finding my way back to fife
So here I am. Full circle, hence the name of this blog.
I’m writing this from a beautiful fishing village on the East Neuk of Fife. I grew up near here from age five to eighteen. I’m not sure what my accent is anymore, the corners have been knocked off, after three decades split between France and Cornwall but I imagine it’s more Fife-Scottish than anything else. An English friend I met in the South of France once told me I was the first Scottish person she could fully understand. (!) That I spoke ‘Radio 4 Scottish.’ — I’ll take that.
In France when the girls were little, we only had a DVD player and a few French channels. We eventually caved in and got Sky and that’s how I saw my first Jamie Oliver programme. It turned out that he wasn’t actually naked but he was young, enthusiastic, in a band, driving himself and friends in a VW Camper, heading to a beach somewhere in Cornwall. He lit a fire and buried a whole salmon in wet newspaper in the flames, until it was cooked, I loved everything about it. Just a TV show but something struck a chord in me. I wanted a carefree, casual life like that. I didn’t want to live near Monaco any more. Despite buying gold sandals, I always felt underdressed, even when shopping in Carrefour. A beach here, was a crowded strip of pebbles where you had to rent a sun lounger and beach fires were banned. (Understandably, with forest fires occurring most years.) I suddenly felt like I had missed my twenties, in marrying and having children before I was really ready, so my husband would not be any older, as a first time dad. We first met when I was 21 and he was 38, he was (and still is) very well educated, charming and confident. I was naive yet optimistic. (I hope I am still optimistic, I’m trying to be older and wiser, rather than cynical) As I stared at the screen, daring to imagine a different life, he walked in and asked, ‘What are you watching?’ He observed for a few minutes and said, ‘He’s a bit of a plonker, isn’t he?’ then left.
I felt my crest fall.
I had craved being back in Scotland for several years. But as Agatha Christie wrote, “One cannot, ever, go back to the place which exists in memory. you would not see it with the same eyes-even supposing that it should improbably have remained much the same. What you have had you have had. ‘The happy highways where I went, And shall not come again…’ Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.”
With this partly in mind and my daughters now older, I thought I should choose a new place to live, to start over. What was it I loved most about the thought of returning to the UK? Proper beaches, deserted, wild and untamed. Where the rain drives horizontally and your rosy cheeks later smart, as you defrost by the fire. Being nearer family and old friends. Scottish/British humour. Traditional pubs. Speaking my first language. Not being referred to as ‘l’anglaise’ at the school gates. (je suis écossaise!) Book shops. Familiarity. Cheddar.
It was a combination of the Jamie Oliver story, the memory of the best wedding I had ever been to, in Penzance (At the time I wished I lived there, everyone I met was so laid back and cool) and the influence of two Cornish artist friends/neighbours in France, who kept telling me my work would sell well, in Cornwall. So it was, with these tiny seeds of ideas, that I returned to ‘home’ to Cornwall with my, then teenage, children so they could have an English education. I imagined I could have all the things I craved, in this new place. Like Scotland, Cornwall is Celtic, has wild beaches like the Scottish West Coast I knew, an art scene, the dress code is flip flops, it has live music and pubs! This was the first time I had chosen where I was going to live.
Going back a bit, when I left school in Fife to go to art school in Aberdeen, I swore blind to my parents that it was because I had been, erm, born in Aberdeenshire, it was the only college for me (despite Edinburgh Art College having been my dream for years) it had absolutely nothing to do with following my high school boyfriend, who had left the previous year, to study medicine. No Sir. seven years later, married (disappointingly, not to the now Doctor) and expecting my first child, I had followed my husband from Aberdeen to Monaco with his job. When, regrettably, that eighteen year marriage ended, I was obliged to stay close by in France so the children could grow up near their father. Until choosing Cornwall I had always moved to follow the man I loved.
After jumping through all the necessary hoops to sell up, pack up and find a school, I finally set off from Nice driving towards Roscoff in Brittany, for the ferry to Plymouth. As I headed north, mid week, on a hot August day I felt deliriously carefree, I was Thelma. I had the roof down as I accelerated away, on those oddly empty autoroutes, I yelled goodbye into the sky to parts of my life and troubles. Imagining myself dumping ballast over the side. I played some of my mother’s CDs that I had inherited, singing Carpenters’ and Neil Diamond songs at the top of my voice. Finally free, so liberating.
“L.A.’s fine, the sun shines most the time
And the feeling is lay back
Palm trees grow and rents are low
But you know I keep thinkin’ about
Making my way back
Well I’m New York City born and raised
But nowadays
I’m lost between two shores
L.A.’s fine, but it ain’t home
New York’s home
But it ain’t mine no more
…
And I am lost and I can’t
Even say why
Leavin’ me lonely still
Did you ever read about a frog
Who dreamed of bein’ a king
And then became one
Well except for the names
And a few other changes
If you talk about me
The story is the same one
But I got an emptiness deep inside
And I’ve tried
But it won’t let me go
And I’m not a man who likes to swear
But I never cared
For the sound of being alone.”
(Neil Diamond ‘I am… I said’ 1971)
Cornwall here I come.
Now I was in charge of the next chapter of my life.
At least I was in charge, right up to the moment before I met the artist next door.
