Busy holiday

Sun goes down, it’s Monday night. I’m rather optimistic that this might follow. And that it might be a touch warmer than it is tonight.

I’ve been away for a week in Cornwall and it feels like I left in summer and came back in autumn. A busy week, even while I wasn’t here. The unplanned biscuit diversion a few blogposts back seems to have started something. Comments, derision, and emails have followed in reasonably equal measure. It seemed to stir up James Alexander-Sinclair to such a degree that he felt moved to do what I hadn’t ie stick to the point – so a Biscuit blog has been created. Generously/harshly he has sought to share the acclaim/blame (delete as appropriate with the benefit of hindsight). We hope to publish a new post each day. Remarkably, there are many posts already awaiting, but don’t let that stop you submitting to the Commissar or his PA should you feel so inclined.

I managed a visit to both Eden and Heligan, both of which were quietly wonderful at this time of year. I first went to the Eden Project while it was turning from china clay mine to the bones of what is there today. I used to work for the consultancy that did much of the master planning and design – alas I was not one of the creative folk involved, I was arsing about next door with software and eating London’s finest tortilla from the Portuguese cafe down the road, but as I left to start my own consultancy business Eden was looking for web and interpretative expertise, so off I went with old friend Stu – the person who could actually do the clever techie stuff.

It was all mist and potential when we arrived, but you got still the idea – this wasn’t some hotchpotch green nonsense, but the vision of a very bright mind that had the energy to see it to reality. I’ve been back once or twice since, but 12 years on it’s very much arrived. The covered domes are as impressive as ever, but it’s the outside that’s come on so much.

All the beds jammed with veg, herb, medicinal and ornamentals looked like they’d always been there flourishing. The tropical and Meditteranean domes may be impressive in reach as well as grasp, but something about the splendidness of how well the ‘ordinary’ had been pulled off edged it for me, at least on that day.

Too many ideas to fill my confused head with too. Slightly reeling still from the ideas that came from a visit a fortnight back from Jekka McVicar (no relation) it did little for my hope of mental relaxation – endless medicinals that might make for a good lower tier growing in an orchard, and climbers (like the hops below) to add to the beverage possibilities that seem to be dominating my list of potential products.

Early autumn is a good time to visit Heligan – it does the handover of the seasons very well, and a quite reasonable flapjack, which is equally important when trying to keep a 3 year old happy. (‘Why are we going to hell-again daddy?’)

I’m a little too desirous of me bed to say much more than that about Heligan, except that they too seemed to favour these yellowy flowers in similar profusion to Eden. Very nice they are too – which is about as good as a compliment gets from me for a plant you can’t eat.

Night night.

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