By: Blonde One
As you know, I’ve been to two very different islands this summer. They are both stunning but in very unique ways.
The Isle of Man rises to an impressive 621 metres, it has a road race track that screams at drivers to speed up, the bends in the road are so sharp that only the nuttiest of drivers will not be scared, from its summit you can see all of the United Kingdoms, the fog can be so thick one minute that you can’t see the steps you’ve just taken and so sunny the next that sunglasses are necessary, the hills are so steep that vertigo is to be expected. Generally speaking this island has ‘attitude’ in abundance!
The Isles of Scilly, in contrast, is so gentle and unassuming that it almost goes unnoticed. It rises a mere 49 metres above sea level and the climbs are so gentle that you hardly feel them. It harmoniously nestles in the Atlantic ocean just off Cornwall and does not shout about itself or expect anyone else to do so. Days here are long and slow with a soundtrack of waves and sea birds. It is the most gentle and peaceful place I think I have ever been and it is all the more stunning because of its lack of ‘attitude’.
I’ve never been to the Isle of Man but I was lucky enough to spend two whole summers working on the Isles of Scilly in the early 1980s. After growing up in Wales’s third largest city (though then still a town), my initial reaction to the islands was that I’d died and somehow got to heaven. Work was incidental, we twenty-somethings spent the entire summer lazing on perfect, white sand beaches, island-hopping and dancing at the end-of-quay disco or at impromptu gig shed discos. Years later, as a local reporter, I was desperate for a photograph to illustrate a feature about long-haul holidays. You’ve guessed it. I dug out an old photograph of the gorgeous St Martin’s Bay and scanned it. Hope to visit the Isle of Man one day too, though these days I’m more likely to be hiking than bopping around at discos.
The disco still happens every Friday night – I’ve avoided it so far!
It is like a taste of heaven isn’t it? You are so lucky to have spent such a long time there. We often wonder what it would be like to be there long term. St Martin’s Bay is our favourite beach.
So prodigal, you are. I feel so feeble saying I can’t keep up but the fact is most of your posts not only deserve comment but originality too, to match the quality of what you’ve laid down. It seems so churlish to turn down an implied appointment as jester-cum-scribe at the Court of Emblondemanship but I really do have other fish to fry even though they stack up as whitebait in comparison with your basking shark fillets.
Not that I want to discourage you. For one thing there is no doubt that your writing profits from all this fluidity. I particularly like your literate use of “attitude”, normally a slang word but here with value added.
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You encourage me to dwell which is what I suppose all bloggers hope for. Notably about the impact your natural rambunctiousness must surely make on otherwise tranquil Scilly, leaving it less than tranquil. Is Scilly for you? I ask. Can it accommodate you? I conclude that it must, since too much tranquillity might end up indistinguishable from moribundity (which doesn’t exist as a word but you get my meaning). I see you as a giant glass of Tizer from which Scilly residents may sip and consequently feel younger and more active. A Blonde Benefit.
Bet you never expected Tizer.