The Sennen Cove Diary
June 4th - Thursday
It looked quite bright out when I peeked this morning. The only reason I put on my light rain jacket was to keep out the chill westerly that was still banging in at more than 40 miles per hour – near 60 miles per hour at Gwennap Head, windiest place in the universe. It was just as well I had my rain jacket on; I walked beyond the bottom of our steps and was rewarded with a face full of rain.
The rain was not too heavy and was short-lived, as were the subsequent showers during the morning. The sea, however, had tuned up its game and was churning away in the Harbour, lumping over the wall and in utter confusion throughout the bay. There was not much splash up cliffs; the swell direction must have been wrong for that.
With far too much time on my hands I spent some of it fault finding on the shop vacuum cleaner. It did not take very long to apply a volt meter to the DC outlet of the charger and establish that there was no output at all. This would definitely hamper the charging process. Having already spent some £60 on a battery I was not about to spend a further £45 on a charger that the manufacturer had for sale. A quick look at one of the national auction websites established that I could get what purported to be the same charger for £10. If it had fallen off the back of a lorry or had been manufactured in a sweatshop in Shenzen, I was not about to ask too many questions. It is on its way from wherever it is coming from.
I had also been putting off finishing processing the new order of bikinis and children’s swimsuits since before the half term. I had shipped them into the back of the truck before the cash and carry delivery on Saturday and only got them out again yesterday. We did not need too many out in the shop, even after selling a few over the holiday. I extracted the eight garments in two sizes that we needed and rebagged the rest. I also mopped up the bikinis already in the shop that had parted company from each other, tops and bottoms. These are now pinned together and I will do the others bit by bit as needed.
I sent the overstock off with the Missus as she went off to collect Mother and head to The Farm. She told me she needed Mother up there to repot the tomato plants that had outgrown their original pots. I might have asked the question why they were not planted in bigger pots to start with which would have avoided the repotting. There is probably a perfectly reasonable explanation which will make me look daft for asking. I will therefore not ask, just in case.
While yesterday appeared quiet, the till at the end of day was quite respectable. Today was deathly quiet from the start until the end. Those that we did see told us that it was pretty wild out and I could not help but agree. It definitely was not wild inside and I spent most of the day Johnny no mates. I might have expected a slew of going home present buying but this week’s contingent clearly have no gardens, no pets and presumably work from home. There was certainly no surprise when I did the till in the evening despite another five minutes to closing rush.
Our Lifeboat training sessions seem to have permanently migrated to half past six o’clock. While it negates me having any tea, it is probably more convenient for all and when we do have launches, it gives more time for sea-borne training. I duly attended at the appointed time and was sent out again to fetch milk and coffee from the shop. It is comforting to know that I have a use.
With the sea state not playing ball for a launch, the Boat Crew went off and did something shore based and we, the Very Excellent Shore Crew went and played with the Tooltrak. As part of the emergency procedures we must know how to release the track brakes. When the Tooltak is shut down, the brakes come on automatically. If the machine needs to be towed, the brakes, logically, need to be released first. This involves tipping forward the cab, releasing the hydraulic tension and using a spanner to wind off the brakes on each side.
There are a few turnips in the hairspray of this procedure. First being that tipping the can requires a special tool which is held in the Inshore boathouse. This must be fetched to the site of the breakdown. A second is, if the machine breaks down in the sea, it would be exceedingly tricky to release the brake nuts which would be underwater. The last issue is that the Institution has decreed that the Tooktrak should only be towed by another Institute vehicle. By the time that arrives, our machine may well be ten feet deep in sea. We would hope, however, that we may only receive slight slapped risks should we use the Harbour tractor instead – although if we use the Harbour tractor without authorisation, we would surely be banished from the kingdom forever.
Having learnt lots of valuable lessons that we will, no doubt, consign to the recycling bags in the deepest recesses of our minds, we all headed off home to our beds – or something.
June 3rd - Wednesday
After a day’s respite, we were back to mizzle again. The girls and I got wet as we traversed the block first thing. I was minded to think that the wind was perhaps not as strong as it was the day before. It is more likely that it was just a different direction.
The mizzle had largely cleared by the time I came down to open the shop. There was no point in coming down too early as we had precious few deliveries and not any bottling up to do. I amused myself with the newspapers and continuing with keying in the invoices, instead. The mizzle came and went sporadically through the day, keeping our customers away and allowing me to finish all the invoices.
I also had carte blanche to take time off to go to the gymnasium. I probably could have gone and shut the shop in the meanwhile. I doubt that anyone would have noticed. I had time, therefore, to carry out a blistering session without worrying too much about getting back quickly, although the Missus almost certainly felt the opposite. I was not back five minutes when she cut and ran off to The Farm for her own blistering session of a completely different sort.
I had placed the last order last night to replenish the stock that had gone out during the half term. This one was the fudge bags and traditional Cornish biscuits that are mainly bought as gifts for gardeners and pet sitters. I surmise that must be an awful lot of gardens and pets being looked after because we sell a monumental about of fudge bags and biscuits. These items are perennially good value for such purposes and have been for the last 23 years. Not the same bags and boxes, of course, well, not all of them, anyway.
Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to continue my work of failing to fix things. The mobile vacuum cleaner that we have in the shop recently displayed its symptoms of having a dead battery. I leave it plugged in, so that battery was failing to charge. We had the same problem before, and I was able to purchase a new battery from the manufacturer, and it had worked ever since up to a few days ago.
Without thinking too much about it, I ordered another replacement battery, and it arrived today. It appeared to be charged already which I hope is why the blue light did not come on when I plugged it in. The alternative reason that the blue light did not come on is because the charger itself is not working. If that is the case, I have purchased an expensive battery unnecessarily and will have to purchase an expensive charger. With my run of luck, I will find out that it is the vacuum cleaner at fault.
If I were looking for a positive out of it all, the battery arrived with a small silica gel bag inside the packaging to ward off damaging moisture. The optician that does ears recommended that I use a dry box in which to keep my replaced false ear when they arrive. She had said that the company could provide one for around ten pounds and I had been fretting ever since. It occurred to me that I could use a small air-tight container, which we have in abundance in the kitchen, a place a small silica gel pouch inside it – for free.
I know that some of our stock items have them in the packaging, but I was unable to remember which ones. I am sure the packing person that dropped the little gel packed in with my battery did not think for a moment the joy it would bring to the person who opened the box some while later.
Before I left for the gymnasium, the Missus was telling me of her concerns about only having the digger for one more week. I asked what she had left to do and she explained that the chief priority was shifting enough topsoil from the bottom of the field to the top to fill the bean and pea frames. There are eight of these and they are large. I musty have had a moment of light headedness because I found myself rather rashly offering to go up after I finished in the shop to lend a hand. I would drive the tractor with the tipping trailer, and she would stay with the digger at the bottom of the field and fill it on each of my journeys. We would probably move the requisite amount of earth in just over an hour, in my estimation, assuming no hiccups. After all, I had nothing better to do.
Naturally, because I was keen to close the shop on time and head off, we had a five minutes to closing rush to slow me down. The last of these shoppers took his time choosing a rash vest to go under his wetsuit. He asked what the letters S M L meant on the label. He had the good grace to slap himself on the forehead when I explained it meant, SMALL.
He then asked about the surfing conditions which is obviously my next specialist subject after quantum physics on Mastermind. The sea state has been building up to a good frenzy over the last couple of days. It has got to the stage of bad, very lumpy and almost angry. These are not ideal surfing conditions and probably only the most experienced or foolhardy would try surfing in them after the Lifeguards had gone home. Due to there being one such individual already in the water, he assessed that it was ideal to go for a dip. I left him to it as I had a tractor to drive.
Talking of conditions, not only did we have the five minutes to closing rush and a talkative customer, the weather has chosen this very moment to unleash the heaviest of it showers just before we closed. A quick look at the rain radar showed that the heavy showers were queued up to the west, just ready to head in for the next hour or so.
So it was that we arrived at The Farm with the rain hacking down and a robust southwesterly pushing it in sideways. I had togged up in DIYman overalls, my big orange workman’s waterproof trousers and a waterproof jacket and, initially, needed them. Happily, the tractor seat had avoided a flooding and by the time I extracted it from the shed and driven to the end of the field, the Missus was already there with the digger.
Shortly after we started, the rain cleared to warm sunshine, and we finished our work in the dry and reasonably pleasant conditions. I conducted eight trips with full trailers, tipping the soil next to the bean and pea frames. The Missus had cleared an enormous area to the back of the greenhouse, and it is mainly level. It certainly would have taken some effort to get it there.
Just as I put away the tractor, the rain returned. It showered on us again when we arrived home and took the girls back in. They had dutifully sat in the truck for the hour or so that we laboured only having a little run in the rain at the end. The sea had improved its game while we had been away with a large swell running into the bay and lumping over the Harbour wall. It was still coming over and hour later when I took the girls for a last spin. We will spend the night with the sound of it bashing around in our ears, which is oddly comforting at a distance. I doubt that I will hear it for long.
Love on a farm boy's wages.
June 2nd - Tuesday
It was a much better looking morning when I first threw back the virtual curtains in the living room thus morning. As I recall, there was even some blue sky, but I did check the rain radar before I stepped out with the girls as there were one or two dodgy looking clouds hanging about to the west.
What I was not expecting was a ten degree drop in temperature with added wind chill. I had worn a hooded jacket which was just as well. When we walked across the Harbour car park the robust westerly was bleddy cold. The skies, at least, became brighter as the day went on and the threat of rain receded. The wind, however, hung on in there for the rest of the day which must have been marginally irritating for the folk wandering about.
It turned out that there were more folk by and by. The morning had been largely quiet but into the afternoon, the streets perked up a bit, and we started to see walkers coming through and some of the more hardy souls sitting about outside the café next door. Perversely, we did pretty well with our pasty stock (sorry, MS) yesterday when the weather was less conducive. Today, there was nothing doing for a long while. The only pasties sold were to some engineers working at the Lifeboat station and some trades people down the road. I reduced the number of pasties in the warmer as there was no point in them drying out with no one to have them. This, of course, induced a walking party to stop by and order more pasties than I had available.
Halfway through the morning, the farm shop cash and carry order arrived. It was relatively big and kept me occupied for the best part of an hour, unpacking and putting the goods out on the shelves. After that, I set to with the accounting again.
We have accumulated as many invoices this month as we did in the previous two and now we have reached the end of the quarter, they need to be input and delivered to our accountants. Naturally, as soon as I opened the box and started sorting them into date order, we started to get busy. I made some headway and will start again tomorrow after I come back from the gymnasium.
Into our little bit of busyness some orders started to arrive. I had thought it about time to fill our premium spirits shelf which were looking a bit thin and ignored. The bottles seem to sell better off full shelves for some reason. I added two new rums, although they have yet to arrive. They have a reasonable story behind them and are a bit more thought through that just calling in Jamaican spirit and adding Cornish water to it. They will replace the two gins in ceramic bottles whose supplier let us down so badly at Easter.
When the Missus returned from The Farm, I thought to have a go at repairing the nearside light cluster. This was the one for which I had purchased a new one complete with wiring because the garage said we had a problem with the wiring. Sadly, the replacement failed to come up with the goods and the brake light and reversing light both failed to function. I had assumed, or more like, hoped that it was the bulbs and I purchased new ones some while ago now. I had only just got around to having a go at replacing them. When I removed the cluster, I discovered some loose wires. Whether the new loom arrived like that and I had failed to notice or I had disturbed the wiring when I installed it, I do not know. Since I had a lot of trouble seating the connector, the latter is likely the case.
I replaced the bulbs and asked the Missus to try reverse and the brakes without running me over. I am sure the temptation was great, but I am still here, happily. Unhappily, replacing the brake light did not work – that was the where the loose wire was – but, sweet joy, the reversing light did. Unfortunately, the reversing light not working does not incur a traffic offence; the unworking brake light does. I will have to order another loom which means getting another light cluster and ending up with two spares. Oddly, when I saw the truck late with the lights on, the rear brake light on the near side is permanently lit instead of the side light. The wiring must be wrong.
The day remained bright and windy until the end. I found that I needed a hat on our last walk. Flaming June, it is not.
June 1st - Monday
Mizzle. I had to look twice since it had been a while since we had seen anything of the sort. There was not anything special about it, it was the sort of mizzle we would get at any time of the year, but because the air was still temperate, it was almost pleasant walking around the block in it this morning.
Although I had woken up at sparrow’s as I had been for a week, I forced myself to stay put for a further half an hour. There would be far less to do in the mornings for the coming several weeks, so there would be no point in overdoing it. Unfortunately, ABH did not get the memo, and I had to explain it to her which rather spoilt the moment.
As there was not much to do in the morning it did not take me long to do it. There was hardly any bottling up required for the beer fridge and only a few items in the soft drinks fridge. The greengrocery had come very early indeed and was easy to bash out followed by the newspapers. It was only a few minutes after we opened that I had to call the Missus down to take over so that I could head off into town for my false ear appointment. I left her expecting the dairy and pasty deliveries (sorry, MS).
While it was just mizzly in The Cove, it was proper foggy up the top. It was thick all the way to Tregonebris Hill after which it was just wet. I had allowed plenty of time as I did not want to be rushing and to allow for the one driver who thinks that it is sensible in such weather to drive at between 20 and 30 miles per hour and brake heavily at each slight bend. He or she would speed up only for the 30 miles per hour limit through Drift, of course. I picked up this driver just as I left the village. I would have overtaken on the straight after Trevedra Farm but having already passed two cars with no lights on at all I reasoned that it was too great a risk.
I arrived in Penzance with ten minutes to spare, which was good enough. It gave me just enough time to recover from the shock of finding out the much maligned council want more than five pounds to park in my usual car park for two hours. Normally this car park would be near full at gone nine o’clock and I had wondered why it was nigh on empty. I think the bean counters at the much maligned council will be wondering where the money has gone at the end of the year.
It was more than likely I could have saved a couple of quid by selecting to buy only a one hour ticket. I did consider it but thought that I had better factor in how long it might take the police to arrive at the optician that does ears when I was compelled to throw myself on the floor, screaming and stamping my feet when the audiologist refused to believe that my false ears had a fault.
It was therefore something of a disappointment – that I had spent so much on parking – when the audiologist agreed that the false ears did in fact have a technical problem and would need to be replaced. Not fixed. Replaced. I did not even have to threaten or bribe; she came to that conclusion all by herself. She also suggested that when I get the new ones, I might try keeping them in a ‘dry box’. She explained that, particularly when it was hot, the units would attract moisture from the air which might be detrimental. Of course, she could not say that was the root cause, but it was worth a try. Logic; helpfulness - I almost fell off my seat.
While I was in town, I thought that I may as well make it worthwhile and top up our pepper containers which were looking a little overused. This is the shop that has all manner of comestibles loose in tubs and will sell them in any quantity you choose. They were more than happy to top up our large containers for not an awful lot which made me feel a little better about the exorbitant parking charge.
It is a wonder how these businesses manage. Not only have they had to endure, significant hikes in business rates, national insurance increases and lifts in the minimum wage, the much maligned council are joining in with making parking unreasonable too. Corporation car parks in town should be free for the first hour to encourage shoppers to use the independent shops nearby. You can do quite a lot of shopping in an hour.
Still, all will be alright in the end. Some bright sparks have tabled the notion that a new railway could be driven into the Duchy connecting Launceston and Bodmin. The route would run along the course of the A30 we are told. The train would run faster than a speeding bullet, bring love, peace and prosperity to the nation, be the ideal transport for the gestating rare-earth minerals trade while avoiding the major centres of population and business, such as Plymouth. I am certain that it would suffer none of the issues the other big railway project has faced as the planners will have thought of everything and learned all the lessons.
We note that it is the 40th anniversary of the Bodmin and Wenford heritage steam railway, so we must live in hope.
The weather that had set in for the day did not do an awful lot for business. The street was deserted for most of the day, and we made do with sporadic customer visits from people who appeared out of the ether. There was not a soul on the beach and the sea that had been building yesterday appeared to flatten out again today. When I looked at mid tide in the middle of the afternoon, there was no one in the water, either. These in between days will need to be sunny or special for some other reason if we are to see some decent trade.
The quiet gave me time to do some emergency shopping. I had noted with some alarm that our single cup hot water boiler had expired when I went to make a cup of tea before I returned to the shop in the morning. This is an idea tool as I can rush upstairs sling a cup under the spout and switch in on. The cup is full of hot water when I return after attending to other pressing matters. Since I had left the shop unattended, I had to hurriedly break out the traditional kettle instead, which does not allow the same degree of autonomy. I had hoped to be able to order a new one from the catalogue shop in town so that the Missus, who was out that way, could pick it up on her way back. Sadly, they did not have one in stock, so I had to purchase it online for delivery. I somehow must survive until Wednesday when it is due to be delivered.
The vape legislation has been in place for more than a year now. It was the one that mandated that all vapes must be reusable and the one that the tobacco companies immediately found a way around. Quite how I should have known – read the legislation from cover to cover, I guess – but part of the bill was that as a retailer of vapes, I must act as a wastebin if someone wants to throw one away. This came to light today when my favourite waste collection company, Buffo, complained that too many of their lorries were bursting into flames because of incorrectly disposed of vapes. They have a lithium battery which are prone to ignite if crushed or made wet.
The company suggested a solution might be that a £5 deposit be paid when a person purchases a vape which is returned when it comes to disposing of it. The retail industry immediately responded by warning that it would just drive people to the black market, which is already big and mighty as it is for ordinary tobacco. I really do not have a view, but it was news to me that I would have to be ready to accept thrown away vapes if asked to do so. It has not happened yet, but if it did what on Earth would I do with it.
The answer dropped in my lap during the afternoon with a telephone call from the Laurel and Hardy Newspaper Company (recycling division). I had applied on Sunday to resume our cardboard collection. The very pleasant lady told me all the ins and outs including the thirty percent increase in the fee. She also verified the vape disposal law for me by offering a collection service for a mere £6 per week. Given that I sell possibly one vape a week and if I had one vape per month handed back to me, I would be surprised, I therefore demurred on their kind offer.
It gave me pause for thought whether I should continue to sell vapes or not. On one hand, the margins are very good. On the other, having to collect disposals would be a pain in the rear – we would not have enough to contract a removal service. If only I knew of a bigger retailer who would not mind taking them off my hands on the odd occasion I might have one to get rid of.
Towards the end of the afternoon, the rain set in properly. Any trade we might have had evaporated completely. The rain came and went but the first couple of showers did the damage. Fortunately, it had cleared out by the time it came to take the girls around for their last run. Lucky, ain’t I.