Despite the day starting grey, we wanted to take a on the wonderful train ride to St Ives and the sun came out!
Dawn was gorgeous! I love this time of year when we can see beautiful dawns without getting up too early!
Dawn this morning
We spent a very happy couple of hours at the Cornwall Diversity Food Festival, meeting lots of new people and trying lots of different and very delicious dishes.Cornwall Diversity Food Festival – 18.11.17, Truro
Afterwards we took A to Trelissick where the view just took her breath away, much to our delight.
Tree in Trelissick
Supper was a Yottam Ottolenghi recipe for Roasted Cauliflower Cheese and it was scrumptious.
Roasted Cauliflower Cheese
What a glorious Autumn day as we went off to Port Isaac, (you may know the village from Doc Martin), exploring all the little byways and lanes, mostly uphill it seemed and finding a little cafe to have lunch.
In Port Isaac
Port Isaac
Tonight there was the most glorious sunset. I took this photo from the middle of our town.
Sunset from Redruth
Tonight we have been to a Sing for your Supper event at the Eco Park ending up singing round the fire – just brilliant!
Singing around the fire
There is some pretty new mosaic on the walls near Penryn Wharf where we sing.
Mosaic
We had a lovely warm walk along Cliff Road after a delicious lunch at the Gylly Cafe and watched a Cormorant enjoying the apricity as much as us!
Shag or Cormorant
Tonight’s dinner was a scrumptious pie.
Chicken, Ham and Leek Pie
On our was home from Falmouth this afternoon, I did an amazing emergency stop! There was an horrendous noise from the front right hand side of my beautiful Beetle and I stopped on a sixpence! It turns out that the wish bone had snapped! Dear Reader, you may know what that means – all I knew was that my car was immobile. and the front wheel had fallen off! Two hours later, it was rescued, taken to our garage, the wonderful Richards Brothers, and they will ring me tomorrow. Thank goodness I was not alone when that happened, just short of a roundabout on a busy road. So many lovely people stopped to see if they could help. The world really is full of kindness, well, Redruth is!
The low winter sunshine comes straight through our back windows and first thing in the morning the shadow of PEACE on the blind was the first thing I saw.
Peace
We noticed a lone golden rose blooming near the arch this morning.
Golden Rose
As I write my very good friend, A, is on the train coming to visit. We have the champagne ready to celebrate being together for the first time in eight years!
Champagne
My blog today is all about yesterday! I discovered today that yesterday was World Kindness Day, a day that started being celebrated in 1998. Today, I celebrate the day with some wisdom from Aesop. My friend Valerie writes here about kindnesses, a lovely post well worth reading.
Kindness
The thing I like least about knitting is the sewing up but, having finished my scarf, I decided to sew up all the baby hats I have made for our local hospital and here they are, ready to be taken to the collection point tomorrow.
Baby hats for local maternity unit
Yesterday, too, I showed you the Sweet Potato Pancakes that we had for breakfast and I have now put the recipe on my Recipes page. Do try them! They are delicious! Here is the link Sweet Potato Pancakes
I love Autumn! The colours are so beautiful and even in a cold wind, a walk around Trelissick gave us so many beautiful moments. Click on any photo to share our colourful afternoon and to read the tale about ‘drawing from nature.’
It has been a very grey day today and I have finished my scarf!
Scarf finished
There are fireworks going off tonight, a little odd for Armistice day I feel, but fun to watch if not to listen to. I took the photo through our bedroom window.
British Legion fireworks – this photo is for V in honour of her Mum and mine.
I was a teenager when my Uncle Norman, my Dad’s older brother, gave me a volume of Siegfried Sassoon’s poems.
My present from Uncle Norman
I found them very moving, clear to understand and perhaps they helped form my pacifist outlook. One of my favourites was
Everyone Sang
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;And I was filled with such delightAs prisoned birds must find in freedom,Winging wildly across the whiteOrchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;And beauty came like the setting sun:My heart was shaken with tears; and horrorDrifted away … O, but EveryoneWas a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
We have seen Seckou Keita in concert before but tonight at AMATA, the Academy of Music and Theatre Arts in Penryn, the concert was outstanding. Seckou was playing with Omar Sosa on piano and Gustave Ovalles on percussion and the whole audience loved it all. Their new collaborative cd is called Transparent Water and that was what we heard live tonight – fabulous!
Poster
A gallery of the evening is not enough. You need to catch them on tour if you can. Our son has known Seckou for many years and learnt both to play the Kora and to make them with Seckou who was delighted to hear that D is now a father of twins! Click on any photo for more detail.
Singing in Penryn was busy today. We are getting to grips with a very beautiful and haunting piece called, “When the Winter Melts” composed by a local musician, Jim Carey. It is hard to learn but as the four harmonies come together, it is giving us the shivers, it is so lovely.
Penryn
Sometime in the early Spring, I must have left my very special scarf somewhere. It was made for me about fifteen years ago, by Daughter No3, in the Suffragette colours of purple, white and green and until I wanted to wear it a week ago, I was unaware that I had lost it and I feel very sad about it. For the last week I have been knitting to replace it (though in fact, of course, it cannot truly be replaced) I keep hoping that if I make a new one, it will turn up, the way things sometimes do……. Today, I have been sewing in the ends where each stripe starts and this is the little pile of trimmings left over. I will show you the scarf when it is finished.
Purple, white and green
I hope you enjoy today’s poem by Kenneth Koch, both a love song and a delight to any lover of language.
Permanently – Kenneth Koch
One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.Each Sentence says one thing – for example,
“Although it was a dark rainy day when the Adjective walked by,
I shall remember the pure and sweet expression on her face
until the day I perish from the green, effective earth.”Or, “Will you please close the window, Andrew?”
Or, for example, “Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on
the window sill has changed color recently to a light
yellow, due to the heat from the boiler factory which
exists nearby.”In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, “And! But!”
But the Adjective did not emerge.As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat –
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.
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