Reflecting

Listen Now

Time is a tricksy thing and this place has tested the bounds of it. We’ve stretched it and shaped it and made it our own. We’ve learned to slow it down. 

While we’ve been here, autumn has turned into winter. We all wound the clocks back and woke up to dark mornings and afternoons. It felt hardly like the end of summer when we got here and last night, we celebrated the shortest day of the year, Penzance-style. Three whole long-short months have passed. 

It’s been long enough that we’ve had sunny days, clear skies and Northern Lights, building into stormy winds and days of horizontal rain. And plenty else in between.

Sunset over Gunnard's Head, Zennor

Our relationship especially has grown into the space we’ve made for it. Deliciously slow cooking on a diet of long walks and morning swims, meals made and shared at the table. There’s been time for Scrabble, and quietness and cuddling on the sofa because there’s nowhere else to be. It’s been long enough to create routines. Long enough that we can feel ‘this is how we do things’. And it is. Long enough for the dog to know when I pick up the keys with a cup of tea in my hand that we’re going to the summer house studio. This is what happens when it’s just us. What shall we do today? Instead of what have we got to do today that will take us apart and have us pass the time for the sake of something or someone else instead of for ourselves?

The longest time has passed in which I haven’t seen my daughter. Eight weeks of phone calls and a slightly restless feeling that grows with distance and the passing of time until she’s here, and she’s fine, and we haven’t missed anything at all with a daily phone call but it seemed so long, at the time.

I’ve kept a daily diary this year, my first whole year. Nothing special, just a list really, a record of the last twelve months. Maybe the miles we walked, or something remarkable we ate. Nothing deep. At the start of the year, and again at the beginning of each month, the diary invites the setting of targets. Ambition has turned slowly into realism, into kindness and self-care. The gentle lowering of expectation and a dawning realisation that these goals are self-imposed. They shouldn’t hurt. Celebrate, congratulate, enjoy. Act big by thinking small. 

Plans for the rest of the year have seemed far in the distant future. And physically far away from here. 

Until, with a steady creep, at this edge of our stay, then this week, and then suddenly, today, we’re packing up and moving on. Heading from strong north-westerly storm winds across the moor, into a whirlwind of ‘events’. Christmas, at least twice over, catching up, seeing in the new year, the start of a new term, January 2025. 

Most important of all, is to pack and bring with us, this whole new toolkit we’ve found for space-making, time-bending, self-caring slowness-making. 

Merry Christmas all. Whatever that means for you, maybe you can find a quiet moment to yourself. Take your time, look around, and breathe. May your time be yours to control, even if only for a moment.

Feeling festive in Mousehole

I’ll be back in 2025 writing from the comparatively vast metropolis that is St. Ives! 

Will having a local bookshop land me in crippling debt? How will I get anything done with the sea on my doorstep to watch? Will the choice of bars and restaurants prove one temptation too far?

Or will I be running back to the hills for quiet and calm?

I guess we’ll see.  

Beccy watching the waves & Elvis, who is not too sure about the "Big Wet", in Trevaunance Cove