Cornish Pasty Blog

If I were a rich man

I got to thinking in an idle moment what I might do if I won the lottery.

I would like enough that both Cathy and I could give up work. What would we do with our time? Firstly, hang out with our parents. I always remember how, as a child, life revolved around my grandmother's kitchen. With my father and grandfather working out of there, the ice cream factory and vans being just outside, there were always comings and goings. I'd like to be able to call around to Mum and Dad's or Cathy's Dad's whenever we felt like it; hanging out, going for lunch, recording family history and visiting places.

Cathy and I are very lucky, we had a great childhood. At least one parent around all the time and parents with time to spend with us. I am not advocating that one parent shouldn't work, just that it worked well for us in the 1960s and 1970s.

We've also had the benefit of living close, very close in my case, to our parents. Already, so much more opportunity to spend time I realise.

Something else would be to catch up with friends both known and those that I have made via the Internet but never met. I was saying to my cousin, when over from Australia, that we got to visit them a few times when they first married and then they emigrated, (is it me?). Also there are people who have come over but we've only been able to spend a very shortwhile with. Some we visit and others are on the other side of the world and we haven't seen in so long.

There are places on my list from my younger self. New York and Shakespeare's garden, so loved by Helenne Hanff; Perachora near Corinth, written about by the late Dilys Powell, who was so kind to correspond with me; the site of a house that was being built in the 1970s show Petrocelli; the locations in Japan visited by the Englishman who was source for James Clavell's Shogun; the Great North Road in Japan, travelled by one of the most celebrated haiku poets Basho.; the final resting places of Humphrey Payne, husband to Dilys Powell, he died in the 1930s, and John Pendlebury, archeologist turned Greek resistance fighter in Crete; the site of James Rockford's caravan, just to see how much it's changed; some of the fountain pen makers in Firenze; these are just for starters.