A walk after lunch. Not the sunniest of days but still beautiful…

All last week I was working on a painting of Exeter Canal, but that is not the painting I have just finished; the new painting depicts the sun going down over a Brittany beach and a little French boy running with his pail to the water’s edge. This painting is a birthday present for my brother-in-law, with whom Chris and I will be staying very soon. The beach is one we know quite well as it is around the corner from Glyn’s house in Le Conquet. I hope the birthday boy will like the painting – it is rather a big one to hide away from view if he doesn’t…

It came as a bit of a shock to arrive at Cockwood Harbour and find that it wasn’t there, even though for the last year or more we had witnessed the slow decline, and maybe the demise, of a small boat. The boat always used to remind me of a gondola; long, slim and dark, but without the high curved ends at the back and front. Perhaps it had begun its life as a rowing boat – the long vessel looked as though it would slice through the water at great speed, not latterly, of course. For ages the boat held water, increasing amounts; at length we marvelled that the boat was filled to the brim with water and yet still managed to keep afloat. At last, perhaps only a week ago, Chris and I noticed that the boat no longer floated when the tide was in; nevertheless, when the tide was out, the boat resting on the mud still brought a touch of elegance and glamour to the harbour.

Now the boat has disappeared and has been usurped by a newer, more serviceable but less attractive replacement. I wonder if the graceful gondola will ever reappear. Perhaps at this very moment she is being loving restored in the owner’s carport or a boat repair yard. I hope so. We shall miss her.

Reg loved Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, “Gunga Din”; he could recite it word for word, and sometimes did (when urged), much to the amusement of his friends and neighbours. Reg was a great character, which is why Chris and I still speak of him quite often even though he passed away about ten years ago.

Only this morning I said something (so unmemorable that I can’t remember) to Chris and he responded with a Reg quote. It took me back to a time before Chris and I were married… It was perhaps the first occasion that Chris was coming to see me in the role of lover.

In those days I used to rent the upper half of this house and Reg regularly popped over from next door for a chat in my kitchen. I can see him in my mind’s eye now; he had twinkling blue eyes and rather long hair for an old man – it was white and unkempt, and matched his beard. We were sat at the big gate-leg table that I had painted white; the walls were painted lemon yellow; and the afternoon sunshine came in through the window. I had been telling Reg that I was in love (with Chris, of course). Suddenly, I realised that Chris would be at the front door in twenty minutes…

“Oh, oh, do I look alright?” I asked.

Reg nodded his approval and grinned (he always thought I looked alright).

“Oh, and what about the house? Do you think I should run the Hoover over the carpet? Is it tidy enough? What do you think?”

“Sally,” Reg stood up to go, “if you can’t keep it up for the next thirty years, don’t bother!”

Seventeen years later we are still saying it. And whenever we say it we think of Reg and his “Gunga Din”.

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

Over breakfast this morning Chris was talking excitedly about his plans, not only for new paintings (he’s an artist too), once the work has been finished on our house, but also for a new workroom/studio. At present Chris’s workroom is the inner room of our old bedroom on the sea-side of the top storey; several years ago we divided the large room into two equal-sized smaller rooms by erecting a stud partition in the middle, therefore, in order to enter the workroom one must walk through the first bedroom. Chris intends to take over the larger bedroom on the same level at the other, colder side of the house for his new studio, thereby freeing up the inner room for use as another bedroom.

“Do you think it will be alright to keep the door as it is or should I build a lobby to separate the rooms?” Chris asked.

“Well, it will be used mainly by the kids when they come home so I don’t think they would mind.”

Chris looked relieved because a lobby would require more building work from him (and he’s been working on the house for ten years already).

I thought about the thickness (or rather the thinness) of the partition wall, and the fact that all our children have partners, and I wondered… My mind went back to the days when I was a young woman living in Australia – to Parker street – and to the sleeping arrangements when my sister and her husband and children came to stay with us. Our combined four children occupied the far bedroom; Mary and Geoff had the middle bedroom and my boyfriend and I were in our usual bedroom next to their’s.

“Young people don’t mind thin walls. We didn’t mind thin walls when I was young,” I said, “At Parker Street the walls were thin and we didn’t worry about it. Of course, you could hear everything… but the men used to yodel and we all used to laugh about it.”

“Yes, people were very open back then, they used to practically make love at parties in those days,” added Chris, nostalgically.

“And when I think of the barn just down the road from the Football Club…” I said wistfully.

“But yodelling?” Chris asked, bringing his attention back to Parker Street.

I nodded.

“At the same time?”

“Yep!”

Chris pretended to be shocked and I laughed like Calamity Jane (for the second time this morning) as I walked out to my studio. And now I must return to my painting and listen to the American voice on my Kindle device read me the last few chapters of “Sons and Lovers”. How apt! No yodelling so far.

“What’s this?” I asked, laughing. (I knew very well that it was the remnants of last night’s repast – just not the good bits – the broccoli was a tad water-logged and soft!)

“I would have thrown it away if it had just been for myself,” Chris explained, “But then I thought about how you complained that we don’t eat enough vegetables… especially when I do the cooking!”

I howled with laughter (not dissimilar to Calamity Jane when Wild Bill Hickok is dressed as an Indian squaw!).

“Well,” Chris continued, “I thought you might enjoy to finish them off for a nice little snack today.”

Incidentally, the appetizing looking brown stuff in the bowl next to the broccoli is the remnants of my breakfast of All Bran. Woe is me.

It will be bookclub this Sunday afternoon so, yesterday, I had the bright idea of listening to my Kindle reader whilst painting. What an excellent idea to kill two birds with one stone! Or so I thought… The only little problem these past two days of listening while working has been that my Kindle reader has the voice of an American high-school girl, and the book I have to read is D.H.Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers”, which, as you may know, is rich in the dialogue of the Derbyshire dialect! Therefore my reader, though not entirely without inflection or intonation, has struggled to cope with missing letters, apostrophes, and “t'”s; so desperate has she become that now she spells the words out for me! And t’ say tha’ m’ mechanical reader ‘as nowt sense. Of course, she dost get a bit carried away w’it  – she even spells “S-H-E”. My reader may be suffering from dialexia…

And here are a couple of photographs of my progress with the painting…

Still in bed this morning (we had a lot to chat about) I was remarking, as you do when you’re in bed, that I thought one of Leonard Cohen’s backing singers, who had an incredibly high voice (Ain’t no Cure for Love), might have been the same backing singer that Elvis Presley used when he sang “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” – the laughing version.

“How funny you should say that!” Chris began, “Because, only yesterday, I was reading that Elvis wasn’t laughing at the lady singing in a high-pitched voice (as we had previously conjectured), but at a man in the audience, whose wig was pushed off by women rushing to the edge of the stage for kisses. Apparently the bald man made a joke of it and set Elvis off…”

Now, I don’t buy that explanation. A short while ago I checked out Elvis on YouTube and it would appear that Elvis was well-known for his little jokes, and he made the same joke – “Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair?” – on more than one occasion. And he had his eyes shut for most of the time, perhaps because of the strong lights, so he wouldn’t have been able, surely, to see shenanigans in the audience. Also, it is apparent in the laughing video, that Elvis finds the lady’s singing bizarre; “Sing it baby!” he says, laughing all the more.

I fancy that Elvis must have been totally bored with singing the same old song and he gave way to his great sense of humour. We, the rebellious children at Sunday School, used to have fun when we sang the song, “I’m in the Lord’s Army”; it should have been:

“I’m too young to Fight with the infantry, Ride with the cavalry, Shoot with the artillery, but I’m in the Lord’s army!”

We used to sing:

“I’m too young to fight with the infantry, Ride with the cavalry, shoot with a 303!”

We always sang the wrong bit with tremendous gusto and we laughed so much that we could hardly sing the other parts. Oh so very rebellious!

Elvis finished his rendition of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and added, “That’s it man, fourteen years went down the drain, fourteen years just shot right there, man. I’ll tell you.” That clip continues to amuse, entertain and endear people to Elvis all these years after his death. If you want a laugh just click on the YouTube link below. Chris says that this clip has been doctored – he can tell because the soundtrack comes from a 1969 concert but the film shows Elvis at a much later date, when he was rather more portly. Therefore, I shall add the YouTube sound only version of the same.

Chris and I were talking in bed this morning (we do most of our talking in bed) when he suddenly had the urge to lean over and kiss my stomach; as he did so, something pricked me and I jumped.

“What’s up?” he asked, just as alarmed as I was.

“You pricked me,” I answered, “It must have been your stubble.”

“But I’ve had a shave this morning.”

“Well, then it was your hair .” (He has got very thick strong hair with a will of its own!)

I thought of the anniversary card that my old school friend, Sally, had sent us recently, which depicted two hedgehogs cuddling and drinking champagne.

“You’re like one of the hedgehogs in our anniversary card,” I added.

Chris laughed and said:

“I just thought you would like a cheap quill!”