I forgot to update this for a little while, I guess that’s what happens when another year ticks over and I hit the ripe old age of thirty-two twenty-twelve. So what’s happened in my absence? A few things as it happens.
For my birthday I had a couple of treats, the first being on the Friday before. We got in the car and I had to put an unknown postcode in the satnav and follow it. Ninety minutes later and I was sat in the grounds of Kitley House just outside of Plymouth, although I still wasn’t sure why. We had a lovely room right up in the top of the building, looking out over the gardens. Early in the evening I got ‘poshed up’ in a decent jacket and went down for drinks and dinner and it turned out to be a Murder Mystery dinner! It’s no secret I’m a fan of mystery, so this was just perfect for me. We had cocktails with the cast (an outside group ran the evening and played the roles) and after a few drinks everyone loosened up and got into the spirit of things. It was an awesome evening, soured only by getting in the car the next morning to find one of my tyres as flat as a pancake. An hour later and thirty quid lighter I was back in sunny Cornwall.
The other main gift I had was an hour in a float tank. If you’ve never seen one before, it’s like a big coccoon, half space-age and half ‘Mork from Ork’. After stripping off and clambering in you find yourself in ten inches of warm water, which is a really heady solution of epsom salts. The idea is that you float in water the same temperature as your body, which gives the impression of floating in mid-air. If you close the lid and turn the internal lights off it’s almost total sensory deprivation. The only thing you’re really aware of is the ‘music’ which is more some kind of mix of muted notes and whalesong, which is played through the water. For the first quarter of an hour or so you’re very aware that you’re just floating naked in a big plastic egg, but once you get the hang of relaxing fully (which is much harder than it sounds) the time just slips away. I didn’t fall asleep – just! – but they say an hours float is the equivalent of eight hours sleep, and I can well believe it. For the rest of the day I was a mental mess, barely capable of completing a sentence, but I slept like the dead that night and felt fantastic the next day. I’d recommend it to anyone having trouble sleeping or with a lot of aches or stress, it’s a real tonic.
Operation House is still going well, in the last four weeks we’ve got from a large concrete slab in the mud, to walls, windows, doors, roof trusses and a first floor. There are pictures to come once I get around to uploading them too. As I write this the roof of the old building is being torn off, and the new one being apexed into it. The kitchen arrives today, the appliances tomorrow, and the gas is due to go in this week too if memory serves. Although I hate to jinx it, I’m starting to think that I’ll be in before the end of July now. If anyone up there is watching, please keep this weather up for another few weeks.
And while on the subject of good weather, I finished off the week in fine style. There was an option on Saturday evening of going to St Ives for the Camra Beer Festival, but after a heavy session the previous night involving beer, tequila (oh so much tequila) and very loud metal music, I really wasn’t feeling like alcohol again. So instead a few of us headed out to the beach with some disposable barbecues (one of which I managed to drop on my toes, cutting and bruising them) to eat some grilled meat and watch the sun go down. Glorious.
Godrevy beach at sunset