The Retreat
I’ve just spent two weeks cooking at a writing retreat in an Old Rectory on the coast of Pembrokeshire, above Newport sands. Supper on Sunday evening when guests arrived, then Breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and supper, Monday through Thursday, with a final breakfast on the Friday morning and a fond farewell to follow.
The kitchen looked out across the bay and out over the Irish sea, with a view that swooped back on to the wide, welcoming sands, over the dunes and up the estuary of the river Nevern. It was blasted by storms for the first week with prancing, galloping white horses racing each other in a lather across the tops of waves, the wind howling and chasing them onto the beach, the finish line.
The sky growled and showed its colours, violet and orange with silver shafts of sunlight lancing through them like earth rods, piercing the ground below. A double rainbow, biblical rain, a show of true nature, by nature, performed, so it seemed for my benefit only. A spectator at the theatre, in the gods, on the side of Carningli, the ‘Mountain of Angels’, high above the coast and sea below.
The second week, which saw a second group of writers descend, was calm blue, cerulean, with blinding sunshine basking over all the land. A contemplative haze, a still photograph or a still from a movie made long ago, ‘How Green Was My Valley’ perhaps, or The Railway Children’, something nostalgic, calming, surreal.
Talking of calming and surreal, the guests were there for writing, meditation, yoga and cold-water swimming. There was silence between the hours of 9pm and noon the next day. So breakfast was a challenge, finding out who wanted porridge, or toast, or eggs, poached, boiled or scrambled.
Some people had come from Seattle, Boston, New York, some from London, Bristol, Sheffield. All brought their ideas and inspiration, packed inside their heads, with the contents spilling out in notes, sentences and unformed paragraphs onto the pages of their notebooks. Each brought their back stories, their nerves, gentle traumas and a spark with which to ignite them and share with others. Their quiet passion, brimming to overflowing as the opportunity to read to and listen to their fellow writer’s stories emerged, their truths or imaginings which all come from the truths deep within us, the mines where the canaries sing, or don’t if the air is too toxic.
Passionate about the stories they wanted to write, they seemed oblivious to the stories they themselves had already become. Poetic, whimsical, dark, adventurous, philosophical. They arrived as a work in progress, with a work in progress in their heads, constantly overlapping, ebbing and flowing between fantasy and reality, fiction and fact. In a way they are more escapees than retreatants. Escaping their regular lives, into this small brief community, a brief encounter with like-minded people and into the safety their companionship offers. Escaping the torment, who know, even torture of friends and family who often ridicule creatives and their early fumbling creative efforts.
And I, a fly on the wall, invisible in the kitchen, sensing the mood each different day brought as the writers got to know each other, relaxed into themselves, found commonality and even discovered mutual friends in those far away cities, even on first meeting, quite bizarre.
I thought I was invisible, detached in my kitchen, with my recipes and spreadsheets and charts. Chopping and slicing local leeks, sauteing them in liberal quantities of butter and thyme until they change texture and become velvet in the pan. Adding the risotto rice, stirring and adding the wine, then the stock, constantly stirring to encourage the rice to slowly cook, slowly soften. Then served with chestnuts, pan fried in butter and thyme, salt and pepper, scattered across the top of the risotto, with flecks of micro red basil to lift the dish visually. I thought I was unseen doing all this, different dishes throughout the day, different every day, nourishing, sustaining. Until, handing this dish to one of the writers and informing him what it was, he took it from me quietly, but with a look in his eye. It was a dish his great friend used to cook for him often, when they shared a flat together many years ago, before he left to go and live in Southern Europe, a friend he hadn’t seen now for a long time. I handed him the recipe to make sure it was the same one, at which point he crumpled and wept.
Who knows what that story was all about, but it was a powerful moment, and I have to say, captured, that the food for them wasn’t just sustenance, or a break from the creative intensity. It was an embrace, a warming, comforting hug, an expression of love, sharing, giving, bequeathing. A soft hand on their shoulder, a whisper in their ear, a supporting arm. I was no longer invisible, I was a part of their journey, helping in the only way I could.
Their stories now are waiting to be written, and the outpourings will be like the river entering the sea, turbulent and full of tears. But in the meantime, their week has been one of bliss, encouragement, friendships forged and more words on the page. Confusion partly clarified, doubts mended and a return to whatever does lie in store with a happy heart and a book closer to publication.