NOTHING DOING IN DARZET : April 2015 Journey

 6th April, '15

On the Downs, beyond Bowleaze, ascend first 'height', sit on bench (inscription : IN MEMORY OF BILL FROST WHO LOVED THE SEA). Man comes up from the beach/holiday-camp path. I comment that the path is further inland every year-- "maybe not every year but since I first came here" -- "yes" he says, "& that's what it'll keep doing, it's the way it was made!" -- Indeed --the geological truth spares vain handwringing -- first cause of erosion is God!

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"MAN WHO LOVED THE SEA" --looking at it, --like me sat here? --sailing on it? --fishing? Everything connected with it --the sea, the sea --local to his boots or in retirement in Dorset, up onto the Downs, this place, for sweet reverie, all weathers, can suppose jumpers, coats, or like today kissed by sun, combed by breeze. "WHO LOVED THE SEA" --at the end what else to say? (Poet take note, all verbiage lost, poem like carved last words, resonant, constant.)

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Other day as we approached The Old Rooms on the harbour, B. nudged me to look at a man hunched over a courtyard table --It's --Yes, Sir G! --no longer resplendently His Honour's familiar self --I mean, jacket & shirt to hang a crevat on, an aura around the courtly, portly, golightly authority, permanent lunch-time feature at the Dorset Brewers, oh the golden age one begins to reclaim with fat jar of the Reverend James this Easter Monday mid-afternoon when 'heatwave' came to town! No, he was sunken, another kind of erosion, with awful short-in-the-leg troos & white socks filling the gap, Falstaff's demise, o the pity of it.

Tall-masts glide through the Harbour --from my chair-less stand only have partial view of the Harbour, but evidently the Bridge is up, open, like eyes & mouths of Easter visitors, cameras primed for several-times daily Weymouth event...



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THE PROPERTY REPORT


Easton Square, Portland. Walking around with B's prospect[u]s in mind and think this section of the island has a distinctive (that is non-suburban) feel & look... And a short bus-ride down the hill & you have the Cove & yours truly sitting at bench at wall overlooking Chesil in full earshot of that incredible advance & retreat of the sea, --thrust & crash, rush & smashing suck as the long wave breaks along the beach-mile of pebbles, --that phrase about shells singing the ocean pops into my head --echo deep-&-wide shattering boom as though, like the Southern Ocean at Port Campbell in South-west Victoria, undermining the cliff itself, --like ocean tunneling beneath the limestone --echo upon echo, echo within echo within echo--


Fishermen lying on the stones, rod & line upended, looking after the business I'm listening to--

Middle-distance, horizon half a thumb further, three black dots. Not flat-bottomed, chap corrected me another day, double-ended--

Complaining about the service he received, the Portland surfer says he was doin nuthin more than payin their wages, --I'm good for five pints but at three pounds eighty a pint you deserve better...
(Mate passing by asked by girlfriend of the posse if he's working? Who works more than 2 or 3 hours a day? he says, especially on a day like this...)

Ah --the Cove's Adnams goes down very smoothly --cool temp, refreshing, Old Thumper-ish, that is the darkest an ale will be before shape-changing into stout...

Oh my --on such a day --But is Portland all of that? --on its day closest thing between Lands End & Dover to St Ives magic --but starved of sun perhaps its society's brought down to grey stone, grey outlook, grey bottom-line? Add winter, bleak house minus shelf of anything resembling O'Brien sisters' Belleek booty (but they were the beauties sir, even if I say so myself, oh doze photies from their ancestral journey way way back in me funny famleys' album, treasured yet in both hemispheres)...

'On its day' is docile, fait accompli --Thing is, to make of it what you will --thus vision --your creation, the inner compulsion...


[April 15, 2015]



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ABBOTSBURY


In the quintessential English churchyard at St Nicholas's, Abbotsbury, with St Catherine's Chapel on the Mount in direct view's first quadrant from where I'm sitting, relaxing on solid bench. An afternoon with the Lord, tasting country village Anglicanism again, and the Summer's day that Spring's extraordinarily produced --bumble & honey bees around shrubs & flowers, and the shiveringly sweet scents of Easter Lillies in large vase in the porch, filling nostril. What to say? North-country tourists : "What a beautiful little village" "Doing a nice sketch are you?" "No!"


(April 15/17, 2015)



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Bridport Report



Off to meet David Miller for 2pm at The Bull in Bridport. Excitement of reconnecting after decades and only because the more recent Australian ex-pat Laurie Duggan let me know of D M's imminent move to Dorset. Given continuing self-doubt regarding my own patrimony, I set out as The Chronicler or, short of that exalted role, The Journalist (that is, regional roundsman aka rat-bag & rouse-about). (Looking out of the X53's top deck across at The Fleet on Chesil Beach as we pass Australia Road! Mightnt that say it all?)

Winding road to Portesham & Abbotsbury is one of Dorset's joys. (Victoria Inn's free house, a minor spell.) Even the coast-side field of rape-seed flashes as the light pierces the fine mist. Have to be a curmudgeon not to smile in return. How decline that bright yellow summoning? (Possum House? Come on!) Since 1987, Portesham, St Catherine's Mount, Abbotsbury village --can now say mine (like the gout claims an unfortunate's big toe, like the sea-mist drifting over claims the ridge before the descent to Swyre)? Mine, oh mine...

The Three Horseshoes, Burton Bradstock, --blackthorn snowing in littlest breeze, brother Bernard's proud reckoning of the village in his inventory, his own really-me awakened every time the X53 barrels through the narrow road, bargaining with the twist & turn like deeply felt memory.

Ahead of the meeting, mist & rain heavy about the bus, fog beyond the steamed-up windows.


[April 24th' 15]




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[previously published as "Notes" on Facebook]