The last days of summer are here. I don’t want it to be over yet as it feels as if I’m only just getting in the swing of it now and I’m not ready for autumn. That uber hot bit earlier in the summer didn’t work very well for me as I was working and consequently sweating a lot on hot, smelly transport. I managed to get away for a few days to Cornwall with a friend and her daughter, which was great – the timing was such that it meant I was away when my children were on holiday, which stopped me from feeling sorry for myself and luckily there was a shit signal where we were staying so I couldn’t stalk them on Instagram and feel stabs of jealousy every two minutes. It was also perfect, because I couldn’t go far as my mother is still in hospital (7 weeks now) just in case she needed me back. She’s now having rehab post her operation to help her back on her feet, but it’s all a big worry that she seems to have lost the use of her legs and still can’t support her weight, let alone walk. It is truly astonishing to me that this sort of outcome to an operation is still seen as a “huge success” by the surgeon, who doesn’t bother to ever see her again after cutting her open, fiddling around a bit and sewing her back up – there just seems to be no joined up plan here. Very frustrating and upsetting.
My children are all safely home from their holiday which is great and my cat is still alive so all good! For the first time in twenty years, early September is not defined by a school term and I don’t have a child off to school. THEY’VE ALL FINISHED. OMG this is so weird. My lastborn is now about to start working to save money for his travels – not today obviously, he’s still in bed, but soon. I hope. So visits to my mother in hospital have become the routine, rather than the school run. Such is the life of the so called sandwiched generation. You simply move from children to parents, with seemingly very little galavanting with gay abandon in between.
My tonsil is still obviously missing – in that it hasn’t quite settled down to the point that I’ve stopped noticing. Nobody is remotely interested in asking me how it is now, so I have to write about it on the blog just to make myself feel better, despite knowing nobody is going to be reading this and feeling sorry for me either. Weirdly I’ve had a strange experience with taste and when I Googled it (I know, big mistake) apparently 1 in 10 people suffer from a change in taste after a tonsillectomy for up to six months!! The worst thing is that it’s the wine I like that tastes different and that better not take six months before my taste properly comes back, although I suppose on the up side, I can drink any old shit and not notice the difference.
Anyway, a brief summary of our time away in Cornwall. As the weather was a bit shit we turned it into a semi-gastro tour and had some great meals out. We were staying very near Polzeath and Rock, so got the ferry over to Padstow and visited Port Isaac too. Lots of lovely walks and a trip out for lunch on a boat. PLUS the essential cream tea, which was delicious. I’ve never been that enamoured with Cornwall before, perhaps that might have something to do with trying to not scream at your children endlessly from the beach “GET OUT OF THE WATER, YOU’RE GOING TO DROWN”….no relaxing book reading/sunbathing to be done when your children are amongst those waves trying to learn to surf, but at least at Polzeath it’s quite shallow and they can touch the ground for quite a long way out. This time I had no children with me, so whilst I naturally missed them, it was a little less stressful and much, much cheaper.
Either this seagull does what flamingoes do, or it’s one legged:-
The Nathan Outlaw tapas place in Port Isaac is great:-
St Tudy’s Inn, another restaurant was also delicious:-
Our time on Polzeath beach:-
Loved the shapes these children’s wetsuits made – like little anteaters:-
The house where we stayed – we celebrated with my first bottle of Rathfinny sparkling rose, from my friend’s vineyard. Delicious:-
St Enodoc Church in Trebetherick is the cutest church I’ve every seen, with a slightly bent tower. Surrounded by a golf course, it contains the gravel of the former poet laureate, John Betjeman and built in the 12th Century:-
The requisite Cornish cream tea, in St Enodoc’s hotel, whereby the scones looked more like hamburgers than the usual shape, but delicious nevertheless:-
Padstow is very pretty and buzzy and we ate at the Rick Stein cafe which was delicious and inexpensive:-
Port Isaac:-
Doc Martin’s teeny front door in Port Isaac and me looking particularly summery:-
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