Everything I Have Always Forgotten Read Online Free Page A

between Wales and Ireland. Yet it remains a current warm enough to temper these latitudes. At sea level, a freeze is exceptional; a few hundred feet up and away from the sea, it’s a very different story. The opposite shore is a rocky promontory (dividing twin estuaries) that had belonged to a wealthy amateur botanist in the nineteenth century. He had brought back specimens of rhododendron from Nepal, bamboo from China and redwood from California and had planted a lush forest garden on the promontory, to this day called the Gwyllt (or ‘Wilderness’). His large house, with its tall, barley-sugar chimneys, nestles down on the edge of the tidal estuary, constantly changing from sand to sea or sand and sea. The property was bought by the celebrated architect and environmentalist, Clough Williams-Ellis in the mid-1920s and converted into an eccentric hotel, his ‘Experiment in Sympathetic Development’: Portmeirion. From our house, a mile away, it looked like a brightly coloured Italianate village in the distance. He denied being influenced by Portofino (which he must have known, even then, but the parallel becomes more evident further on in this story). As a very young child I had precociously declared that Portmeirion had been built during the ‘ Early Ice Cream Age ’… what did I know of ice cream at the time? The hotel remained a magical mélange of architectural styles, a mirage in my mind. As for the frozen dessert, I had to wait for refrigeration and the end of sugar rationing… for Britain maintained food rationing until 1954 largely because of the cost of maintaining its armaments (three full Naval fleets and one-hundred-andtwenty RAF squadrons worldwide).
    The estuary is a mile across and some days, when the sun shines, the shadows of clouds chase each other across the brilliantly-lit expanses of sand and water, bringing a rapidly-changing light, like a fast-forward film of clouds. Ever changing from grey to bright light – moody as Mother. It was true that Father could also explode like a thunder-clap when disturbed by children’s games. He had a huge voice and large presence. His anger was an avalanche or violent squall, driving us noise-makers into submissive silence and seclusion. Some child once remarked that: “Daddy’s thundering again.”
    The situation of the house was remote and wild beyond what one might imagine of Britain – and indeed remains largely unspoilt to this day. True, we could see the hotel a mile away across the estuary and a few other houses appeared as tiny dots still further off. On the far side of the twin estuary stood the small, silted-up harbour town of Porthmadog, but that is two miles away. On a very still night, one might hear the train a mile and a half away, but otherwise there were no sounds of civilization, no cars, or trucks, or buses. Our neighbours on either side were several hundred yards away. To the east was old Mr Edwards (the farmer) who had no motor, save his son’s old lorry for the hay harvest. To the west stood the house of old Mrs Thomas who must have had some money because she drove a little old Ford from the 1930s, but with petrol rationing, she used it only once every two weeks. Since none of us had electricity, motor mowers, chain saws or today’s other noisy contraptions, the only noise was the sound of the seagulls, the wind and perhaps the waves at high tide. In the isolated silence, we could hear the blood pressure pounding in our ears – a rhythmic reminder that we were alive, but certainly no proof that anyone else in the whole wide world was also alive…
    Then the clouds would pour rain here and there on the scene, while all the rest remained in bright sunlight. Much of the time, the mountains to the north were shrouded from view by thick cloud and sometimes, even the mile-away coast opposite disappeared completely and rain would pour down for many days on end. We spent day after day