What the Dickens

We have come to Devon for the weekend. If I’m honest I prefer Cornwall for the pasties, but I understand you can buy them elsewhere these days, which is a reassuring development. We’re in the north of Devon, which has a prime view of south Wales. It’s very much like booking into a nice hotel and the view from your room is into a neighbouring apartment.

I enjoy the rugged landscape and proximity to nature round here, though it’s a shame there isn’t a greater proximity to the major road network. It took hours to get down the motorway for the weekend as it was, then another three days to make the last 30 miles on foot while trying to coax along the mule that was laden with our baggage.

The telegraph has made it though, and the incandescent light bulb, so it’s not as though you feel too far away from home. The other preservation of the olden days is the bed and breakfast, where you slumber in a drastically overdecorated room and are somehow watched by the proprietor every single time you leave the house.

A particular delight of the weekend has been our visit to see a play by the Pleasure Dome theatre company (nothing to do with Amsterdam, it’s apparently a reference to a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem) by some rocks outside. They performed The Signalman, a play by Charles Dickens but also starring his great-great-grandson. Something something nepo grandbaby.

It was a real treat though, and I speak as an uncultured swine. The feral goats stage right, the audience members trying to keep their dogs quiet. It was lovely how the sun setting behind the actors added to the eerie disquiet of the spooky train track based chiller. More theatre ought to be enjoyed from a picnic blanket with a little tub of hummus in front of you.