In training to be a spectator

Carenza was preparing for the Hackney Half Marathon.

She was hoping to beat her previous best by a whole seven minutes – a bet with a friend was at stake.

‘I’m quite proud of myself – I’ve done a reasonable amount of training.’

Pascoe and I were to spectate, joined by Dan. I had not watched Carenza race since she was at school.  I had neither trained nor prepared for my role as spectator.  How naive I was!

Carefully, Pascoe and I traced the route map and found a midpoint from where we could also cut across to the finish line. But how would we know when to expect Carenza?

‘You can just download the Hackney Half App and track me on that.’

Carenza went off to the start and we found our spot and waited.  The app said she was coming, coming, coming.  She appeared to be lagging her target time. Oh dear.  Then suddenly she was past us, but Pascoe, Dan and I hadn’t spotted her.

We trudged off towards the start/finish line and stood there.  The app said she was stationary at a rehydration station.  But she WhatsApped us ‘Yay.  Beat my personal best by ELEVEN minutes.’ We’d missed seeing her again, but she was somewhere very nearby.

Finally it dawned – with huge numbers of runners and supporters, all on their phones, there was a big lag on the App.

When we caught up, Carenza was delighted with her time but the start had been dodgy.  It had been so cold she left it until the last minute to check her coat into baggage, thereby missing the warm up and being allocated to a starting pen for much slower runners.  In the pen, amongst the runners, appeared an elderly homeless man who took a shine to her.

‘They say there are twenty-five thousand runners here today.  Make it twenty-five thousand and one, baby – I’m coming with you!’

He did indeed start the race, carrier bag in hand, but luckily she soon outran him.

It was clear that Pascoe and I had been rubbish spectators – instead of failing to catch Carenza at the middle and end, we should have been at the start to see her off safely.

Our spectator training is complete - we’ll know for next time.

Nigel Gummidge

 As pets we keep no dogs nor cats, but free-flying white doves who come to be fed.

On the end of our house is a white dovecote which has proved less popular as a roosting and nesting site than the space beneath the solar panels on my friend Claire’s roof.

One of the reasons is that the dovecote, with it’s pretty arched openings, is vulnerable to crows and magpies.  This spring, two pairs of doves were nesting, and then suddenly they weren’t - the nests were abandoned, the eggs and chicks vanished, and on the ground a tell-tale broken egg.  There had been a crow raid. 

We were chatting with some of the teenagers at church and confided we were worried that when the doves nested again, the crows would attack once more.  Yet we could think of no device which would keep the crows out, which would not also deter the doves.

‘You want a scarecrow,’ announced one of the boys. 

We laughed, but on consideration, he was quite right.

The doves have no fear of Nigel – it is mostly he who feeds them. So I made a model Nigel, using his old clothes and even printing out a photo of his face for it.

Nigel then sat his doppelganger on top of the garage.

It is a measure of the politeness of our lovely neighbours that they waited nearly a week before gently enquiring why we had put a lifesize model of Nigel on the roof.

So far, the crows appear not to have returned, and there has been an unexpected side effect.  We put the figure up there to scare the crows.  We did not anticipate it would also have a positive influence on the doves. 

Such is their affection for Nigel that we now have more birds than ever roosting and nesting in our little dovecote.

A family pilgrimage

Before ever my mother became ill and died, we had booked a holiday cottage close to my parents for a week at Easter, intending to get the whole family together.  It now offered a very different opportunity - perhaps we could scatter Mum’s ashes all together.  However, Dad was not ready.  Given the great time pressures on Pascoe, Perran and Carenza this year, it seemed unlikely we would be able to assemble everybody again to do this.  Even as it was, Perran and Carenza were working from the holiday cottage, with only one day of leave left to give us.

Meanwhile, my friend Fiona had told me of a one-day pilgrimage along St Michael's Way, walking from Lelant on the north coast of Cornwall down to Marazion on the south coast, then across a tidal causeway to St Michael’s Mount. It was the old route which British pilgrims had taken as they set off to embark for the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. By coincidence, Carenza had also just given me Wayfarer by Phoebe Smith describing this very path.

Mum had loved Lelant, the village where the trail started. As I sorted her belongings, I found a couple of drawings she had made of Lelant. That clinched it.

 On our one day together as a family, we would make this pilgrimage in memory of Mum.

 From Mum’s desk, we picked up the pebbles she had once brought in her pocket from the beach and put them in our own pockets. We took the little water bottle from her painting kit and set off.

When we found a spring on the cliff at Carbis Bay, Nigel scrambled down and collected some water in the little bottle. 

There was a small pool in the Neolithic fortifications at the top of Trencrom Hill and we added more water there.

 The peninsula is not very wide at that point, but the pilgrimage sent us on a circuitous route, up hill and down dale, encountering prehistoric standing stones and medieval churches, like the one at Ludgvan with a carving of a pilgrim above its door. It amounted to a walk of thirteen miles.

Mum loved birds, and along the way, we were accompanied by larks overhead, and from the hedgerow, a chorus of finches, wrens and robins. We saluted five ravens on Trencrom Hill and in Marazion Marshes, there were egrets and even a Cetti's warbler.

When finally we approached St Michael's Mount, we had timed it for low tide, to allow us to traverse the paved causeway.  Once on the island, we climbed the cobbles to the giant's well, where Jack the Giant Killer once slew Giant Cormoran , and into the well, we poured our water. 

On the steep path up, we found ‘Giant Cormoran’s Heart’ – a heart-shaped cobble. 

At the summit near the ancient Benedictine chapel, we found a niche in the rock with a magnificent house leek growing just below. There we set the pebbles to rest.

 
These stones had been part of Mum’s surroundings at her calligrapher’s desk each day.  Relinquishing them brought it home to me at last that she was gone. It was odd to leave them behind, out in the open under the sky.  The only comfort was that they could be in no place more beautiful or holy.

 
And the day held one last small blessing.  Back in Marazion, waiting for a taxi to take us back to our car in Lelant, we saw the best bird of all – a single white dove came and perched on the wall above and waited with us.

Thanks to Pascoe for several of these photos

An Oasis inTime

 

My mother’s cremation was at Penmount Crematorium near Truro on Friday 4^th April. 

Beforehand all five of us shared breakfast in the sunny dining room of the hotel where we had stayed the night.

Perran’s plans to move to Brussels had finally crystallised and he would return to London that same night on the sleeper train in order to pursue arrangements. Carenza announced she would move in with Sandy when Perran left, another milestone.  She had to return on the sleeper too – a friend’s hen party the next day.

So Mum’s death was not the only big change taking place, and everybody had suffered the drag of time pressure as they made the long trip to Cornwall for the funeral.

Despite the sunshine and the abundant spring blooms in the hotel garden, we were self-absorbed, hoping we were suitably dressed, running over readings and eulogies.

The funeral went smoothly, orchestrated admirably by Revd. Di Willoughby.  The lunch afterwards was held in the barn at Trelissick, an NT property which Mum had loved. It was good to catch up with friends, relatives and carers, and to remember Mum.

After a couple of hours, guests were leaving, but bizarrely, after all the fuss and flurry, it was now hours until the sleeper train, and we had nothing further scheduled.  Dad didn’t want our company as he needed to rest.  And it was the most beautiful bright spring day. 

The five of us walked on into the fabulous gardens of Trelissick, which were at their peak, with blossoming magnolias, azaleas and camelias.  Incongruous in our smart black gear, we strolled along the paths we had walked so often with Mum, and recalled how her circuit had reduced in circumference as the years progressed.  We talked desultorily of this and that, and there was no rush or urgency.  Perran and Pascoe climbed the tree they had first tackled as infants.  All of us perched in the wooden hut where, when the children were babies, I had once sat to breast-feed them. Blue sky, green grass, bright flowers.

If there is such a thing as an oasis in time, then this was it. 

I know that sometimes I shall feel sad in the months ahead, and I am writing this for my future self, so I can recall once more an unlooked-for perfect afternoon with my husband and children.