Wet shave

I had a fairly nasty start to the day, largely, I suspect, because my body was just not ready to he back in the smoke. Everything seemed crass and incredibly loud. The lorries trundling up the Archway Road sounded like heavy artillery being fired in the height of battle, and even the air conditioning unit in the shop below - a sound I've become almost deadened to - was suddenly the noise of a Boeing jet engine in the midst of a bird strike! I suddenly realised how much sound us city dwellers manage to filter out, largely out of complete necessity. I'll be used to it in a couple of days, of course, and silence will be no more pleasant than the tinnitus it brings!

To compound my bad mood, I had hoped to very speedily finish the song arrangement from Brass I'd dipped in and out of throughout the holiday, but there was a lot more to do than I'd realised and, at about mid day, I had a 1990's style computer crash which effectively meant I'd lost a morning's work.

My plan to start (and finish) another song vanished into cyber space and I felt considerably rattier than I'm sure I would have done had I not just returned from a lovely holiday.

It struck me that my only real hope was to ease myself into the day by somehow pretending I was still on holiday, so took myself to Camden Town for some male grooming.

On the tube on the way there I felt the bloke two seats along prodding my arm. He pointed at the open computer on my lap and grinned a toothless grin; "is that music?" He asked. I nodded and in the process opened up a conversation about piano playing. "Do you have your grade eight?" He asked. I felt sad. He seemed lonely.

It did, however, remind me that there's a certain sort of conversation a musician has to put up with which results from people feeling the need to proudly tell you the musical vocabulary they've accumulated over the years. So often when I tell people I'm a composer, they say things like "so you know a crotchet from a quaver then? Ha ha ha." Or more bizarrely, they simply list off the musical terms they know. Out of context, "crescendo, adagio, treble clef..."

I've no idea why people do it. It's the equivalent of me finding out someone's a lawyer and saying, "litigation, mediation, articles!" Nathan tells me that when people see him knitting, they invariably say, "knit one, purl one, drop one..." so I guess it's not just musicians!

Anyway, I took myself to a barber in Camden Town, and, for a hugely reasonable £23, had my hair cut and face wet shaved. I was given the full works: hot towels, warm shaving foam, a facial massage, all kinds of lotions and potions. Right at the end, he took a little metal stick out of his draw with a fabric swab attached to the end which he proceeded to dip into Paraffin. He then set fire to it and rubbed the flame all over my ears to burn off excess hair. It was fairly extraordinary. And a bit scary!

I have to say, there is something rather wonderful about having a wet shave with a cut throat razor, delivered by a stranger. Firstly, you're forced to entirely place your trust in someone else's hands, which is, I think, rather good for control freaks like me, but it's also an incredibly intimate, highly sensual experience which simultaneously feels extraordinarily masculine. It's the one bit of male grooming which is acceptable for those whose bodies buzz with testosterone. I don't think a straight male Afghani bloke would give another man a tender facial massage under any other circumstance!

The barber said my beard was "challenging". Apparently the hairs all grow in different directions. I probably could have guessed as much. Shaving's always been quite an event for me!

I went into town to meet Nathan for a late lunch. We ate at Stockpot on Old Compton Street, before I returned home to finish my arrangement and make a cursory start on the next one.

Coastal paths

We slept in the garage at the cottage last night on account of having been locked out of our digs. I say garage: We were actually in a dusty old games room attached to the garage, which, luckily, had a couple of zed-beds in it. Thank God nobody had thought to lock it, so we didn't have to wake anyone up to get the key.

We slept rather badly; the beds were a bit springy, I'm not very good at sleeping in a sleeping bag, and, because the morgue-like room had given me the heeby-jeebies when we first entered it at the start of the week, I felt rather uneasy throughout the night. To make matters a little worse, we kept hearing the garage door rattling as though someone were trying to get in. At one stage we actually both called out, utterly convinced that there was someone there. I can only assume it was the wind. Whatever it was freaked me out royally!

Anyway, the morning eventually arrived and Iain woke us up with a lovely cup of tea, and news that there were plans to go for a long walk. He knew it was our last day in Wales, had read in my blog that we weren't at the lodgings and wanted to know if we were joining the group for the day before heading back to London. The weather was expected to be fine and dry. It was a no-brainier. We leapt out of bed...

We drove back to the lodgings to collect suitcases from our room and were met by a hugely apologetic proprietress, who quite rightly waived the cost of the room for the night and offered us a free breakfast, which we thought was a rather sweet gesture despite declining. Her abject horror at what had happened was enough for us not to want to give her a hard time, so we had a quick bath and went on our merry way.

We took the coastal footpath from the cottage and walked around Dinas Head. It was a seven mile round trip which introduced us to views so beautiful they almost made me weep. Pembrokeshire is uniquely green; a product of a warm, wet climate, one assumes. The footpaths, which snake up and down the cliffs, are sometimes enclosed entirely by hedgerows of gorse and then, a few meters later, become entirely open to the elements with vertigo-inducing drops to the rocks below which make ones legs feel all fizzy and ones testicles ascend into ones stomach!

We stopped off at a beautiful cove where a tiny ruined chapel sits within an ancient graveyard, beside a smattering of houses and a little sandy beach. A few entrepreneurial locals had set up little trestle tables in the graveyard selling buckets and spades and refreshments, which I later realised was something to do with some kind of sea race or regatta. As we passed the cove on the way back, we could hear a bloke on a tannoy system sounding a little like one of those people who only exist on this planet to speak incoherently into PA systems at village fetes! I was somewhat disappointed to conclude that the trestle tables were probably not a permanent part of that particular cove on sunny days. I reckon if I lived somewhere like that - just like the man we met in LA who lives under the Hollywood sign and sells cans of drinks to grateful passing hikers - I might be tempted to set up a little refreshment stall in my front garden!

We walked up onto the headland, passing over black streams which gushed through dark green gullies, with the vaguely sulphurous smell of fern never far from our nostrils. The sea, a tapestry of aquamarine, ice blues, mint greens and indigos glistened in the brilliant sunlight. The sky was never anything but pure cornflower blue. We could have been walking above the Mediterranean...

Our ramble took us to a second beach at the other end of Dinas Head, where we sat in a pub and ate tomato soup on picnic benches so weather-worn and knackered that the slats which formed the table part kept coming loose, shooting up and knocking huge quantities of food into the air! The poor old duffer on the bench behind was deposited onto the floor when the seat of his bench snapped in two as he sat down on it. His mate was unsympathetic in a typically Welsh manner as he rolled around like a giant beetle on its back: "you fat old bugger!"

We walked back to the cottage. Little Lily requested ABBA songs, so we ambled along, singing every song she could think of by the band. This occupied a good half an hour.

We got back to the cottage, had a quick cup of tea, and, well that was that, really. Our last view of the cottage was of Little Lily and Tanya waving us away, silhouetted by the late afternoon sunshine, whilst the rest of our friends, in bathing and wet suits, disappeared through the garden gate on their way down to the beach. Their holiday will continue for another day or so, but we return to London with heavy, yet hugely relaxed hearts, terribly grateful to Sam for sharing the knowledge of this house with us all and finding us a very specific location for a very special holiday...

Locked out

I woke up with small pieces of flint from yesterday's quarry attached to my legs, which was a curious sensation. Even after I'd showered, I was still finding little pieces of Flint attached to my legs, and when I pulled the covers of the bed back, there were scores of little black pieces of rock on the white sheets. That'll teach me for swimming in a quarry!

We went to St David's today, which, with a population of 1,797, is by far the smallest city in the UK. St David's is actually no bigger than a village. Its city status comes on account of its cathedral, a beautiful 13th Century building with some of the most stunning ceilings I've ever seen. Little William and I went and lay on our backs on the stone floor staring up, counting bosses, wooden panels and shields. It was perhaps a somewhat eccentric act, and a few mothers rather passive-aggressively pointedly told their children to make sure they didn't trip over on us, but we didn't care. It was great fun!

We took the kids up into a library in one of the cathedral's towers, which had books which everyone could take off the shelves and read. Despite there being plenty of books for children on the shelves, Will selected one about Medieval art and sat in a corner very happily reading it for ten minutes. The librarian, a suitably eccentric older woman, showed us a page of manuscript she'd found shoved inside a book which turned out to be 800 years old. As old as the cathedral. It felt very strange to be holding it.

We came home and spent the afternoon doing jigsaws whilst the rain lashed down outside. There was a moment... just a brief moment... when cabin fever struck and the kids got over excited. Sam retired to his room, I retired under a pair of headphones and Nathan ran knitting classes.

We made cakes and bread for tea, in honour of the first episode of this year's Great British Bake Off, which we watched en masse, the first telly any of us had seen in the cottage for the entire holiday. That's surely the sign of a great vacation!

Meriel ran a literary quiz which lasted well into the evening before a smaller group of us took ourselves down to the beach and went skinny dipping in the bible black water. It was a genuinely wonderful moment. We carried torches and lanterns down to the water's edge, which shone across the sea, casting weird, eerie reflections on the surface of the water. Periodically, a white, ghostly face would swim through a shaft of light. Great arcs of light shot up into the night sky in crazy directions and, when it started raining very lightly, it almost felt as though we were underneath a shower of sliver coins.

When we returned to our clothes, hundreds of tiny sand flies were dancing in the light from our torches which was a somewhat grotesque, yet curiously beautiful sight. We stumbled back up the hill, avoiding snails and worms and all sorts of other slimy creatures who only appear when it rains, and returned to our jigsaw whilst drinking hot toddies. It was 2.30am by the time we'd returned to our B. So late, in fact, that all the street lamps had been turned off in Newport.

Horrifyingly we'd been locked out of our lodgings. Who knows how or why that managed to happen. We simply couldn't get in, so we're forced to return to the cottage, and sleep in the games room. Not the happiest end to our final night in Newport but I guess these things happen.

Blue Lagoon

We went to Fishguard this morning, a charming little market town which clings to a series of cliffs and hillsides. It's actually the location of the last invasion in Britain by the French; an event which happened in 1797. By all accounts it didn't go too well for the invaders. Within two days they'd surrendered unilaterally. The Welsh, we're told, fought viscously. One Jemima Nicholas single-handedly captured twelve French soldiers, and women were also responsible for a brilliant act of subterfuge when they paraded around a hillock dressed as male soldiers and convinced the French that the British army was much larger than they'd initially calculated.

There's a brilliant Bayeux-style tapestry in the town library which local residents sewed in 1997 to celebrate the event's 200th anniversary.

I managed to hide two little toy snakes underneath the tapestry as part of the game I've been playing with the two girls. They knew they were looking for snakes in the shape of the number seven, and created a little rhyme in order to summon them...

"Seven snakes in the tapestry
One plus two plus one plus three
These are the words which hold the key
To set the snakes in the tapestry free!"

We came home for a late lunch before heading back along the coast, past Fishguard, and onto the most remarkable little spot called The Blue Lagoon, an old slate quarry which is breeched by the sea at high tide. At low tide an incredibly deep and impossibly jade-coloured lake is left in its wake which has become immensely popular with cliff divers, who jump from a couple of natural platforms created by an old industrial building on the edge of the quarry.

The place is so so beautiful. The slate cliffs which surround it are a fusion of blacks, greys, rusty oranges, browns and whites. It's been pretty awful squally weather today, but as we sat on the flinty beach, the sun suddenly burst through and everything started glowing majestically. I braved the freezing water for a swim. It was like being attacked by a thousand needles to the extent that my arms started going into spasm and my heart began to thump like crazy in my mouth. At one stage I thought my body was actually shutting down, but it was so so worth it. Nathan, Meriel, Sam and I swam to the mouth of the quarry and stared out through a tunnel of slate columns to the sea where the waves were crashing and bursting like foaming fountains illuminated like a million sequins by the late afternoon sunlight. It was magical beyond words and well worth coming close to death to witness!

Emerging from the water was like stepping onto a tropical beach, such was the coldness of the water in relation to the outside air. Drying myself with a towel, however, was like rubbing myself with sand paper.

As we left the beach, the heavens opened once again and we drove back to the cottage through driving rain, which, rather brilliantly, stopped when we got back to the house. This mad West-Walean weather can work rather well!

The B

We completed our jigsaw last night at midnight. Raily, Nathan and I became the perfect team, sparring off each other, getting more and more obsessive and excited as the hours lengthened.

Nathan and I are actually staying down the road from everyone else in a local B and B, which shall henceforth be known simply as a "B" as breakfast is (perplexingly) not included. We're in the village of Newport itself, which is surprisingly chi-chi and fancy for this part of the world. They have whole food shops here, farmers markets and fancy cafes. It's like being in Stoke Newington with plenty of sea air and no lesbians.
We went to Newport Beach this morning which is miles out of the village and like some terrible wind tunnel with dreadful grey sand. Going to a freezing cold beach to eat a picnic whilst shivering and huddling under blankets is such a typically English past time. Sam assured us that there were lovely rock pools further along the beach, but by the time all of us were assembled, we'd sort of had enough and decided to retire back to the cottage, and our much more beautiful sheltered beach, which is so empty and inaccessible to anyone but the cluster of houses at the top of the cliff that it feels like our own private beach. 

I spent most of the afternoon with Tanya's daughter, Lily, searching for pieces of sea glass, those little worn down flecks of glass of all colours which you seem to find on certain beaches. We colour-categorised our hoard, defining them as crystals, emeralds, blue bottles and cola bottles...

It started raining quite heavily, so we made a beeline for the cottage, and sat with the kids doing another jigsaw. This one was a much easier 500 piece puzzle of a fairground which we polished off in a couple of hours.

By the time we'd finished, the sun was shining again and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. There's a saying round here that if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes...

We ate our tea out on the terrace again, all sixteen of us eating al fresco sitting on a long table with the sea just over our shoulders and the sun beating down. Once again we were treated to a little play - this time a musical - performed by the kids. I think it was about a sea monster. It was all a little Bauhaus for my taste. Sam pointed out that the songs were like the Glee cast performing songs by Berio! Hugely surreal.
We watched the sun setting behind the cliff opposite, hoping for a "green ray," a phenomenon I've not heard of. Apparently the last flash of sunlight as the sun sets can sometimes appear green in colour, and this is something which is apparently considered very lucky. No such luck for us tonight, although I'd consider sitting on a terrace over looking a bay whilst eating food with a group of wonderful people plenty lucky enough.
Meriel and Iain actually went swimming in the dark tonight. When they returned I felt quite envious... But we'd started another jigsaw. This one was a thousand-piecer of Waterloo Station in 1948 which Tanya, Paul, Raily, Nathan, Iain and I stayed up until midnight making a good start upon before we skedaddled back to our B. Night night! 

Jigsaw puzzles

We're doing a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the world on the sitting room table. It's addictive. We've done all the land masses and are now struggling to get all those silly islands in Micronesia sorted out. It's become an obsession. There are currently six of us trying to cram wrong-shaped pieces into wrong-shaped holes whilst screaming with frustration. 

This house is stunning. It sits on a cliff top surrounded by heathland and woods. There's a tiny bay below us with a pebble beach. The tide goes out really far. At one point Raily was jumping off a rock into the sea, which later in the day was in the middle of a beach surrounded by a group of picnickers. 

We took a longer route down the ravine to the beach after lunch and stumbled upon the most beautiful waterfall which was cascading over a moss-covered cliff. It was like some kind of fern-filled Hawaiian grotto. The most capable Capability Brown would have struggled to create something so perfect! But then again, this landscape was created by dragons. 

Getting to the cottage by car involves a rather long and bumpy trip along a dirt track. There's a field entirely filled with horses on one side, which is a somewhat unusual sight. Even more usually, the field on the other side of the track is always full of crows. Hundreds of them. It's a bit sinister if I'm honest! 

I've set up a long-form treasure quest for two of the little girls in our number,  whose task is to follow clues to locate ten little tiny toy animals who have come all the way to Wales to visit them. It's been great fun to watch their faces light up when another clue turns up. Most of the clues are written in chalk. It's great fun. 

But I'm returning to the jigsaw now. MUST COMPLETE BEFORE BED! 

Ah! Wales

We’re in Wales. More precisely, we’re in the most Western part of Southern Wales, in the midst of the Pembrokeshire National Park, somewhere between Fishguard and the Newport that isn’t the Newport near Cardiff. This is Welsh Wales. The Wild West… 

We drove here, with Sam and Matt and a shed load of baggage crammed into our car. The weather was beautiful in London. By the time we’d reached the Severn Bridge, it was looking overcast, and as we passed the “Croeso Y Cwmru” sign, it started to rain. Welcome to Wales indeed! 

Wales isn’t just the Land of My Fathers, it’s the land of MY father, so I always feel like I’m coming home when I enter its green, green embrace. And of course the landscape is green because it gets well-watered. Hence the rain. But my Dad tells me the weather in these parts doesn’t stick around for very long - whatever it is - and that has certainly been our experience so far. 

We stopped in Swansea for lunch. Everyone is exceptionally friendly in Swansea… and inquisitive. They’ll basically talk to anyone - particularly those they don’t recognise. We went around Tesco buying food for the house we’re staying in, and must have talked to five people. One woman came up to us to talk about garlic, and a young lad outside wanted to know all about London. He was an outsider himself, he said… Turns out he was from the Rhondda!  He was part of a group of teenaged lads who were talking to each other in the most peculiar blend of Welsh and heavily accented English. They told me they were off to play rugby on the beach. They were wearing the wrong clothes for rugby, and it’s the wrong time of year for the game, but they assured me they were off to play a match. Maybe there’s a new sport called beach rugby? 

Swansea is covered in wild flowers. It’s obviously some kind of initiative by Neath Borough council because all of the verges by the sides of every major road are covered in the most amazing riot of colour… So, so beautiful. Bravo Neath County Council. (I may have made that up. It might be a Swansea City Council initiative. Is Swansea even in the borough of Neath?)

It seemed to take forever to reach our little cottage. We’re staying here with a bunch of university friends. Tanya, Raily, Mez, Hils and their associated loved ones, plus, of course, Sam and Matt. We holiday together every year, but this is the first time we haven’t ended up on a campsite. (Although, Nathan and I have latterly ditched the tents and opted for the relative luxury of bed and breakfasts.)

The cottage is a Sam and Matt find. They stayed here two years ago and raved about it in a most infectious way. So here we are, and it’s absolutely stunning. We had our tea on a terrace overlooking the beach, which is 100 meters below us. I genuinely had to keep pinching myself just to take in the glorious view. As the light faded, the sea appeared to get lighter in colour until one could almost imagine it being made of milk. We went down to the water’s edge, out of a gate in the garden and down a magical set of natural steps through a little wooded area. It’s all rather Famous Five, and I think the kids with us are going to have the most incredible time. We walked along the water’s edge and skimmed pieces of slate on the calm water. 

I blinkin’ love Wales…