Tag Archives: Cornwall

INTRODUCING SELF-STYLED ART LABOURER, ANGELA LOWETH

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When it come to my art work terms I don’t see myself as skilled worker more as a labourer!!

I paint rocks, glasses, jars and of course pictures.

All my life I have loved art – most of my work is bright and bold that is why I find acrylics so wonderful to use, the colours, you can get fine details, but also build it up to create a texture if needed., but I also enjoy pen and ink. We moved to Cornwall over 12 years ago and I find it is the landscape, sea … well basically everything around me that inspires me to paint it. Art is my passion, my escapism but also my therapy. I take my watch off, sit and paint forgetting all about time, but just being in that moment putting brush to canvas, glass or rocks.

I put my emotions and be emotional into whatever I am working on at the time.

When it comes to painting it is the sea that I turn to, trying to capture the power of the waves and in my more abstract painting it is that power trying to be tamed and utilised by man (hence the surfboards).

When it comes to pen and ink it is to nature I mainly look, trying to create reality and beauty from just one colour, but different thickness of pen.

I shall never be famous nor do I care if people don’t like my work, I do it because it’s what I love to do and what pleases me and yet when I do ask an opinion and you get that one person who finds a fault yes it hurts, especially when you have put your heart and soul into a picture and then I think to myself its only their view “it’s my work and if they should be grateful I showed it to them!! “

I am my own critic and I have may unfinished canvases to prove it, but art whatever I do, it lifts me up when I am down and helps me concentrate on being me and brightens my day when it is dark.

 

Find more of Angela’s art here: https://folksy.com/shops/angelaloweth

Redruth clocktower, pebbles and paint

INTRODUCING CORNISH CUBIST, SIMON SMITH

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‘It is the desire to represent the world not as we see it, but the way it actually is’, is the driving force behind this Cornishman’s work. A native of Porthtowan on the wind swept Cornish granite coast, Simon Smith is essentially a modern day cubist. He’s a former Truro Schoolboy (the posh school) and a carries, amongst other qualifications, a degree in fine art – mentored by the great Welsh painter and printmaker David Carpanini.

After a successful career in business Simon essentially retired back home to Cornwall by buying and running a pub, and most importantly returning to his first love of art. “The iconic mining ruins of the heritage coast lend themselves perfectly to the painter,” he says, “with the endless sweeping sky and rolling ocean as the perfect partner”. His home and pub, in Porthtowan, are situated just a dozen miles up the coast from the iconic artist centre of St Ives and the hub of Cornish creativity.

 

But why cubism? “I love to draw and financially speaking I gain a steady little income from my pointillist drawings of local sea life and fauna but, as rewarding as they are to complete, they don’t push the limits. Cubism on the other hand gives me the opportunity to push my limits to the maximum and really work at representing the 4th dimension of time.” And time is clearly important to him in his work with one beautiful triptych showing the not only a cubist sea/cliff scape but also the changing seasons from Spring to Autumn.

So what next? “I’m exploring the classic Analytic Cubist phase of Braque and Picasso and love the limited palette. My musician friends are keen for portraits so watch this space….”

 

See more of Simon’s paintings at https://www.facebook.com/Porthtowanfinearts

 

SISTER SCRIBES: CASS GRAFTON ON HER LOVE FOR DAPHNE DU MAURIER’S CORNWALL

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I’ve been reflecting lately on which books stand out most to me, from childhood through to the present day, and a pattern has emerged: my all-time favourite reads at any particular time of my life had a strong sense of place.

From Enid Blyton’s boarding school stories, through my teenage passion for the Brontës’ wild Yorkshire moorlands, it’s clear I was hooked on places from an early age. Onward I went into Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire, Harry Potter’s Hogwarts and Tolkien’s Middle Earth, always captivated by a good setting.

Alongside my fellow Sister Scribes friends, Kitty Wilson and Jane Cable, I have a deeply-rooted love of Cornwall, and whilst writing a recent novel, I thought back to when this fascination with the county began and realised it stemmed from my interest in a writer and her Cornwall-based stories: Daphne du Maurier.

It was the 1990s, and every autumn, my husband and I would spend a week on the south-east Cornish coast—days of kicking our way through crisp golden leaves, inhaling the smell of wood smoke from cottage chimneys, and watching the gulls wheel across steel-grey skies as waves lashed the rocky shoreline.

One of our favourite walks was the Hall Walk, which has stunning views across the charming town of Fowey and out towards Gribbin Head as you meander towards Pont Creek, onwards to Pont Pill and then back along the other side of the creek to Polruan.

During these holidays, I discovered Daphne du Maurier’s strong connection to the area, where she lived for many years, but at the time I had only read her most famous novel, Rebecca. I became fascinated with her life, devoured her biography and began to read her other works, beginning with the first full-length novel, The Loving Spirit.

Daphne often walked the Hall Walk from her then home at Ferryside, adjacent to the Bodinnick Ferry where it docked after crossing the river from Fowey. It was on this walk, at Pont Creek, that she came across a derelict schooner, the Jane Slade. Although the ship was rotting, the figurehead remained intact, and she became spellbound by the ship, not only often climbing aboard and imagining its past adventures, but also going on to make local enquiries into the vessel and the local family who had built her.

She absorbed the history of the boat-building Slades, sought out the family tombstone in the churchyard at Lanteglos, up above Polruan (the church where Jane Slade had been married and where Daphne herself went on to marry), and was also given access to some family letters.

Bewitched by all she was discovering and inspired by her surroundings, Daphne realised she had enough material for a novel, a book she wanted to write ‘in which atmosphere and a sense of place would dominate’.

The Loving Spirit (the title came from a poem by Emily Brontë) was published in 1931— with the Slade family becoming the Coombes and Polruan renamed as Plyn—and is still in print today.

The figurehead from the Jane Slade was given to Daphne, and it was mounted on a beam below her bedroom window at Ferryside, where it still hangs.

My love affair with Cornwall is as strong as ever, and I’m looking forward to when I can visit again, walking those beloved paths, taking in the breath-taking views and inhaling the atmosphere of the place my heart calls home.

 

Sources: Daphne du Maurier – Margaret Forster (1993), Vanishing Cornwall – Daphne du Maurier (1967)

 

 

 

INTRODUCING SISTER SCRIBES: KITTY WILSON

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Sister Scribe number three is Kitty Wilson. You know with every group of friends there’s always one who’s outrageously funny. Well that’s Kitty. Funny and clever and warm. It’s little wonder she writes romcoms – and that they’re hilarious.

 

Hello! It’s so exciting to be able to collaborate with some of my best writing friends as Sister Scribes and keep you updated with all our news and views, so a big thank you to Frost Magazine for hosting us.

I’m Kitty Wilson and I write contemporary romantic comedies; my current series is set in the fictional village of Penmenna and is based around the school there. I used to be a primary school teacher myself and absolutely loved being part of such a strong community.

Having been both parent and teacher, I know what goes on both sides of the school door and really wanted to use a school as a setting and then fill it with some larger-than-life characters. I feel very lucky to be able to do this and often find myself giggling away as I invent some of the more outlandish antics of Penmenna’s PTA.

When my parents first suggested moving to Cornwall I was furious, and vowed I would never set foot in the place. I failed to win that battle so would wander around the lanes, sulky look on my face and a book tucked in my pocket, desperately waiting for a romantic hero to come and rescue me. These days I’m glad I wasn’t bundled into a car by a passer-by but it felt as if my heart would break with disappointment back then.

I lived there for twenty-five years, only moving away a few months ago to have a taste of life in the city. However, the sea is in my soul and I do head back to Cornwall regularly to get some beach time. Cornwall provided me with so much inspiration it made sense to set my books in the county and writing about it now makes me feel as if I’m still there.

Nine years ago, I was devastated when prolonged ill-health meant I had to give it teaching.  After a couple of years, I decided that I would chase my dreams instead until I could return to the classroom. I started to write.

When I had finished the first novel, I began the second, having heard you needed to write a fair few to learn all the things that make a book work. When I put that through the NWS which is a scheme run by the Romantic Novelists Association (the most supportive professional association in the world and one that actively encourages new writers and helps them build a career. It’s also responsible for me meeting my Sister Scribes) I was encouraged to submit the book to agents and publishers. I did this and couldn’t believe it when I had an offer. When I ran to tell one of my closest friends, laptop in hand and tears streaming down my face unable to get any words out, he made me hot sweet tea and sat me down, assuming all the emotion meant a close family member had died!

I used that publication offer to secure myself an agent who then immediately found me an alternative deal to consider. I never had dreamt I would be in the position of choosing a publisher, to this day I can’t quite believe that happened. I am loving writing them and there will be five Cornish School books in total, I have just finished the third and will be starting number four next week.

I am so looking forward to keeping everyone up to date with its progress through Frost magazine and introducing you to some of the women within the writing industry whom I admire. We’re going to have a blast!

Follow Kitty on Twitter @KittyWilson23

THE BUSINESS OF READING: JANE CABLE TAKES A HOLIDAY WITH A FEW GOOD BOOKS

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I’ve just been half way around the world on holiday, but visiting Cambodia and Vietnam it actually felt further than that. Intense heat, spicy food, incense drifting from temples and a recent history which shocked and disturbed me. Strange or inevitable then, that my choice of holiday reading was firmly fixed back home in Cornwall.

For a long while I’ve been promising myself I’d read some of Winston Graham’s Poldark novels. I can barely remember the 1970s TV series starring Robin Ellis and I’ve never watched the current BBC dramatization, but I wanted to read the books. And I was entranced to find that they were set exactly in my part of Cornwall, and in the limited gaps between excursions, I devoured the first three.

But the first book I read, at the beginning of the holiday, was Cornish writer Liz Fenwick’s latest and it was anything other than what I was expecting…
Jane Cable’s review of One Cornish Summer by Liz Fenwick.

Book marketing can sometimes be a slightly disingenuous thing. The cover and the blurb promise one thing, but the story inside delivers quite another. Sometimes this can lead to disappointment, but at others the opposite is true. And this is very much the case with Liz Fenwick’s latest novel. It isn’t a light and fluffy holiday read – it’s brilliant and challenging and altogether so much more.

To me it seems a shame that the publisher wasn’t entirely as brave as the author. The blurb describes Hebe as having ‘a life changing diagnosis’ and ‘memories slipping away’, but shies from actually mentioning the ugliness of Alzheimer’s.  From very early on in the book it’s clear Hebe has early onset dementia. And what’s more, she is written in the first person, something only a truly accomplished writer like Fenwick can pull off.

Hebe is every inch a full and rounded character, and one I sorely missed once I’d finished the book. To chart the cruel descent of her illness in such a way as to carry the reader with her must have been a serious challenge and I asked Liz Fenwick why she chose to do so.

“My best friend’s sister has early on-set Alzheimer’s and it has been sitting in the back of my mind waiting for me to find the story to write…in a way so that I could work through my own grief. And that leads into research…first hand, reading a great deal through the various support groups and finally my mother is in the early stages…so although not the same I was living it.”

One Cornish Summer is actually set over the course of a Cornish autumn and winter but the title is not a misnomer, even if the cover image might mislead. Hebe and her niece Lucy’s days in the damp and draughty ‘Hell House’ are contrasted with the former’s memories of a bright and colourful summer just the previous year when she was able to share Cornwall with the love of her life before her memories of it completely dissolved away.

As Hebe’s condition worsens, parts of the book are heart-breaking to read, for example when she answers the door without her trousers on. But there are thoroughly heart-warming parts too, as ‘Hell House’ reveals its secrets and Lucy, at least, is finally able to move forwards. Thought-provoking and ultimately life affirming, One Cornish Summer is an excellent read.

 

A Break From Business: Holiday Reading: Jane Cable on fiction from Cornwall, her adopted county

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The question I’m asked most frequently since moving to Cornwall is ‘so are you going to write a Cornish book now?’ The answer is that I’m in no hurry to, but in that I seem to be alone and with so much fiction set in the county I thought I’d pick out a few which would make great holiday reading.

Old favourites

I would have to start with Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, in many ways the ultimate in romantic fiction with a seriously heavy twist of suspense. The beautiful house by the sea, the spooky aged retainer and the dear departed wife in the background, it has it all – especially as it didn’t resolve in the way I expected.

Also a classic is Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers which is in part set in Cornwall and known to readers of this column as my favourite book. The characters are so superbly drawn they could break – or make – your heart every time. But almost as good and often forgotten is Pilcher’s Coming Home, a saga which starts in Cornwall in the late 1930s and follows the heroine and her adopted family through the Second World War.

Another writer from my youth associated with the county is Mary Wesley. Camomile Lawn is her most famous Cornish novel and always a popular choice but I enjoyed Harnessing Peacocks far more. I like her heroine Hebe’s unconventional take on life – it seems especially suited to a backdrop in Cornwall.

In a totally different vein is Patrick Gale’s Notes From an Exhibition which perfectly captures (for me, anyway) the artist community at St Ives. The book tells the story of a family coming to terms with the dazzling genius of their late mother. At times a harrowing tale of depression, the wonderful language Gale uses lifts us and takes us to a completely different place.

New friends

Cornwall is now famous for chicklit and romcoms, a trend surely started by Judy Astley with her Just for the Summer, a sharp, witty read about Londoners who decamp to their Cornish second homes for the holidays.

Among those new out this summer, which means I haven’t actually read them but they may well appeal, are these:

Confetti at The Cornish Café by Phillipa Ashley – the third book in this hugely successful series sees the café become a celebrity wedding venue. Described as warm, funny and feel good by doyenne of romantic fiction Katie Fforde.

The Returning Tide by Liz Fenwick – the latest from a writer who has a built a career based on Cornish novels, this time with a saga of sisters and a wartime betrayal that spans the generations.

The Cornish Hotel by the Sea by Karen King – a heart-warming novel from my April Business of Books guest. Ellie returns to help her widowed mother keep the family hotel afloat, but will she succeed or will love intervene?

Dying to Take The Tour by Chrissie Loveday – a murder mystery set against the backdrop of a Poldark sightseeing tour. Cosy crime from a writer who I have to admit is a Cornish neighbour and is also published by Endeavour Press.

 

 

BEST ENDEAVOURS: Best Of Days: Jane Cable’s Digital Publishing Journey

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Jane Cable, publishing, writingBEST ENDEAVOURS

Jane Cable’s blog about what happens once that digital publishing deal is in the bag continues.

BEST OF DAYS

That’s it – the manuscript has been emailed to Endeavour and acknowledged. In four to six weeks I’ll know how much more work I have to do.

So how do I feel? Exhausted – and suddenly very uncertain about my book. Of course the logical part of my mind tells me to get a grip; all I’ve done is a little tweaking and tidying up – they’ve read The Seahorse Summer, for goodness sake – and they’ve bought the rights. So of course it’s going to be fine. The tired, emotional part of my brain, however, is so mashed up I got motion sickness on the elevator in Sainsburys. No kidding.

But last night in my favourite pub, The Victory Inn at Towan Cross in Cornwall, an important aspect of my book was validated when conversation around the bar fell to a former soldier who was going badly off the rails. In so many ways they could have been talking about one of the two GIs in my book, Paxton.

Now when you tackle a subject like combat stress it’s important to get it right. I was lucky enough to be introduced to a former para turned fitness instructor who was prepared to tell me what he’d seen and heard from the soldiers under his care in Afghanistan after they came home from setting up Camp Bastion. The sense of isolation when separated from their unit on leave. The struggle returning to normal family life and relationships after all they’d experienced. How combat can scar a man in ways unseen. How fireworks are never the same again.

publishing, writing

Readers of Frost will be no strangers to Words for The Wounded, the charity set up by author and contributing editor Margaret Graham. The charity supports soldiers suffering from combat stress and I very much hope that I can do something with The Seahorse Summer that can help them in this work.

In the meantime, with the editing finished, what now? Feet up for a while? Not a chance… there’s a huge ‘to do’ list of tasks which have been swept to one side and too long ignored; a vast amount of marketing to be done – both in advance of The Seahorse Summer and for The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree which have been sliding down the Kindle charts while I’ve been busy editing; and, of course, picking up the threads of my current manuscript again.

But as for today? I’m on the north Cornish coast and the sun is shining. Quite honestly, I think I deserve a little break.

 

Jane Cable is the author of two independently published romantic suspense novels, The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree, and a sporadic contributor to Frost. The Seahorse Summer tells the tale of how two American soldiers born sixty years apart help forty-something Marie Johnson to rebuild her shattered confidence and find new love. Discover more at www.janecable.com.

 

 

 

The Rise of the Staycation – Top Destinations 2012

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The Staycation is going to be biggest since the recession began with the UK tourism industry set to benefit by a record £8.7billion

 

Cornwall is the top Staycation destination for 2012

 

In spite of 2012 being a tough year for many Britons, the one thing they are refusing to give up; is their summer holiday according to Travelodge’s annual holiday index out today.

 

The hotel chain surveyed 5,000 British adults to investigate their summer holiday intentions and discovered that 41% of Britons are holidaying at home this year (up 6% on last year) with the average week’s holiday costing  £433.47 (Up £10.78) on last year). This investment is set to benefit the UK tourism industry by £8.7bn (Up £1.5bn on last year).

 

The travel report also revealed that 48% of Britons will be taking four domestic breaks this year. (Up on the average of three breaks taken last year). The top three summer Staycation destinations for 2012 are: Cornwall, Edinburgh (Jumping to second position from fifth position from last year) and the Lake District.

 

Listed below are the top ten Staycation destinations for 2012 and 2011

 

           

2012 Destinations

 

2011 Destinations

1

Cornwall

1

Cornwall

2

Edinburgh

2

Lake District

3

Lake District

3

Devon

4

London

4

L ondon

5

Scottish Highlands

5

Edinburgh

6

Devon

6

Scottish Highlands

7

North Wales

7

Wales

8

Glasgow

8

Blackpool

9

Yorkshire Dales

9

Great Yarmouth

10

Blackpool

10

Scarborough

 

 

The annual holiday index also revealed that a third of adults are reliving their childhood and taking a traditional British seaside holiday this summer. Whilst 30% of Britons are taking a UK city break and a quarter of Britons are planning to explore the British countryside. Just one in ten Britons are taking a thrill seeking theme park holiday.     

 

Nearly half of British adults (49%) have waited until now to book their summer break due to financial budget constraints. Sixty five per cent of Britons have had to make major sacrifices to their household budget; in order to afford a holiday this year. Some of the financial cutbacks have included:

 

  • Not going out for a meal or drinks with family and  friends
  • Buying cheaper groceries and cuts of meal
  • Not buying new clothes
  • Not buying a present on a special occasion for their partner 

 

Around a fifth of Britons have relied on selling goods on eBay to cover the cost of their holiday this year.     

 

Grant Hearn, Travelodge, Chief Executive said: “It’s fantastic news that the Staycation is going to be bigger than ever this year despite British household budgets being attacked by a second recession. Our research highlights even in difficult financial times, Britons will make the necessary sacrifices in order to have a summer break. I guess everyone needs something to look forward to during these difficult times.”

 

“2012 is such a momentous year for British tourism and it’s a great bonus that the economy will be further boosted by £8.7 billion due to more Britons holidaying at home this summer”.

 

Further findings from the report revealed that over a third of British families (36%) are breaking up their traditional one week Staycation holiday into three shorter breaks, at different locations this year; so that their children will think they have gone on lots of holidays. 

 

A third of Britons are using their Staycation break to catch up with family and friends. One in ten Britons reported that taking a UK weekend break with friends was cheaper than a night out at home, whilst a quarter of couples surveyed stated they are taking more UK short breaks, so that they can spend quality time together.

 

Findings also revealed that 72% of Britons will travel to their Staycation break by car. Just 12% will go by train, whilst four per cent will choose to travel by coach and six per cent will opt for air travel.