27/ Mobile Home
Over the summer I’ve been able to spend time in our mobile home on the DinglePeninsula. It is, in fact, anything
but mobile now. The chassis barely supports
the superstructure any more. Like
an old work horse resting in a grassy paddock. It’s situated at the edge of a small site that scorns the
packaged slickness of a standardised, European holiday spot, spurning central
facilities, or any site amenities.
It has a unique character. Long-term residents and regular visitors
value its calm, its sense of community.
We love the place.
From the windows at the front we look out over the sweep of a bay with
browny-green hills in the background. Low down on the slopes a few farmsteads, holiday cottages, a
distant coastal village. Five minutes walk away there is a little pier where local
fishing boats can moor and unload their catch. Intrepid holiday makers leap from here down into the clear,
cold Atlantic water. A long, sandy beach with pasture land behind stretches around
a large part of the bay to one side of the pier. On the other side snags of rocks and low cliffs. The interplay of light between sea and
sky is unceasing and hypnotic.
The mobile home has been a psychological bolt-hole. Somewhere to be away from the world of
late and soon, getting and spending. I can be at rest here. I relax. When I am elsewhere I can call to mind the way it looks and
feels. The benefits of being in a
natural environment are generally accepted but perversely ignored. Our species is progressively,
obstinately migrating towards the built-up, the man-made.
We need a getaway where peace comes dropping slow. A locus on the globe
from which to appreciate nature around and above us. To stand and stare.
A place to hold in the deep heart’s core.
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| © Benóg Brady Bates |
