It’s Friday morning, and you find us sitting on the train, whistling across the countryside towards the south-west of England. By “us”, I mean my youngest daughter and I. After some hasty planning and approvals - both from work and my parents - earlier in the week, we’re parachuting her away from everything or a long weekend. A few days to process, get perspective, and put herself back together.
A weekend filled with the basics - walking on beaches, paddling in the sea, exploring rock-pools, visiting favourite haunts, and talking the requisite amount of nonsense with Nan and Grandad.
So far the trains are connecting as planned. I will admit to a little trepidation, given the drivers have been threatening to strike all week. Given my usual luck with dysfunction in anything and everything, I’m counting our progress so far as rather miraculous. Perhaps it has something to do with Miss 19’s presence. Maybe the universe knows she needs something to work for her for a while, and is nodding in our direction - holding it’s hands up about the usual bullshit it throws in our general direction.
We have a couple of hours on this train, before racing across Plymouth station in search of a connecting train. I’ll only truly relax when we’re aboard the final train to Liskeard. From there my Dad will meet us and descend into deepest, darkest Cornwall.
I grew up near Oxford - my parents moved to Cornwall following retirement, after spending countless summers in campsites and caravan parks there over the years. It’s the little things that remind me of that part of the world - that tell me I’m there. The quiet is probably the biggest - the lack of the distant hum of traffic, or occasionall rumble of aircraft in the dead of night. The smell of sea air. The cries of seagulls in the morning. The taste of cornish pasties.
I’m not sure if cornish pasties have travelled that far around the world. The story goes that they were made by the wives of miners generations ago - a pastry parcel filled with meat, potato and vegetables - a self-contained meal to get you through the day. The thumbed seam - a handle of sorts - was traditionally thrown away - to feed “the knockers” - the ghosts of miners lost to the subterranean passages they never returned from.
Anyway.
Two hours to go until Plymouth. Perhaps I’ll join my laptop to the train Wifi and express cynical wonder at how well it doesn’t work. Or maybe read a chunk of the book I bought last summer - called “Beach Read”, about a writer that inherits an unknown property from her Dad - along with knowledge of a second life he lead for years underneath his family’s noses. The next door neighbour is another writer, and they get off on the wrong foot. You can probably figure the rest of the story out, can’t you.
Sometimes predictable is good. A bit like this weekend really.