The West Wight appears to me to have had a steady increase of visitors this summer. Throughout August it was so- seemingly busier this year than usual, and we were fortunate in meeting some lovely customers who appreciated our dear Freshwater.
One chap who lived in Haslemere, visited both shops three times during his holiday, and on his last Tea and Victoria sponge, we chatted as he sat in his now favourite spot by the window, overlooking School Green.
He was quietly engaging in speech, and had previously told me he had been to the Island as a child, but not since.
I asked him what he had enjoyed, and he gave me some food for thought...
'The people here, they are ordinary.
They say hello.
They don't conform.
Where I live (Stock-broker belt- my words) everyone conforms to a social stratum and they all dress accordingly.
Here they don't.'
No, Em, they don't.
They never did.
I think that is the essence of what I love about Freshwater.
The ordinary.
How, ordinary we are, collectively visiting our plethora of charity shops and dressing ourselves and our houses from them.
How ordinary we are to raise money for local causes and volunteer and fight for them tooth and nail.
How ordinary to share plants, vegetables and fruit and recipes.
To respect, stand by and care for each other when in grief or distress.
This, dear Emily, as in days gone by in my favoured focus of the 1860's, is how it rolls in a gentle, quiet and ordinary community.
Which is quite Extraordinary.
In the 1860's, Julia Margaret Cameron lived here, visiting and caring for her friends and peers, and photographing them as she went.
Charles Darwin, wasn't the Darwin we now understand from History- here, he was a chap writing a book, an angst ridden Scientist, who was all out of sorts (he knew he was about to blow his Wife's religious beliefs out of the water regarding evolution, but all that showed was a man troubled and anxious.
Tennyson wasn't Alfred Lord Tennyson, he was a chap who had written a poem that had enabled him to buy the house he rented, who had mood-swings and fretted about cash flow.
Julia herself, had a husband who had fallen out of favour in getting a job (Government Post-wise) as he'd taken the flak for Macaulay. His Laudenam habit didn't do much for his earning potential either, and Julia quietly assumed a genteel 'Amateur' status, whilst being paid handsomely for her likenesses, and therefore providing for her large family.
Her aristocratic background was very different from her ordinary life in Freshwater, and she loved and embraced it.
Extra-Ordinary.
A pioneer in historical terms for her ground-breaking photographic work.
So, is Freshwater.
A beautiful, quiet, rural, seaside community that honestly beats to its own drum.
Not possible to pigeon-hole in terms we can grasp.
It is my home.
'Is there no-one Commonplace here? ' said Anne Thackeray Ritchie in 1853...
Everyone, extraordinarily Em,
And that is what I love.
Hope School went well today dearest, and give your sisters a big kiss from me-
Your ever-loving Grandmother,
GiGi xxx
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