The Sennen Cove Diary
May 4th - Saturday
It was glorious again at the very first thing this morning, but we had rather more cloud turn up shortly after that took the edge off slightly. We were also blessed with a southeasterly breeze that due to our local phenomenon, blew in through the first electric sliding doorway in The Cove and made grumpy shopkeeper life a little chilly. The breeze must have started up after I had taken ABH out for a walk because I was fooled into thinking I could get away without a fleece. I thought very wrong and scurried up the stairs after half an hour of being open.
My coldness was not a result of being idle. Despite the breeze, we had an uplift in the number of customers frequenting the shop from early on in the morning. So much so it interrupted my breakfast. Ahead of any inkling of improvement I had diverted my attention to our ball display outside. I had been aware that my balls were dirty and could do with a brush off but more than that they were deflated after sitting out unattended for so long. I took the ball pump to them and then thought that while I was at it, I may as well bolster the meagre stock that was there with some more balls. This turned out to be a remarkably prescient as we sold all the additional stock by the early afternoon.
I was quite surprised that we also sold a number of swimsuits, flip flops and other beachware items. The additional cloud slipped away at some point leaving a much sunnier afternoon but even then, that southeasterly appeared to be keeping the temperature down. Perhaps it was a bit more sheltered on the beach and it was only in the shop it was Siberian.
I must have found my enthusiasm button because I managed to stock up the soft drinks fridge. It was mainly because we had a delivery from the local cash and carry that somehow manages to outprice the big boys on several items that we buy regularly. Had I not put the drinks out I would have struggled to find space in the store room that still has various boxes from upstairs clogging it up. I was very pleased with myself that I managed to clear the pile between customers.
I was also spurred into action regarding our display of keyrings and souvenir badges and patches. A lady came into the shop early on and asked if we had any of the ‘tacky bottle opener keyrings’. I assured her that we had plenty and that they could be found down our tacky product aisle. She was duly delighted and bought one.
Many people might feel that we should have been offended by the use of such inflammatory language regarding our carefully selected and high quality products but frankly, what’s in a name. That which we call a keyring bottle opener by any other name will still open bottles – until the soft metal it is made of shears off after a couple of goes - and as long as the customer shells out the appropriate number of shillings and is satisfied, why should I care what they call it.
The one thing I did care about was the parlous state of the display that was much depleted. I had avoided buying any such stock last year because I had plenty from the year before. This year, we have finally come to the end of most of the overstock and investment is required. There are two suppliers of such things that we use and so I fell upon their catalogues with a pad and pen at the ready. Once again, between customers, I cobbled together a couple of lists and will pursue these on Tuesday with the relevant supplier. Bit by bit and very carefully the shop is filling up in readiness for the season.
Just to add a little excitement and mystery to the day we had an almost launch of the Inshore boat to an injured party over at Gwenver in the middle of the day. It amounted to nothing for us, and the Cliff Team extracted the casualty over land and family took her along to hospital. In these parts waiting for an ambulance is only an option if you are not going to get better without one.
The mysterious part of that was a shout that actually happened later in the day. I had no customers at the time and was first to the Tooltrak and drove it down to the Harbour. I handed over to one of our keen and eager supplementary Tooktrak drivers, we have several, and having done the heroic bit went back to the shop. Because I abandoned, erm, boat so quickly, I never did find out why we were launching the Inshore boat. I do know that it headed up around Cape Cornwall rather rapidly and was then stood down after twenty minutes. I might find out later if I ask the right people, but it was clearly nothing particularly serious.
The shop coasted into closing time just as a rather pretty looking catamaran coasted into the bay under sail, which perhaps is not coasting but I shall claim poetic license. I seem to recall a similar one being here before but did not get a close enough look to confirm if it was our regular visitor. I thought that it might have moored for the night but had gone later when I looked.
Once again, I took ABH out twice in the evening. She was climbing the walls after tea. It must be most frustrating for a young pup being constrained to a slow amble around the block when what she really wants, and needs, is a good zoom around the beach, chasing and playing. We are stuck with this until Thursday when I hope we will be given the all clear.
I did find out later why the Inshore launched. Someone had reported a fishing net in the water which was on the rocks by the time the boat got there. Still, the boat needs a good run every now and then and the youngsters that now respond to the calls are full of enthusiasm for it. Bully for them.
May 3rd - Friday
I might have expected a bit of a corker today when I was out with ABH in the early evening yesterday. It is just that so many times it has looked good the previous day and turned to rubbish the following morning I wondered if I should dare hope. It was therefore most gratifying to find the sun shining and there being some real warmth in it right from the outset today.
It would also have been pleasant if the upturn in the weather had translated into a material improvement in business, but it did not. We did see additional people today and perhaps I should not be too fussy on a change over day at the beginning of May, but it is frustrating, nevertheless.
I managed to slip away to the gymnasium after missing out on my Wednesday session. As it transpired, I would not have been able to go on Wednesday anyway because someone with a big drill was making a hole in the floor where my rowing machine usually resides. Given the amount of concrete dust and mud across the floor and on the walls, it was a big job. I still managed to undertake a blistering session, but no records were broken today.
I understand that the Sennen Cove Recreation Centre, for that is its proper name, has won its planning permission to knock the place down and put up a two storey building in its place. The plan has not found universal approval and I was not overly delighted to note that they intended to put the gymnasium upstairs. I will have enough exercise in the gymnasium without having to struggle up stairs to get to it. Anyway, I presumed that the drilling was part of the preparatory work.
If you are interested in such things, dear reader, the people involved have done much work in securing funding from various sources to pay for the rebuild. They need to raise some funds themselves, as it is not done to be seen to be wholly reliant on handouts. There is a crowdfunding page which launches on May 8th or your hard earned can be sent direct – which might include paying for a stairlift for grumpy shopkeepers.
I had come back to the shop shortly before the middle of the day having spent fifteen minutes taking ABH around the block. She is nearly back to normal after her little operation but still needs to wear her romper suit for another week. She has made no particular fuss about wearing it and is now completely at ease wearing it – but what do I know. She might be harbouring dark thoughts about it even now as I write.
Let us hope not and instead think about the afternoon that passed without hardly being noticed. It also passed with the shop being hardly noticed, either. We had a few people coming and going, but I had enough time to distribute the fishing tackle delivery to our shelves. It was absolutely astounding that it had arrived at our door less than twenty-four hours after I had placed the order. They either had very little else to do or were super efficient. It is more than can be said for the combined building trade sorting out our build. We have had three weeks of nothing happening but one day of frantic scaffold knocking down. It is not even in the configuration that will enable the back end of the roof to be done.
I sent a message to our builder to ask what my expectations should be for the coming weeks or possibly months and where, perhaps, we should hang the Christmas lights. He advised that he was just as irritated with the scaffolders not turning up as I was and apparently they are serving other clients before us. I was sort of expecting a bill from them for the reconfiguration, but I have heard nothing. It leaves me in a bit of a difficult position. I do not want to cause too much of a stir in case they had intended to do the reconfiguration under the original terms. I also dream of winning the lotto and believe fairies will come and do the housework overnight.
Having it all finished by the half term would have been a ‘nice to have’ but I think that is now out of reach. There is therefore no imperative to having it finished in a particular timescale as there are no cost implications that I can think of. We are losing out on saving by not having the solar panels installed but what we do not have we are not missing is possibly the way to think about that. In short, I have reached the point of ambivalence about the whole thing.
It was so pleasant in the evening that I took ABH out twice. It was also because she had been stuck inside for a good proportion of the day while the Missus continued her decorating of our bedroom. She set a target of moving back in there at the weekend, but I think that was a little ambitious. Again, there is no particular hurry other than we are both fed up with living in squalor. It was a bigger job than the other rooms, too.
We have a very serious damp issue in the corner that I suspect came from when the mews behind us was built and the gap at the back of our wall was filled in. It needs proper tanking against the damp that has the wall paper soaking after a few months. We might get around to that one day but in the interim the Missus put a couple of coats of PVA glue on the wall as an undercoat. We shall see how that works out, but she is single minded about it and it will certainly be finished before the weekend is out.
In the meanwhile, I shall gird my loins for a busy weekend – just as soon as the fairies have finished mopping the floor.
May 2nd - Thursday
Oh, well, that was disappointing. Our little taste of better weather yesterday was fleeting, a mere tease. Today we were back to grey and the breeze from the northwest was chilly though mercifully light. It was a good job I had not cast any clouts, well, not permanently anyway.
Just for added measure we got a shower of rain at the end of the morning. Mother had told me the forecast that she had seen suggested rain for yesterday and today. The Meteorological Office had decided it was not going to rain on either day, so between them they got it bang on.
It certainly did not help encourage anyone into The Cove and we were quiet the whole day long. There were a few more people around in the afternoon but through the morning I was denied any human interaction at all – and no customers, either.
I thought that I had better do something rather than nothing and finished off the barcodes for the jewellery stand. I then went around the shop to see if I had missed anything and discovered that of the few things we have been selling, the fishing lures had taken a bit of a beating. It is mainly a small group of local boys responsible for the depletion. They are in several times a week when the sea state is suitable and head off to the end of the Harbour wall. It is heartening to see a group like that finding some harmless pastime to consume their free time and they are all good and amiable lads. I saw them later in the evening. One had grabbed a spider crab by hand, no snorkel and mask, just dived down and got it. Pleased as punch he was and told me his mother was mortified.
The last time I placed an order for lures and jigs, the supplier stepped in to recommend some. It was a bit of a risk, but it paid off and the ones they sent have been very popular. It is comforting to know that there are still suppliers out there who know what they are about and have their customers’ best interests at heart. I reordered a bunch of them to replace our missing stock.
The afternoon saw a clearing of our cloud blanket and a broad arrangement of blue sky and white fluffy clouds. It apparently offered not the slightest encouragement to visitors to come and enjoy it and we were just as quiet as we had been for most of the day. By the afternoon, I had also run out of things to do, or things that I felt I needed to do and found myself at the bottom of a bored stupor. I was not even compelled to rage at the thirty percent mark-up our pet insurer had deemed necessary to levy onto next year’s cover for ABH. She has not materially changed much in the twelve months since I commissioned it, although conceivably she might be thirty percent bigger. I will consider this overnight and just pay up because it will be much easier than filling out numerous online quotes and forever more batting away the ensuing avalanche of messages and telephone calls asking why I did not sign up with the companies I enquired with plus all the one they sold my details on to.
It was a good job that someone had organised a launch of the Lifeboat for a spot of Thursday evening training. At the very least it was something constructive to do and made me feel so much more valued – even if it was me doing the valuing. Mind, I probably get a better rate that way.
We launched both boats into the calm bay and a rising tide at around seven o’clock for them to go tearing off in two different directions. We have not got quite as far as full spring tide, in fact we are halfway between neaps and spring, so there was plenty of water in the Harbour to launch the Inshore boat. For a change and because we were a little light on numbers on the shore, I took the Tooltrak out. It was perfectly mild for a change and I eschewed any additional layer when I went out to launch the boat. Unfortunately, I thought the same when it came to recovery when the temperature had dropped some and the northwestly breeze had kicked back in again. I was down there in the cab for some time, too, waiting on the boat because someone said it was coming in when it was not.
Aside from that we fell into our respective roles and executed our duties with calm professionalism. We even managed to maintain some decorum when the boat arrived back in the bay, enough so to carry out what looked like a textbook recovery up the long slipway at around a quarter to my bedtime. This extended a bit because there was some fuelling up to do and I eventually got away as it was going dark at around half past nine o’clock when I took ABH for her last walk. We are, after all, a very dedicated, very excellent Shore Crew.
A textbook recovery underway taken from the cab of the Tooltrak. You can see the 'span' cables off the back of the boat. The Inshore just arriving around the pointy end of the big boat.
Spring is here up Mayon Cliff with a blankets of tri-cornered leek everywhere. The smell of garlic in the air is intense downwind of it.
May 1st - Wednesday
The scaffolders and the builders turned up this morning to make a start after a two week hiatus. The builders were here to move all the various bits building materials they had carelessly left where the scaffolders wanted to put scaffolding and the scaffolders to reconfigure the scaffolding into the bits the builders had vacated. Fortunately, no horseshoe bats had moved in during the break and the collared doves were quietly taken away and murdered. (Not really, Mr Packham, if you are reading. They were asked politely to move on.)
It was a cracking morning for such things, too. The sun was shining from the very off and it stayed dry and reasonably temperate. Almost miraculously, The Cove filled with trekkers passing through and more casual visitors mooching about and occupying the tables of the café opposite. Quite what they made of the merry sound of power drivers undoing bolts is anyone’s guess, but it was soon very testing on my false ear enhanced hearing.
I called the cash and carry people early to try and resolve our outstanding credit and got to speak with the elusive lady in accounts. I did not fully understand what she was saying at the time, but it amounted to the issue having been resolved and I should no longer worry. What passed for ‘resolved’ was two further invoices for services that had hitherto not been raised for both orders amounting, very roughly to what they owed me for goods not delivered. Both invoices detailed ‘handball’ charges, that is the carrying of stock from the cages into the shop. Of course, had I known that this was being charged, I would have sat back and watched our man bring the delivery in by himself.
One of the invoices had a ‘delivery’ charge on it, which was odd because the company adds delivery to the price of each item and therefore I had effectively been charged twice for it. Being a somewhat cynical grumpy shopkeeper, it struck me that these charges that had never been raised before on our deliveries, had been added to avoid paying the credit. Furthermore, one of the invoices related to the order placed at the start of April and was therefore an afterthought. Naturally, our lady in accounts was unavailable when I called back to discuss the matter. I am now very glad that our original supplier has come good, else we would be stuck with these crooks.
The boys really cracked on with the scaffolding. The new lengths at the back of the property will wait until Friday, they told me, but all the rest was nearly all taken away. We are left with one storey at the front and similar halfway down the side opposite our steps. It looks very strange indeed without and I had a sudden sense of insecurity with it gone. I told one of the boys it was like having a bushy beard for 40 years then shaving it off.
It had not been a particularly quiet morning and getting away for the afternoon would have been pleasant had it not been to a shuffling off ceremony. Two of us had been asked to represent the station for our ex-winchman whose turn it was up at the venue in Camborne. I took one of our neighbours who was short of a ride. On balance, I think it would have been preferable not to take the truck which has not been washed for some time. I know that we were not exactly going to be part of the motorcade, but it seemed embarrassing, nonetheless. I was going to park a little distance from everyone else but when we arrived, we had no choice. Our man was very popular and had known a lot of people in a number of jobs over the years.
We congregated at the place where they take our man away and replace him with fond memories, and they did it very well. As it turned out there were at least a dozen Lifeboat crew there, past and present, and together we formed a guard of honour and one of our number joined the pall bearers. All very nicely done even if not one us knew what we were doing.
I had not realised when we left that the truck was low on fuel. My plan to fill up on the way was scotched when we fell in behind two tractors at the top of the hill and followed one all the way into town. It necessitated a detour through Hayle on the way back to a small independent fuel station that I favour. I also had plans to stop at the post office when we got back to post a parcel to Brittany where a regular visitor had discovered that we sell goods on our website shop. You may have seen labels for it, dear reader as you pass by on your way to read The Diary each day. Just thought that I would mention it in case it had eluded you.
With two additional stops we were already behind everyone else leaving the event. We were further delayed by heavy traffic along the route and narrowly avoided being involved in some sort of incident that had blocked the Longrock bypass. In all it took us much longer to get back than our fellow mourners for which I was roundly admonished. Well, that is life being a grumpy shopkeeper.
Despite it all, it was quite a lovely day and warmer than we had had it since the middle of December. We had been in short sleeve order up at Camborne and walking around The Cove later in the evening it was still perfectly temperate. We do rather hope that this is no flash in the pan.
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