Monday, May 31, 2010
Getting a taste for it
Today discovered that our hotel had its very own ancient monument and so to that extent there was no need to go dragging around the country at all. A heavy half barrel made of iron bars covered a stony hole in the ground from which, so the little plaque told us, an urn had been removed to Truro museum. We can now spend the evening finding out exactly what it was.
That out of the way, moved onto Holywell Beach, a large beach nestled behind the much larger Perranporth Beach (which I had been intending to go to) and an army camp and run by the National Trust. It turned out to be a good wheeze as it meant that BH could flash her shiny new NT card (the orange one like a low grade credit card, not the green one you stick on the windscreen) and we saved 3.50 on the day's parking. (This being from an Internet cafe in town, the library being shut today. Perching on a high stool, squinting through the outdoor specs. and having to manage with a rollerball rather than a mouse. But, more to the point, the key that says pound gives a '#', so no pound on the 3.50).
But yet another fine beach. So fine that on this occasion I would have gone for a swim had I been tooled up with costume and towel. Few too many people about for expedients. Waves a bit on the big side for body surfing but I think I would have managed. But there were other compensations. At one end of the beach, the eastern end, there was a strange cleft in the cliffs with water dripping down through it and covered with some strange multi-coloured green stuff, some strangely white. Maybe twenty square metres of the stuff. Not clear whether it was sea weed or moss. The stuff at the bottom must have been sea weed being under water at high tide but the stuff at the top must, one would have thought, be moss, being well above the high water mark. Can sea weed grow in fresh water if it is near salt water? All very strange looking anyway. Picture from the trusty Nokia to follow in due course when I am properly online again.
The other end of the beach was bounded by some high, dark gray cliffs. Very strange and a little frightening. Would be even more so in rough weather. Looked to be something slatey stood up on its end and very twisted. Streaks of quartz so maybe metamorphic. A lot of deep clefts, just the thing for smugglers of yore apart from the fact that they must have been fairly well flooded at high tide. Reminded of the wood cut we have at home called 'Slate Rocks' which is forbidding in a vaguely similar way, despite the rocks in the wood cut being much smaller and daintily parked on sand, rather than rearing up in front of you. Unfortunately, the wood cutter in question died some years ago so I doubt whether I am going to be able to find out where her slate rocks were taken from. Her parish was Kent but I doubt whether there would be many there.
Spent the rest of the day browsing in our new Turkish dictionary where I found lots of loan words (for example, diskotek), presumably reflecting lots of interest in things European. As a dictionary, a much more scholarly affair than the Welsh dictionary, as befits its origins in the town of Morse. And got an interesting take on the sort of English words that it was thought a Turk might want to look up in the early fifties when the thing was first compiled. I suspect that the world has moved on a bit. Lots of abbreviations get explained (for example, four meanings are given for MD and one for MDT) and quite a lot of French words (for example diseuse) which one would not have thought were in very common anglophone usage now, get translated. Got a bit stuck on 'psoriasis' which seemed to be a something disease in Turkish but with the Turkish-English option being missing was completely unable to find out what the something was. Tried skin, chronic, genetic, heriditary, scaley and chalky (these last two being taken from Troilus and Cressida), but no joy. Apart from deciding that the Turks do not seem to have a medical sort of word for the condition. Perhaps they don't get it. When we get home I shall have to run the offending down word in Mr. G..
That out of the way, moved onto Holywell Beach, a large beach nestled behind the much larger Perranporth Beach (which I had been intending to go to) and an army camp and run by the National Trust. It turned out to be a good wheeze as it meant that BH could flash her shiny new NT card (the orange one like a low grade credit card, not the green one you stick on the windscreen) and we saved 3.50 on the day's parking. (This being from an Internet cafe in town, the library being shut today. Perching on a high stool, squinting through the outdoor specs. and having to manage with a rollerball rather than a mouse. But, more to the point, the key that says pound gives a '#', so no pound on the 3.50).
But yet another fine beach. So fine that on this occasion I would have gone for a swim had I been tooled up with costume and towel. Few too many people about for expedients. Waves a bit on the big side for body surfing but I think I would have managed. But there were other compensations. At one end of the beach, the eastern end, there was a strange cleft in the cliffs with water dripping down through it and covered with some strange multi-coloured green stuff, some strangely white. Maybe twenty square metres of the stuff. Not clear whether it was sea weed or moss. The stuff at the bottom must have been sea weed being under water at high tide but the stuff at the top must, one would have thought, be moss, being well above the high water mark. Can sea weed grow in fresh water if it is near salt water? All very strange looking anyway. Picture from the trusty Nokia to follow in due course when I am properly online again.
The other end of the beach was bounded by some high, dark gray cliffs. Very strange and a little frightening. Would be even more so in rough weather. Looked to be something slatey stood up on its end and very twisted. Streaks of quartz so maybe metamorphic. A lot of deep clefts, just the thing for smugglers of yore apart from the fact that they must have been fairly well flooded at high tide. Reminded of the wood cut we have at home called 'Slate Rocks' which is forbidding in a vaguely similar way, despite the rocks in the wood cut being much smaller and daintily parked on sand, rather than rearing up in front of you. Unfortunately, the wood cutter in question died some years ago so I doubt whether I am going to be able to find out where her slate rocks were taken from. Her parish was Kent but I doubt whether there would be many there.
Spent the rest of the day browsing in our new Turkish dictionary where I found lots of loan words (for example, diskotek), presumably reflecting lots of interest in things European. As a dictionary, a much more scholarly affair than the Welsh dictionary, as befits its origins in the town of Morse. And got an interesting take on the sort of English words that it was thought a Turk might want to look up in the early fifties when the thing was first compiled. I suspect that the world has moved on a bit. Lots of abbreviations get explained (for example, four meanings are given for MD and one for MDT) and quite a lot of French words (for example diseuse) which one would not have thought were in very common anglophone usage now, get translated. Got a bit stuck on 'psoriasis' which seemed to be a something disease in Turkish but with the Turkish-English option being missing was completely unable to find out what the something was. Tried skin, chronic, genetic, heriditary, scaley and chalky (these last two being taken from Troilus and Cressida), but no joy. Apart from deciding that the Turks do not seem to have a medical sort of word for the condition. Perhaps they don't get it. When we get home I shall have to run the offending down word in Mr. G..
# posted by Jim @ 8:10 AM 
