Spectrum

It's been a long, long while. Nearly a whole year since I wrote anything on this blog. So long in fact that I have spent the last half an hour battling to find my way here, trying old passwords in vain and being asked cunning questions by Google like, "When was the last time you logged on to your blog?"Aaagh- I don't bloody know do I. Anyway, panic over that I had lost myself in the ether net. One additional digit and here I am again.

The photos and ramblings stopped for a while and I am hesitant to begin again.... This year has been a contradiction of conflict and understanding.Our daughter was finally diagnosed with Asperger's in July. I could not write for anger and frustration, for doubt and exhaustion, for needing to read anything I could find to understand and writing the worst about our child so as to be believed ( I wouldn't recommend that).  I  spun around in turmoil with the amount of people that would tell me how "normal" my child was when I was crying out to say "I need to tell you.This isn't right". So it was easier to catch my voice in my throat, unless I was sure I was believed.Thankfully some people did believe us.

It felt a betrayal to write about my beautiful lovely daughter and our daily struggles and still does.Would I want someone to write about me without my knowing, pretty sure not! So here I am, not sure where to go now with this blog. I have never been one for chit chat when I have fire and passion raging and I don't think a whole blog on my old dog going senile is really going to fulfill me or you dearest reader...(though please if anyone wants to hear about endless trips to open the front door at night and trying to turn a chubby old dog away from the wall she is barking at please feel free to contact me.)

I digress.

On the day that we had the results of our daughter's assessment we took her for her usual riding lesson.The conversation turned to passions and our daughter talked about loving the Harry Potter books ( currently on the fourth time of reading the whole series ). Her riding teacher clearly has a big passion for horses and she looked at me with her shiny smiley eyes, knowing nothing about me and seeing me every week and simply asked "What's your passion?". I felt like there should be a big space that I could run into, my passion flying like a banner, but there was only empty exhaustion and somehow I said a little hysterically, "I don't remember". And I really laughably couldn't. Drama aside, it took me a couple of weeks to remember.



Today for the first time in an age I took my camera and went with my daughter into the late autumn sun. The early morning transformed by the heavy frost.We looked at our familiar landscape anew. She with her camera, me with mine.This is the way I saw it :)

xxx

See you here or there or somewhere.

Waves and where does it all begin?

We decided to get away from our riverside dwelling for a few days before Christmas.We left behind the sounds of the workmen at the big house next to us, manouvered past the ten or so work vans, mud spoil heaps, needy hydro, left behind our dogs who were sulking a little and went to Cornwall. I longed for some sea air, to be fed, to be surrounded by something other than the work we do and to generally be free from most of our responsibilities.

This is Mousehole pronounced like Mowzel. It is a tiny pretty fishing village with winding alleyways that lead to traditional Cornish cottages, steps with pots and gardens, courtyards, and a handful of galleries. It seemed very quiet and private so I stopped taking photos of the streets, reminded of taking photos of a decorative house in a medieval village in France when someone chucked water out of an upstairs window onto the street below with an annoyed glare.No slop lobbing in Mousehole which seemed much friendlier but you will have to visit yourself to see what I mean!

We had a sea view from our room at Old Coastguard Hotel and watched the waves crashing on a small island in front, called St Clements Isle. Gulls wheeling and calling and being blown in the mizzle and wind. Daisy set up her toys on the low down window ledge and wedged herself between her "dangerous" z bed and the view and played.The Barbies and Ken seemed happy with their room.

Someone told us of a good beach.This is Sennen cove further around the end of our isle on the atlantic coast. I love Cornwall in the winter, devoid of summer tat, icecreams and windbreaks, litter and disappointed people wishing it was sunny.Winter on the beach was wrapped up dog walkers, bobble hats and red faced babies in backpacks, a brave or nutty kayaker, me loving the wind, breathing in the spray and salt, and really getting into the unashamed greyness and beauty of it all.

Daisy had fun in the amazing velvety soft sand and relished bare feet being buried in the coolness and then followed up with the obligatory footballer's dive.

A good beach for leaping off rocks and sliding down and clambering up avalanche sand banks.

Meanwhile I am looking at the rocks, zig zags and swirls, fracturing.

Staring at the waves, curling and breaking. Bliss.

Later we go to the very end of our isle, luckily bereft of summers crowds. There is an exceptionally gaudy King Arthur's theme park and tourist shops, all closed, looking like a Mike Leigh film set. Hooray we have Lands End to ourselves, apart from two elderly women walkers chasing a stray plastic bag whipping faster than them across the car park and a young couple diligently paying at the meter surrounded by acres of empty lots.

So here we are at the end of our island, well the south westerly part of it anyway. I had my photo taken here many years ago as a kid and just felt compelled to take one of Daisy. Bit kind of weird that it is 3147 somethings to New York, especially as someone spends all summer taking photos to sell to tourists here!  A sign begging to be graffitied if ever I saw one. It reminds me so much of photos of my childhood in the 70's, a typical holiday album shot. Sometimes they just need a little more colour....

Then home for Christmas. The river has been smiling at us.

As for new year I have no affinity with the usual celebrations, I have always found it surreal and  felt a fake because I didn't really feel like I was celebrating anything. So this is my beginning of the year.....You have to look carefully because I looked yesterday and I couldn't see them, but today, as I was clearing back the leaves from a bed of heathers, they were there. Hidden or curling up from the earth.Winter Aconites -the first signs of new growth here. It makes my gardening heart glad. Spring is on its way whatever winter still has to give us.xxx