“If only I could recommend this inn I knew in the hillsides – a picturesque little place ran by an old woman and her daughter… or was it her niece? …Great place, great place! Even the road that went up to the old place was marvelous! Why, it was right on the cliffs! Not less than a quarter-meter from the rickety guard rail was a sheer, utterly sheer, drop-off to the corals below! Went on for kilometers –but equally intriguing was the pathway from the road-side to the lodge; lined on both sides by stone wall likely built in the last few centuries and held in place solely by time’s collection of debris and moss.”
He shakes his head from side-to-side slowly and looks down at the floorboards in disbelief from his sayings. He scratches his chin and nose and looks up.
“Can’t recall what made us choose the old place… think a fella in the village must’ve mentioned something. Anyhow, the place had no trees or hedgerows or anything, anything at all – just the greenest grass you ever did come across and bluebells growing all around the property! I quite adored bluebells in those days”
He laughs
“The house was also a faint blue with white trim around the windows and the eaves and the doors … but the front doors was a bright yellow! It matched wonderfully!
I was taken aback when I noticed that the panes of the windows – they were the old style panes, somewhat unfocused with tiny air bubbles in them like an old bottle! Looking in from the outside provided an even more dreamy feeling of the place.”
He cups his hands and holds them up to the sides of him temples as if looking through a window.
“We left our luggage at the front gate and walked to the... hell we drifted to the back we were so captured! The cliffs just to the rear of the inn took my breath!”
He clasps his chest in another gesture of disbelief
“I just had to stand there for a little while and smell the salt in the air and listen to the sea birds as they danced in the sky unafraid of the elevation change from sea to land. So hard to explain the way I……..”
He licks his lips and swallows a knot building in his throat. His eyes tear.
“It was amazing in those days you know... Gosh. Sorry about that kiddo…
…the elderly lady who owned the place came outside and greeted us and she approached me and she reached up to me and she hugged me deeply and kissed me on the cheek. Then she placed her hands on my face like this…”
He inverts his hands a places them on his cheeks.
“She said ‘I’m very delighted you two are here, very delighted indeed. Won’t you come in? We’ve recently put on the fire and I just made an apple crisp with cinnamon and butter!' An apple crisp! Can you believe it! ...I loved anything with apples in those days and I suppose I shall forever.”
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