We have been hydraulic engineers
in preparation for this trip, installing a couple of automatic plant-watering
systems in the garden, so as to lighten the diligence load on our neighbour
Margaret who for many years has valiantly been in to tend my green babies on
all our previous trips. We weren't as efficient as we could have been in
setting it all up, but you learn with practice, and got most of the precious
pots linked up and then tested for timing and quantities. It seems 5 minutes of
trickle, twice a day is more than enough - but she has agreed to come and check
for wilted or droughted plants every other day or so. We spent more time getting the garden sorted
than packing up for the holiday. I am
not ashamed of this somewhat obsessional performance, because the garden has
been our great creative project this year and has aroused widespread
admiration: young people say they'd like to get married there, and older people
have asked to come and sit in it for other rather spiritual reasons. I have
even been doing a little blog about it (MyTinyGardenBlog).
We set off not long after 9.30 -
all was well. I am - these days - juggling with the satnav and comparing its
instructions with a different instructor on my phone, waiting for 'a signal'
for both devices, staring at these mad screens and trying to find somewhere to
put them (rather than balancing them on my lap), and missing the rapturous
countryside as a consequence. Bah! The
phone-route-planner is called Waze and is rather good, being interactive and
able to warn of impending traffic jams. I think I really prefer road maps.
We think about coffee. Andrew
employs his usual search method which involves gradually thinking about how he
needs a pee, gradually thinking this moment could be combined with having a
coffee, and gradually looking for somewhere suitable. They are not all that
common in the backwoods of Kent, to be honest. The first few obviously won't
do. So he drives past. We drive past several, then right through Burwash which
we had chosen ahead (from the map).
Nothing there, and we sail past the entrance to Kipling's house,
Batemans. (National Trust. Open. With a restaurant, also open). I get stroppy.
"Turn round, go back." He
does. Down the lane to this idyllic English estate - we park under trees. The
loo is beside the carpark. The café is inside the gates…. We cannot go in
without a ticket. Membership is like hundreds
of pounds, no, not that much but a
lot and ours has lapsed this year. We have been members of course, but have
become bored with the way the Trust do things.
The pretty ladies on the gate won't let us through… but I persuade them
all we want is a coffee and I promise
not to look at the house. They let us through, and we saunter inside, watch the
gardeners working on hands and knees, sit on the terrace on treacherous
mesh-seated chairs which hold a secret supply of rainwater to make your bum
wet, enjoy a coffee and a pastry each, and then dart back to the entry. The
ladies in the wooden kiosk say 'We don't know how you did that. We NEVER let
anyone in. How are you so persuasive?'…..
On we go, and I have the bright
idea of finding (if possible) a replacement power lead for my laptop as the
original has wrinkled its way into worrying non-function. I need to find one
while we're in England, so the mobile phone is diverted away from satnav duties
and we start to make phonecalls. Yes! There is one, at Hassocks. Somehow we
lose our way, divert to Frant (how?) but eventually find a pleasant IT man in
his house, who sells me his own spare cable for £15 and recommends the local
place The Thatch for lunch. 'It has a thatched roof', he says. It does.
It's a 30s roadhouse in the process of being re-thatched, with
extravagant quantities of reed being bundled up to the hat end. Inside, quite a lot of older people are
settled in and we join them, perusing the wildly extensive menu for something
not-too-extravagant. All mains are £10 or more, and it claims to be home-cooked,
but who knows? When it comes along, it
turns out to be the kind of meal which makes you both cheerful (clean, hot,
something to be grateful for), and at the same time utterly depressed. Its
components are all dull. The tastes and textures are dull. The burger bun is
the cheapest kind of pap. The salad has no dressing. The cheese in the filo
pastry tart is completely anonymous. The vegetables have come from a microwave
and have no adornment - three kinds all rammed into an oval dish, plain and
over hot. It's café food at restaurant
prices. I fantasise about opening a tapas bar along the road, in competition.
In truth, the view of the downs through the archly faux-Tudor windows is the
best thing about the meal.
We walk up to the local windmill
in the hot sunshine, Andrew trying to rescue a moth from a cobweb, and greeting
a cheery party of walkers when we get to the top of the hill. It's charmingly
named Oldland Mill, founded in 1703, and snuggled in between some ravishingly
beautiful houses and cottages. Two men are painting the mill, using a
cherry-picker to get round. Its pretty cladding is gleaming brilliant white in
the sun. Dr Dulux doing his thing on an ancient structure.
On we go, and chase round
Southsea and Portsmouth to find a NatWest bank for Andrew who needs to cancel a
lost bank-card. The satnavs argue with each other and with the road signs. We
sort that out and drift into the dock. Panic!!!! Where are the passports? Not in
the folder! Ah, there they are, under
the seat. We wait. It seems because the boat was totally full
coming in and will be totally full going back to Santander, the turnaround time
is longer than usual. We sit and wait in the milky hot sunshine. Our queue
neighbour in his Jaguar has a thrilling old-world Etonian accent, and Dublin
number plates - I say that is where our son lives. He says 'Whereabouts?' and
when I say Blackrock (which usually does the business), he trumps it with
'Howth, round the bay'. Aristo beats middle class. He kindly shows me on our roadmap the
general whereabouts of a delightful palace he and his wife stayed in, in the
Picos. She meanwhile is telling Andrew years
ago they'd been to Santiago because he being Catholic wanted to go to mass
there, but the famous swinging censer was being mended or something so it
didn't happen. Quite a couple.
We get on board, our cabins are
still being cleaned, so we go on deck with our little bit of luggage and sit in
the sun. The British navy is on show, with a three-master (HMS Victory?) in the
distance. With a sparkling water and a sangria we sit and unwind. The cabin is delightfully small (no windows).
We take a stroll round the decks, head for the café. We join another couple for
supper - make friends, talk about caravans and aeroplanes and social injustice.
We're in bed by 10 or so, and find we
may as well have been sleeping with a horse - the shuddering of the boat is
like a great animal flicking its withers.
Sleep is fitful, but we chug along out towards the ocean. Beneath us, there
are octopus and dolphins, if they are not driven frantic by the rumble of the
engines.
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