This is lovely! Sitting here looking out at rooftops and down onto the festive shopping street, I am loving being in Mumbles! The sun is shining in over the deck and through the patio windows of this first floor apartment. It is warm, stylish, comfortable and well appointed even if the spiral staircase to the bedrooms and bathroom make getting around with hip problems a bit challenging, as do the low sofas and low beds. But never mind that! This is Mumbles and it's just three weeks till Christmas, a time when I like Mumbles best!
What are we doing here? Well, we finally managed to relieve ourselves of the pile that was Bay View B&B, the chores and the mortgage, moved into our caravan with as much stuff as we could that wouldn't fit in the storage unit and optimistically planned for some adventures. The adventures require a small motor home and a property we can rent out to fund some travel. A fly in the ointment is an impending hip operation for Gareth and while he has been told to be on standby, it doesn't look like happening any time very soon. How is it working out? Well, we haven't yet got a property or a motor home, and since the caravan site is now closed until next season we are moving from week to week into different holiday lets. First of all it was the Kings Head hotel in Llangennith, Gower which is very popular being a dog friendly hotel (for those of you who don't know, we have two lovely, if lively, springer spaniels in tow), then a chalet in Gower Holiday Village, Scurlage followed by a cottage in Llanmadoc, and now this apartment where we will stay for three weeks initially while we continue house hunting. Christmas will be in a rather old-fashioned house in Reynoldston, within staggering distance of Gower’s famous King Arthur Hotel.
The trouble with Mumbles is that it brings out the worst acquisitive streak in me. Show me a boutique-y shop full of nicely displayed bits and bobs and I'm sucked right in! In my caravan I'm a firm advocate of minimal consumerism, but here in Mumbles I'm a magpie of the most voracious kind (that might be a bit of an exaggeration - I have Gareth to keep me in check.....most of the time).
Anyway, a few weeks of uncomfortable beds, poor heating, smoky fires and we have arrived in Mumbles! My first step out into the joys of Newton Road shopping had me spending nearly £4.00 on a loaf of artisan bread (to eat which I'm glad I don't have false teeth), £3.75 on a tea towel (none at the apartment), and another £3.50 on a ball of string to wrap and post a parcel for my granddaughter Margot's birthday. Our first tiff here is inevitably about how to make ends meet. Nevertheless we had to have Friday evening at the Pilot, a real ale pub, full of oldies like ourselves, dog friendly and with a great friendly atmosphere. Eating then at the Mediterranean Barbecue, a Turkish restaurant where years ago we regularly ate with friends, the wine mellowed us further and we reminisced about those years before friends dispersed, one of them to dementia, but how nice it is that some things don't change, like the restaurant, it's decor and all.
I resisted the urge to do our grocery shopping here in Mumbles yesterday and we trekked off to our usual shop - Lidl. With a couple of things still needed we topped up in the new Co-op store in Mumbles and for a few items we spent almost as much as we had for a week's worth of groceries from Lidl. Sigh! Gareth had something to say about that as well!
This morning, Sunday, the sky a bit grey and a soft mist drifting about, we took a walk with the dogs down to the promenade and ambled through the puddles musing on how different a place can feel when you live in it. We've known Mumbles all our lives and yet it feels different. The little fish kiosk on the prom that we've never bothered to visit before, avoiding the holiday crowds, beckoned with its promise of coffee and tasty bites of all kinds. Mine was a Gower Brownie (yes, I know that's not fish, but delicious, and I'm worth it). Realising that while I have been in and around the higgledy piggledy streets of Mumbles many times in my life, I haven't really explored them much, I dragged us up the steep, stepped alleys and we marvelled at the way little fisherman cottages of many years standing as well as grand design feats of architecture scramble up the rocky cliffs jostling for a view of the wonderful Swansea Bay. Our respect for the builders who have to carry out the many, often o.t.t. restorations and developments soared, but none of the properties appealed to me as places I would like to inhabit, even in the prettiest streets, and that is just as well because our budget wouldn't extend to buying anything here anyway.
We stopped for Gareth to have a coffee and for me to have a chai latte in the Kitchen Table, another dog-friendly (and people friendly) bistro-style seafront place. Then, we walked the back streets back to our apartment, two wet dogs in tow.
Last night I had watched for the third time 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'. I love it for the sprinkling of wise words as the down-on-their-luck, late-life residents grapple with their changed circumstances, and this morning my recent feelings of displacement and anxiety about what retirement really means for me was replaced with one of anticipation and acceptance. My Mumbles meander was a fresh, open-eyed experience.
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