Thursday 29th October 2015

I forgot to mention various other last minutes I couldn’t do before going down to Lyme Regis with the Gay Mother for 4 nights at the Hotel Alexandra last week. Lyme Regis is not much mentioned except by Jane Austen and John Fowles. It is tiny, clasped in a tight bowl by the sea, tucked away and has been bijou for centuries apparently. Always an agreeable resort with villas in gardens at the rear and a genteel row of pink terraced houses right on the sea front. In the hotel dining room a lot was going on. Two old men and an old woman at the same table were as follows – Old woman: ‘It was wretched end to her life…. just sitting there staring into space. Didn’t know anybody. Couldn’t move…’ Pause. Old man no 1: ‘Well, it all depends how active you want to be. I go out to buy the paper. Come back, sit in a chair…. that’s about it really….’ Another pause: Old man no 2: ‘That graveyard at …. is it still going?’.  The next night an elderly couple were both deaf: he bellows: ‘I need some buttons for my blazer like you’ve got.’ Wife ponders: ‘How many exactly?’ Man v. cross: ‘What do you mean? Three on each sleeve. Just like yours. What did I just say?’ Later, she goes: ‘You know our dog, Emma?’ Now the man’s turn to ponder, as if not certain either that they have a dog at all or if they do that it is called Emma.’ ‘Yes,’ he blasts at last.’ ‘Well,’ old lady goes, ‘I do wish she wasn’t quite so boisterous.’ ‘Yes, I see,’ old man says. What did he see? When they rose from the table, he said, ‘I can manage perfectly well, thank you!’ and lurched forth to be waylaid an American woman of a certain age dining alone at a neighbouring table and got up like a child’s idea of a fairy. ‘You two, you’re such a devoted couple. You make me miss my husband.’ ‘ Where is your husband?’ the old man enquires brusquely. ‘Well, he passed 18 months ago.’ ‘I see. How old was he?’ ‘He was 82.’ ‘Oh well, jolly good. Did you enjoy your dinner?’ Stumps off. We also are extracting ourselves from the dining room at the same time and fall into conversation with the old lady in the lobby. Delirious exchange of ages: old husband is 91, lady reveals. The Gay Mother exclaims ‘The same as me.’ Old lady very full of what he once had been in the City and how they’d lived in Buckinghamshire, Lyme Regis or where ever they lived nearby ‘not the same.’ All the while noises of discontent from the old man tottering on stick by the front door: ‘Do hurry up. Do stop this idle chattering.’ So off they went. The Gay Mother said, ‘They’re very brave to drive in the dark. They must have been keen to come here.’

Lyme Regis as Seen from the Cobb which is the Harbour wall To from Whence Louisa Musgrave Fell, Causing the Other Sister to Faint so as Not to be Left Out. The Gay Mother Also Walked on the Top of the Cobb but Did not Fall

A Grey Sea-Scene from the Hotel Bedroom – Note the Paintwork in in Premier Condition

A Strange Sunlight Effect as Seen from the Hotel Bedroom: In the Distance is Golden Cap which the Gay Mother Climbed