Sunday

A found poem

On my way to the Spar shop in Polzeath, Cornwall, I pass the intriguing sign above, and a house with a porch that reminds of Aunt Anna's, every time I go by.

Aunt Anna's was a pink bungalow overlooking the Atlantic at Arisaig, on Scotland's west coast. From the back porch, stuffed with waxed milk cartons for burning on the fire, we gazed out at the isles of Eigg and Rhum, but mainly Eigg, with its sgurr or horn at one end.

Aunt Anna was an old lady of the tweed-is-so-practical era, but being deaf and living alone, slightly more eccentric than most. She was nimble, wiry, and wore her hair up in a bun. Her voice was high and scratchy, like a hen's, and she welcomed guests with plates of biscuits and an excited twitter. In her earlier life, she'd been a Carmelite nun in Falkirk, but had suffered significant and mysterious health problems. She had felt it kinder to the other nuns to leave the order, since the doctor's comings and goings were an intrusion on the daily life of an enclosed order. Instead, she found her peace and her prayer in a remote location in the West Hghlands. Although tiny, she could drag her little rowing boat unaided from the shoreline to the water, from whence she would set out on her voyages. Maybe she fished. She did not, the day she took my mother and several of us small children out in the boat together, but that might have been for practical reasons.

Highland houses in the 1970s had a make-do-and-mend feel about them. Not everyone was lucky enough to have a house: some lived in old-fashioned caravans, then upgraded to mobile homes on a plot of land; others were prefab. Aunt Anna's was the latter, with a red carpet in the living room and a tacked-on sun porch/kitchen at the back, where plants flourished. Like her sister, my grandmother Elspeth, Anna was green-fingered and artistic.

Amazingly for 1973, Aunt Anna had a television with proper reception. Seated in front of it, with mugs of hot chocolate, we watched the Blue Peter summer special from Mexico, where John Noakes dived from some spectacularly high cliffs. There was no diving from the shore at Aunt Anna's, just rock pooling, scrambling around in wellingtons, and making friends with some naughty boys. The first encounter with them was unpropitious: overhearing my sister Kate squeal about seeing a 'snake' on the shore, they left an eel for her to find when she slipped her foot into her wellie! Naturally, she squealed some more, but our respective parents encouraged us to make friends, so the deal was sealed with an eel. What I remember most about 'the big boys' was sitting in a huddle atop a huge, vertical rock overlooking the road, talking, chucking twigs and fir cones at the road, watching the occasional car go by.


On fine days, we'd head for the beach at Morar, with its famed silver sands, for swimming and bucket-and-spading. My youngest sister, Tittle, was just over one year old, sporting a yellow gingham dress with rick rack braid. Beside my mother, she could crawl safely and take her first wobbling steps on soft sand. We doted on her, but the other five of us, aged eleven to three, were free range. Out of the car and out of sight. (Once, in the hills near Oban, I ran away from the car so fast that I never heard the instruction not to go beyond the brow of the hill, and got lost in the mist. A search party had to be sent out for me.) But at Morar there were acres of flat white sand, and a sightline extending to the back of beyond. Huge jellyfish glistened on the sand: Portuguese and purple blisters at low tide.

This wasn't a good summer for my mother: she was seriously depressed. The reasons why will have to wait for my book, but she was at pains to conceal it from us younger children. Though my elder sister, TMLHereandThere/Tanya, picked up on it, and began having prophetic dreams which scared the downward spiral clean out of my mother, I remained blisfully unaware. I still regard that week in Arisaig as one of my happiest childhood times. I may have written about it before on blip, but I'm hoping that someone new will find this, and the old bliphands will forgive me. Holidays give me the gift of time to remember.

PS I back-blipped yesterday.