No name...

... for Knots in the String.

For a long time now, I’ve had the urge to give the cottage a forever name.

When we first purchased it in 1988, it was just called the Roberts’ house which seemed entirely apposite as my husband is also Robert and he fell in love with the funny little place the minute he saw it. He watched the For Sale sign being tied to the fence one afternoon and he had purchased the cottage by midday the next day after taking me through.

One always knows if a house will be a home. It casts a net as fine as the gossamer thread of flying spiders. Maybe one will cry. They do it all the time on Escape to the Country when a property really burrows into the soul.

I walked into this quaint house with its quiet ambience and with different levels in each room, with window seats in two rooms, with light, so much light, streaming in from the east, north and west. I could hear the waves on the beach five minutes away, whilst in the ½ acre garden, two magnificent willows were just beginning to bud, enormous trees that I imagined would wave, waft and womp, casting shade in summer where one could lie and read whilst waves fussed, grumbled and sometimes roared. In the kitchen, my gaze fixed on shelves of blue and white striped Cornishware and I knew, I just knew, that the house was speaking to me. The rest of course, is history.

In those days, our children were young and our daughter (and her mum) were devoted fans of Anne of Green Gables . The cottage was a white weatherboard house with a dark green roof and so it became Green Gables for years, despite that it had no gables or dormer rooms like Marilla’s and Matthew’s house on PEI.

Years later we had to replace the roof, and I settled on a colour called Surf Mist which is as it says on the tin – the ivory tint of flying seaspray. Green Gables no longer. A conundrum then on what to call this place that fits around me like a well-worn jacket, that has dried my tears and cossetted me with its sea silences through love, through grief, through illness, through the writing of 14 books and the rearing of two children who are now in their forties.

No name fitted, or else there was no consensus. So for years in my mind, it’s just been House. But said with affection as I rub the door-frame as I leave. ‘Goodbye, House. Thank you for sheltering me and allowing me to unwind.’ When I return, I rub the door frame again and murmur, ‘Hallo, House. It’s good to be back. Cast your magick…’

It’s time it was christened properly. It’s owed that much.

It’s been all and everything to me, despite that its redolent of any little seaside cottage. It sparkles on the sunny days, its smallness a thing of perfect beauty for the two folk who tend to live in it for ¾’s of any week. It has an oar in one of the two bedrooms, blue and white Cornishware in the timber trimmed kitchen, it has flotsam here and there telling stories of the coast at its doorstep. By the side of what we call the boathouse (where all the boating paraphernalia is stored) there’s a worn white dinghy propped on its side, oars underneath.

There’s an old lifebuoy nailed to the wall above the long border which has a black arrow and the simple word ‘Beach’ written on it, in case one needs directions. There’s an ancient buoy hanging beneath the silver birch, lost in exploding acid-green leafage.

So what to call House?

For a long time, I was taken with the name Saltings, a word associated with high and low tides. My husband disliked that. Then there’s Sandhamn, the beautiful island set in the Stockholm Archipelago and the setting for the series, The Sandhamn Murders. My husband disliked that one as well. I love Cornish and Welsh names but my friend down the road has a beautiful Welsh name for her house, ‘Porthcawl’, and I would feel as if I was copying. I also like the romanticism of Cape Cod and the islands of Massachusetts. Especially the place known as Nantucket. I think of Henry Beston and The Outermost House, despite that Beston wrote the book on Cape Cod. (His book sits permanently by my bed – 5 stars).

Nantucket is a name that sings of Moby Dick and whales, of First Nations people, of boats and the sea. Of oysters, shells and lobster. Of seawrack and surf. All the things that are here on our own coast. We have a First Nations history of our own, we are on the whale song path, we catch crayfish and scallops, we find samphyr and kelp and watch nesting sandpipers, oyster catchers and dotterels. There’s even a small lighthouse on Black Point that flicks its friendly light across the bay every night. We are as windy as Nantucket, although it’s a rare day that we get seafog shrouding our beaches and coves and thus there are no bells in the bay to ring their warning toll.

Or maybe the cottage should be called The Willows, after our two 70 year old trees…

I suspect that there may be no consensus on this name either. I just have a feeling.

But maybe I’ll have a small sign made regardless. To be fixed to the large white gate set into the tall black fence under the front liquid amber tree. It might say Nantucket and be etched in white script on a navy background (or navy script on white). Or perhaps I’ll think of some other name that has equal romanticism.

First, however, I must ask the cottage what it thinks. That’s the most important thing of all. I’ll let you know…

Doing:

We’ve had a few days of gale-force winds, one day of 100kph. In that time, a massive branch of one of the willows cracked and crashed to the ground. So there’s hours of chain-sawing and carting.

Fortunately, the willows live on. I’m in awe of their strength in the face of the relentless clawing, scouring wind. We’ve had a month of gales – nothing in living memory has been like this. And fools say the weather isn’t changing. As Sister Boniface would say: ‘Oh, fishbums to that!’

Watched The Perfect Couple on Netflix and it drew a hairline crack through my romantic outlook on Nantucket.

Then The Good Liar with Ian Mckellan and Helen Mirren. Nice twist.

Also watched Ray Martin’s documentary series on death in The Last Goodbye. Expansive expose on death and how we might think about it. It prompted much talk between husband and myself, but that’s for another time.

Owing to travelling back and forth along the highway, I finished listening to Michael Parkinson’s autobiography and began Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait. It’s enthralling, set in the Renaissance, a fated, frightening marriage between Lucrezia di Medici and the Duke of Ferrara. O’Farrell writes with such skill – her settings are so naturally contrived, there are no info-dumps. I am a part of the setting, a fly on the wall. Subtle and secretive. I think I’m a fan.

I’ve spent time writing more of Act III. It’s expanding and contracting daily, sharpening its narrative. I think about it as I walk, as I work. It’s a good sign…

We’re trying to eat more healthily. Creamy oats (husband cooks it beautifully) and fruit with almonds and natural yoghurt for breakfast. Bowls of dry-roasted vegetables, dry-fried haloumi and hommus for lunch and a much smaller meal at night – maybe soup, a veggie curry, middle eastern veg, an omelette stuffed with steamed veg, or oily fish and salad. We’ve each reduced (him) or eliminated (me) bread. We have halved the amount of sweet nibbles we eat. I make natural jellies with fresh fruit stirred through as they set. Why are we doing this? I have no idea, except it sounded good at the time. Do we have more energy? Are we sleeping better? We are a work-in-progress so I’ll let you know. The hardest thing is that I love cooking cakes, slices, chutneys, cookies, pies. I miss it. Today we had over-ripe bananas, and I’m afraid I cracked. Made a chocolate banana cake – probably the best ever, which I then froze. I suppose it'll be handy if normal people visit.

I gaze out the window at the tangled mass of willow yet to be chopped and disposed of. And I wonder, perhaps it’s not a good idea to call the cottage The Willows. With climate change and continued blows, there may be nothing left of the willow trees. And even though I beg them please, not in my lifetime, I put the moniker to one side. Perhaps its back to the romance of Nantucket again.

Music for this week?

In honour of beaches and the seabirds who are nesting in the sags at the moment. Sandpipers, oystercatchers, dotterels, sea gulls, bitterns and more.