reading: Lama, and The Way to Minack

late February 2023

I continued immediately with the next book in the Minack Chronicles, A Donkey in the Meadow, and then Lama, in which a darling little black cat joins the household.

I was learning that Derek Tangye told the same stories at the beginning of each book. He will remind us of how he and Jeannie left their high powered London life in 1950 for a cottage and daffodil and potato farm on the Cornish coast, about how Jane and Shelagh worked for them and how the delightful Shelagh had tragically died young, about how Monty the cat converted Derek from being a cat hater, and there would be lots of passages about how miserable and unfulfilled city dwellers were. All city dwellers, it seemed. I was realising that much as I loved him, I could not agree with him about everything. I do know some city dwellers who are fulfilled, artistic, environmentally aware and would not trade for the sort of life Derek (or I) lead. It was a good lesson in how you can love someone without agreeing with all that they say or believe.

This may be why he tells the same stories over again at the start of each book:

The repetition of the earlier part of the story in each book might irk some readers. I wouldn’t have it any other way. To me, it was wonderfully soothing, like a good bedtime story. I learned later that Derek did not like having any editor (other than Jeannie’s suggestions when she read the final manuscript).

Each memoir reminds me of things in my life; there were more ways that Derek and I would agree than disagree. (We will get to the two main disagreements in later books.)

For example, this brings back memories…

… and the gift giving through the animals is adorable. I was reminded of how my dear grandma used to write poems, corny but well rhymed, to go with her Christmas presents to every friend.

I also remembered when Robert and I bought our little shack behind the boatyard, where I lived for 16 years, as small as Minack cottage, and sleeping the first night not a floor of earth but a floor of damp linoleum from the leaking refrigerator.

We also had “a grim fight to earn a living”, having embarked upon the seasonal career of being gardeners, so that we went into credit card debt every winter and spent most of the summer paying it off, a cycle that continued for years.

As Derek remembered their beloved former cat, Monty, I thought of our Skooter.

A this point in the series, I was slowed in reading by looking up every landmark as I tried to use Google Earth to find out exactly where Minack was…and to look at every home or place that Derek and Jeannie had lived in or visited. What I did not realise till later is that the Carn Barges are the vital clue.

Here is one of the places where Derek lived as a young man. I took some time to “walk” down the street and look at all the terraced houses.

After the delight of Lama, which is set mostly at Minack Cottage with some reminiscing of earlier life, the next book is almost all about Derek’s life as a young traveler and journalist and, later, member of MI5.

It is my least favourite of the series. I missed Cornwall! But it must be read in the proper order and does explain a great deal about his character, and Jeannie’s life before Minack. It covers the years of World War II in London, a time that affects me to read about so strongly that, if I believed in reincarnation, I would think I had lived through the Blitz.

Derek, being in MI5, heard an early direct report from a Polish refugee about what was really happening in the Holocaust. He told Jeannie, who wept. The authorities reacted just as the refugee predicted they would react.

Yet even then “only a few believed what was happening. The rest waited for evidence of their eyes.”

Meanwhile, the Blitz continued and then the unpredictable and horrible little V1 bombs.

Frustratingly, I now had to wait one day for the next Minack book to arrive in the mail; they were coming from all over, so I read a different book for a day. I must keep schtum about what it was because someone is getting it for her birthday; I had to make sure it was good!

Here is the Minack series in order; I was still in early days and so much hoping for reading weather to continue.

1961: A Gull on the Roof

1962: A Cat in the Window. (American ed. has title: Monty: biography of a marmalade cat.)

1963: A Drake at the Door

1965: A Donkey in the Meadow

1966: Lama

1968: The Way to Minack.

1970: A Cornish Summer

1972: Cottage on a Cliff

1974: A Cat Affair

1976: Sun on the Lintel

1978: The Winding Lane

1980: When the Winds Blow

1982: The Ambrose Rock

1984: A Quiet Year

1987: The Cherry Tree

1988: Jeannie: a love story

1990: The Evening Gull

1993: Monty’s Leap

1996: The Confusion Room