Sunshine, trains and animal collectors.

And suddenly it's summer. Yesterday I made it into the pool for the first time this year: a little chilly but nowhere near as cold as I had been led to believe! And today the temperature gauge on the advertising hoarding down by the Carrefour shopping mall read 21 degrees at 9.15. By the time we set out to catch a train to Pontevedra it was considerably warmer. I shall have to start being a very Spanish señora and carry my fan around with me wherever I go. 

The train to Pontevedra was the very little one, only one carriage. Our tickets indicated assigned seats but none of that applied to this train. People wandered around looking for their seats until someone declared, "en este tren hay números que no existen". I love the way that was expressed: there are numbers that do not exist! One of Spain's little anomalies! 

The train filled up with pilgrims along the way. Maybe they had decided it was too hot to walk much further. I can't say I blame them. Perhaps they are the ones I saw going past our flats the other day. Have they been wandering around Redondela trying to find the way to Pontevedra? 

On the subject of wanderers, Phil and I have been reading Gerald Durrell's books about his childhood in Corfu. I was amazed at the freedom he had as a ten year old, the nonchalance with which his mother let him wander around the island and mess about in a rather unreliable small boat on the Mediterranean. And then there were the animals and birds and insects and reptiles he collected- a veritable menagerie in his bedroom. But then, when your mother buys you a donkey for your birthday, I suppose that gives you some encouragement. His family must have hated him for a while when the first book was published. What a set of weird and strange folk they appeared to be. So this was how the moderately rich lived back in the day! 

And then I read an interview in the paper with Frieda Hughes, daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Hers was another odd childhood. She remembers her father tucked away writing poetry. It must have been strange growing up the child of someone so famous and having fellow pupils made aware of her mother's suicide. At school she had special permission NOT to study her father's poetry and, knowing that she wanted to write herself, she chose not to read his work until she had established her own voice. Then she refused to show him her work until she felt confident in herself. At that point she gave him the lot and he divided into categories: already good; needs work; discard! A firm taskmaster, her dad! 

But she also remembers him cooking her scrambled eggs, taking her to the beach and going for walks across Dartmoor. “I had a lot of freedom as a child – I used to run a bit wild. I was happiest roaming free in the sun, in a field, with an animal of some kind.” The interviewer was not surprised at that statement, having watched her patiently feed minced up chunks of a dead chick to Sammy, her fluffy Eurasian eagle owlet, using chopsticks. It turns out she owns nine owls – along with two dogs, two rabbits, two chickens, six chinchillas, nine ferrets and a snake. 

 So, another Gerald Durrell! 

I wonder if either of them would have that freedom to roam if they were growing up in the modern world.