Rather like Wales but further south and therefore a bit warmer, Cornwall has its very own special kind of rain – like a tiny hole in a leaky hose it can soak you through in minutes and you never know where it’s coming from. When we woke up yesterday morning rain was beading up and running down the campervan windows, and just beyond was an impenetrable sea-mist. We turned as always to the Met Office to lift our mood but drew a blank. They referred to a “wobbly front” which is seemingly weaving a narrow band of misery across Roseland and northeast passing anywhere else we might think of escaping to. We made a cup of tea and sat in bed looking at the window. Driving home seemed, and remained a good option throughout the morning so we dried out the groundsheet, emptied the cludger, topped up the drinking water, blew up the tyres and packed away the table. Then we changed our minds (it was still drizzling) and I went down the field to take some macro photos of a plant that needed a closer look (see above) and suddenly for no reason at all we felt cheerful.
There’s an upside to rainy days in the campervan and that’s because it gives us an excuse to read books and do whatever we want without getting wet. So Madame read and I finally transformed my eccentric records into compliant form using AI and a staggering amount of memory and data. Then we ate pasta for the 73rd time this week and lived like students for a few hours. I absolutely love getting into a topic and hammering it. I can feel my brain straining and the synapses making novel networks until it feels like new life spreading through me; and no – apart from a syrupy and fiercely bitter espresso coffee first thing – (a holiday treat) – no recreational chemicals were involved.
Anyway I’m sharing this next photo because it’s a lot more representative of the tiny details that I spend most of my campervan time looking for. It’s just a bit of a leaf, but if you look very closely (the leaf is barely 5 mm long), you’ll see a line of tiny spike-like hairs and whether they point forwards or backwards is a determining feature between two species. The thing is that close-up examination with a hand lens reveals a truly exciting new perspective. Things that once looked identical look a bit different under 10x magnification; even more different under 20x and under a microscope oh wow! When I enlarge a macro photograph on a big screen when I get home I can see details that until the invention of the lens in the thirteenth century had probably never been seen by a human being. Many people tend to assume that science is driven by numbers and rooted in solid facts. In fact it’s driven by wonder and curiosity. It’s people with neither of those faculties who give science a bad name. We’re bedevilled by binaries and especially the ones that divide science from art. Mathematicians will willingly admit that theorems and solutions to old conundrums tend to come in inspirational flashes leaving all of the work to be done in proving the insight. They talk about “knowing” that a theorem is true because it’s beautiful or elegant. Philosophers agonise about mind/brain binaries when that may be an artificial division. Maybe they’re one and the same thing; mind, body, spirit, brain, even – dare I say – male, female, human and non human, native and foreigner. Fragments of a whole waiting to be reunited in a kinder vision – the kind of vision that a child is gifted with and is taught to forget.
When we were at Falmouth Art School the Head of Sculpture was something of a reclusive genius. Without ever exchanging more than a nod with him – (Ray Exworth was pretty terrifying) – he taught me one of my most important life lessons. He worked every day except (it was rumoured) Christmas day. Even as fashions were changing and it was taken as read that creativity was like a special gland that only some people had – so whatever they did would be art on account of the secret gland – Ray Exworth just worked. I fell upon Samuel Beckett’s words when I first read them ;
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Sitting here in the campervan lost in a sea mist, the ghostly voices whisper words of discouragement and I tell them to piss off and go bother someone else. There’s a blackbird singing outside and soon the voluble family of crows will start their day-long group chat. The last few remaining campers are all lingering in bed like us, waiting for the sun to appear. It may take a couple of days yet, after all this is Cornwall where it rains every day. Hotter fiercer weather is on the way and this holiday will soon fade as the solstice takes us towards autumn. We’ll revert to our late summer heatwave timetable on the allotment and rise early to weed and water.
Life really is very simple if we allow it. Take out greed, petty disputes, ambition, pride and fearfulness and that leaves space for pondering, for growing, harvesting, cooking and eating, loving and allowing ourselves to be loved, and following our curiosity and wonder wherever it might take us and inviting those discoveries to share our lives and help us to fail better.
