My wife asked me the date this morning, and in telling her, it made me realise that we'd managed to forget a rather significant anniversary for our family earlier in the week - we first moved to Cornwall on June 8 2000, so we've now lived down here for over 10 years. It hasn't all gone quite as smoothly as it might have done, but, on the whole, I'm still happy that we made the right decision - it's a pretty nice part of the world to live in, by anyone's standards.
My daughter's school bus didn't turn up this morning - there was a new driver, apparently, and he'd taken a wrong turning and thereby contrived to miss out a large chunk of the route through our town, including my daughter's stop. The upshot was that my daughter came back home, and I ended up giving her a lift to school, a 15 mile round trip I could've done without after a 12 hour night shift - or, at least that would've been the case, but for a chance encounter en route. As we were driving down through the town, my daughter saw a number of her former primary school classmates on the way to the local comprehensive school. At one point, my daughter said "There's E* and M*", two of the boys who'd been in her class up to the end of the last school year, just under 12 months ago. To be frank, I almost crashed the car looking at E* - I doubt I'd even have recognised him if my daughter hadn't pointed him out. I assume it's puberty kicking in, but he's gone in just under a year from being nice looking, but very 'little-boyish' to being, to my eyes, drop dead gorgeous. It's interesting that yesterday I saw someone who's moved out of the upper end of my 'window of attractiveness' while today I've seen someone else who's entered the 'window' from below.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
It's ok to look and appreciate, but pay attention to your driving too!
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew more about your part of the world. I've never been to the UK or Europe. You make Cornwall sound very nice. I guess I will have to start looking on Wikipedia and Google Earth and find out something about it. My grandmother on my father's side was from England.
Have a nice weekend!
Hello Brian
ReplyDeleteI'm usually a very safe driver, but sometimes distractions are so unexpected that they break through that wall!
Cornwall is a nice place to live - we have a very oceanic climate, much of weather coming in from the Atlantic - in other words, it rains a lot(!) but we hardly ever get snow and ice, and we do get sunny weather as well, but more in the Spring and Autumn - Summer can actually be the wettest time of the year, because there's so much sea so nearby, there's a lot of evaporation in the higher temperatures, and it has to come down somewhere, and coming in from the Atlantic, we're the first landfall in this part of the world. The other main attraction of living down here is the laid-back lifestyle - there's a Cornish dialect word 'dreckly', as in "I'll do it dreckly", which pretty much equates to the Spanish 'mañana' - things get done, but not necessarily right now, don't get too stressed about it!
Love & best wishes
Sammy B
Hi there, Sammy and Brian
ReplyDeleteAs another one-time Cornish resident, I can probably say a bit more about "dreckly". I suspect the word started out as "directly" - which to almost any other English speaker would, I think, imply some degree of urgency and immediacy. I seem to recall my parents grumbling about it soon after we moved to Cornwall from somewhere much near London - I think a plumber or electrician had been asked to do some work on our new house, and he and my parents had ended up with very different ideas of the likely timescale for the job!
Take care
Mark
Hello Mark
ReplyDeleteI think you're spot on with 'dreckly' - and I can just picture the scene between the tradesman and your parents! All part of the Cornish experience.
Love & best wishes
Sammy B