Yesterday when we hopped on the bus to Looe the driver advised us if we're going more than a couple of miles buying an all day rover ticket would be the cheaper option. It seemed we were eligible for a 50% discount or something, I suppose it's an age thing, we have finally got used to polite teenagers in Spain and Italy offering us their seats, but have not gone as far as applying of a pensioners bus pass. I think we are both in denial about getting old. Nevertheless, we were happy to benefit from the cheaper fare, £9.00 return for both to of us Polperro seemed like a good deal, especially as the tickets could have taken us anywhere in West Cornwall.
As for the village itself, the place is almost painfully cute; inevitablity its perfection could only be glimpsed through a scrum of fellow tourists. That the place is full of trashy gift shop is an indication that the place gets over-run summer long. Of course I won't remember it this way as like everyone else I sought a brief gap in crowd to frame a few shots that gave the impression of quaintness, peace and tranquillity.
The east side of the harbour beyond the museum seemed less crowded. A narrow street wound upwards towards the coast path.
From a distance Polperro achieved the stereotype promised on postcards. So what did we do? Snapped away on our phones to as if impelled to conform to some pre-ordained image. Such is the power of visual culture, why TikTok and Instagram prevail over Facebook, and why every Pope and despot sought the best artists to realise their propaganda.
It would have been interesting to walk further along the path. It is lovely, a riot of flowers framing the spectacular view of the wild coast.
The couple camping next to us had taken the bus here, then walked back to Looe, about five miles I think. At the moment even smallish hikes are out of the question as the knee sprain that Gill suffered in Sicily back in 2015 has flared-up again. She phoned recently for an appointment with a physiotherapist. There is a three week waiting list just to get one to contact you for a remote 'triage call'. What the pandemic has revealed is not a health system under strain but one that is semi-disfunctional caused by decades of ill-thought out reform and underfunding resulting from Osborne's austerity measures. It is inconvenient rather than life threatening, but that is not going to be the case for people in the queue for a scan or an appointment with an oncologist.
Next day we headed homeward planning to break the journey with an overnight stop near Great Malvern. We made good progress to begin with until we joined a long queue at the Tamar Bridge toll booths. From then on, for the next 180 miles the traffic was gloopy as treakle or at a complete standstill. It was early evening before we reached the site in Worcestershire. The result, I slept badly with random thoughts and images tumbling through my mind.
I suppose most people are assailed by ear-worms, inexorable snippets of songs on endless repeat. Because of the amount of driving I've done over the last seven years I suffer from a visual equivalent, 'sight-worms' - brief, momentary flashbacks of random windscreen views. Top recurrent flashbacks of the moment all feature the slight judder and cutlery jangle you get as the van's rear wheels bump off a ferry's front ramp, the windscreen flicks from vehicle-deck gloom to blinding white light as you drive into the chaos of some ramshackle southern port - Bastia, Patras, Messina, Portoferraio, just running the names through my mind is pleasurable, a calming mantra, an addictive koan.
What this tells me is I feel trapped and oppressed right now, not inconvenienced or irritated by being unable to travel. It's not a hobby, more a psychological imperative, my happy place, everything else, just the boring bits in-between.
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