cornwall where colin and joy live

i learned that irving penn passed away on thursday, aged 92. he was one of my favourite photographers. and i am very fond of black and white photos like his and henri cartier-bresson’s, although i don’t take any black and white photos myself any longer. i only rely on digital camera now and my old canon eos has been laid to rest in my closet for years. i’m not good at portraits, but i used to take a few black and white ones, of colin wilson for example. he is an english author who is actually better known in japan and the usa than england.
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cool and fresh air of this glorious autumn morning brought me memories of my october trip to scenic cornwall where colin and joy wilson lived. i sort of befriended them when i made colin fly to tokyo for a special lecture as part of a symposium i organised along with my girl-colleagues. they were kindly saying to me i should visit them home in cornwall some time. so some months later, when i started my ma art course in london, i took a train from paddington. in advance of that, joy reminded me not to forget to bring a raincoat with me because the weather could be whimsical there.

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joy picked me up from the st. austell station. after a heavy shower, the sun appeared on the way to gorran haven. the day turned out to be a beautiful indian summer day, which seemed as if it’d last forever in cornwall. fuchsias were still in full bloom here and there in the village. in their big garden, there were a bungalow and several sheds that all stored some 30, 000 titles of books. i stayed at the bungalow comfortably but in fact i slept being surrounded by their bookshelves. during my stay, between sightseeing, joy took me to various places such as an archaeology workshop and a local library for her research, namely, to help colin out.

colin would work on a book in his basement study from early in the morning to 5pm every day. supper would start around 6pm when colin opened a bottle of wine. they had no dinning table. we gathered in the lounge instead, using a tray on our each lap. colin kept talking (almost nonsense) to rowan, his younger son who lived with them, while joy kept just smiling quietly. although i forgot why, i happened, and sure was certainly honoured, to meet all his family members at the weekend as his daughter came back home from south africa for some reason where she lived at the time and his elder son drove home from london to join.

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as time went by, i lost contact with them. but i am glad to find via some net news they are both well. especially these black and white photographs make me feel appreciative of the precious time in cornwall colin and joy offered me.

pic 1.
his house is built on the hill overlooking the sea, while the parrot perching on a branch overlooking me in his lounge.
pic 2.
small room next to the entrance hall. i found the young colin on an old poster quite cute.
pic 3.
idylic view out of the bungalow window where i stayed. there were flocks of sheep and goats behind the wire fence.
pic 4.
bungalow interior.
pic 5.

lounge with colin’s creative clutter.
pic 6.
their cat fell asleep on joy’s lap while their dog yawning. i often walked the dog down to the nearby shore during the stay.
pic 7.
joy told me that all the animals in the house belonged to her daughter. whenever she came home she left joy and colin her pets one by one.
pic 8.
entrance hall. no cornish country life could exist with no wellingtons!
pic 9.
in the bungalow. i picked nasturtium from the garden and placed on the windowsill.
pic 10.
mr colin wilson, smiling.
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how are you enjoying this sunday?
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dreaming of jolly old england for yuletide

i am happy with another sunny sunday to enjoy japanese winter, though we’ve had a freezing morning: the temperature fell below zero overnight. i don’t mind the cold as long as the sky is blue.


i guess you, if in some christian country, are about to go frantic for christmas shopping (take it easy, everyone!!). i know how you feel right now. as for me, i’m not christian. i’m neither a kid anymore nor one of young twosomes in love (japanese christmas is adopted commercially and adapted exclusively for them!), so christmas is no big deal. still, i’d truly miss the english festive mood as soon as i turn the last page of my calendar. in fact, this december is no exception. i’ve begun to long for the festive mood of england i used to take it for granted. i wish i were back in london, my 3-time second home, just for yuletide.

staying in london for a week would be great even if its winter sky is gloomy, but spending a few days in the country would be fantastical. i had a chance to do that. exactly 5 years ago when shion, my daughter, flew from tokyo and stayed with me in london, mr dreamer took us to newbury in the west of the county of berkshire, where he was at the time taking care of his friend’s home while the entire family (except their furry little creatures) was away on holiday.

english countrysides feel so welcoming while the english winter is infamously bleak. and the house, converted by his friend, jonathan, himself from a grade 2 listed barn, is luxuriously but not ostentatiously decorated with english elegance by his wife, sue. it is as if the house embodies my favourite images of country life just like pictures from the glossy magazine “country living”. in their house, there were two pianos: mini-grand and upright. shion and mr dreamer amused themselves by playing the piano or a guitar in the music room, and i sat back by the fireplace in the lounge with a whiff of burning logs.

whatever we did or wherever we moved within the house, we were surrounded by the ambiance of classical englishness. it is, though, a typically modernised country estate with a barn-turned huge family house and a farm building-turned cottage for guests. several months later, i also had an opportunity to stay at the cottage. jonathan and sue had kindly put up mr dreamer and me for a little while before we moved together to buenos aires in the spring of 2004. (but my decision to quit work for the new life there was a big mistake, by the way.)

the house set in a tranquil rural setting was like a dream. i had such a lovely time there being under the apple blossom in the spring. but staying in the winter was more than that. it was quite an experience to me. i yielded to the sheer serenity as much as i could, looking at the misty meadows and woodlands adjacent to the newbury racecourse and a golf course. the only thing i regretted was i had no proper footgear. it wasn’t that easy to step into the meadow. i’d never trained myself to stomp on that soggy english ground. pity. that’s the downside of the english countryside, i’m afraid.


(i’ve learned that shuichi kato　加藤周一, my intellectual hero, passed away on friday. he was 89. he was japan’s leading critic and the greatest generalist crossing over many different cultural spheres. i ever sent him kind of a fan mail when he wrote on sarajevo in his column for a japanese daily. he wrote me back with his home address. that meant something special to me. so i wrote him again. may his soul rest in peace!)

septembers to remember

it’s been brilliant. i mean the weather. summer is not ending here in the far east yet. our september resembles almost mediterranean’s i always long for. much as i feel sorry for my friends in england where summertime is too short (or rather, around only sometimes?), we japanese deserve this long late summer to make up for the unbearable last two months, don’t we.
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i love this season and the word “september” itself. sound-wise, it makes me feel sentimental. it is now inevitably associated with the tragedy of “september 11”, though. in buenos aires, there is a blue bottled white wine named “septembre”. i used to buy one. i distinctly remember the september of 2004 that i flew back to england from argentina: i jumped into summer from winter.
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my porteño life had a wrong start in early may. mr dreamer, who brought me there and was supposed to show me a new aspect of life, could not change his louche lifestyle. i’d already decided to leave him, but he fell ill; i needed to look after him for some two months. then, when he made a recovery i couldn’t leave him alone in buenos aires since he had no money, even one peso, in his pocket. i know he had a half sister and half brothers in germany and canada, still, no real family to rely on. he eventually admitted having no savings, no assets or no concrete plans to make a living. his vintage car and a false hope were all he had. i took him back to england.
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another reason i flew back to england, not to japan directly, was my personal stuff i’d left with jonathan, mr dreamer’s close friend, in berkshire; jonathan had offered me some space in his grand residence to store it. mr dreamer also had left his car there, so we went to berkshire first, telling jonathan i would arrange my stuff to be shipped shortly. mr dreamer picked up his little black mg from jonathan’s garage and we drove together up to london where his another long-time friend byron lived. we had no home or base in london any longer, but we needed a place and a little time to sort things out.
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they once worked together: byron was art director of a high brow art and fashion magazine that mr dreamer sponsored as publisher. the prominent pop artist allen jones did the cover. subsequently, byron became a successful photographer, especially for erotic ones. we’d met before in london. i noticed his liking for styling himself as a lanky grey-haired rocker. just like his eccentric looks, his mysterious victorian house intrigued me. it was decorated in elaborate eclectic taste: william morris wallpaper for the quest room; a huge bath room and grapevines bearing fruits in his tiny conservatory. anyway, byron put us up. and his limits came a few days later. he was well-accustomed to enjoy his own company, so he kindly removed us from his london home to his country cottage in yoxford, suffolk.

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i’d never been to suffolk before. as we headed north-east, classically bucolic scenery appeared in front of the car. i was thrilled at my stay in the countryside as much as i fretted about my future. we reached byron’s idyllic cottage. with honeysuckles around the gate over the meadow, it looked like a fairlytale. indeed, it was such a lovely retreat. during our week-long occupation, i’d be basking in the september sun, listening to twitters from nearby woods and looking up at the constellations and the milky way in the pitch black sky to make the most of the last days of summer.
* in retrospect, i think i was waiting for mr dreamer and myself to come out with something. something like a nicer comma at least? otherwise, a decent full stop between us. time got us nowhere after all. to mr dreamer’s credit, he was always very compassionate, generous, brave and tough, but he was hopelessly iffy about his own life when it came to honesty. he couldn't face the reality. so he went on drinking again until he emptied byron’s wine cupboard, only looking back on the vagaries of life. sure enough, it was high time for both of us to move on. that september swept me back to japan in the end.
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september comes and goes every year. i can’t remember them all. meanwhile, i’m pretty busy remembering all the birthdays of my daughter, my mother and my best girlfriends…phew! there are so many birthday girls in september somehow. *