I don't even know what "frabjous" is and I don't know who said it in Alice in Wonderland, but it feels like it means what I feel right now. This is Monday, bank holiday, I am can now say I have been lost in Penzance, Marazion, Mousehole (pronounced Mowsel) St Ives, and several places in between. Amazingly the car and I have come through unscathed!
First to Penzance. Good road all the way (2 four lanes, no shoulder) and I lost my barely controlled fear of driving by the time I had reached Penzance. I am in love with my TomTom, now affectionately called Tom for short, because I just set it for the town and tell it I want the car park, and follow directions. Well, that is a slight exaggeration. Tom is truly great, but I don't understand roundabouts, and there is one every 50 feet or so. Some are very small, about 10 feet diameter with bricks set into the pavement so you could drive right over them. Easy to see and maneuver around those. The middle sized ones are fine too - maybe 200 feet in diameter, maybe planted, four or five roads intersecting. The horrible ones don't look like circles at all - you can't see the other side, and you think you just made a right turn when in fact you have started around the roundabout (or vice versa). Thanks to roundabouts, I have now had driven on teeny tiny roads that two card can't pass each other on! I have pictures because I will have to remind myself that I really did negotiate some of those roads. Since this is such a hilly country, the roads can't be widened a couple of feet to accommodate real cars, and both the country side and the towns are filled with these miniature roads.
The rolling country makes for great scenery and since I survived the driving, I guess I approve of beautiful roadsides instead of practical and safe roads. There are hedges all along the roads, and lots and lots of deep yellow flowered gorse bushes. They are very prickly, and smell like coconut sun tan lotion close up.
In Penzance I walked along the harbour and then through parts of the town. I stopped and watched some tennis players in the park and even chased a couple of balls that flew outside the fence for them. There have been seagulls ever since Truro, and there are many other chirps and warbles going on. A gardener or an ornithologist would be appreciating all the things I am seeing and hearing in an informed way; I am just enjoying it.
The voices from the tennis court are very carrying - it is in a little dip in the ground. Four courts, all occupied, and I am hearing the most hackneyed British phrases that don't sound hackneyed at all: "Cheers, mate" "oh that's lovely then" "pardon me my love""right-ho". I haven't heard the following yet: "the loo" (everyone calls it the toilet!) or "ta" or "cheerio"..
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