I’ll never forget how it felt, when you were lying in the cardiology unit, the wires and monitors, the dressing over your heart, the vulnerability exposed like a raw wound.  Your heart rate spiked— I don’t know exactly what caused it, a call, a text? but I felt the change, it crackled in the air with one cruel nurse almost ready to physically propel me from the room and the nurse hastily hustled me out. When I was invited to come back in, something had changed, your girlfriend had called?  Do you know at that point, when they walked me out that they asked me if I really was your wife? How was I supposed to answer? Legally yes, if you had died that morning  (and how lucky you were that you didn’t), it would have been me that picked up all the unfinished pieces. The endless paperwork, the bureaucracy, dressing the open sores of grief and sorrow. I hate that I read body language, ignorance would have been so much easier. I hated the nurses for being complicit. I left feeling ashamed that despite my compassion I was being sidelined, discarded. Those twenty years suddenly counting for nothing, nothing at all. Meaningless. I'm older, uglier, I don't get the sympathy vote.

Did you phone her when you thought you might be dying? Did you wish you hadn’t called me? And at any point when you were lying in that hospital did you think how it might have been for me when my father was dying? When I came back from all those attritional visits to see my uncle? When you asked me to pop in and visit your colleagues wife, and I could see, she too was dying ?- Oh, that was the biggest tragedy of them all, given her youth, her humility, and her deep, enduring love for her two young children. 

The next day, when I arrived, having checked with you that you wanted me to come, I was accosted again by a staff member. You had two visitors, you shouldn't have so many. For a moment I thought maybe it was her, but no she'd come the day before - after me. Poor ward staff, how often does this happen, how clear were you? After an hour of trying to find a car-parking spot, I didn't care. I was the wrong person to attempt to lecture, I chucked your next-door neighbours out, they are complicit too. I was past caring, the passive aggressive car-park chaos still burning on my retina - everyone's need was as great as the next persons - no prisoners were being taken, it was a miracle there wasn't a four-car pile up, or maybe there was and I sailed past it - eventually channeling my inner-goodwill hunting-vibe.

Did you ever step out of your self-centred zone and wonder in all the mess and pain after my father died whether you’d really done right by me? Or were you too busy, masking the guilt at the relief you felt and relishing the thought of new possibilities? When you discovered me, alone in the chaos of my fathers house, after a brief hospital interlude myself, having noted the washing-up needed doing — did you feel anything other than the fact you were late for a hot-date with your girlfriend? Did you feel one iota of consideration for my needs, or was your “I’ll help you get rid of some of your father’s junk next weekend” sufficient?…Some weekends are a very long time coming aren’t they? 

As I left your hospital bedside today you said “I’ve missed you”. Really? Or have you missed the twenty years of comfort and nourishment, as I withered. I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to walk in your shoes, it’s not good for me. It hurts me. At the Hospital today, we talked about families. Yours couldn’t drop me me fast enough, I wasn’t sure about calling your parents, was it my place? I called your sister-in-law, when she remembered who I was, she, at least, was compassionate. Your father called me, a whole twelve months and some…too late, asked me how I was before moving on to you. Another question that was suddenly too hard to answer. 

You told me it was my ‘choice’ to leave. I’m not sure self-preservation is a choice, it’s more a visceral need to find high ground, a deep primal cry for help and fear, a lot of fear. I’ve been terrified, every day for the last nineteen months. Every step of that time, I haven’t known what was ahead. You made so many assumptions when I left, and today you said, “we probably need to talk in the New Year”. Talking never seems to have solved anything at this murky end of our relationship. Generally, I listen, you assume, re-fine the narrative that makes you feel more comfortable with yourself, and I go unheard as you listen, but don't hear. Does assuaging your guilt make it better? Even at a moment of life and death, you manage to break my heart. Just when I thought it couldn’t break further.  I will never forget these past two days - the profound emotion of someone you love facing death, (THAT is an emotion I’ve experienced before, it still hits hard). The setting aside of blame, hurt, history, to be compassionate and caring in someones time of need, and then the thunderbolt shift, the realisation that you are existing in a liminal space where you have no place, the utter agony of that loneliness compounding ones loneliness. You let me down, I didn’t deserve that.  I will not allow you to hurt me any more.

Will I regret writing this? I hope not. Every now and then,  I will sit with these words, and as time passes I hope I will be able to edit and re-shape them. May life bring me sweetness to dull the bitter.

Addendum:

The year is not yet done and I have had a final kick in the teeth. And that blow has taught me something that perhaps I knew, intuitively - but if anyone else reads this and can pass it on for the greater good, then please do. 

It is this: 'Don't start a new relationship before finishing the old one" it causes untold hurt, deep, deep, pain - to a multitude of people beyond those involved in the immediate relationship. Weakness, immaturity, is no excuse. 

I brought two new books back with me from Cornwall: The Salt Path, purchased at the Falmouth Bookshop, and Sea Fever, bought at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall. I began Sea Fever on a stormy evening in Maenporth, even reading parts aloud to my youngest (who probably wasn’t listening), as its rich blend of accounts, facts, and famous sea fiction is so brilliantly woven together. It chimed with a more recent retelling of a sea journey a friend of my daughter had made from Norway to Ipswich, a voyage that challenged the crew’s wits and resilience in the face of the mighty sea.

The Salt Path is something else entirely: a story of lived experience that is incredible, heart-wrenching, almost impossible to contemplate—and yet beautiful, funny, and utterly compelling. Raynor Winn’s account of her walk along the South West Coast Path with her husband, Moth, after losing almost everything they owned, including their family home, through the treachery of a friend, reads like a rite of passage. Surviving on barely any money, with Moth’s ill health looming large on their horizon, Raynor captures the geography of the path and evokes the wildness and romance of the counties they pass through while facing hardship and homelessness.

She broaches the concept of homelessness in a way that challenges preconceptions, asking the reader to consider the morality of a society that still refuses to tackle homelessness with genuine understanding of its causes, or compassion for its victims. There is a vulnerable faith in the kindness of strangers throughout this journey, as humour and hazard walk hand in hand in this extraordinary book. And what a gift it is to witness such an enduring love; that alone is reason enough to read it.

Post Script

Since writing this, there has been a great deal of controversy about the author and the validity of her story as a 'true story' with facts being questioned and dirt dug up in a way that has probably kept this book selling beyond expectation! I stand by the power of this book to evoke, challenge and inspire. Whether fact or fiction, it is a great read and stands out as compelling storytelling.

What is blocking the heart of my country?

I walk in its verdant valleys, that dress the horizon.

I trace the twist and tumble of its streams and its rivers, 

I stumble through its forests, ancient and knowing,

But cannot find the source.

At sea, I crouch in the conning tower as we sweep around this isle

Surveying subterranean roots of majestic cliffs for rock fall, 

The dim sea bed for fault lines.

There is a suffocating malaise, a slimy bloom

It slips through nets refusing to be caught and spreads like fear

And the sun breaks, across the hills and sweeping downlands, solemn granite mountains

Pale marshes and the sandy flats, as the long shadow reaches.

I dream of the wind whining in the oak barn, lifting the loose straw,

And the gale smashing flotsam against the old seawall.

The slowing beat of the earth beneath us, as planets reel in distant galaxies

Has not yet silenced the Robin at my window, or the hum of bees on the lavender bush

But the sluggish pulse that chills the sun, and gathers cloud, is rattling bones

In the ivy covered churchyard, and causing the earth to moan.

I found this book in a second-hand bookshop. Despite its publishing date of 1937 (second revised edition), it is full of sage advice and advertisements for 'must have' gadgets including the Hamble Line Passer - still a useful tool for hitching a line to a stable object from a distance. The author W. Eric Wilson, D.S.O with assistance from Admiralty Chart Agent J.D. Potter based in the Minories in London and their neighbours Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson Ltd., the oldest Nautical Publishers in the world (or so they claimed) who published this hefty tome in their printing works in Hackney, all conspired to produce this detailed guide for the serious sailor.

Guides, in all forms, are there to assist in times of trouble, need, or in expectation of either. A firm hand on the forearm, a gentle nudge in the desired direction from the 'you don't have to do this the hard way, allow me to enlighten you' folk who have gone before. We navigate our lives making good, bad, and indifferent choices. Guidance is always worth listening to, in navigational terms experienced guidance is essential. Like sea shanties and folk songs, handed down by word of mouth for centuries, changing with the times but doggedly true to its original form. The Pilot's Guide is a sensible practical tome on the vagaries of the English Channel, of necessity it must be trustworthy and reliable, lives depended on it. 

W.E.W could surely not conceive of a modern-day Channel full of super-tankers and people in barely sea-worthy inflatables, and the seasonal influx of top-heavy gin-palaces, and I wonder if he, or J.D. Potter or Messrs Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson, gave thought or conversation to a time when printed maps would be digitised, along with instruments so that maps became less important and computer screens plotted courses and pinged against satellites to guide sailors around the English Channel. 

There is a reason why sailors for the most part are easygoing. they've learnt to make and read signals, to predict the weather, how best to make an approach, judge depth, understand the tides, and perhaps most useful of all how to use a compass including variation and deviation, and having absorbed all that understood, practised and reflected on that wealth of seafaring knowledge, a good sailor might also digest that cautionary truth as expressed thus by W.E.W "Discretion must be duly exercised in the use of all Sailing Directions as aids to navigation, and they should not be regarded as infallible, as a little consideration will show. A chart or a book may be accurate at the time of publication, but it may become unreliable in some particulars owing to the changes in shoals and their constant and numerous alterations in Lights, Buoyage, etc." In effect, guidance is just that, the sum of someone else's experience but the world is not constant, it is ever changing. For the Pilot amongst us, it pays to be humble in plotting a course, to stay calm and prepared, and to meet the unexpected with the same assurance in which you meet all challenges, with a weather eye to the horizon and a quick arrival at the most practical solution.

Today we ambled around the Helford, starting at Glendurgan Gardens, the Fox family's coastal playground for their numerous children. And neighbour to Trebah Gardens. The highlight of the three steep, lush, tropical valleys plunging down to the Helford is the cherry laurel 'maze' - a delightful distraction from giant rhubarb, tree palms and ferns, magnolias, camellias, and a historic collection of plants from the Foxes travels around the world. Durgan beach is a pretty, pebbled, rock-pooled stretch of beach with boats moored on the Helford and the remnants of the pilchard fishing industry that dominated Cornwall. Best cheese scones ever were to be found in the glass and oak framed tea shop back at the top, plus a rootle through the second-hand bookshop (a genius idea by the National Trust for all its properties) which at Glendurgan included a donation from (I would surmise) a very interesting and well-read gentleman's collection of many rare and interesting books. 

Traveling around the Helford offers so many wonderful views, a feast for the photographer, a delight for the walker, a challenge for the cyclist and a draw for canoeists, kayakers and paddleboarders. I should be evoking the richness of this part of Cornwalls coastline, the green cathedral-like lanes, the emerald ria (flooded valley) of the Helford (Dowyr Mahonyer) and its seven creeks from west to east. These are Ponsontuel Creek, Mawgan Creek, Polpenwith Creek, Polwheveral Creek, Frenchman's Creek, Port Naval Creek, and Gillan Creek. I should be talking of Daphne Du Maurier, or of conservation, field crickets from Spain, or even of mystery and smuggling but the sun was shining and I was beginning to remember how-to-holiday, so all romanticism was pushed aside in favour of beach-hopping.

The Helford deserves not to be skimped over, given the wild and vivid landscapes of Cornwall, its myth and legend-evoking history. The Helford holds it own against the rugged, fishing coves of the Roseland peninsula and the bustling commerce of Truro, the piratical romance of Falmouth and the Lizard Peninsula, a plateau surrounded by sea cliffs, here and there providing a safe haven for a small harbour, fishing village and sandy cove. The Helford starts from its wide estuary mouth continuing inland to the muddy creeks upstream. With its sheltered, wooded valleys it is a haven for sailors and in good weather, it is scenically beautiful and serene. All seven of its coves are cornish gems.

I've been reading 'Sea Fever' by Meg and Chris Clothier. If you're going to be beside the seaside, then this book will set you right. From the shipping forecast to flora and fauna, to resorts, tides, distress signals, and all things coastal including that evocative poem by John Masefield that begins "I must go down to the seas again..." and concludes "and all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over."

I wanted to get to Helston, we diverted to Mullion after a brief glimpse of RNAS Culdrose drawn by the sun and promise of a dip, but the tide was in and the stocky, battered sea defenses undergoing repair, so after a sunbathe on the sea wall we headed off to the chocolate factory where iced coffee was cooling and mobile signal restored, revealing a plea for fresh clothes from the youngest, who was off to a Captains Dinner in Falmouth as part of the Tall Ships event. I had an emotional moment or two, stuck in traffic at end-of-shift-time passing by Culdrose again. Happy memories and some sadness for times and people - gone. Unable to re-visit the blackberry lane down to Mounts Bay with my daughter as planned, we sped back to Falmouth on the A394.

It's been three years since I left the shire for more than a day and the journey, or the descent into Cornwall was full of joy and some sadness as familiar roads reminded me of past holidays, places we might stop, views we all marvelled at. In particular, I felt the absence of our dog, our brown lab Morti who died at the start of the Covid pandemic. All that long journey it was as if he was with me, dogs came up to me tails wagging and I could sense his nose pressed to the car window as the air changed from chalk dusted seed filled Wiltshire through Dorset -  old fossils, heathland and London Clay through to Devon - the greensand of the Blackdowns, heathy grassland and shale, a tang of iron from the red oxidising sandstone, to the greying granite of Dartmoor where the air has settled from the collision of tectonic plates leaving an acidic taste on the palate. We holidayed in South Devon nearly every year and these smells and traces on the tongue resonate the most, along with the sense of lush greens and folding in of hill and valley from the more open plains and valleys of Wiltshire. The rich geological patchwork is largely untouched by the ice age scouring of the spiny ribs of Wiltshire and Dorset. We are unhurriedly heading towards the Tamar having decided to dip into Plymouth where copper and arsenic were once shipped from the Devon mines and now, this ocean city sings of Navy, culture, and a wealth that papers over poverty, aspiring to create a grand gateway to Cornwall.

And so we cross the Tamar duly heading towards Bodmin and the swept, granite moors of Jamaica Inn before dipping down to St Austell in search of sea glimpses and that wet, loamy fern-filled, tree-arching comfort of cornish coast roads. We weave between coast and sub-coast before diving down the zig-zagged roads to Mevagissy (Lannvorek) an ancient fishing harbour, where the houses and cottages cling to the hills like limpets and the fifteenth-century Fountain Inn snuggles under the cliff, and a maze of streets wind around the harbour guarded by a small lighthouse. A boat trip from here might afford you a glimpse of dolphin. We ate at the street food van beside the harbour, salt and pepper squid with frites - freshly cooked and delicious. Then having been on-track in terms of our planned three hours to Cornwall - typically, our schedule fell apart as Cornish time and tides crept like a sea-mist upon us and having chatted with the man in the Yarn shop (aptly named) mourned the retirement of the Potter over the road whose lovely mugs and pots and plates seemed to sadly display themselves in the shop window we then meandered to the Lost Gardens of Heligan to subject our calves and feet to the constant delight of beautifully rescued vistas of planting, landscapes, woodlands and jungle! It was too much for one visit and the Burma Rope bridge finished off my travel-weary feet, so it was time to go. My senses overloaded with scents floral and more exotic we headed out through the shop (as is the way of all things) via the Farm shop and set our course for Falmouth.

I am an adventurer and the eldest is an excellent navigator, so it was only a short while before we found ourselves 'off the main track' again in search of those uplifting sea-vistas and weaving along single-track lanes, submerged in sunken clay and stone, tumbled barns and leafy ferns creating magical secret ways to hidden kingdoms. I have learnt from my Devonian adventures that there is no shame in reversing, don't moan, don't panic - if you meet another car (or tractor), reverse to the nearest passing place. Hence, as I drove and marveled at the old roads, the valleys and old farms, my inner monkey frequently cried "passing place!' as we circumnavigated a small stretch of coast passing Gorran, Caerhayes and Veryan before heading through Tregony and onwards to Truro, the southernmost City. Cornwall's only City. A glossy, traffic-congested centre of commerce and leisure where two rivers merge into one.Truro always seems like a sausage mixer, you are squeezed through it and emerge the other side, forever changed. Our progression to Falmouth and then Maenporth was mercifully direct and straightforward. The sandy beach at Maenporth after a typically wide-then-narrow-wide-then-sharp-bend-narrow-then-narrower was a welcome sight, and my Sea Fever instantly becalmed by the gentle rolling surf and the open aspect of this once important harbour turned hang-out beach. After locating Wave Watchers (our apartment on the rising hill, leading out of Maenporth towards Glendurgan) we finally stopped, and settled in for the night, the waves lulling our travel-weary selves into a state of expectant sleep, where pirates marauded and miners mined and fishermen set sail, ever hopeful of a 'good catch'.