last night’s shenanigans at http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/mardigras .
how’s that for speedy !
: cH
Yearly Archives: 2000
s u n c h a s i n g
13:07 friday 3 march – mundarrah street , clovelly , sydney
lots has happened since my last transmission . the main thing , though , is that i’ve shifted myself out to sydney , where i’m staying with my friend ross near clovelly beach for a few weeks .
some pics of the journey here , and of my new surroundings at
http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/sunchasing .
i’m continuing to access email via my usual addresses . whilst i’m in australia my phone number is + 61 415 985794 .
: cH
e x e u n t
07:58 saturday 12 february – steamship company office , hugh town quay , st mary’s
i sit here keeping out of the way of the frenetic ballet of forklifts on the quay outside . the gry came in yesterday afternoon with a full load . as i walked round to keith’s yard at porthmellon one of the steamship company directors commented to me that he’d never seen her so low in the water .
there are still stacks of flower boxes waiting on the quay to be loaded . i reckon she might be an hour later than the scheduled eight o’clock sailing time . no matter . i am content to sit and observe .
ian is phoning round the islands letting them know the lyonesse lady’s revised movements . there’s so much freight to despatch that she’ll have to take it in two runs .
the sky is grey and troubled but for the present the wind is not too severe . ian says it’ll rise over the next two hours .
everybody looks at me as if i’m mad when i tell them i’m going over on the gry . it has a reputation for being less than the most comfortable way to travel between here and penzance , particularly in rough weather . it has been known to take seven or eight hours in a heavy sea . but today there should be a following wind and swell , even if they are a little on the large side . people seem to regard it as some kind of ultimate sea-sickness endurance challenge . because she has a shallow drought and the wheelhouse is up forward the motion can be quite unpleasant . i’ve never succumbed in the past and rather hope to avoid it today .
ian’s just handed me the latest weather fax from the met office . southwest force 7 or gale force 8 with the strongest winds around the isles of scilly . sea state rough to very rough . hehe !
10:09 – gry maritha , a couple of miles out from scilly
i was eventually called at twenty past nine and hurried down the quay. i threw my bags onto the deck then grabbed the rail and heaved myself up . we slipped berth five minutes later . the sky has cleared . we are rolling about quite a bit .
10:19 in the last couple of minutes the ship’s motion has changed noticeably . we rise up and down each wave more steeply . the hull judders as we pitch into each one and there is a constant swish of spray breaking across the deck . my rucksack falls over in the cabin as i write .
10:26 i went out on deck and was confused to find the islands already out of sight to stern . then i poked my head over the rail , looked forward , and there they were . i blinked and checked again . but we were definitely heading * towards * the islands . no wonder i sensed a change of motion . i went down to the mess where the crew was variously sitting and lying with cups of tea . i enquired why we were going back . to drop me off , they teased , to answer some tricky questions for the police . but it turned out a fuel line had burst , spraying diesel all over the engine room .
this creates a slight problem for me . at two o’clock a van will be delivered to the quay at penzance for me to drive all my stuff up to my parents in gloucestershire . i need to be there to brandish my licence and sign some papers . i’ll phone and try to delay it .
12:05 we have just cast off from st mary’s quay for the second time today , having arrived three quarters of an hour ago . it felt earie to be returned like this having bade the islands farewell . the fuel line couldn’t be repaired and the decision has been made to proceed to penzance anyway . could be a slow journey .
13:58 no land in sight from the main deck , though there probably would be if i climbed up to the wheelhouse . we have passed out of signal range for my mobile phone . following a flurry of calls to the penzance harbour office , the steamship company office and the van rental company i am left with very little idea whether there will be a vehicle waiting for me , and whether its keys will be locked in an office somewhere .
there is nothing more i can do . the crew gave me some tea and a pack of biscuits . i shall settle down to some reading .
21:32 bodriggy street , hayle , cornwall
we docked at penzance at half past five , eight hours after the initial departure from st mary’s . by this time the uncertainty regarding the van had been augmented by the possibility that my belongings were not even aboard the gry . the crew could find no trace of my two palates and bicycle in the hold . my feeling of exasperation increased a couple more notches .
but some anxious communications with st mary’s drew assurance that they had been loaded into a big steel container on deck , though this would not be confirmed until we arrived in port .
the quay was crammed with articulated lorries waiting to collect shipments of flowers from the islands to deliver across the country . we drew in , lines were thrown , i leapt across with my rucksack , my powerbook , my camera , my saxophone . as the holds were being opened i scuttled up to the steamship company office , where i found a waiting van . but no keys in evidence . and nobody around . i returned to the quay to find the first of my palettes and my bicycle unloaded . encouraged by this i went back for another search of the parked van . the keys were tucked in the sun visor . i suddenly felt a lot lighter .
i drove down to the quay , tore the plastic wrap off my palettes and transferred everything into the van . three children emerged and started firing a stream of questions at me : where had i come from where was i going could they come with me what was in the boxes why were all the lorries on the quay what was it like to ride in a ship ?
i shouted my thanks to the master of the gry and made the twenty minute drive here , the home of my sister anna and her husband adam . i’ll continue up to my parents tomorrow afternoon . so what was the voyage like ? well the sea was big and ship rolled around a lot , but to be honest there was nothing very exciting about it and at no point did i feel even the tiniest bit queasy . almost a sense of anti-climax . but this was the right way for me to leave the islands .
: cH
w i n d o w
13:53 friday 11 february – rosevear , st agnes
my belongings went aboard the launch at one o’clock . the sea and wind have subsided but are expected to rise again this evening . the day is stolen from spring , doors and windows standing open in the sunlight , the birdsong , the gentle breeze .
i travel to st mary’s at half past three , spending the night at keith buchanan’s house . tomorrow i plan to make my way to penzance on the freighter .
my studio and bedroom are cleared and hoovered . most of my goodbyes are said . there is time to stuff what remains in my rucksack , return a couple of borrowed items , venture one last time to wingletang .
nick lishman sent me a battery for my camera on the launch . i don’t yet know whether my computer bits were in the mail .
these will probably be my last words from st agnes .
: cH
c o n t i n u a t i o n
11:51 thursday 10 february – rosevear , st agnes
still here !
the steamship company phoned at two yesterday afternoon to say that the launch would be coming at quarter past three . so i leapt on my bike and cycled off in search of johann . not in tamarisk , not at work rebuilding the old gig shed at conger , not engaged in boat maintenance down at periglis . by the time i’d completed my circuit of the island johann had heard about the launch and brought the trailer round to the lane beside the studio with two palette bins . he and piers already had most of my boxes loaded on .
we bumped down to the quay and waited . the swell coming into conger was quite alarming . from time to time a set of extra big waves would sweep over the end of the quay . johann commented that the conditions were almost identical to those in which the launch had almost been lost a couple of years previously whilst trying to unload here .
as we stood there the gry maritha left st mary’s , battled out into the roads and set off towards penzance . she’s a big sturdy vessel , built i believe for the ferocious norwegian coastal waters . but she was bucking and rolling all over the place . it was a little disheartening to see her heading off since all my boxes should have been in her hold . she won’t be back until saturday , and even that is uncertain .
then the launch , the lyonesse lady , hove into view round the garrison . twenty minutes later she rounded the cow and stood off the quay , waiting for the right moment to come alongside . by this time a smattering of islanders had gathered . a huge set came through , tossing her about dramatically . then her engines gunned and she darted to the quay . a line was thrown , caught and hooked to one of the iron rings , and the vessel was brought against the quay .
then everything moved very quickly . tristan hick and john bird jumped off , returning from a building job on st mary’s , a human chain formed and supplies were swiftly brought off , a sack of mail , then rhondda wraith and rosemary bird jumped on , both en route to engagements on the mainland , taking the mail with them . the skipper struggled to keep the boat’s position as it bounced around .
then the line was released and she was off . in these conditions there was absolutely no possibility of bringing the trailer down and winching my palettes aboard . so johann drove the trailer back up to rosevear and we unloaded everything back into the studio .
in the evening i went for a walk round half of the island , pausing here and there amongst the erupting plumes of spray , then went down to the turk’s head for ( presumably ) my final quiz night .
this morning i looked out of the window to an undiminished sea . the steamship company was uncertain whether the launch would be coming or not . johann and i loaded everything onto the trailer anyway . word came round that launch would be delayed so we left the trailer until we heard more . i settled down to breakfast . a little later mollie peacock stuck her head round the door to say that it was just coming in . damn ! i found johann and we set off . i biked ahead , but as i rounded the corner above the bar i saw the launch already departing . it had been another hit and run affair .
this time we have left the boxes on the trailer and it is parked in one of johann’s sheds . maybe tomorrow …
meanwhile it’s another beautiful bright day . yesterday it was mild enough to wander round outside in a t-shirt . i’m feeling a bit deprived , with no battery for my film camera and no way of transfering images from the digital one to my powerbook . the relevant adapters should have arrived on tuesday but there is still no sign of them .
yesterday marked the anniversary of my arrival .
: cH
d e l a y
10:30 wednesday 9 february – rosevear , st agnes
at this point i should be standing on the quay watching the lyonesse lady arrive , ready to winch my belongings aboard . instead i’m sitting in the house with everything piled around me .
i awoke to a beautiful sunny morning , the thrushes singing their hearts out … and the growl of a seriously big sea . at nine the launch was still expected to run . half an hour later it had been cancelled . the gry maritha , which runs freight between the islands and penzance , has just arrived at st mary’s but it will return to penzance as soon as it has unloaded . there is a possibility the sea will get worse tomorrow .
it seems the islands are not ready to release me quite yet . the weather has even denied me the use of my camera . i have plenty of film but the battery expired yesterday . one of a number of articles i intended to buy on st mary’s .
the next sailing of the gry isn’t until saturday , and the steamship company is sceptical if even that will be running .
i sit by the phone and wait .
: cH
e n d i n g
10:55 tuesday 8 february – rosevear , st agnes
i sit in my studio amidst half-packed boxes and scattered papers . sunlight cuts low through the windows and i can feel its heat on the back of my hands as i type . my belongings are booked on the launch to st mary’s at half past nine tomorrow morning , ready for thursday morning’s sailing to penzance .
so it is almost over , this enchanted year . but i find my heart is not heavy . i have drunk deep of this place .
these final weeks have been as busy as any . the first full meeting of the scillonia digital workshop’s membership , a session on the internet with the st agnes schoolchildren , the first steps towards a community website built by the people of st agnes , a flurry of correspondence . also i have a new computer , a macintosh powerbook . the big system which has been the mainstay of successive projects since 1995 , when it was acquired to develop the balkan odyssey cd-rom , has found its final home in the school here on st agnes . i found myself unexpectedly sentimental about parting with it . we have been through a lot together , shared many memories . but i’m glad to put it out to pasture here where it may continue to be of use a little longer .
the new one is a joy . i spent half an hour last week with keith in the sail loft designing a padded case for it in yellow and tan canvas . another step towards being able to work from anywhere . i leave for australia on the twenty-fourth , where i shall be for five weeks or so .
today is clear , bright and very windy . i had a packed morning planned on st mary’s . meetings with the duchy of cornwall and the education authority , a handful of other liaisons and ( most important ) a haircut . but it is too rough and the boats were cancelled . there will now be no chance to reschedule these engagements . the weather has had the final word . i wonder if it will calm down tomorrow ?
this inconvenience did have a silver lining . i got some terrific photos of the island’s farmers loading boxes of flowers onto the launch . the light is amazing .
: cH
l u n a c y
05:37 friday 21 january 2000 – rosevear , st agnes
i’ve just cycled back from wingletang where i’ve been watching the lunar eclipse . i feel like sleeping now so i’ll write later .
02:10 saturday
later , as usual , turns out to be quite a lot later !
i’ve just put together a little module : http://www.charlesarmtstrong.net/trawl
you might have noticed a more stable style of presentation and interface emerging over the last few weeks . for the time being i’ve moved away from the photo-journal approach i tried in october to focus on self-contained modules . people’s comments and feedback have been instrumental in shaping the current format . i know some people still find themselves opening scores of image windows , but at least this can be avoided with the next and previous image buttons . it’s always good to hear people’s thoughts .
last night i ( that is , thursday night ) i returned from a magnificent dinner at westward and settled into several hours’ work . i’d intended to spend the afternoon recording interviews but ended up in highly-charged conversation with two island women who nonetheless refused to record a peep . i stuck my head out the door at about half three to confirm that the eclipse had begun . the sky was still cloudy but the moon’s white disc could be seen and a quadrant was indeed absent .
over supper we’d speculated about whether the sky would clear . inevitably there were memories of august’s eclipse , the solar one ( http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/eclipse ) , when a perfectly-situated hole opened in the clouds precisely for the period of totality then closing again as mysteriously .
i woke nik as arranged at four and we went into the lane outside my studio . the sky was featureless black . i decided to bike down to wingletang to see whether it might be visible away from the house lights . i tried to chivy nik into joining me but fresh from bed he was not enthusiastic . so off i sped , down the pitted concrete track , past the ghostly bulk of the old lighthouse , turning right onto the rutted mud of barnaby lane , down the narrowing track flanked by pitasporum and tamarisk , finally out into the open space of the downs . i pedaled through the bracken up to the great rock known as the giant’s punchbowl . there i stopped and looked about .
from the way the cloud caught the beams of lighthouses it was evidently low in the sky . in these conditions one can clearly make out the play of seven different lights . bishop rock , penninnis head , round island – the islands’ trinity . then wolf rock , longships , sennen and lizard , hidden below the far eastern horizon .
still there was no sign of the moon . but several patches of star-crammed sky had opened in the cloud . and they were slowly stretching . it would be worth waiting and watching . the weather here often rewards patience .
so i bounced down the curving track to praskin , my best-loved beach , a short band of white sand punctuated by great boulders and embraced by jagged arms of black rock . i left my bike at the sand’s margin and trod down to the quietly lapping water . then i lay back on the sand , my face to the sky , and waited .
i have not spent nearly enough time this year lying on sand watching the stars . but in a way last night made up for it all . at twenty-nine minutes past four ( i checked my camera’s clock ) i caught my first glimpse of the eclipsed moon . for a fleeting moment a dark orange crescent appeared through the seathing cloud before being consumed once again . nothing more was visible for quarter of an hour . by this time the sky was six-tenths clear with great swathes of stars . but the quarter in which the moon hid remained stubbornly veiled . constantly i judged that she would be revealed by the drifting clouds , but time after time they seemed to mutate before my eyes or reverse their motion or in some other way refuse to disgorge her .
then there was another glimpse , swiftly engulfed . and another , a few seconds . this teasing continued . i smiled to myself and the sky .
around five o’clock my patience was rewarded . twice or three times , for a few moments only , the full disk was revealed . like sombre cochineel , the colour reminded me of the air’s hue during the solar totality . my eyes widened and my heart pounded in the same way . residues from a primaeval ancestry tinging me with the deep terror of perverted nature .
i tried to take a photograph but it was hopeless . this event was to be seen unrecorded .
a little later , knowing that totality would be ending , i raised myself , returned to my bike and began the ride home . at several points i stopped to stare a little longer towards the patch in the sky where i knew a crescent of brilliant blue-white would be beginning to spread . back up at the old coastguard cottages i was granted a view of this , the rebirth of normality looking perhaps even stranger than the fearful orange disk had done .
then i returned my bike to johann’s barn , braced the door with the old broken oar , wrote the few words with which this despatch began and went satisfied to bed .
: cH
s h e l l s
00:32 saturday 15 january – rosevear , st agnes
i’ve just arrived back , a little mud-spattered , from cycling round the island under a moon torn by stormy clouds . no lights . a couple of brief squalls lashed me with icy rain . yesterday there was hail .
these weeks have been filled with wonder and discovery . it feels like the beginning all over again . perhaps this is no more than a heightened sense of the annual cycle . i notice the first white flashes of wild garlic on the path behind covean . the fresh shoots of alexanders in the hedges . the new growth on the tamarisks .
at low tide last saturday murray hicks and i went hunting for winkles on the rocks beside the quay at periglis . christine , murray’s mother , had suggested the idea on the boat a couple of days earlier . we scrambled about , poking in the crevices between rocks , trying to avoid the largest ( too tough ) and the smallest ( too fiddly ) . by the time the tide caught up with us we had gathered what we thought a respectible quantity .
back at westward farm christine dropped them into a pot of boiling water for four minutes , then drained them and left them to cool . once they were cool enough to hold we set to work with sewing needles , spearing each one and twisting it out of its spiral shell , discarding the brown translucent trap-door . quite a fiddly business .
soon we had a pile of these unprepossesing brown coiled creatures on a plate . we ate them the traditional way with vinegar , black pepper and freshly-baked brown bread . they were splendid . not such a rich flavour as mussels , but the same fresh tang of ocean .
murray and mike were not convinced of their edibility . ross experienced something of a conversion , particularly when a liberal dash of tabasco was added .
later on mike set up his telescope behind the house and pointed it towards saturn and jupiter . the sight made a profound impression upon me . somehow i had not expected saturn to look so perfectly like its popular image , a large sphere hemmed with flat slanted rings . and there it was before my eyes . i believe i cried out in surprise and joy . two equatorial bands were visible on jupiter , along with four of its moons . all this at one hundred and sixty-nine times magnification .
stars remain dots of light when viewed through a telescope . few things surpass the beauty of the moon when magnified , but it is an augmentation of what can be seen with the naked eye . at a stroke these planets were transformed from tiny points of colour into neighbours whose form , characteristics and satellites could clearly be perceived . at that moment my sense of the solar system latered . images seen on the page or the screen , however detailed , can never affect us the same way as direct experience .
a day or two later i picked a variety of seaweed i had not previously eaten , one which grows in fan-like clumps of short brownish / black stems . i have not seen it on many of the island’s beaches , but i discovered it in profusion on a little rocky cove between perkillier and browarth point . i chopped it coarsely and steamed it for five minutes , which made it turn a shade greener . with a dash of balsamic vinegar it was delicious . a chewy texture and a strong flavour . no idea what it’s called . this was the first time nik’s been subjected to my seaweed fetish and i was delighted when he responded positively . no turning back now … we’re off harvesting on sunday !
this week finally saw the start of my project to get a photograph and a sound recording of everyone on the island . i’ve been planning it since my arrival but it’s been agony deciding how to do it and what questions i should ask . with typical helpfulness the recharger for my minidisc chose now of all times to pack up . christine hicks has saved the project by loaning me a compatible device from her cd player .
work continues for the digital workshop and the sse . plans are beginning to coalesce for the year ahead . but that’s another story .
a few photos of the winkle adventure at
http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/winkling
and some photos i took in december in an amazing derelict church in islington http://www.sse.org.uk/people/charles.armstrong/st-pauls ( i’ve temporarily stuck these on the sse server as i’ve run out of space on my own – hope that’s ok james ! )
: cH
t w o k a y
23:06 sunday 2 january – rosevear
bits from new year on st agnes : http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/twokay
: cH
// charles armstrong // 