The sun is shining, the shy is blue, it’s a gorgeous day for the beach. Pick up the kids and the towels, surf, sun, steak pasties for lunch and fresh cooked fish and chips on the way home. Brilliant.
But not for me, unfortunately. I’ve just had to cancel our week’s holiday in N. Cornwall because of the rapacity of the local dialysis clinic in Bodmin. It’s private, not NHS; so regardless of whether you have insurance to cover it they charge £225 per session, upfront, get it back from the insurance who knows when. Three sessions for the week = nearly a thousand euro = too damned much to pay out not knowing when you’ll get it back.
There are beaches here but they’re not the same – it’s not the Atlantic. There are no cliffs, just less endless muscle-sapping dunes and no surf to speak of despite the constant chilly wind. Ideal for windsurfing, but not much else. No, Dutch beaches just won’t do. It’s Summer and I yearn for Cornwall. Just the whiff of a pasty would do.
Oh well. Surf’s always up in Hawaii. It even comes out of the walls.
From The Telegraph’s picture gallery of trompe l’oeil murals by John Pugh:
His [John Pugh’s] immense mural in Honolulu features Queen Lili’uokalani, the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands, with Duke Kahanamoku – the ultimate father of surfing. A colossal wave appears to crash right onto the pavement. It took two months of studio work to plan and a further six months to execute with the help of 11 other artists. The scene is so realistic that just as it was near completion, said John, it attracted the attention of the fire brigade which stopped its truck in the middle of traffic. “They jumped out to rescue the children in the mural,” he said
I thought they were real children looking at the painting too, until I saw the closeup:
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Incredible. But still not quite the same as being there.
