How we first met

I saw you in the mirror of a hot summered day.  And just how long had I waited to meet! There were fleeting glances before.  Casual sightings that seemed to end as soon as they started.

But where did this story begin?

Let's rewind to the icy climes of January.  Mother has just died.  Mother who entombed her emotions behind a solid concrete wall after the death of her daughter aged eight and her husband aged forty eight.  Mother who had no answers and no words for a confused young boy.  Mother who in years to come will reject her own great grandchildren.  There's some some healing to be done.

And at the start of the year I'm thinking too of my approaching sabbatical. Three months off! I left school at seventeen and this will be my longest break ever. I'm not sure if I'm excited or just a little bit scared at the prospect.

Then I speak to others of their sabbatical experiences. Their great journeys exploring the world - Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa.  I realise this will not be for us.  Our youngest grandson is severely epileptic and we can't afford to be more than a few hours away in case of yet another emergency hospital visit. It brings back memories of when we first learned of our own son's handicap. We cancelled a tour of the States .. to mourn together.

But this time it's different, there's some healing to be done.  And it's a blast from start to finish - here are just some of the highlights.

A trip to Cornwall in our camper van to hear Sigur Ros conjure an Icelandic storm in music amidst the dying embers of a summer day at the Eden Project. Taking the photograph of one brave young lady who I subsequently discover has undergone brain surgery for her own epilepsy.  A co-incidence or a God incidence?

Our return to Latitude and two very special acts.  The first is a sixty three year old short-order cook and latter day James Brown impersonator who's not giving up his chance to shine. In the lunchtime sun he cooks up a magic experience as powerful as the years that fill his frame.  The second, two teenage prodigies who rock a dance-tent rammed to the gills with fresh-faced youngsters.  Charles Bradley and Disclosure are separated by several decades but share one thing in common. They WILL seize the day!

A special visit to Paris to celebrate our thirty-fourth wedding anniversary. We married young and couldn't afford a honeymoon .. not that we cared. We embraced and walked the sands of our hometown beach to eat fish and chips for our first meal alone as a married couple, a tradition we repeat each and every year to remind us of shared and deepening love. And so it is again in one of the best fish restaurants in the capital of France, and it tastes just as sweet as it always has.

And so to a very special week on my own.  Something I've never done before.  A Street Photography course at an Arts College in the heart of London.  What joys await!  A riotous journey across Notting Hill Carnival, my stomach filled with cheap chicken-jerk and a four-pack of Red Stripe in hand! So many great photo opportunities ….

Yet it's the still of an afternoon that moves me most.  A photographic assignment that finds me venturing into St Pancras Old Church.  It's empty but for two elders polishing the congregational brass. And it's there I smell it. Brasso!  Oh what memories that brings back.  An age of innocence as my mother polishes and dusts and just four years old I help her fold the fresh-laundered sheets!  A time before the concrete wall fell into place.  A time of healing …..

And it's there I find you. A street away and a dusty antique shop.  I look into a mirror and smile and smile and smile. And take a photograph of the first time I meet what I can be …….

Healing.

The Eden Sessions ... in which our intrepid explorers brave the scary heights of a rain-forest

Dear Sheddists,

as Sunday dawns bright across the slumbered camping fields of Cornwall we are to be found nestled in the back of Veronica the Van, sound asleep and watched over by Letitia, our tousle-haired guard guinea-pig.

All seems at peace with the world.

Dressage en van   

It's only on rising we discover the difficulties of simultaneous dressage in a space designed for little more than easy passenger access.  Heads are bumped, socks mislaid and underwear exchanged as Letitia looks on impassively.

We resolve that on return home we shall adopt a strict training regime for the summer ahead and partake all our meals in the cupboard beneath the stairs, cooked on a one-ring primus stove.

Some running repairs

After an unpromising start it's a brisk but welcome shower in the spotless camp-site facilities with a bacon-buttie breakfast chaser to follow.  Set up for the day, we take off for the Eden Project, stopping en route for our first running repairs to Veronica.

Whilst the replacement of a blown reading-light and the re-attachment of a minor pop-top fastening may not appear the stuff of aspiring Barry Bucknalls it ranks as one of yours truly's finest hours in the field of DIY endeavour.

Not for good reason has mrs electrofried padlocked the tool-box back home, but I rise triumphant from the back of Veronica, screw-driver clutched manfully in hand only to bump my head yet again on the roof-lining.  Oh well, that's life!

We scale the heights

Running repairs duly effected it is but a short drive to the Eden Project, and what a magical place it turns out to be.  We walk through waving fronds of neon-green fern to the waiting Bio-spheres at the very bottom of the quarry site.

We start with the rain-forest and as we climb higher and higher so the temperature rises.  We pass a marvellous series of wall-paintings in faux native style - running ants, fecund female tree-forms and the celebration of new growth.  Mrs electrofried spots a tiny green lizard scuttling overhead through the branches of a moss-draped tree.

And then it looms into sight.  One hundred steps up a swaying walk-way to the overhead observatory, suspended cradle-like above the forest.  Much to mrs electrofried's surprise I rise to the challenge. Five fear-filled moments later and we're there and what a view!  With trembling hands, I fire off a few photographs and then it's time to return.

At rest

We venture next to the Mediterranean Biosphere and whilst it fails to scale the heights of the rain-forest we're rewarded by the first music of the day, an impromptu gig beneath the cacti that gives space for some much-needed reflection.

Drained, we pause for refreshment at the conveniently sited cocktail bar (a lemonade for mrs electrofried and for me something a little stronger involving an unlikely combination of buffalo grass and vodka) before returning to rest up for a while in Veronica.  The pleasures of a good book await, in my case Dominic Sandbrook's, 'State of Emergency', a superb exposition of the Heath years.

Suitably refreshed, we return for the main event of the day as the sun sinks slowly behind.

The sound of glaciers

The opening act of the evening is Daughter, who we will meet again later in these tales from my sabbatical.

However, it's the headliners, Sigur Ros, we've come to see and once more they prove their brilliance.  Amidst plumes of smoke and a dazzling light-show their music summons the force of a glacier, implacable and unstoppable.  It brings to mind our visit to Iceland some five years ago, seeing a huge metal bridge discarded five miles downstream by the might of flowing ice!

All too soon the music fades and we're left to make our way back to Veronica, the might of the evening still ringing in our ears.

best regards,

electrofried(mr)

And the band plays on