The kindness of strangers

In my experience, most people will help you out if asked nicely. 

For instance, yesterday I was in Oakham, the small town that is the 'capital' of Rutland, England's smallest traditional county. I'd parked Sophie, and was walking into the town centre, when I realised that I had still had my car keys dangling from my neck. Living alone, I have to resort to 'key management', meaning that all my essential keys for house and car are attached to a lanyard that I wear around my neck. Without fail - I'm never lazy about this - I put my keys around my neck whenever I step out of my front door, even just to pop something in the recycling bin at home. And I will naturally do this if going out for while. It's a good habit that has become ingrained. So long as I have my keys on a loop around my neck, I know that I can't accidentally lock myself out of house or car, with nobody to rescue me. But of course, while this expedient is fine for a short time, I don't want to 'wear' a bunch of keys all day. In that case, I take them off, and loop the lanyard around one of my handbag straps instead. Thus tethered, my keys can if I want be zipped up inside the bag - certainly if it's raining, but also if the environment makes it wise to keep house and car keys out of sight.

Well, there I was, in Oakham and already some distance from the car, with a couple of hours ahead of me, and wanting to transfer the lanyard from my neck to my bag. 

Could I do it? No. 

I should explain that there were four things around my neck: the cross-body strap of my bag; the cross-body strap of my camera; the lanyard from which my bunch of keys was dangling; and Starfishie's silver chain. Either in the car when driving along, or when I'd put the straps for bag and camera over my head once parked, Starfishie (my silver starfish from Orkney) had somehow wrapped her chain around the lanyard for my keys in some complicated way. The silver chain was now in a proper tangle, and felt as if it might be knotted. At any rate, I couldn't free it from the lanyard by touch alone. I needed a mirror. But here I was out on a pavement. It wasn't an emergency, of course, but it was something that needed sorting out without delay, for appearance's sake if nothing else; although it was also best not to make the knot in the silver chain worse than it was. If I walked on, it might gradually tighten up so much that I would never unravel it.

But good luck sent me a suitable helper. A lady appeared. She was maybe in her fifties - so far as you can ever tell - so somewhat younger than me. But I knew at a glance that she was likely to assist. You just know. So as she came closer, I said 'Excuse me, could you help me please? I'm in a bit of a tangle.' She stopped and smiled. 'Of course. Gosh, you're right. The chain's wrapped around the cord a couple of times, and seems to have got knotted. Let me see...' 

So there were were, standing together on a sunny pavement, practically head to head. I let her ease the chain free. It took a couple of minutes. She was clearly patient and methodical, and not the sort to give up. Nor did she. She persevered. Starfishie's chain was quite a fine one, and it would take good eyesight, care, and nimble fingers to sort this out. I hoped she hadn't been in some kind of hurry. But if she had been, she said nothing. Such is the overriding importance of one woman helping out another. I don't think that, in general. men ever show quite the same solidarity. 

Suddenly the chain was free. I thanked her warmly, and she went on her way. I suspected that I had indeed delayed her. On the other hand (I philosophised) we had both had a psychological boost. I'd set her a challenge, and she had met it with success. She'd also had the satisfaction of doing a good and useful deed, plus my sincere thanks. As for myself, I felt a glow from having a stranger's instant confidence and assistance, plus of course getting Starfishie's rather nice chain freed without damage. An encounter to remember. And now to write about.

Perhaps it's a trivial thing, perhaps not. We are often told that manners have coarsened and that in the modern world we have all become selfish. Certainly there are some awful people around, especially people whose aim in life is to fulfil a personal ambition that will entail stamping on others. It seems clear that those who become prominent in public life, or become household names, or are any kind of celebrity, eventually lose a sense of humility and a willingness to consider others not so admired. But most of us, in ordinary life, have not discarded the impulses to be helpful and full of good and decent intentions. It's good to know that the better side of human nature is alive and kicking and hasn't been abandoned. It's not naïve or foolish to be kind.

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Shingle Street and a line of white shells

Back in May - already four months ago! - I was travelling in Suffolk and made a point of revisiting a favourite spot called Shingle Street. It's a collection of houses, with a Martello Tower at one end, and former coastguard cottages at the other, strung in a row behind a wide expanse shingle that overlooks a wide bay a few miles south of Orford. It's out of the way, down a wandering dead-end road, and you won't casually stumble upon it. You have to seek it out.

When I first discovered Shingle Street back in 1985, I was struck by its end-of-the-world atmosphere. Many of the houses were weather-beaten and ramshackle - although being mostly brick-built, they were somewhat more substantial than the miscellaneous collection of shacks you see at Dungeness in Kent. Many had proper gardens, albeit half-wild. The impression was of a community that came alive in the summer, when owners came to stay, but was very quiet in the winter. Despite the rust and peeling paint, it was all most attractive, even in February, when I came.

 On that first occasion I gave more photographic attention to the wide, sweeping bay and the three Martello Towers that I could see, whose guns once guarded this stretch of coastline. The cold restless sea constantly sucked at the shingle, making quite a noise. 

When I returned ten years later, in February 1995, I was rather more interested in the buildings and the scattered holiday paraphernalia of their part-time residents, which together evoked treasured memories of similar sunny places in Cornwall long ago; although of course those Cornish retreats looked out upon sand and rocks, not shingle. I was pleased to find that Shingle Street hadn't changed a bit in ten years. Even in the chill winds of February, it was easy to imagine what summer weekends there would be like - lazy days in a wicker chair with feet up, watching the clouds, or reading a book, with happy strolls now and then along the shingle beach. Simple contentment.

Here are some pictures from that 1995 visit, to show what was so appealing to me about the place:

Another ten years passed. I went back in 2005, this time in June, and noticed other things, such as the flowers growing on the shingle. 

This time there was some clear evidence that owners were giving their properties more attention. Shingle Street looked a little less ramshackle. Walls had been repainted. There were a few smart accents, like that red sunshade. 

I didn't let yet another ten years go by. I was back again as soon as October 2008. This time I blitzed the place, taking more photographs than hitherto. I wanted to capture its most appealing aspects, before it lost its charm.

This time I came across something unusual. A long thin line of white shells that began (or ended) close to the high tide mark, and ran inland towards the coastguard cottages.

It was very well done. I was most impressed! And the thing was such a wonderful addition to the scene. But what a labour! What motive lay behind it?  There was nobody to ask. It occurred to me later than the person or persons who had created this line of shells were defying the malice and carelessness of vandals and others who might take pleasure in destroying this work of art (for that's what it was, surely). Well, good luck to the creators. But I didn't expect to see that line of shells on my next visit.

I was wrong. Years went by. When I revisited Shingle Street this year I found a line of white shells still there. 

It couldn't be the original line of shells - even if that had been respected by every visitor to Shingle Street through the years, and had escaped the heedless scuffing of young children and dogs, two or three stormy winters would have smudged or obliterated it. Therefore it had surely been refreshed at intervals, perhaps as a kind of ongoing tradition, and I imagined a family, down for a fortnight, spending the first couple of days tidying up that line of shells section by section. I wished I knew. (Research on the Internet has supplied the answer  - see the end of this post)

And what did the rest of Shingle Street look like after a sixteen-year absence?

For one thing, there was much more vegetation growing in the shingle. There were the expected seashore plants, but also colourful flowers, as if somebody had scattered a lot of seed packets, creating a colourful spectacle in places. But gorse was encroaching too. As for the buildings, they had had received even more attention, and generally speaking had been repainted and reroofed. In some cases, altered or even rebuilt. Here's a selection of my May 2024 shots (it was bright, but the sun wasn't out this time):

It's inevitable that owners upgrade their holiday homes. Tumbledown shacks give way to something smarter, with modern facilities and comforts. There was plenty of this now at Shingle Street, but its old charm hadn't been entirely lost. 

In 1972 I wrote a poem about a Cornish property called Corrib, which had a rear entrance off a sheltered and rather secret footpath that ran from the Trevose Golf Clubhouse down to the dunes at Constantine Bay, near Padstow. The opening lines went like this. (I was a sensitive soul in those days, fifty years ago)

A white gate in a tunnel of green:

That's Corrib, my Jamaican house.

A shady lawn, old tennis courts,

The bleached bones of a boat, or a seat,

Overgrown in a garden:

This is Corrib, my evening retreat.

 

There is a sandy path

That whispers through trees;

A tunnel of memories, a darkening arch.

Under boughs and down to the dunes

I flash by waving grass,

Rustling bushes and staring flowers.

Heedless of the evening breeze,

I hasten past broken gates and posts,

Forgotten by years and sagging in decline;

I look for the lights of Corrib,

My solace, dark refuge mine.

The Shingle Street I first knew had something of that atmosphere. I'm not sure it has any more. But it's still a magical place, a place apart anyway.

If you want to read the full poem, and to know more about Corrib and what happened to it, I wrote a post titled A tunnel of green, and a surfing bay on 15th October 2016, which you can easily look up.

Back to that intriguing line of white shells. I quickly found these web pages on the Internet - click on them to enlarge:

I'm even more impressed, in that it was originally a work started in convalescence, when the ladies concerned couldn't have been feeling too great. 

As for the long low building with a turret in the middle, near the coastguard cottages (and the landward end of the line of shells), I found this:

I don't know when I'll be in this part of Suffolk again. My priority for the future is to visit as much of the more distant parts of this country as possible, before the cost (or effort) of doing so by caravan becomes too much. So it must be Scotland, Northern England, and maybe Ireland, ahead of parts closer to my home in Sussex. 

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