Connections

Little things that connect, that send your mind drifting back into the past. Memories weaving here and there some of them as clear as if it were yesterday.

On Wednesday morning we went up to Leek to look around the shops there.  The museum, for some reason was closed but we ventured into the Foxlowe Arts Centre to look at a local art exhibition.  On the same floor was a book case of second hand books for sale, the title of the one below caught my eye and the memories flooded in.

 

It was 1980 and we were staying in Lyme Regis, a place we both love.  Paul had an appointment with the curator of the Philpot Museum to look at and photograph Pterosaur specimens and I was just fascinated with the story of Mary Anning who spent days on the Undercliffe searching for fossils.  We stayed at a small hotel called the Old Monmouth where creaking floor boards and suddenly opening doors led the other people at breakfast to delcare that they were sure that they had heard 'Old Monmouth' during the night.  The owners had a cat called Cleopatra who more often than not visited the bedrooms, luckily we liked cats, as once or twice we found her curled up in the sink in the corner of our room.  I remember the hotel was across the road from the church and the church clock could be heard ringing each hour.

A very fuzzy and discoloured old photo of me outside the Old Monmouth. Below the Philpott museum both taken in 1980.

 

The day of the appointment arrived and we went in to meet the curator who at that time was the eminent writer John Fowles.  He was interested in why we were visiting and what we were interested in and happy for Paul to identify a fossil for him. He referred us to Dorchester Museum to find another fossil there.  A few weeks after we returned home we had a thank you letter from him.  We still have it somewhere, most probably in a file, in a plastic box in the back of the garage.  Perhaps one day we will come across it again.

The book is full of illustrations by an artist called Elaine Franks with a foreward by John Fowles.

John Fowles of course is no longer with us but - here - is an article about Elaine Franks.