I have just returned from a few days in Clovelly. The idea was to celebrate the handing over of the book manuscript - a project which has preoccupied me for the better part of two years, and to make some plans for keeping me off the streets in the future. It was also to commemorate the fact that it's now very nearly four years since I lost Cherry. It's trite to say that it really doesn't seem like it, but it doesn't. The first time I did this, four years ago, the trip was rather a mixed success. The weather was pretty awful, the cottage was absolutely frozen and on my first morning I ran the car into an unseen kerb with such force the wheel had to be changed as well as the tyre ! This time was much better; the cottage was warmer, it didn't rain anything like as much and all the kerbs stayed where they were supposed to. This picture of the cottage makes it look particularly nice.
I did a lot of coastal walking and fossicking about on deserted beaches when I could get to them. It was very stormy with high tides that seemed much higher than usual. So a couple of the well-established favourites were out of bounds. The usual little stream at the entrance of the beach at Duckpool was a raging foaming torrent and there was no way of getting across it. The entrance to Sandymouth was sprayed with a new waterfall from the cliff and getting round the corner was impossible.
Still Speke's mouth and Marsland were fine, so I got in all the beach-combing I could have wished. The waterfall at Speke's mouth was spectacular. The only problem was that the storms cast up a huge amount of mouth watering driftwood that was much too big to carry home for the fire in the cottage. Very frustrating. Hawker's hut (where he used to watch out for shipwrecks) was still there, plus two sodden little plastic boxes in the geo-cache.
There were very few people around and mostly I had the beaches and cliffs to myself. Even the last morning down in Clovelly village itself, I sat outside the Red Lion on the quay having a farewell cappucino while a few locals were putting up their Christmas decorations. As far as I could see I was the only visitor around. It was delightful. The Covid restrictions on the local churches were all lifted so I was able to effect an entry into them all this time, including the one at Clovelly which I hadn't been inside for years. Kilkhampton (where I went to buy the very splendid sausages that Moore's the butchers provide) even had a place where a candle for Cherry could be lit which was a bonus.
It was the same story at Malmsmead and the Doone valley. It was deserted, even on a reasonably warm and sunny Sunday afternoon. I didn't see anyone else as I walked along to what I fondly imagine to have been the waterslide that inspired R.D. Blackmore to use as the place where John and Lorna first met. Last time I was there I left Cherry's old (and now pretty useless) binoculars there. As the place where I go to have a picnic isn't obvious, I thought it faintly possible they might still be there amidst the whortleberry bushes. They weren't of course. I still enjoyed my lunch though.
The problem with all this self-indulgent pleasure was that I really didn't have the expected time for a bit of a think about what I want to do with the next few months and years. The immediate problems and issues of the present kept intruding. So I'll probably end up going with the flow as usual, but hopefully at a slower pace than recently which has been a bit too frantic for my taste. Not being able to make decisions like this tends to mean that I react to other people's timetables, which isn't ideal. I will try harder.
Back at the house the immediate pressure was to start catching up on all the things I have pushed onto the back burner these past few weeks. Included in this of course is all the rigmarole involved in applying for another work visa. Getting my I -1129, so I could access the DS-160 for my O1A (Outstanding Ability - over-the-top Americanese for getting a foreigner in to do something a US citizen could do perfectly well so not to be taken seriously) work visa and then begin filling up the exact dates of my last 5 visits to the United States - and off we go again, 'starting all over.'
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