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Where to Live?

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

We went up to Montseny again today to give a friend a lift to her old home in the hills. Everywhere I go at the moment leads to thoughts about where we can live. Where can we find a home with a garden? Do we want to be near the sea? In the mountains? Close to Granollers? Is it best to buy or rent? What about the boy?
And so on and so on…..
Nice place today with friendly cats, a national footpath going past the garden, beautiful views over the vallley and beds of iris. But it wasn’t a possibe home, just a chance to dream

To get there you drive up a windy road and then along bumpy unmade tracks.  It is quite isolated although there are some other houses which are only visited at weekends.  There is a river running down the hill with beautiful pools and waterfalls.
Duna was ecstatic – how much she wants to live somewhere more in nature!

It’s good to imagine Blue and Bonnie and Duna sleeping happily on the terrace while we potter in the garden, make things and listen to the birds.  But for the moment it is only a dream

The First Day of Spring

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

Lamorna is famous for daffodils. Early ones, late ones, yellow and creamy ones. Small meadows are full of them and a lovely path edged with them, winds back from the coast taking you past the granite quarries and down to the stream. There are always places to buy a bunch with an honest box for money.  Friends from Barcelona were amazed that here in Cornwall you are trusted to leave your money in a tin by the side of the road. I suppose sometimes people steal it but it’s not common and I like that feeling of being presumed to be honest, unlike in some shops in Granollers where you must leave your bag at the door in case you get a sudden desire to shoplifter.

What luck to be here in Spring, with time to think about future plans and to let go of the stresses and strains of the past months. I still don’t have a clear idea of how I will resolve the split I feel between two homes but I feel more trusting that the answer will come by itself. We will find the right path.

 The end of my time here is fast approaching and I am dreading the day of goodbyes with my dogs while trying to savour every moment that remains. Tomorrow I go to two different vets with two different pets. Both Blue my black collie and Mazey my black cat need to have teeth extracted urgently so it will be an anxious day of waiting and worrying.  Then hopefully a happy and painfree homecoming

Is there anything you miss?

~ Kate Wilson ~ 7 Comments

People often ask me what I miss about Cornwall. After more than a year in Catalunya I am getting clearer about my answer although probably it would change depending on when you ask me and on who is asking! I am back in Penwith for a week. It stirs you up coming back and at the same time you have so much to do that you hardly have time to sit back and think let alone feel.
Here is my answer for today and I’m not including the obvious answer – friends and family.


It is not easy to buy flowers in Granollers. Not just a normal ordinary reasonably-priced bunch of garden flowers for the house – which I like to do every week and used to do here when I lived in Penzance.  The florists in Granollers have posh flowers and houseplants and they are expensive.

I really really miss second hand shops and charity shops. They don’t seem to exist in Granollers. I miss being able to rummage through books and china and clothes. I also miss having somewhere convenient to take things I want to get rid of. What do people do with their old stuff?  Dump it?

Here is the wonderful Honeypot in Penzance. Not only is it a great place to meet friends and to watch the world go by but they have fantastic food. There are always several vegetarian dishes. This day I had delicious sweet corn fritters with a spicy sauce and cornish potatoes and salad. I just wish it was easier to find vegetarian food in restaurants in Catalunya. Interesting, tasty and spicy vegetarian food.

I love the cliffs here – I love the landscape in Catalunya too but what is lovely here is that I can drive for no more than ten minutes along quiet country lanes and end up here.
And of course I miss my dogs – two border collies who can bark too much, don’t really know how to behave in town, sometimes growl at strangers but are intelligent and loving and beautiful. I want to pack them in the van ( which by the way broke down as soon as I arrived here) and take them home with me to Granollers. But what sort of a life would they have without a garden? And what sort of life would I have with three dogs to walk twice a day in town?
Tomorrow I go home, I say goodbye to my dogs and my house and the cliffs, rain, wind and mud. I feel I am going home – I look forward to arriving back in my life in Granollers – so much awaits me.  Each time I make the journey it is another letting go, another chance to make the decision and to say Yes. But it is complicated and making the choice doesn’t mean that one is better than the other. Just different.

High above Granollers

~ Kate Wilson ~ 9 Comments

 

I took a walk this evening up to the derelict tower that sits on a hill overlooking GranollersThe tower Torre de Pinos is an old fortified defense tower built in the 14th century and now half in ruins it is protected but not really cherished.
But the place is magical. I took these photos on a sunny afternoon last week, walking along flower lined paths while trying to take photographs of the swifts. It is not easy to catch one moment of their flight path as they are the ultimate aerial birds. I had many photos of empty blue sky! Swifts eat, drink, mate and sleep on the wing and only come to earth for long enough to nest and feed their young. Barcelona is full of the sound of their excited cries and from our terrace here I can watch them at night. In Catala they are called Falciots, not orinetes which are swallows. Up in the fields around the Torre, high above Granollers, in the evening when the air is full of flying insects, I am able to feel as if I am in their world.
Tonight I went to the Torre just before sunset. The sun was hiding at first behind a large cloud and I watched it slowly emerge like a luminescent red balloon to glow with midsummer fire before settling down behind the hills. I had no camera and could only wonder and marvel at the dance of the swifts, the rays of purple light spreading across the sky and the wildness of this place so close to the city. So often I stand with my neck craned to watch them high above but tonight I had the amazing experience of having them whizz past my head so close I could hear their wing beat.
Life sometimes throws at us ‘momentos malos’ and it was in this kind of mood that I climbed the hill tonight with Duna as my companion. I felt very aware that nowhere within miles or kilometers was there anyone I could talk to freely in my own language. I was missing not so much ‘home’ but the feeling of ‘being at home’. If you ever imagine living in another country, include this in the fantasy, it can be hard! Small things can feel like the last straw and it is easy to feel inadequate when you can’t freely do the most normal thing – talk. So,what to do, where to turn?
For me it is to nature, which exists outside frontiers and customs, languages and barriers, frustrations and misunderstandings. All exists in the moment and tonight as the light was dying it was beautiful to be part of that moment.

Roots

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

 

It is the last day of June and summer is here. I travelled again to Cornwall to see my beautiful dogs who are still living ‘at home’ and waiting for me to find a home for them here with a garden for us all.

But meanwhile they can enjoy privileges Catalan dogs can only dream of…… My cats too are happy in the Cornish countryside where they were born I had two days of intensive tango in Devon seeing old friends and letting my legs rediscover total freedom from conscious control. Then a sleepless night and an early flight home to Catalunya.  I had many thoughts about Home and what it means to leave behind all that is familiar and known and build a life in a new and sometimes strange environment. What it feels like to reposition myself in fresh earth, in another climate, with new foods and waters. And how I move between these two worlds when I travel back and forth, balancing between the two. What is happening now to my roots as they dig down finding new ways to provide stability? Why do some people stay very close to their origins and others go on journeys to different lands? I have headed south in my life – from Inverness to Edinburgh to London to Penzance to Catalunya. I know what it is like to be the new one, the different one, the foreigner. Here we are called ‘guiris’ and I asked recently what it means to be a ‘guiri’ – it can be translated as tourist or foreigner normally someone from the north of Europe with blue eyes and blond hair and pale skin. I hear the word used sometimes in a dismissive way –  ‘that restaurant is only for guiris’ and at other times as if it is just a description of someone different. I will always be a little bit the outsider here, no matter how long I stay or how well I speak Catalan.  Interesting questions to ask myself –

Why do I find it so easy to live somewhere where I am always different?

Have I ever felt I am more or less the same as those around me? Perhaps it is something to do with being red-haired when I was young – always a little different and sometimes uncomfortable with this visibility but now I seem to enjoy just being myself in a new world. My roots are not only seeking out new stability but are intertwining with others at a new level.

When I was living in Barcelona I had the strange experience of feeling like a ‘guiri’ but being treated like an unofficial tour guide. Every day I was approached by people – Spanish/Catalan people – asking me for directions, checking if they were on the right train, wanting to know the nearest chemist….. I couldn’t look more like an outsider but clearly something in me was exuding ‘ I belong’.