I wake up this morning feeling better than I’d normally expect after so much food and drink – and after going to bed too early, and on too full a stomach. But I’ve had a strange dream …..
I find myself attending some kind of event – possibly at the college where I used to teach. One of the women has more of the air of an investigative journalist than a teacher however. A gigolo-like man with an Australian accent appears, offering his services as a photographer. The woman avails herself of this service, supposedly in her capacity as a journalist. She has to undress. The man oils up her body, taking his own clothes off too as he snaps away, visibly aroused. The woman describes the experience as empowering or some such word, but I don’t buy it. She knows she has a good body and just wants to show it off, I think. This voyeurism then turns a tad gross when the woman’s little dog starts to fellate the photographer. I can only think of its glistening canine teeth at this point. Afterwards I find myself sitting with all these so-called teachers around a big dinner table. By way of making conversation, one of the men asks the photographer if people would have accepted his career choice if he’d stayed in his small home town Down Under. He laughs at the very idea. Of course not! he says. So that’s why you’ve come over here! I blurt out in a loud and confident voice. Everybody at the tables laughs and I bask for a moment in their appreciation of my humour, though I feel I’ve made a pretty weak joke – indeed not really a joke at all. Soon, however, it becomes apparent that my naivety and directness has amused them – and not my smart repartee. Some of them repeat my words mockingly, imitating my accent and tone of voice. I try to turn the situation round by getting in on the joke. Ee I’m so blunt me – I speak as I find! I say, sending myself up – but all to no avail. I wake up.
On the way down to breakfast I spot a Daily Mail on the corridor floor, just outside one of the rooms. The headline reads: The Tragic Price of Surrender. Why subject yourself to this when on holiday? My father always refused to buy a paper during our weeks at Llandudno or Scarborough in the 60s. I didn’t understand why not at the time, though I do now. Then I saw world events as a remote theatre for grown-ups. They didn’t touch me.
We eat our breakfast while surveying a Mediterranean scene of blue sky, water, boats, yachts, sunlit cottages, and villas on steep coastal slopes. A couple of days ago I saw a statement from the Cornish Tourist Board in one of the papers – telling people not come unless they’d pre-booked accommodation, on account of expected crowds and high Covid case numbers. I make a conscious choice to live in the world we can see from the hotel window for a day or two and to ignore this other world. I guess the other people I see around me in the dining room have made the same choice.
Tourists on a street in Fowey
When we return later in the day I order afternoon tea at the bar, and I hear two waitresses conversing in the accent of Louisa from Doc Martin. I’ve never really noticed the local Cornish accent on previous visits to the county.
At dinner my wife says she can see a man who looks like a younger version of the Jimmy Perez character in Shetland. I rotate my head discreetly and see an attractive young couple sitting at a nearby table – the Perez lookalike with a slender female companion. Most guests have gone into holiday sartorial mode, but these two have dressed up and made an effort. They know they’re a bit special and living a charmed life – as are we all to a lesser extent given the exceptional weather and glorious location. After dinner they pause on the stairs to take photographs of each other. When they see us enter the antique lift I fancy they make a mental note of another photo-opportunity.
Blackthorn 