So, Friday saw us down in Plymouth, doing a reading at the Central Library to coincide with Plymouth’s Out:Fest.
It was a good evening; quite a small crowd, so it felt more like a gathering than an audience, and the discussion afterwards was lively. And, well, that was it. Thank you, Chris Goddard and Sue Lancaster!
Sue points out the escape routes. You know what readings can be like....
We got to explore some of the city, too, and we were down on the Hoe just after dawn. I’d only seen the more urban bits of Plymouth before.
Richard says:
At which point Dru runs out of steam. This is why we have to do the readings together. Dru gets to live the life. I get to be Boswell, and Boswell says never mind the size of the crowd, feel the quality. Had some particularly interesting questions, including two new ones and an old one that I’ve changed my mind about so answered completely differently. We’ve never set out to preach to the converted, and it’s always fun (for me) when I feel some of the audience approaching the trans adventure from my (cautious) perspective rather than charging with trumpets like Dru.
The day after, we had to have an adventure (our trips can become so predictable – we learn something new every day). Hence the lighthouse in the pic at the top. The Hoe at Plymouth is well worth the candle, and there are regency houses hidden on the polite side that made me think of Brighton. The Hoe was once two-thirds of the way to becoming Hove, and then the Royal Navy arrived.
Best rhyme I can muster is ‘glimmers’. As in distant bobbing candlelit wheelhouses glimpsed through thickening sea fret ect ect.
Your lighthouse pic looks a bit like one of those optical setups where the caption goes: ‘Richard, actually only 6″ tall, is in fact hovering in mid air in an artful pose only 3’ from the camera; the remarkable Dru really is almost half a lighthouse tall; but see how clever composition and a well calibrated lighthouse create the illusion that Richard is taller than Dru!”
Pleased to hear it went well in Plymuff, both of you – and I love that bit about the optical set-up, Suzzy!
Suzzys comment is an award winning one.
All I remember from arriving in Plymouth was that there is a Toys R Us. Goes back to map reading with 3 excited children in the back of the car at the beginning of a holidays in the UK
Hi Dru,
I was going to come to this event, but I have a bug, which has been triggering beastly migraines, so still struggling a bit at the moment.
Susan
Sailors always have been fond of their hoe’s, but any place with a red and white striped lighthouse, can’t be all that bad! I love the shape that one.
Melissa XX
Here’s another view of the Plymouth Lighthouse that shows its lovely shape a little better.
Melissa XX
I suppose the rhyme would work if you lisped it, Suzzy. You are right, of course; I am in fact huge. I found a cake that said EAT ME. Honest.
Thanks, Delia. It was fun.
I recall sitting in the family car in a very static queue, Anji, on a hol in the 60s. We were next to the Brunel railway bridge, which made it memorable. That and my father adding dialogue to the two seagulls that were staring with baleful eye from a nearby wall. It was raining.
Hi, Susan! I hope you’re feeling better now. There wasn’t a huge turn-out anyway, as I said; and apparently the rest of Out:Fest has been cancelled. Oh dear.
Thank you, Melissa! Richard made that joke too… this lighthouse was originally on the Eddystone Rock, you know. I used to climb a hill above the farm I was working on, near Modbury, and gaze across to it. The new one, that is.