains upon their hides, the colourful swallow in the crook between finger and thumb, anchors, hearts, the scaly fish laid out across their back.

 Some even had ports of call, or sweethearts or exotic woman’s names scrawled across their heavily veined arms or barrel like chests.

But the one he liked the best, was on a large Scot who’d fished between the tip of Cornwall and Cape Wrath.

This giant of a man with rusty red bushy hair and a full beard and moustache, had a magnificent drawing upon his broad muscular shoulders, or so the boy had heard.

One sunny afternoon after asking the lad for a large, enamelled tin mug of coffee, something that the harbourmaster only gave to this one man, the rumour was that the Master’s life had been saved by the Scot once, it now that the boy asked a favour.

He’d heard the tale at school, that the Scottish seaman had a beautiful tattoo on his back, but that he was loathe to exhibit it.

Having asked, he attempted to stare down the older man, quite ridiculous when the boy at no more than five feet six, had to crane his neck back to look up at the Scot’s eyes at a lofty six feet seven.

Men around the harbour often commented that ‘Wee Haggis’ wasn’t the right shape to be a fisherman, because surely if he stood up in his small Cornish crabber, the boat would capsize when he leaned into pulling a catch in.

These same men would never call him Wee Haggis to his face, or even in his hearing, as he had a mighty reputation for his temper when it broke.

So, the boy hoped that as he stared in the deep blue eyes of the Scot, that he wouldn’t take offence, but he was poised to scamper off if needs be.

The man stood like an iron post on the quay side, and as the boy watched, he lifted the hot mug of coffee to his mouth, quaffed it, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand, and then gave the boy back the mug.

The man foraged in his pocket, bringing forth a rumpled packet of ‘Navy Cut’ cigarettes, he extracted one slowly, put the packet away, found a ‘Swan Vesta’, stooped to the granite quayside, and struck the match, lit his fag.

Standing upright he dragged on the white paper stick, inhaling deeply, the tip of the cigarette reddened, but his face was emotionless as he exhaled a cloud of white smoke out into the boy’s face.

The boy knew better than to ask again, the Scot was known to be unpredictable at times, so he left without a sound and returned the mug to the harbourmaster.

The master smiled and said he’d never seen a harbour rat stand up to Wee Haggis, told him he’d some spunk, but maybe this one favour just wasn’t to be had.

The boy left the shelter of the office to have the Scotsman call him over in his rough accent.

Once again standing before the man, the boy stared up into his wrinkled face, the man stared back, and for a while they stood fixedly glaring.

The harbour edge went quiet as the other harbour rats and more and more men became aware of this match of wills, but then the Scot put his palm out, took a long drag on his fag, before stubbing it out on the skin off his hand, and then dropping the butt to the ground.

Slowly he unfastened the small buttons of his sky-blue washed-out canvas shirt, slipped it away from his shoulders and off, and the boy found himself staring at the man’s massive hairy chest, before he turned and flexing his musculature, showed off the large tattoo on his back.

From base of back, to nape of neck, there was a magnificent, inked picture of a naked woman, correct in all anatomical detail, or was it a woman?

Her skin appeared slightly lightly scaled, her skin colour had more than the merest hint of the shade of a wild winter sea.

Her hair was reddish and there appeared to be ornaments entwined in its many curls, her aquiline nose rode above a curvaceous slightly cruel full lipped open mouth, but her teeth appeared sharp and somewhat dangerous.

The boy wasn’t sure on reflection if she could be called a beauty, but there was no doubt in his mind that she was attractive if unnerving.

She had wide shoulders for a woman and full breasts that jutted proudly, not just hanging from her shoulders, her waist curved inwards before flaring out into her slim but rounded hips.

Between her hips, a hairless mound, the detail of the inking of her sexual outer lips most insightful, the first the boy had ever seen.

On his eyes reaching this detail, his face coloured up, first pink, and then red as he forced his stare to move on.

The legs of this woman were the strangest of all, something wasn’t right, and even with his limited experience of a mature woman’s frame, he’d seen his mother naked once, just a glimpse, he was aware that they did not appear thus normally.

Unexpectedly the Scot flexed his back muscles and turned slightly, it’s then that her legs became a scaly tail, and her face drew ugly.

The boy stepped back, and the Scot turned abruptly to face him, his gruff Scot’s accent rang out.

“Aye lad, it’s a Sea Hag herself, one who tried to drag me down into the briny! You do yourself a favour, should you meet her on a lonely beach or boat, turn away, accept nothing of her favours”.

He loved both his mother and his father, and when home, his father spoke of his adventures on the oceans of the world.

When the boy had been much younger, his father had told his impressionable son of many lands, of islands with dancing palms, and of high seas around the capes.

The boy would often sit at his fathers’ feet on the rug by the fireside, hands clasped in front of his bare knees, and he’d gasp with each new tale that his father would tell from his newest voyage.

Over time, the boy had found out that his father was merely ships cook, not the captain as he’d supposed, but he did have other chores aboard the ships he sailed on.

His father had never told him otherwise, there’d been no exaggerations on his part, it was more the boys desire that his father be a hero.

As the boy had grown older, his father had taught him seaman’s knots and how to cook a good nourishing meal from simple ingredients, but also told him of the somewhat lonely life he led upon the waves.

It became obvious that his father missed his family, and only sailed to pay the bills, also the boy came to feel that if his father hadn’t married, he’d have been free to do as he wished, and not chained to some ship.

It was at this still early age that the boy resolved to live alone, and to pave his way through life in any way he desired.

In his late teens, the boy left school, and he discovered that once away from his chores and responsibilities, he preferred less complicated company.

So, the boy, now nearly a full-grown man at six foot five, and certainly with the determination of an adult male, began to fish as a job with the usually sullen solitary Scotsman.

The fisherman owned a cockle shell boat, a crabby vessel called the ‘The Craic’ and the boy was now a constant addition to its normal crew of one.

They seemed an unlikely pair, but their comradeship became ever stronger as they pulled in the feathers of a catch of Mackerel or hauled in the crab pots.

They often worked in silence, but occasionally the Scot would produce a bottle of his favourite tipple, and he’d encourage a wee break for a smidgeon of craic.

The big man had many tales of the fishing as he called his life’s toil, tales of various ports around the four kingdoms of his drinking, fighting, and squandering his hard-earned money on various women, but never once, could he be brought to again mention his tattoo’s meaning.

The boy would listen avidly, although became somewhat embarrassed when the other man described in full detail his tryst with the many port women that he’d he met.

But on the other hand, he learned a lot about where this grim man had grown up, the hardships and values of the Western Isles.

He lapped up this knowledge, believing every word that the Scotsman dropped, and sometimes he squeezed even more information if the man appeared somewhat hesitant.

It was on this day the boy asked to know the Scotsman’s name, the man was leaning forward examining the label on the whiskey bottle in his hand.

“Aaran, my baptism name, my parents called me Aaran, it’s meaning holds that I am strong like a mountain and enlightened to the natural way.”

Returning home of an evening, his mother would place his meal on the family board, and as he ate, his head would be buried in various books from the local library, the subject he studied? The Outer Hebrides where Aaran had been born and raised.

A year after the boy had left school to fish with Aaran, a man visited his mother, and when he returned from fishing, he found her with her head in her hands, his father had been drowned.

She keened her grief, her sobs carrying throughout the night, the boy was the man of the house now, his own grief he knew, he’d have to tuck away, for now, he was the only bread winner.

Three months later, her grief finally too much for her to bear, his mother threw herself from the cliffs high above the beach, and the man as he was now, knew he’d not be able to console himself of her death by staying at his childhood home.

Settling his family’s affairs brought home some truths that the man had not been aware of, the family home was mortgaged to the hilt, and his father had a large overdraft at the local bank.

After the sale of his parents’ home and using the money leftover to pay off the loan on the house and the bank, he was still in debt, but only by a small amount.

By chance, the Scotsman’s landlady offered him lodgings for a reasonable sum, and the man moved in, and continued to fish with his now close friend.

Two years passed uneventfully, he pulled fish, crabs, and lobsters from the Cornish seas, paid his lodging, bought his food and carefully payed off the remainder of his parents’ debt.

He could have moved away, started a new life, left his now dead parents’ problems far behind, but they’d always looked after him, and now, he felt a need to let them rest in peace, their reputations intact.

He drank of an evening at a local bar above the harbour, often he became drunk and loud, and like his close friend the Scotsman, he was somewhat leary when he drank far too much.

Because of this, the local girls, although admiring his work hardened physique and flashing sea green eyes, tended to avoid more than a fleeting kiss.

Sure, there were pretty lasses who flirted with the now twenty something man, but their mothers warned them of his known temper with the drink, of how other men would move when he hove into view.

They said that a man such as this, was not the type to marry, for if they did, they’d maybe long regret this union.

It was true though that the locals had time for the man, he worked hard for his money, he caught some of the best fish the port had seen, and he paid his debts, and for these reasons he had their respect.

However, when one day Wee Haggis’s boat was seen to leave the harbour as normal on the early morning tide to ply the sea, but later when it didn’t return with the tide, there was consternation, for it was well known that the Scotsman couldn’t swim.

There was concern for the other man, his companion, but he could swim well, and unlike Aaran, he often wore a life jacket.

The lifeboat was launched, the coastguard notified, and fishing boats, manned by the men of the harbour searched for bodies, or signs of wreckage from of the Craic, but none was found.

Then five days later, ‘Wee Haggis’ was found washed up a mile north along the rugged coast, where the drifting currents had carried his corpse.

His massive frame stretched out on the yellow sands, the crabs and fish had been at him, but he was still easily identified by his Sea Hag tattooed back, but of his fishing companion, sightings none…

LEARNING TO SWIM Pt 2.

SUN SEA & SAND Pt 2.

 
 
                                                                            Apple & Thread.
  
 So many little clips of my younger life run around my head, things that I often reminisce about nowadays when I am attempting to get some sleep. I have found that this practice has often helped me to skate away into that dark forgetful void, and also allowed me to drift away to Nod on a cloud of fond memories. 
 Lately I’ve begun dredging through some of my vaguer memories, and today I have selected two of the longer recollections at the edge of my filed thoughts.
          I’m still very young in this first memory, and this first one relates to my father, and something that he always did in the late summer – autumn when he was out with me.
          
 He and I would be walking the dogs in Porth, some of the time, it would be a walk out onto Trevelgue Headland’s island. 
 The island back then was much wilder, and after crossing the slatted wooden bridge to the island, you then walked through high earthworks to get into the interior. These fortifications were very interesting to me as a child, and although I’ll talk more of these in memories to come, I’ll also dally slightly on them now.
  
          When the bridge had been constructed, the engineers had cut through these earthworks and exposed the inside layers. My father had been intensely interested in Archaeology, and between us, we had discovered many flint arrowheads, and even a flint knife. 
 He’d explained to me that these arrowheads must have been used during a battle to defend the island, and then lost to the soil. 
 He would often paint vivid images on my young mind of how these battles may looked, with me listening in awe.
  
 During the war, and before I was born, the family had lived in Dorset, and he had visited ‘Maiden Castle’ a lot. Often as he talked to me about Porth’s history, but he had also told me of Maiden Castle, and just how impressive it was. 
 Eventually I had visited it for myself, sadly though, a short while after my father had died, for I would have loved to walk its slopes with, see it again through his eyes. 
 For the first few years after his demise, I often walked on my own with my own dogs, out onto Porth island and its fortifications, and thought back on him, and regretted the things we would never share again.
  
          Back then, and once we’d gotten out onto the island proper, we’d then make the slow ten-minute walk to the farthest point on the right-hand side. 
          It was then that we’d sit on the rocks in the warm sun facing out over the Atlantic. There might be a slight breeze that would bring ozone to our nostrils, an aroma as of slightly rotting seaweed, salt and mixed with a mysterious fragrance that to my romantic mind thought of as far away exotic destinations. 
          After a while, and we would sit there for at least thirty minutes, it was then that he’d always suddenly produce two small apples. They were usually small Cox’s Orange Pippin, their skins would be striped with shiny red, orange and green, and they’d be warm and fragrant from the heat of father’s pocket. 
  
 We’d sit there eating their juicy flesh, sometimes he would regale me of tales of foreign countries, and on others there would be a silence between us. 
 I would often find myself lost in observing the restless water, and their ebb and flow. I found the sounds of the ocean, the gulls and breezes, very relaxing, and even today, I love to sit near to water, especially an Ocean. 
 I’ve sat next to the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and they seemed too vibrant, it’s hard today for me to believe that human stupidity is killing them.
  
 My second memory today, is of my father taking me to a large rock pool on Whipsiderry, it was situated next to a large natural stone archway. 
 The archway in itself was interesting, it was raised from the sands on a pedestal made of hard rock, and the mainstay curve stood a good fifty at its highest point. 
 Underneath and to the right-hand side of this massive rock doorway, there was a deep and wide rockpool. It was a microcosm of the sea, with its own seaweeds, anemones, fish, crabs and prawns, and its waters were replenished at every tide rise. 
 I have memories to tell of just this pool, of my sisters, my friends, and Sharon and I, but it will feature later in this telling of my life on the beach.
  
 The rock pool I will talk about now however, was on the left of this archway with its massive pillar. This pool was set into a large dark rock that I guess was made when the archway was slowly being formed by the rumbling strength of winter storms.
 We’d scrambled to the top on that day, and once there, had hunkered down by the side of this pool. Its jagged edged side went straight down into the surface of its salty waters, it was a wide largish pool with a depth of eighteen inches. The bottom was covered in fine sand, weed and a few large flattish stones.
 As I had crouched there in my T-shirt, chino shorts and bare feet, he’d taken his penknife out. 
 He had a cream bone handled knife, and it went everywhere that he went. Over the years to come, I saw him use it many times in the garden, peeling fruit, cutting up pears and apples to eat. Although he ate the cores, much as I do today, leaving no waste behind us when out, my mother and sisters didn’t, hence his needing it. 
 He’d pare twigs on shrubs for cuttings, and basically used this knife to cut anything he had need of to slice.
  
 So, on this day, he used it to cut up a limpet, a fat limpet that he’d knocked from its mooring on the rocks surface with a quick blow of his hand. He’d then removed the flesh from its almost unbreakable shell and he’d sliced away all the inedible parts, and finally portioned it into four.
 Next from his pocket, he’d produced some strong black cotton thread on a spool, it was slightly waxed. He’d unrolled about eight feet, and then cut that length off, and then repeated his actions.
 He’d shown me how with a simple knot, he could tie the little portion of limpet flesh to the thread. 
 Having made his, he’d had me make my own, the orange, grey, cream flesh of the shellfish was slippery and hard to tie onto the thread. I remember that I wasn’t too impressed by the tangy smell of the limpet either, but I never have told him that, I had wanted to seem brave.
 He had then lifted me and sat me securely on the edge with my little legs dangling, he’d then hunkered down by me, and shown me how to dangle the line into the water below. 
 I’d watched fascinated as he had jigged the tiny piece of limp meat up and down near one of the larger flat stones.
 He had then pointed out that the stone was lifted at one end because it was sitting awkwardly on another stone under it. As I had watched, I had spotted movement under this part of the stone, and then out had popped the dark greenish head of a little fish.
 With a little more tempting, the fish had left its home, and moved on the bait like a flash before dragging it back out of sight.
  
 We had waited a short while, and then he had gently pulled the line back to him, complete with the wriggling fish, the fish that he had explained to me, was a common Blenny. 
 I had examined it as it had lain in the palm of his hand, watched its wide mouth opening and closing, it’s gills juddering, and felt its slightly slimy skin. 
 I’d then watched as he had carefully pulled on the thread with the bait still attached, as it had slipped from the fish’s mouth. I’d seen him drop his hand down near to the water, and then he released the fish back into the pool. I had watched it dash back to its hidey hole and disappear, and then he gave me an important lesson. “Never kill anything unless you intend to eat it, or it is threatening you, and you cannot safely run away.”
  
 We stayed there for maybe an hour, me fishing in the pool, and him identifying what every catch was, whilst he lay back in the sun.
 I caught crabs, both brown and green, Goby’s, and more than once, the same Blenny. 
 It was an idyllic afternoon for me, being with my father on my own, the adventure of fishing, the interest in the all the life in the pool. 
 In later years as I got older, I found that I just couldn’t recapture that excitement, although I did still enjoy catching crabs and prawns around the rock pools, which I then ate, and did right up to when I married Sharon, also subject to a memory to be written. 

SUN SEA & SAND Pt 1.

 
 

 My Earliest Memories of the beach.
  
 The memory that jumps to mind immediately as being my first of the beach, is sitting on the soft sand of what has to be Porth beach and digging in the sand with a red plastic spade. 
 I still can see the spade quite clearly, it was about eight inches long and the colour was very bright, the red being of Royal Mail post-box shade.
          I had a bucket as well, it was bright canary yellow and round, and my father had been showing me how to make sandcastles with it.
          It's easy to remember the golden sands, dry and warm at the surface of the beach, but underneath wet and cold. It was this wet sand that I needed, so that the castles I made were solid, and didn’t crumble immediately.
          I must have been three or four years of age, and I was quite happy to be digging in the sun in my little T-shirt, shorts and sun hat.
  
 Along with this memory, and this is why I am sure the first memory is of me at Porth, is paddling with my father in the river running out of Porth. 
 Every stone in that stream, and there were many, had a slight covering of bright green seaweed, and every stone had a ring of tiny glass eels.
 These see-through eels would be wriggling, and desperately trying to stay in place until they had a chance on the rising tide to get even further up the river. 
 They’d most likely been born in the Sargasso Sea, a gyre in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, covered mostly by Sargassum seaweed. 
 The waters of the Sargasso are deep and clear blue, and an ideal spawning place for eels. The elvers, so called glass eels, due to their transparency, would swim back to the rivers that their parents had lived in. 
 Once there, they’d feed, grow fat darkening to a dark grey colour. They’d be much larger by this time and ready for their long swim back to the Sargasso to breed.
 I’d collected lot of these eels with my bucket, and by just dipping it into the water near them. As water had flowed into the bucket, so had they, it wasn’t at all hard to catch them. 
 It is impossible today, for me to tell how many eels there were in the stream mouth, as there were hundreds of thousands. However, I do know that the last time I visited when they should have been swarming, there were none that I saw, and that was maybe three decades ago.
  
 Having captured some, I would return slowly to my waiting father who would be sitting in the sun keeping an eye on me, and then we’d watch them for a while. 
 He always encouraged me to let them go, but I have to admit to remembering that I once waited too long, and they had died from the suns heating of the water in the bucket.
 This is my earliest memory of death, as when I had poured them back into the river later, and they’d not wriggled away. I’d enquired of the reason why, and my father had explained about death, and I had been quite startled.
  
 With this memory of bucket and spade, also stirs my first memory of jealousy, because around this time, there became available square buckets with built in turrets at each corner. 
 I never did have one of these buckets, but as a small child I can remember my envy of other children who had these buckets. It was just a tiny desire to have the ease that these brought for building sandcastles, but it was jealousy.
 Luckily for me, I lost all interest in what others had been given or bought early on. I was happy for friends who were happy, but often I chose a different path, and wanted different things in life to them. I guess you might call me sensitive now, as I enjoyed being on my own, painting, drawing and writing’ I also had a fascination for the company of women, and avoided football, drinking and other so called manly pursuits.
  
 This wasn’t inherited from my father’s genes, as he enjoyed a pint, loved watching football, and supported Arsenal is I remember correctly. The interest in women? That definitely came from my father’s side, that I do know, as he actively encouraged me to have girlfriends when I was at an early age.
  
 Lack of jealousy? I count myself lucky that I’m not in constant competition with neighbours and friends over possessions, keeping up with the Jones. In my mind, this can only lead to sadness, and I seek to lead to a constantly happy life and have no time to worry about what others have chosen to do with their lives. That isn’t to say that I take no notice of their lives, but I’m contented to be happy for them, if they feel they’re filling their desires.
 I’ve suffered so called friends who constant vie to be ahead of me, and I have always let them slip away.
 This lack of jealousy did make me more inclined to play by myself as I wasn’t competitive, and just found my own company healthier. 
 So, although I had a lot of acquaintances, I didn’t have many close friends in my childhood. 
 A lot of my acquaintances had absolutely no idea who I was inside, and I just didn’t care, quite often going out with the intention of staying on my own.
  
 So, without further ado, onto the older memories that I have of the beach.
  
 The next is set in the winter, I’m about four, and it’s certainly before I even started school. 
 It was cold and stormy day; my mother had dressed me in a royal blue duffle coat ready to go out for a walk with my father and the dogs. 
 I remember leaving my parents bungalow on the hill above the beach, it had been very blustery. My father was holding me by one hand, and his other hand was concerned with our three long haired black and tan standard dachshunds. 
 They were pulling his arm out as they attempted to beat each other to the beach and were dragging him along behind them.
  
 I don’t remember what I was wearing on my bottom half, but I do know that I had on short red wellies. I also remember that my father was wearing his sage green naval duffle coat, with a dark navy blue bottle hat, and large dark green wellingtons.
 I was being somewhat hauled along by my father, as the Dachshunds progressed and pulled at my father arm.  As they neared the seaside, they had yipped their way more and more confidently to the beach. 
 We only had to cross one road at the bottom of the hill and then a hundred yards later, we’d be by the sand.
 We’d not gone onto the left side however, we had crossed the road bridge and then walked out on the right-hand side of the beach.
  
 As a child, and all the way through growing up, I called this side of the beach, ‘The Rocky Side’, the other, ‘The Sandy Side’. 
 The rocky side was just a narrow strip of sand by the river side, the low cliffs of Trevelgue head on the other side. 
 The sea had been halfway in, and the beach in some places was covered to a depth of three feet with a deep cream coloured sea foam. It had been generated by the winds whipping up the heavy winter seas.
  
 The top of the foam had dirt covering, and if you got it on your clothes, it stuck and stained them. 
 The dogs had been released from their leashes, and were dashing alongside the cliffs, but keeping well back from the foam. 
 Leaving me to play on the sand, my father had taken up a position on a bladder wrack covered rock and was currently gazing out to sea. 
 The river had been on the side furthest of the rock, so well away from me. I couldn’t see it though, because of the foam. 
 I remember I had felt the need to be up on the rock with my father, see what he was looking at, and so, I had climbed up. 
 I was maybe four feet from where he stood with his back to me, and I’d attempted in my little wellies, to walk over to him. 
 My boots had slipped, I’d stumbled, and slid down under the foam and into the river. 
 As I’d gone under, I’d screamed in fright, but under the foam, and in the water of the river with the incoming tide, I’d a mouthful of dirty water, and was panicking because I couldn’t breathe now.
  
 I wasn’t in that predicament for more than a few seconds, because of course my father jumped in and hauled me out by the hood of my duffle coat. 
 He’d dropped me back to the beach like a floundering fish, and checked me to see that I was okay, and then used his handkerchief to clean up my face and clear my nostrils. 
 He was of course, none too pleased at my adventure, but as he had been responsible for looking after me, he knew that he’d be in trouble with my mother as soon we got home to mother.
  
 My father had rounded up the dogs, and then he’d marched me back home, and he’d been right, mother had berated him for a long time, as she had stripped and then bathed me.
 He couldn’t have hidden what had happened to me, as my duffle coat was thoroughly wet through, and also covered in messy foam, so the moment my mother’s eyes had alighted in me, he was in the poop.
 It took my father quite a while to live that particular incident down. Whenever he took me out for the next few months, he was admonished before we had even left the house. Although he kept more of an idea on me now, he never really curtail my freedom, and I had many happy hours with him on the sand as you’ll find out.
  
   

LEARNING TO SWIM Pt 1.

I learned to swim at quite a late age for a boy who lived by the edge of the sea, I was twelve before I could truly swim properly. Having grown up by the ocean, I should have cruising like a mackerel through the aquamarine waters of Cornwall a long time before that.

My father swam like a fish, but on deciding to teach me to swim, he just, shall we say, threw me in at the deep end of the cove.

I remember the unexpected shock, and the feeling of fear, the salty water clogging my throat. And when I didn’t swim, I sank, my father was extremely disappointed, and pulled me out of the sea by one arm.

As a small boy I clung to my mother’s legs, and as I listened to her berating my father, and I swore that I’d never ever swim.

From that point, I didn’t enter the sea for more than a paddle at the oceans rim, some might think my father was cruel, or even crazy, and by nowadays standards, he might have been.

Back then though, men were men, and boys, boys, my father saw swimming as a rite of passage. After all, he had learned to swim in in the Argentine at eighteen, however, he quite forgot that I was only five!

At seventeen he had already sailed around the world, and seen many amazing things, but he himself never learned to swim until he was eighteen.

One of my keen memories is of my father telling me the tale of just how he learned to swim himself, and how he had been taught by a ships doctor.

The ship they were on, had been moored up for three weeks near Buenos Aires, he never told me why, but I did know he quite a few adventures in Argentina, including being shot at several times.

The ship’s doctor, my father did tell me his name, but it eludes me now, had taken a young man under his wing, this being my father, who had joined the ship at Folkstone.

He taught my father lots of things whilst on the long voyage to Japan, and when my father finally returned to England after his travels, and this being much later, he could speak Russian and German, plus passable Mandarin.

When the ship by a circuitous route, had arrived in Argentina, and dropped anchor in the river Plate, the officers were told by the captain that they could have some R&R. Seeking to entertain themselves they built a wood and canvas swimming pool on the deck and would then swim in the early morning and late evening in the cooler temperatures.

The Doctor noticed quickly that my father didn’t know how to swim, and so set about teaching him. He was a fast learner, and he enjoyed the water, swimming strongly. This skill was one that he never lost the urge to use, and was often to be found in the sea in the long summers at Newquay.

He enjoyed surfing as well, both with and without a board, and before he had tried to teach me to swim, he had often taken me out into the sparkling white surf on his shoulders, jumping the waves with me held tight.

The stokers and able seamen on the ship who were not allowed to use the officers pool, often swam in the river Plate itself, and soon my father started to join them.

One of the seaman’s favourite tricks was diving down to the bottom, which was about forty feet down, and once there, they would weight a tablecloth down.           

The weighting was done with stones, and then they would set this cloth with old plates and cutlery.

Finally, having finished the chore, they would sit and pretending they were eating a meal just like they were on dry land.

By the time I was born in the late fifties, my father could still swim a fair way underwater, and to me as a child, he could hold his breath for an amazing amount of time.

He drew me pictures and also told me of the huge fish called Pirarucu that he had seen in the Plate.

Later on, in the school library when I was older, I had discovered that these fish were the second largest freshwater fish in the world. He had regaled me with tales of how they had cruised by like submarines, and I had been so fascinated by his tales as a young child.

He explained that he and the Doctor had managed to stay in the city of Buenos Aires. Listening to his descriptions of the city in the day and night, the food, the people, it had seemed such a romantic and exotic place.

He had described the women, bars and meals so vividly, and it was there that he had found his first love with a South American girl.

This budding romance had not been appreciated by her father, nor her numerous brothers, however, her father had him invited out to the cattle ranch that he owned, to ask him about his intentions towards his daughter.

It ended badly, and whatever my father had told him, caused one of her brothers to pull a gun on my father. Shots were fired at my father’s feet, and her father used a bullwhip to drive him from the hacienda.

As a child I imagined him dancing to the gun shot as he had described, but it all ended with my father in a local police cell, being locked up as a troublemaker for the night.

Luckily the ships doctor had quickly arrived and bailed him out the next morning!

It’s safe to say I think that he never saw her again, but from his tale, I have always imagined her wearing a swirling riding dress and wide brimmed hat in the story.

One summer years later, I took a dark-haired Spanish girl out, and when I arrived at my parent’s house, my father seemed delighted.

Later after she had gone, he told me that she had reminded him of his love in Argentina all those years ago.

My parents’ house in Cornwall was only just three minutes at a trot, and ten minutes at a stroll from the sandy cove of Porth… Porth meaning cove in the Cornish language.

I understand now, just how lucky I was to grow up there on the edge of the Atlantic, with what some might call, an idyllic childhood full of wonders, and with my parents freely letting me range far and wide, I made the most of it.

Porth is a bottle shaped cove, the narrow neck keeping most of the Atlantic winter storm seas out in the much larger Newquay bay.

In summertime, the cove will often be almost like a swimming pool when the tide rolls in. The waters will be still, clear and warmish, and the bottom is easily visible from the low cliffs.

The lure to enter those waters should not be underestimated, and in the tourist season, the sea will be full of bathers, it is still an extremely popular family beach.

The sands at the back of the cove are often littered with people in multicoloured bathing costumes.

Back in the sixties, an enterprising lad in his school summer holidays, could earn a good amount of pocket money, by just being early onto the beach, and then picking up the returnable glass bottles.

If you stand on the soft sands at the back of the cove, and gaze out at the entrance of Porth, on the left-side you will see a small sandy car park, a deckchair rental on a concrete pad and then perched on the side of the cliff, and just beyond the car park, the RNLI lifeguard hut.

In the summer season back then, there would be two senior guards and occasionally one junior, however most of their efforts were in the sunbathing and chatting up girls’ department.

Beyond the hut there is a set of steps rising to a footpath that runs towards ‘Glendorgal’, which is a large old house sitting above a natural cutting back into the cliffside.

If you keep on the footpath, it skirts around the next cove ‘Lustyglaze’, and then meanders over the Barrowfields to Newquay town centre.      ‘Glendorgal’ has its own steps cut into the cliffside, and on the land that runs out from the house to the entrance of the cove, you’ll see the silhouette of a low concrete Second World War lookout post.

On the right side of the cove, a stream exits a lush steep valley via a low granite road bridge. It then runs alongside a granite promenade with deep stone steps, before snaking out to sea on the right-hand side of the cove.

The cliffs here are largely made up of sedimentary rock of a light grey colour, and then topped off with a thick covering of pebbly sandy earth, which in turn is covered with rough grasses.

In spring and summer, the cliffs back then were covered in flowers, with yellows, reds, blues, pinks and purple shades erupting towards a largely cloud free duck egg sky.

The air would be filled with dozens of different insects going about their business, the grasses alive with their non-flying cousins.

Voles, mice, rabbits and even occasionally a fox scurried and scampered after food, whilst overhead the beady eyes of sparrowhawks and kestrels watched.

Herring gulls wheeled above, giving vent to their cackling cries, as fulmars glided along the edges catching uplifting breezes from the warm sands below.

Tiny birds thrummed over the grasses, catching midges, gnats and flying ants, some perched in the tamarisk trees, other on the stalks of the longer swards.

In the sixties, wildlife burgeoned in the UK, and Cornwall is a haven for many different species of nesting birds and animals, I even saw a storm blown Osprey perched on the cliffs once.

You didn’t have to hunt very far to see hedgehogs, fox, badger, river voles, herons, ducks and many other small animals.

Standing on the cliffs as a child, and looking down into the waters of the cove, it was quite normal to see large grey mullet, their heavy three-foot long silvery shapes in shoals of twenty to thirty, as they glided slowly towards the back of the cove.

As the tide rose, dabs and even plaice were there to be stepped on when wading in the sun warmed salty waters. Your toes would feel wriggles as the flat fish flitted away, leaving sandy trails hanging like yellow fairy dust in the crystal waters.

Small green and brown crab were found under every rock pool stone, there were bright starfish, along with gem edged sea anemone lurking in any poolside shade.

Blennies and Gobi’s darted out to catch tiny titbits, and large translucent prawns waggled their antennae as they feasted on anything dead.

On occasional summer afternoons, I would stand stock still, knees deep in the creeping oncoming tide, with feet wide apart, and if I was patient, a sea trout would often glide right between my legs.

Better still, a sand-coloured dog fish, its tail flipping gracefully as it checked for dinner in the outflow of the stream, could even glide by. My friends or acquaintances had spun me the yarn they might nip at my toes, but they never did though, and my toes all remained accounted for.

Wading in those shallow waters as a child, with the sun warming my neck and back through my t-shirt, I had to be careful not to step on weaver fish.

I’d seen others do so, grown men often with teary eyes as they limped from the sea. Children carried out by parents, their cries pitiful, to then be given first aid at the lifeguard hut, and sometimes even an ambulance arriving.

Luckily, I had never encountered the spines of one, although I had several near misses. The fear as a weaver lifted from its hidden position in the sand, and then its quick dash away as you cried out loudly “weaver fish!” Warning the other bathers nearby.

As a child, there were few things to really fear in the waters of Porth cove, although one of the worst, was the fear of drowning.

The unattended child of tourist parents left playing on a speedily incoming tide, it’s accidental slip under the salty waters, and then the parents panicking.

Often though, all would be well, another more cautious body, keeping an eye, or a local stepping in with a helping hand. Then a lifeguard and their strident voice on a bullhorn calling attention to the straying child, calling for the parents.

But not all were so lucky, and each summer there would be drownings, and not all would be children.

Adults who learned to swim in a pool in the Midlands, or the North, would encounter currents and waves, the strong pull of the tide, and worst of all, the undertow of the river that they couldn’t see at high tide.

As a very young boy walking the sands, I once saw three grown men go into the sea in the cove at high tide.

It had been an idyllic day, the sun warm, the water smooth as glass, and they had swum out to where the river flowed below unseen.

There had been a shoutout from the lifeguards as across the beach they sped to warn them, calling, calling, but ignored completely by the men.

I can remember standing incredulous as the Guards warned the guys, and how they had sneered and told them to go away.

I also watched that day, at no more than thirty feet from the swimmers, witnessed how one by one they were pulled under by the unseen force of the undertow.

The lifeguards stood powerless as the last man’s hand disappeared under those so still turquoise waters.      

The first man gave a cry as he was pulled under, the second tried to help him, the third left his life with not a murmur.

The race was on as the guardians of the beach headed out to sea gripping their Malibu boards. Paddling fast, they made for the entrance of the cove two hundred yards away.

Once there they sat bobbing on the slight swell and waited, because this would be where any of the men would resurface.

Then a shout rings out, and from where I stand with the crowd, I can hear that a body has been found, and then there’s another, finally all three are returned to the safety of the sands.

A local person called for an ambulance and the police, as the lifeguards try resuscitation, the bodies are a dull blue grey, and in that moment, I know they are already dead.

This was my first sight of a dead body, and I was to see many more, pulling several from the waves myself, the saddest a young school child. Each corpse left a toll, took a part of my heart, but in time I learned that life goes on, I hid these experiences away.

In a cold matter of fact way, I can think back now, realising that if those guys had just listened and not been so stupid, they’d have been safely sunning themselves on the beach later that day.

The local paper had reported that they had been from the North, and that they’d been drinking in the local pub, and then had not listened to the orders of the RNLI.

The verdict, misadventure, and they’d go home in a box, and not in the train that they had arrived in previously

I returned home that day, and then spoke to my father, and told him that I wanted to learn to swim…

Rabbit

Another beautiful Illustration by Alex

Worm Illustration

To continue with the Mouse story, we are following our mouse on his adventures as he tries to find his way home. This time he meets a rabbit happily eating away at the dandelions but not very forthcoming with information.

After drawing out the scene as usual in watercolour pencil my first problem was how to make the rabbit look fluffy.  So I worked on mixing the colour required choosing watercolours that tend to granulate, in this case yellow ochre with ultramarine,  a little coeruleum blue and a touch of Alizarin Crimson. The yellow ochre and the coeruleum being good for granulation if the mixture is right. I experimented with the mixtures until I found one that worked then damped the area to be painted and quickly applied the paint, then it had to be left to do its magic.

Some of the paint separates and the heavier granules sink…

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The Lizards Tale – Part 10 – 3.

Queen Oona with the Faery court high up in the skies above Carniggy.

Oona, her red gold hair flying behind her like flames in an ardent fire, her King and court of Lords and Ladies sketched out across the sky like shining stars, are heading homewards. Unfortunately Fox (Lowarn) would unbelievably appear to have eluded them, and therefore they have yet to fulfil their agreed challenge from the Lord of this realm. All the hunts senses are cast downwards and seeking for something living that may well ease their passage back to Faery land through the magical rift in the skies. It is now that Oona feels the searching eyes of another Fae upon her, and looking out and down from her saddle high in the evening skies, marks Hav standing in her walled garden in the forest below. Now that Oona’s attention is on Hav’s summer garden, she feels with her Faery senses that there is another Fae present in Hav’s garden. Oona on a whim, jerks on her flying horse’s reins, turning its head away from homeward bound, and then glides instead for Hav’s garden of summer. She will investigate this other Fae, for this could indeed be where the wily Lowarn indeed hides behind the skirts of summer?

Hav and her court at the house of summer.

Hav stares at Cora, her eyes searching each minute detail, the colour of her hair, the smallest glint within the girl’s eyes, and as she gauges Cora, she draws in huge wafts of Cora’s personal perfume. Hav then knows without a doubt, that this before her, is ‘Cordelia’ the name Celtic, meaning faithful daughter… And so in softest voice, Hav asks her prompts the woman by asking what her name is? “Cora” the girl replies with her eyes still cast down,  her name as given to her by her father. This is no surprise to Hav, as she knows that the father, who is obviously only a man, would have given his babe a more than likely modern name. But Hav knew that her sibling would have used the true name ‘Cordelia’ and yet, there is a hint of her more majestic Fae heritage in this shortened version. Hav’s face without warning bursts into the happiest smile, for her sister is the first to give life to another Fae, in this her long and noble family.

Pan in the great Oak.

beneath me I catch sight of Fox, or Lowarn, as the Man would have him known now. He is scrabbling on all four feet, regardless of the fact that he is now mostly man. Of course he has called to me for mercy, rather than the Man, as Oona and her rabid Lord with their Faery hunt chase him through the garden with their hounds snapping at his very heels and with his death foremost in the Faeries minds. My woodland magic springs forth before I even bid it, twirling into the form of the ancient mistletoe, which then reaches down, and then grabs the quivering, shivering lowly Lowarn, and then as quickly as it has descended, it retracts back up into the tree bringing Lowarn with it. The mistletoe instantly disguises him from the dogs that low for his demise, and also from Faery eyes, and then swiftly lifts Lowarn even higher up amongst the branches and then deposits him next to me. Lowarn’s former Lord the Green Man would have him dead, and this somewhat puzzles me, but then I let this conundrum go, for it is minor in my mind and laugh into his wildly staring face.

Under the oak now, barking and yapping in frenzy are this Faery hunts most foul dogs. Pan can smell their fetid breathe, and see their yellowed bloodshot eyes a staring for a glimpse of their prey that they see as just a Fox. And then who arrives in haste, the Lord of them all, Finvarra, a stupid jealous dog himself, and he is quickly followed by his bitch, the gorgeous, but cunning seductress Oona, her red hair curling down across her pouting breasts and very nearly naked body to then trail out along her horses glistening sweating back. Both of these Faery royalty ride around Pan’s seat in the mighty oak, but they cannot see either Lowarn, or indeed Pan, as he has his woodland wild magic give them such glamour. Round and around they go, seeking their rightful quarry, the rest of hunt arrives now and starts milling and mixing near the bole of this greatest of trees. Just for a second Pan lets his face appear through these greenest of oak leaves, his tongue stuck out in the rudest ways, and for just a second Oona has ken of hi,, and then she wears the most wicked of smiles. Oona smirks and then bears her horse away as her husband brandishes his golden horn, and blows his dogs away from here to search for the quarry elsewhere. Finvarra himself though, hangs back for one more searching stare and Pan almost feel he can somehow see the woodland god, even though Pan’s glamour is complete. Then even Finvarra draws rein and gallops away, and Pan awaits the small forest sounds returning, before he pours down to the ground disguised at first as a shower of rain, but once on the ground and safe, Pan dresses in his real self, and pulls his pipes up from about his waist. Now trilling a merry tune he calls Lowarn and the Rook to his side, then away they whirl through the forest, for now Pan would find the beauteous Kynyav, as he has no longer a need to be the furious god, for Pan is at last in the garden of the Green Man, and at last revealed as the great god ‘Pan’ himself!

Gaia.

As Pan had entered the Green Man’s domain, Gaia swept a spell upon him, and removed the pressing enchantment that the Gardens Lord had laid about Pan. He no longer has such ardent anger, and he would be merrier, but she would not take Pan’s wild indifference from him, nor instil in him a degree of responsibility, so Pan would in essence remain the tricksy god he always had been. One thing she changed though, Pan’s small goats horns, these now grew to his stags appearance, and Pan, he was considerably more majestic in this guise. Gaia was now content though, for time was moving on and the end of her world was nigh, and Pan had an enormous part to play yet, as did Btu Chun.

Tom and Jago at the caravans.

The gypsy stands on the top step of her caravan and shouts… “Fool Ho…!”

To which the Fool stops his spinning dance, and slowly approaches the fire with its bubbling pot. Tom watches the Fool with suspicion, as he feels this new member of the caravans is not such the merry fool that he tries so hard to seem. Reaching the fire, the Fool stops for a moment staring intently into the flickering flames, and then executes a prodigious leap into the air, whilst at the same time lashing out a foot to kick the pot from its tripod, thereby spilling rabbit stew all upon the ground. At the top of his leap, he turns a colourful somersault, and then lands next to the empty pot. Crouching he slips a finger into the stew that still dribbling from the blackened pot, brings the finger to his now grinning painted mouth, licks his finger clean, and then grimaces saying… “I should never have allowed that slippery devil Fox into my wood!” And then the Fool, he’s off  spinning, somersaulting and cartwheeling about the dell as though beset with sudden madness, before then leaping up the muddy side of the dell. He stands amongst the bluebells for a split second, before turning to stare directly at Tom, and then nodding as if in an almost sociable way. Then the Fool is off spinning away at speed until he is out of sight under the oak woods. Tom is left staring away up and over the trees, but even now he can just about hear the tinkling of the golden bells on the Fools hat, and then… Even that fades away leaving him alone with the gypsy, and still not knowing the fate of Jago…? So Tom turns to where she stands upon her caravan top step, “What has happened to ‘Jago’, is he dead or alive?” The gypsy’s face doesn’t change, and gives no hint to Jago’s fate, but she does produce a teapot and two mugs. “No how about that Camomile tea, I’ll tell you the tale as we go along.” She then moves down the caravan’s steps and assumes her usual seating; she then pats the step beside her. Tom takes the hint and moves to take the proffered seat beside the gypsy. Saying nothing more, the she pours two teas, and then raises her mug to her mouth, where she then blows across the top of the steaming brew.

Lowarn meets the ‘Fool’.

Pan strides on ahead through the oaks dappled light, whilst sullenly Lowarn follows, and Rook has to flap hard to keep up stumbling across the forest floor, hampered as he is by his wound from the farmers gun.

Pan now obvious as a God for all of the woods to see, and is wearing his new rack of antlers well, his shaggy hair droops boyishly across his forehead, sometimes getting into his deep emerald eyes. His chest is bare and hairless and looks finely muscled in a healthy way. His legs are strong, and completely covered in golden blonde curling fur, his manlike feet unshod, but horny enough to cope with the rough terrain of the woods. Around his waist he wears a fine leather and silver belt, in which is held his Faery pipes, and circling around his neck is a golden chain that bears a finely wrought oak leaf in hammered silver. This pendant bounces off his powerful bullish chest as he strides purposefully through the forest in search of his love Kynyav, for in Pan’s mind, the picture of her face overrides all else. Behind him, Pan hears Rook muttering about his wound and how he must needs rest up! Lowarn is none to happy either; after all he has lost his dinner, been chased by dogs, and then half strangled by mistletoe. It would seem Lowarn and Rook have no appreciation of their Gods help, and this make Pan unhappy! He stops abruptly and Lowarn in his self concern barges right into the back of the resolute Pan, who doesn’t even rock with this collision, and so its Lowarn who falls to the leaf moulded ground. Pan doesn’t even turn, but rather lifts his magic pipes, and there upon them he trills a merry restless breathy tune, instantly Lowarn begins to blur, as does Rook! When Pan turns to look behind over his shoulder, his lips curling into a smile, it is to see Lowarn replaced, and returned to a fox, but Rook is now a man in what appears to be a long black coat. This man if that is what he is, has Rook winged coloured hair, and with matching black beady eyes. Pan claps Rook upon his muscled shoulder, and Rook grimaces with the pain of his wound that has not altered in his transformation by Pan. Pan unusually concerned, bends slightly, rips some purplish woundwort from a green clump that has sprung to life beneath his questing hand. Pan then crushes the flowering plant between his horny hands and invites Rook to show his wound. Rook reluctantly opens his new coat, and here he is revealed quite naked beneath, Pan then slips his hands swiftly inside Rooks coat. He speedily rubs the dripping green poultice all over the darkly bruised and bleeding holes that Rook is carrying from the farmer’s gun. Pan then hastily leaps back as the lead pellets spring forth from Rooks flesh, to drop down to the ground. Lowarn who is now a fox once again, takes note of the way Pan fears the farmers lead, and pushes that information back into the farthest region of his mind, for one never knows when mayhap that information could be of worth.

Rook then shrugs his shoulders in a manly way, sidles away across the forest floor a short distance. Rook seems to stand somewhat straighter now, and then he pirouettes on his new shiny boots, letting his coat flow outwards, and that shows Pan that Rooks wounds have indeed healed. Rook has a sudden need to preen, leans against one of the nearby oaks, and then produces a bone comb from within a pocket of his glossy coat, and now at ease, Rook combs back his rakish hair into what he, believes to be a more becoming style. Pan steps forward, and leans in close to Rook, whispers in his ear, and then pulls away and turning to the fox, “You must pay your due ‘Fox’, for these not my woods, so take heed and run red dog run!” Fox as he is now, is rather confused, what could Pan mean? But then Pan is off a gambolling amongst the trees, watched by the Rook. Pan’s form very slowly becomes see through, and then he fades into dimming summer days light, until he is completely hidden from Rooks view, for Pan is now searching for his love Kynyav once more. Rook now turns to Fox, “Fare thee well, Lowarn as you were, and goodbye!” Fox shrieks “‘fare well’, what do you mean ‘fare well’?” Surely you will not leave me alone in these woods with the possibility that the faery hunt may well return! But with a shake of his lustrous coat and not another word to Fox, Rook spins at speed and then appears to take off and skitter into the darkening skies in a blur, for Pan has somehow left Rook his ability to fly, and fly he does to do as Pan had instructed him in his last whisper to Rook.

Fox is left on his own in the lowering light of the forest… That is until he hears the slightest titter and then a giggle coming from beneath one of the nearby mighty oaks, and on looking with his bright eyes into the darker shade there, perceives a painted fellow, dressed in the silks of a fool. It is of course the now nearly insane Btu Chun in his new disguise as court ‘Fool’….

The Lizards Tale – Part 10 – 2.

Hav and her court at her house.

Hav strolls in all her grandeur down the garden towards her house, and as she passes the flowers, they become ever more riotous in their growth. The plants seem almost unable to bear her presence so rotund is she with the power of life and vigour in this present season of late summer. Hav is right outside her home when her cherry faeries then set up a clamour, should they not be sent in first they ask of her, for who knows what acts may have been committed since Kingfisher was last here? Hav will however have nothing of this suggestion or indeed even listen to their bell like voices ringing in her ears, for it is her time of year. The full of the power endowed in her by her father the Man, will keep her safe, and she therefore will not falter from her purpose for even a second. She approaches the bottom of the steps up to the veranda, and then with her faery court in close attendance, although now the cherry faeries are for once silent, and even Kingfisher has stopped her constant chatter, Hav starts to ascend. Her foot touches the first wooden board gently and the house of summer springs into life… The ligneous structure of the house moves and sways just a little, but where the veranda had been completely empty before, now chairs and tables with beautiful silken cushions and table cloths leap up from the very structure of the house. Each of the tables is covered in sumptuous foods of every type, and in amongst this sumptuous repast, are golden flagons of water, wine and iced fruit juices. A flavour of the meal wafts across the air, ones tongue can almost taste this aroma, one of cinnamon, anise, pomegranate, tangerine and lemon, jaggery tarts and roasted, toasted vegetables. Hav ignores all this commotion that her arrival brings, and continues to mount the steps with stately tread. Once upon the veranda though, she stops and stands still, her court are all a flutter around her head in such a cloud, that Hav has need to brush them away with her golden fingertips, and then at last annoyed, she commands them away, and they return muttering and fluttering to their cherry trees.

As the cherry faeries alight in the naked branches of the cherry trees, there comes a noise, a lowing of what sounds to be hounds, dogs that are out hunting away, a ways in the distance in the gardens forest, and on the other side of Hav’s garden walls… Hav swings around to glare out of her realm, and up above the trees into the deepening shadowy blue skies, and it is there that Hav spies a sight, not unlike a fiery meteor, one that appears to climb away from, rather than fall to earth. The goddess recognises the heinous ‘Daoine Sidhe’ hunt, led by the gorgeous Oona, for she is the Queen of the Daoine Sidhe. Hav prefers the ancient name for this plague upon the land of her mother Gaia, although most men would call them ‘Faeries’. The Daoine Sidhe Queen is flame haired and a deadly beauty of their realm. Not far behind her rides her husband Finvarra, a yapping jealous cunning dog, covetous as he knows Oona would seduce all males that she meets, her beauty having been spun into many tales by Man, Fae and Daoine Sidhe, and then sung throughout all the lands of man. Hav fervently hopes that this hunt has not been down amongst those of her realm, whilst she has been spinning her chore of summer. Hav has given no permission for such an excursion, and does not like to think of what they even might be hunting, or of their aims of a vicious kill. If however they have, she will be mighty in her anger and will exact a passionate price for their breaching of her will. Then Hav turns her back abruptly on the view in the sky, because she knows that Oona has been unsuccessful in her hunting. Have knows this because she has heard the sullen trill of the Daoine Sidhe’s golden horns, and that tells her that they are in the process of returning homeward after their intended quarry has escaped. Tis likely that they now look for some unwary beast or man, as they need a kill just to breach the sky with such a court after hunting, and then be able to return to their faery realm. Now that Hav is home however, all her responsibilities will be safe beneath her glamour from this fae hunt, and therefore she has no further concern with the faeries. However Hav also knows that now she will have to pay court to her father at his house in the middle of the enchanted garden, to tell of this sighting in this his mystical forest, for even they, the Daoine Sidhe court, have to bow to this worlds truest God the Green Man. Hav now faces her houses doorway, and then without the slightest hesitation, enters her home of endless summer. Her foot lightly touches the inside boards, and the room bounds up in true devotion, and once again chairs and tables appear, food both plain and exotic covers every table top, drinks of every type clamour to be drunk, and along with flowery perfumes and rare spices, the air feels almost heavy, and ready to ignite into sudden flame such is Hav’s summer might. There before her then, Hav sees a woman with reddest of hair, and she is pale of skin, and this woman, her back is to Hav, for she is turned away with almost an acolyte’s attitude to her. And there upon this woman’s shoulder, Hav observes that the most honourable Mouse is resting. Hav’s nostrils flare in ire, and then in a rush she inhales the other woman’s scent causing her face to soften once again, and she almost smiles for she has detected her sibling Kynyav’s scent, and yet, not quite? Hav moves forward with no word yet spoken, and extends her long golden fingers to her beloved Mouse. Mouse’s beady black eyes follow Hav’s advance, and he is excited as this is his lovely goddess returned, his heart flip flops in his intense excitement, but from the lack of sternness in her face, he knows his goddess will do this young girl no harm.

Rook arriving in Carniggy’s garden.

Rook crashed into the highest twigs, all of which are green with summer leaves, and then he slips down through to the branches big enough to take his feathery weight. Once under the greenwood cover, he finds himself a secure hidden perch, and then checks himself over. Whilst he grooms his feathers, he hears the baying of hounds hunting, yapping and howling as they go, this is mixed and followed by many huntsmen’s horns. Gazing down from his secret roost and through the green leaves of the oak, Rook spies a colourful character abruptly emerge from beneath one of the other trees, he appears to be running on all fours, and he is wearing what is definitely man type clothing. Rook feels the branches sway just slightly beneath him, and that can only mean that he is not alone! Raising his head a little, Rook sees a very curly headed apparition, one of a very young man sitting naked nearby in this very tree. The man is staring straight back at Rook, and then smiles, he displaying rather spade like, slightly yellowing teeth, but is a great beauty, of that fact Rook has no doubt. Upon this boy’s head amongst his curling hair, it would appear that he is sporting a pair of short and very curly horns that glint as if with gold. Rook looks a little lower, and then he realises that this young man is not completely naked, for he has the furry legs of a goat, covered in its curly matted coat, and the scene is completed with its blackened hooves. On his side on a silver chain, hang some musical pipes, and around this boy’s head is a crown of ivy entwined with belladonna and hawthorn. Rook has the feeling he has seen this apparition before? The youth shivers slightly, and for a moment takes on an older form, he then speaks quietly to Rook and suddenly Rook understands..

Pan in the great Oak.

At last… I am in the Man’s most secret world, I’m in his walled garden, and just how did I get here after all my failed attempts? One of his former vassals that I had twisted to my wiles and rescued from his former masters curse, but then betrayed, has called me into being to save him! SO here I find myself in the greenwood, and to keep him from their majesties pleasure, the faery King and Queen who are out hunting. I feel no obligation to him as his god though, for after all this Fox lost his life in pursuit of information on the Man, and I am his god. Yet again maybe I could have some fun with the faery Queen Oona, for she, the dogs wife, did once seduce me in the moonlight, and by making me believe that she was my luscious Kynyav. Maybe I will help my one time begging vassal the Fox? Although at the moment he would seem to be playing some other different character called ‘Lowarn’? Then near where I sit comfortably, I however hear a crash, followed by a black winged fluttering, and there before me I see Rook my spy, Oh now this day is now improving and at such speed, what joy!

Hav and her court at the house of summer.

Hav took Mouse gently to her bosom and Mouse nestled comfortably there in his Goddesses décolletage. It was then that Hav extended her hand once more, her fingers outstretched and questing, and this time she allowed them to softly fall upon Cora’s shoulder. Cora turned to look Hav straight into her now golden hazel eyes, eyes that seemed to shift with sliver flowers flecked in the background.

The Mouse’s tail…

Mouse has failed to alert Cora to imminent arrival of his Goddess, and now he feels the full weight of this guilt, for he is so sure that this young lady might be some sort of Goddess herself. So without further adieu, he scurries up her leg, and in haste arrives quickly on her shoulder. From this, his new vantage point he instructs her to turn away from the doorway and bow her head. Mouse feels it better that Cora not look Hav straight in the face as she enters, but be at least submissive. The young woman turns as instructed, and Mouse then strikes a pose, one that he believes is best to meet his Goddess on her arrival home …

Cora in the house of summer.

Cora let’s the squeaking Mouse instruct her as there is nowhere to hide that she can see… And so she turns from the clamour now coming from the houses doorway, and then stands facing in the other direction and as best she can, at ease with head bowed.

The frantic tinkling faery voices outside suddenly cease, and now the silence itself is almost as deafening as the noise from the cherry faeries before.

Cora almost feels herself shivering, her milky flesh covered in goosebumps from the anticipation of meeting the owner of this house, and of whom this little Mouse seems so in awe of.!

Cora then feels an almost sunny burst of warmth across her back, and then watches unbelieving as the room explodes with tables and chairs, all covered in almost unimaginable types of food and drink. Cora then feels Mouse stand up on his two hind legs, and then he turns to face the incoming homeowner, whom Mouse has informed her in his squeaky little voice, is called ‘Hav’. Hav is the goddess of summer and her name is apparently the true Cornish Celtic name for summer. Cora feels Mouse run and suddenly leap from her shoulder, but still she resists the sudden urge to turn and face this Goddess, as Cora is still struggling with the whole reality of the garden that she has found in the forest, and is having difficulty in not believing that this could be all a dream. The silence stretches out, and Cora is just beginning to believe that may be Hav has indeed gone, when upon her shoulder she feels the slightest touch, then almost as if encouraged, Cora turns and faces the goddess Hav, and immediately Cora’s eyes are drawn inexplicably to the Goddesses golden brown green eyes, eyes flecked with tiny silver shapes.