‘The earth shows up those of value and
those who are good for nothing.’ - a peasant judgement from Jean Pierre Vernant’s, Mythe
et Pensee Chez les Grecs
Rain
and the promise of more later. I take the early Saturday bus from Dawlish to
Newton. With just half a dozen passengers I’m free to enjoy the Teign estuary
and what I know to be Hay Tor in low cloud.
A
leisurely cooked breakfast at the Carlton Café before Verity picks me up at
9,00am. She’d e-mailed a couple of days before to confirm, doubtful about the
weather, I’d replied I would be there whatever the weather. After all, as Billy
Connelly famously said: ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong
clothing!’
We
speak of when we’d last met, and visited the Dawlish Garden Trust, which has a
long history of trying to provided training and employment opportunities for
people with learning disabilities, and of what we might learn from them.
It’s
great to be a passenger with someone on the way to BCW who knows the route so
well she doesn’t have to consciously think about it - she gives me a long
explanation of what a Community Interest Company is, and how the project is
about to become one. And I tell her that the bureaucratic trick I want to
pull-off, is at one and the same time, to be part of the setting up of the
project and, as a client of mental health services, be referred to it!
We
stop by the farm to pick up bits and pieces for today’s task, planning and
making a start on the quarry barn - which hopefully can be the base for
activity around the beacon. I pause, roll a cigarette, absorb the rush of
silence, slowly pick up new sounds and see movements on another scale. I feel
suddenly jealous, and I’m someone who lives with the sound of the sea and a
view of the coast!
Was
it eight or nine of us huddled in barn? As the rain got heavier, discussion
turns to what needs doing, who can do what, what can be got on the cheap or for
free. Then suddenly after thirty minutes or so, we’re a group.
The
barn could become simply somewhere to find protection from the weather, but
equally it could serve as a workshop or classroom. There’s a real possibility
of a wood burning stove, but first it needs a floor and the two open sides
enclosing. But the barn already has a history, and a sound timber frame, it
doesn’t want transforming too much. There’s a hot drink for those who want it.
Then Simon gets the itch to be doing.
We
start clearing the overgrown vegetation from around the back and side of the
barn, and we all chip in and the group holds for an hour or so. By the end
there is the makings of a bonfire and a pile of scrap on the trailer.
(Photos from Flickr: The Broadhempston Community Woodland)
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