The Sennen Cove Diary
August 5th - Wednesday
What is it that drives a busy day, I ask myself. Sadly, I had chosen exactly the wrong person to ask because myself did not have a bleddy clue. We were flat out on Friday, a change-over day and traditionally quiet in places; the weekend, though not shoddy, failed to meet expectations; and Monday, unexpectedly had me on my knees. The dip on Tuesday very likely had much to do with the weather, or at least the forecast, and then somebody ordained today a beach day and somehow everyone else heard about it.
On its own, this would have been just dandy, thank you very much. Stand behind the till, go nowhere and get my fingers running over the keyboard like a concert pianist playing a Rachmanioff piano concerto. Any eejit can do that – the till bit, not Rachmanioff. No, for added edge we like to have all our deliveries all at once and make sure that we have ordered lots from all our suppliers the previous evening.
Just to make it interesting, our customers fell through the first electric sliding door in the The Cove from the moment I opened it and did not stop coming until the middle of the afternoon. It was a little intense. So intense, indeed, I left the Missus to it at ten o’clock and went off for a blistering session at the gymnasium. I also left her with the greengrocery that I had been unable to process and later, she dealt with the butchery order that arrived in my absence. Oh, come on. A blistering session is crucial to maintain my stamina and stunning physique.
In fact, the Missus had been waiting for my return so that she could get down the shop to put the bacon and the gala pie in the fridge. After that we conducted a seamless handover and as the Missus was getting ready to go off to The Farm, the beachware order arrived.
This was the one that contained some of the bodyboards we were short of. To make up the order, we had added some other items we were running close to empty on. It was not a huge order, but it piled up a fair bit on our newspaper box outside. The crowds had diminished sufficiently for me to lend a hand unloading the van, but I had to rush back at the end as the diminishing crowds, erm, reminished again.
It was a familiar pattern throughout the rest of the day. There was quiet moments later in the afternoon, but they were just that, moments. I had every intention of filling up the sunglasses stand but as the day progressed, any hope of even thinking about topping it up faded fast. The same was true of the other things that I knew we would be running short of such as topping up the beer fridge. That too was a no more than a fanciful notion.
I would love to report just how busy or not the beach was today, it being a beach day an’ all. It is just that I did not get to see it. I had a good geek as we slowed to a crawl in the last embers of the afternoon and even then, it looked pretty packed up at the upper reaches. Since there were waves, albeit rough and blown flat, the surfers were out in large numbers. I suspect that they will not be there tomorrow, so it was a one day window and they were keen to take advantage even if the play was poor. The beach itself looked splendid in the softening light. It is also kinder on the eyes for a long look.
Oddly, one of our neighbours from up the hill told me she has thought that it was not as busy this year. She said that the beach was not as crowded and there were fewer people milling about. I was feeling alright about this year until she said that, now I am worried.
We had started to slow down at around half past four o’clock, but it was two hours later that I was actually able to put away the contents of a couple of boxes from the earlier delivery. We had a second set of bodyboards, too, that the Missus crammed into the truck on her return journey and will take up to The Farm tomorrow. We were still seeing the beers, crisps and chocolate brigade right up the last minute but there was no real five minutes to closing rush. Our visitors were probably all shopped and beached out – or it is just so much quieter this year that they are just not here.
Hopefully, I will be able to complete putting out the rest of the deliveries in the morning. I ordered in some smoked mackerel and salmon which needs pricing. It will be reasonably short dated, so it is important that it goes out sooner rather than later. Another delivery needs putting away in the beer cupboard before I can use the freezer top, so I have set myself up for quite a bit of work first thing. I will not start working evenings; that way lies lunacy.
One thing I have started doing in the evening while I eat my tea is deal with messages that have arrived during the day. I can delete the detritus and respond to those that can be done with a written reply. Telephoning is mainly out of the question as that is nigh on impossible to do during office hours. I can check up and down the street and there will not be a soul around but as soon as I press the dial button on the telephone a rush of customer will come piling from around corners and down drain pipes.
One of the messages I dealt with a couple of days ago was from the lady who rocked up at the shop telling us we need a pavement licence and if we did not have one, we would get a fine. I had sent my robust letter to her, because I held her responsible for the whole mess and was unequivocal in pointing that out. She clearly disagreed. She thanked me for ‘brining the matter to her attention’ and passed the buck to the Licensing Team. For sure, they messed up as much as anyone, but our lady needs to carry the can because she started it.
Despite the busyness of the morning, I managed to fire off a message to the Laurel and Hardy Newspaper Company regarding the absence of magazines. I mentioned that their purpose was to sell newspapers and magazines but through their actions they had managed quite the reverse. I cannot see it doing any good but at least it made me feel better.
The company had randomly sent two newspaper titles I had not ordered. They were not on the delivery note, either. I put them out just in case I managed to sell one, but they were still there at the end of the day. They had done this before and I sent the unsold copies back. I did not include them on my paperwork but some smart eye noticed them and filed a ‘returns rejection’ because they were not on the ‘sent’ list. This appeared on the next delivery note and because I had not recorded the delivery – I could not because there was no entry on the screen for them – they charged me for them. I then had to claim them as missing to clear the charge. Thankfully, they accepted that and credited them. I will not make that mistake again.
I think the wind had reduced by the end of the day. It was difficult to tell because I had not been out in it. The channel markers appeared to be leaning over at a lesser angle, so I will take that as a yes. Gwennap Head, windiest place in the universe, still had it at 30 miles per hour or more and Land’s End is not worth looking at because the weathervane has still not been fixed.
At some point during the day, the cloud we had in the morning went away and left us with a largely sunny day. Earlier, it had looked quite dark and menacing to the northeast with big black cumulus hung low somewhere over the cliffs. One of our last customers of the day told me he had spent the day in St Ives. Apparently, it was monstrously busy. After I had finished ribbing him for his choice of destination, he told me it had rained there. I think my case is rested – as indeed should I.
August 4th - Tuesday
I was awarded an unwanted break today as the weather fell apart on us. I got a little damp as I took the girls around first thing. Someone told me that it had rained heavily in the night, but the ground was completely dry as we walked around the block.
Before I did very much in the morning I reported our overflowing bin again. Once again, the emergency cleaner-up arrived in his tights and cape with a big R on his chest for ‘Rubbish Man’, I presume. Alright, I made that bit up, but he single-handedly cleared the detritus which took about twenty minutes while he made notes filled bags and swept up. Surely, the bosses must notice soon that this is happening way too often to be an isolated incident.
By the time I came down to start in the shop, the day was looking a much better prospect indeed. There was brightness and bits of blue sky were showing through the high level cloud with some of the sky still clouded over with thicker low level stuff. A second wave of rain came through not long into the morning and scared off the few who had ventured out at that stage. More than the weather, I think that the forecast probably did the scaring off. One look at the dark clouds and raindrops on their favourite ‘app’ and they were all off to St Ives.
Those who chose to brave it out were rewarded by some very fine weather between the very occasional showers, especially during the morning and early afternoon. Another band of light rain came through halfway through the afternoon. There was not much discernible difference between today and yesterday after the clouds cleared out. It took a while but by the middle of the afternoon there was quite a crowd down on the big beach up on the hight tide line just waiting to get a bit damp. One of our fishermen had told me that he was rolling around a bit over by longships, so I had expected some swell to be moving into the bay. I am sure that there were a few surfers who would have been grateful for it, but there was none. The best they had were some waves breaking on another sandbar over by North Rocks.
We were busy at times and sometimes very busy. In between, we had long periods of sporadic customer visits. It allowed me time to slowly work my way through the farm shop cash and carry that had arrived in the early afternoon and was probably the biggest of the year. Quite fortuitously, the Missus was just on her way out when the delivery arrived. She was able to jump behind the till while I helped unload the truck and when she was not serving, she helped as well. The store room that was a complete mess before, was an even worse complete mess when we had finished.
I knew that I would not clear it all during the rest of the afternoon, especially as there were drinks delivered that I would not put out until the morning. I concentrated on clearing a route through to the back of the store room and to clear the top of the chest freezer that I would be using as a work surface in the morning. That all went very well until I had to move the soft drinks out of the way to get at the accumulated cardboard and put them on top of the freezer again.
There was much drifting in and out during the later part of the afternoon but no major rushes right through until the close of play. I had spotted a band of rain approaching that would probably coincide with our closing. It produced some heavy drizzle for ten minutes but never really amounted to very much. The till was reasonably respectable for such a relatively slow day, but we had a smaller number of higher value transactions, some of them most notable. I admit to having struggled through parts of today for the very reason that I was not distracted sufficiently by work to take my mind off how weary I was. It had largely passed in the last few hours run up to closing. A good gymnasium session will sort me out tomorrow.
Having not stepped outside since the morning, save for a couple of runs up for a cup of tea, I had not noticed how the wind had freshened in the latter part of the afternoon. Radio Pasty said that it would be breezy tomorrow and the surface pressure charts show high pressure building again after that. The break up of the weather, it seems, was a temporary blip and did not produce very much in the way of much needed rain.
The Missus had threatened to go back up to The Farm in the evening but at some point changed her mind. It meant I got to take the girls out last thing and this evening at roughly the same time as the last time I did it, the sun had gone and it was dark – well, very gloomy at least. The wind was still making an effort, especially as we rounded the corner of the Lifeboat station, but it was still relatively warm. A family were taking supper at the table outside Tinker Tailor at the head of the Harbour and it was busy out, once again. Something clearly defines which late evenings are worth hanging about for and which to spend indoors and the weather clearly is not a factor.
A quick run out was quite sufficient for me; I could hear my bed calling from the other side of the Roundhouse.
August 3rd - Monday
It was looking all rather bright and encouraging before six o’clock this morning when I stepped out with the girls. By the time we opened, things had gone downhill and it was not just the weather that had produced some thickening cloud all over us but our deliveries were in disarray.
The bread and the newspapers were roughly on time, although it seems that the Laurel and Hardy Newspaper Company has stopped checking my volumes. There is no longer a nice little scribble on the packing note, checked by Fred (not his real name), and to prove it I was missing a title. As explained yesterday, I narrowly avoided missing the credit as I got tied up with customers and later deliveries.
The greengrocery, of which there was quite a bit, arrived after we were open. Since we had not reached manic customer activity at that stage, I managed to get it all out of the way, bar the produce that needed to be weighed, before the dairy arrived. It was when the milk got here that the customers pounced. I found myself going up and down the aisle to put a few litres of milk away, then returning to the till to serve and going back again.
By the time I went to my gymnasium session, there was no sign of our pasty man (sorry, MS), so I left it to the Missus to sort. We had already taken orders for pasties when they did arrive, and I fended off the usual questions of what time the pasties get here with my usual response of two minutes after the van arrives.
Even the gymnasium session was in doubt. The local gig club had arranged to have a joint exercise with the Inshore boat – or we had arranged with them. They called off at the last minute and there ensued and hour of indecision whether the Inshore would go anyway as planned or later in the afternoon. Since my gymnasium session rested on which was it would go, I had to press for an answer.
I felt a little torn about going anyway because business has started to pick up before I left. By the end of the afternoon, I was glad that I did not turn back – I was grateful for the rest.
To say that it was busy today would be like saying that light travels quite quickly. We were pressed behind the counter for most of the day and when we were not being pressed, we were being very pressed. The pasties had arrived very late in my absence and the people who had ordered had already had them by the time I got back. The soft drinks had arrived and were piled up in the store room – the Missus cleared them after I went upstairs to get ready. The water and the biscuits arrived before I went up, and I stowed those at the back of the store room. I eventually got to put the biscuits out approaching closing time. Breakfast was at half past three o’clock.
The day that I thought was supposed to be cloudy according to the people I spoke with, turned into another proper rip gribbler. I imagine that the beach was packed again, although if I did get to see it, the scene did not lodge long in my brain to be recalled later. I do remember the sea being full. At low water two long sandbars reached out from the beach proper and dissected the sea into approximate thirds. It was a most peculiar arrangement with water users spread across the three segments or pools seemingly equally. Again, there was no surf, and the bay was as flat as a dish all day.
Despite the melee in the shop, I had to make some effort to replenish our bodyboard stock. We are almost out of child boards, and the adult ones will not last much longer. When I called our suppliers when I went upstairs to get ready, they too were short on just the boards we needed. I was able to secure some stock of the children’s boards, but we will just have to run out of the adult ones.
If there were any other deficiencies across the shop, they would just have to wait. Roughly the only time I came out from behind the counter was to put more pasties in the oven or retrieve them. Any other spare moments were reserved for trying to build an order so that we could have a delivery from the beachware company who were supplying some of the bodyboards but not enough for a minimum order. Even this task I had to give up on in favour for doing it in the evening after we had closed.
I am very fortunate that I can have fun with some of the customers. It would be a very long and difficult day without some levity. I do occasionally get it wrong and there are people out there who, unbelievably, are even grumpier than a grumpy shopkeeper. Someone did ask why I still had our ‘covid’ screen in place after all these years and I explained as well as the function of keeping some germs at bay, also provided a modicum of protection should an offended customer wish to punch me on the nose.
The Missus headed off to The Farm before we closed, so I did not get to see her until almost bedtime. If I stopped to think about it, I might consider it a curious life with us both running at full tilt for these few weeks and maybe a bit longer here and there. We have been doing it for twenty odd years. This thing may rattle along but if it was going to break, I am sure it would have broken by now.
August 2nd - Sunday
There is nothing quite like strapping up your second customer of the day’s broken finger to get the morning going with a zing. He had fallen on sone rough ground up St Just was the previous evening while walking his hound. Always blame the hound; it looks better.
I was also seriously ahead of the posse by the time the shop opened. Thankfully, the soft drinks fridge had not been too badly ravaged by the thirsty hordes yesterday. I was able, just about, to reach the spare stock behind the cash and carry order without having to move too many boxes or break an ankle trying to reach the back of the store. The beer fridge had fared worse but at least I could get at the stock and that did not take too long.
Neither did the newspapers. The Laurel and Hardy Newspaper Company decided in its wisdom to short me on two of the most popular Sunday titles. Just for added amusement they did charge for them, so I had to login to their system to arrange the credit. At this time of the year that is a precarious arrangement because there is a cut off time involved. If I am busy first thing, I can easily forget to do the credit and letting the Laurel and Hardy Newspaper Company get away with it is more galling that you can imagine.
We were blessed with another dry and sunny day, this time without any attendance cloud to spoil it. I think, not that I had much time to look, that the beach was about as busy as it was yesterday. I am not sure what it was about Friday but it is unheard of to have a Friday as the busier day of the weekend, if we wish to be loose with the term. Each day of the actual weekend was, by our turnover, a third less busy than Friday.
The other odd thing about the three days was the enormous demand for cheese pasties (sorry, MS). Up until now, including the busy half term, I had maintained roughly the same ratio of cheese to steak pasties. Friday and Saturday upset that particular wheelbarrow of ratatouille with a frighteningly large demand for the vegetarian option. There was no doubt that we would run out early on Sunday.
One customer, a regular, warned me that her extended family would be buying cheese pasties for the entire week. One day I might have thought was a blip but two looked more like a trend and I increased my order of cheese pasties for Monday by a good margin. I probably do not need to say that sales of cheese pasties, subsequent to the order cutoff, dropped through the floor and the few we had left for today lasted until the middle of the afternoon.
As a small aside, we have also been selling an unusual proportion of Diet Coke, both cans and bottles. It struck me that there might be a correlation between this and the vegetarian pasties. It is the sort of thing that I should commission a university to study, but I understand they might charge a bit for the privilege. I imagine there are probably a few blokes down the local who would give it a bash for a pasty and half a pint of lager. I am not paying out for a pint at those prices.
At quarter past two o’clock we ran out of pasties completely. We would struggle to fit a greater volume in the fridge than we had for this weekend, so we must either hope this weekend was exceptional or imagine a way of holding some more.
The Missus came down to the shop after the initial rush of the morning. She set to in the store room and cleared the rest of the cash and carry in about two hours. Obviously, I had broken the back of it with my many forays into it over the last day and a bit, but I was grateful for her efforts. We will only have one more big cash and carry delivery and then it will be all over. It is amazing to how quickly it finishes after the long period of expectation.
From the middle of the afternoon, we were more cruising through the day with occasional frenzied activity when small crowds blew through. It gave me the opportunity to look down on the vast expanse of low water beach in awe and wonder. There were probably as many in the water than there were at the head of the beach with a bit of a sparse middle in the no man’s land. At low water, there was not a wave to be had anywhere not even around the many exposed sandbars. Anyone in the water was either standing about paddling or sitting on a board and drifting here and there. Through it all, the sun shone down, and sales of parasols were back on the menu.
It really was a proper rip gribbler of a day even with a bit of southeasterly keeping the temperature down. It was a departure from the normal sort of day that St Buryan Male Voice Choir play on the wharf; it usually tips down. Actually, it usually does not. I think that we had some memorable days when it absolutely heaved down in biblical style stair rods and those are the days that stick in the mind. The choir collect on the Harbour wharf and sing a few songs to the usually substantial crowd that gathers around. The RNLI buckets are then taken around by some burley types looking menacing before anyone can escape. It usually turns up a few bob for the Institution.
Another thing that happens on choir night is that we have a five minutes to choir singing rush. Those who have come down to view the choir realise that we will be closed when the singing stops and it is time to head to the OS for some more – fuelled by beer. We were particularly busy for a good half an hour before the show started with all manner of customers including children eager to spend their holiday money.
One young lad acquired a bag of fossilised sharks’ teeth which are, and have been for years, immensely popular with boys his age. He was obviously a canny lad or perhaps slightly suspicious because he asked if they were genuine sharks’ teeth. I said that they were, honest guv. Still a little unsure, he asked what sort of shark they came from. Momentarily flummoxed, I remembered that they were fossilised, so I told him, a very old shark. Behind the family in the queue was a young man who suggested that the young boy photographed the teeth with his smart telephone and asked the AI facility on it to identify the shark. I said that he better not as it would probably come up with ‘rabbit’ which caused some merriment. (I made a note of who he was so that I could bar him later.)
We did indeed close up before the slightly rotund gentleman has started singing. I slunk away upstairs out of the way as the crowds shuffled by. With the OS calling, they would have had no interest in shopping, I concluded.
The Missus took herself off to the OS after the event so that she could finance some of the beer for the boys and the choir. She took the girls with her leaving me to do the admin I would usually do in the morning on the computer and retire which sounded like a very good plan at the time.
August 1st - Saturday
The sun had not quite broken over the cliff when I took the girls out first thing. There was just enough beach to cavort upon, so we headed down the slip which is far easier that dragging them down the road. If the tide is fully in, there are alright about avoiding the beach but if they can see a sliver of sand, they are most insistent that they go down.
We did not tarry long, I had places to go and drinks to see and was keen to get started. What I should have done is started much earlier as I was caught out just at the end of doing the soft drinks by the arrival of the cash and carry delivery. I had checked the tracker for the first time that had told me the van would arrive at ten minutes to eight o’clock. I thought it a useful addition to the service until the van turned up half an hour earlier.
We carried out the usual, efficient unload of a delivery that was a fair bit larger than the delivery we had last time. I had ramped that up on the expectation of a marked increase in business and for this order ramped up some more. Judging from the business we had yesterday, it was still going to be too small.
I must say that it certainly did not feel that small after we finished bringing it in. It was piled high and precariously, the full length of the store room with only just enough room to squeeze down one side. There was no time to be concerned about the stability of the piles because hot the heels of the cash and carry delivery came the newspapers and the greengrocery. Most of the latter could go straight out but there were a few items that needed weighing and pricing. Since the top of the freezer where I do the weighing and pricing was loaded with cash and carry goods, they would need to be processed and put out before I could do the greengrocery.
At twenty five minutes past eight o’clock, five minutes before opening, with the newspapers done, the freezer cleared of enough space to finish the greengrocery, and the bread that had arrived first, I suddenly realised that I had not yet topped up the beer fridge. Panic? Certainly not.
I would have been gravely mistaken to think that the helter skelter of the morning was over with the opening of the first electric sliding door in The Cove, although I might be forgiven for thinking so in the first hour as we were reasonably quiet. Then at half past nine o’clock, just as the first serious wave of shoppers appeared, so too did the extra large dairy order I had placed last night. Working between customer visits to the till, it took me the best part of an hour to price and secure all the items in the fridge. It was not helped that after getting my trolley to the end of the shop, I could not get back again because of people in the aisles.
Having boxed off the daily deliveries, I could concentrate on shopkeeping while trying to clear as much of the cash and carry as possible. It was a corker of a morning out there with so much bright sunshine it was hard to imagine a person not wanting to be part of it. I was, as a result, quite hard pressed and there was rather more shopkeeping than there was clearing boxes. It was gone eleven o’clock before there was enough of a break in the traffic to go and get a quick cup of tea.
We stayed busy until well into the afternoon although it was a little more sporadic than the morning’s major rush. I do not think that the beach was as busy as yesterday; the camps thinned out a bit as they went towards and past the Lifeguard huts. Maybe it was the cloud that put them off. Our bright and sunny morning paled a bit from the middle of the day as cloud either filtered the sun or blocked it out altogether. It was combined today with a bit of a breeze from the northwest which might have taken the edge off the temperature a bit. I suspect those camped out on the beach were not minded to care very much.
As the afternoon pressed on, we started to see some more arrivals, many with familiar faces, which is always pleasant – like seeing old friends. It reawakens my conversational mode, which can be eroded as I tire towards the middle of the afternoon. Sometimes others get caught in the crossfire such as the young lady who came to the counter purchasing postcard. I asked her if she had warm hands and I must commend her wit and presence of mind because she responded immediately, ‘not at the moment’. I very quickly pointed to her sweatshirt, before she thought me any more of a complete eejit than she did already, and its legend that said, Cold Heart. She mentioned that her uncle had said something similar which told me that she thought that age might be a factor at play. The very cheek of it, but touché.
In the last couple of hours of opening I had enough leeway to do a few more boxes of this and that from the cash and carry delivery. I had not made much of an impact on it but the Missus, who now looks like she constitutes the night shift, said that she would power through it in the evening. I had no doubt that she would.
Except she did not. By the time we had some tea, it was too late to consider probably two hour’s work in the shop. She said she would get up early, which I doubted, to do it then. Our ideas of early tend to differ in somewhat extreme ways.
When it came to take the girls out last thing, The Cove was a completely different place to the evening before. Gone were the crowds and our end was practically deserted. There was no aftermath of a spectacular sunset as the cloud had thickened a bit. At the end of the shop day it was still fairly bright, but the cloud was gathering then. The Harbour wall was lined with jumpers and there was still plenty of activity in the Harbour. They had all clearly thought better of hanging about later on. Not without cause, so did I and promptly went to bed.