The Sennen Cove Diary
November 4th - Wednesday
The rooms that I stay in are deathly quiet; you cannot hear a sound. It sits above the restaurant courtyard which at this time of year is unused. It also sits atop the restaurant and kitchens, and I cannot hear any sounds from there, either. Living in a place where there is the constant sounds of the sea, or the breeze or both or seabirds, it is most disconcerting to hear nothing at all, zilch, an absence of sound, utter silence.
I feel the constant urge to make some noise, play some music or have the television on but I just cannot make myself do it. It would seem a bit rude.
It is a very comfortable bed and I had trouble tearing myself from it. I also had no assistance from small furry creatures. I still woke up at sparrow’s though. Just cannot break myself of the habit.
The breakfast was a sumptuous and quality feast. They meats were from the butcher in Wincanton that we have frequented when the Aged Parent lived there. The vegetables were from a noted local greengrocer, and it was quite delicious.
I made my way at a leisurely pace up the hill. I think that I have pulled a muscle or something alongside my false knee and it does not seem to want to go away. It has happened previously and goes away after a few gymnasium sessions. This time it is hanging in there for the long haul and is not helpful in the least.
The Aged Parent had not long finished his own breakfast, so my timing was impeccable. We chatted for a while until he told me that usually on a Wednesday, he gets to meet a bunch of children from the local playgroup. Someone at some time thought it a jolly idea to get a host of four year olds and throw them into a room full of octogenarian and nonagenarians to see what happened. It must have met some success criteria that we simple folk are not privy to because it happens once a fortnight. Who was I to stand in the way of such progress and delight – though whose delight we are talking about is open to debate. So, girding my loins with a double gird, we headed for one of the communal rooms, which I was horrified to note had only the one door, making a subtle escape impossible.
The room was suspiciously quiet, so I allowed myself to open my eyes. The room was empty, except for a lady sitting at the table with photocopied crossword puzzles in front of her. She explained that for some unknown reason the playgroup visit had been postponed a week. I sincerely hope that my distress and disappointment was not at all obvious. If it was, the lady with the crosswords pretended not to notice.
So, instead of being overrun with small children, a small group of us sat around a table and completed a crossword, which was actually most enjoyable. As we were finishing, we were joined by another resident who I learnt had come along to play scrabble. Deep in my heart I had hoped that this was the point at which we left but as no one, including the Aged Parent, moved I thought it a tad rude to demure. I think that I should mention if anyone breathes a word about me sitting there for the next hour playing scrabble with three representatives of the union of parlour games collective and an assistant, there will be trouble. I came second, incidentally.
I left the Aged Parent to his dinner and a snooze and returned to the hotel. I had thought about a snooze myself, but someone had organised a Lifeboat exercise for tomorrow evening, and I set to with the rotas. That did not take all that long but before I knew it, it was time to return. On the way down I had purchased a woolly hat as the air had turned chilly and it was required. I already had a hat but because I spent the entire summer forgetting to wash it, the darned thing was unwashed and very loose. I had also gone to the trouble of investing in a battery pack to recharge my telephone. It is getting a little long in the tooth and the battery does not last as long as it once did. The previous evening my in bar entertainment was sharply curtailed when my smart mobile telephone ran out of power.
The Aged Parent and I spent the afternoon not engaged in any entertainment other than jovial and convivial conversation. We were pleasantly interrupted on occasion by someone bringing tea and biscuits which is all very jolly. Tea, of the meal variety, is provided at five o’clock or thereabouts so I bowed out to find some of my own.
The previous evening, I visited the very excellent Digby Tap, a proper alehouse at the bottom end of the town. It is so welcome to visit a proper public house that I went there again this evening and shall most probably visit there again tomorrow. They sell beer at less than five pounds a pint, too, and appear to be busy every night. Most of the eateries and drinking establishments are down there with some more at the top of the hill connected by a high street full of shops and scaffolding. There is so much scaffolding down one side of the street it is impossible to walk any more than a few yards without having to step out into the street.
Halfway up on the scaffolded side, or halfway down if you prefer, is a new eating establishment with a trendy name. I briefly surveyed the menu on my way up in the afternoon and decided that it would be worth a visit in the evening. It was not.
It is a vast barn of a place with a bar the length of one side and the remaining floor area supplied with tables of varying sizes and capacity. The sign at the door asked the visitor to pick a table and be seated, which, after some consideration, I did. My pause concerned the number of large parties seated at random positions and I though it best to avoid their raucousness lest buns were thrown later and I was caught in the crossfire. About half the other tables were occupied but I managed to find a table for two near the window.
I sat and perused the menu expecting that at any moment one of the serving staff would descend upon me to take my order. I had already slightly regretted my choice as the menu was full of ‘crushed’ items, ‘hot honey’ and ‘smashed’ things. I felt this entirely unnecessary when there were other words that had been used for the same things for decades. Nevertheless, having perhaps deciphered the menu and made my choice, I continued to wait to be noticed by a waiter. I had already noted them arriving at the group tables and taking orders, so I assumed they were busy. I also noted that those orders were being fulfilled with frightening speed which made me wonder about the cooking arrangements.
After twenty minutes, I thought to forced, the issue and went to the bar to ask whether I should have ordered there. I was told that there was a sign on the table that told me where to order or, indeed, there was a QR code, and I could have used my smart mobile telephone instead. I pointed out that the waiters had taken orders at the group tables but, apparently, that was different, and I should have known that. Did I want the bar person to take my order? No not really. I told her that, like her, I could not be bothered, either, and I would find somewhere where my pathetic custom might be more appreciated.
I did too. The Italian place where I have dined before, welcomed me properly, served me attentively and provide a first class dining experience along with a very palatable meal. It really is not that hard.
I retired to my rooms with a very fat malt whisky and continued to watch a serial thriller on my computer which I really should have dispensed with as it is awful. The whisky quite the opposite.
November 3rd - Tuesday
When the shop is open, at least from the end of May, I have the newspapers to tell me which day of the week it is. Clearly, without them I am utterly lost. I had a keen belief that today was a Wednesday at one point, of which I was violently disabused or perhaps reminded in a less than gentle manner.
I was up with the lark. It had, perhaps, a bad night because it was later in the morning than it had been the morning before. ABH decided that it was high time that I got out of bed and having done so, burrowed under the covers that I had moments before coveted for myself. I bore no malice, or at least no more than normal, and went about my morning exercise routine having first extracted BB from the living room and confined her with the other one.
We headed for the beach again in the broadness of daylight and I attended to the administration on my return – which included deciding which day it was. By the time I had finished it was so close to the appointed leaving time that I had to hurriedly pack the remainder of my travel things and go and fetch the truck and, more importantly, the Missus who would be driving it, and me, to the station.
In all my planning I had quite forgotten the four-way traffic lights that had been installed at Drift. These kept us interminably on red and when they eventually did turn to green to let some traffic through, turned red again before we got there. Nevertheless, we still made to the station with time to spare to discover that the inbound train was delayed.
Fortunately, it was not by much, and by my reckoning, it actually left on time. I had already been informed that my connecting train at Exeter had been cancelled due to the dreaded SMD, so I was aware that I had 40 minutes to kick my heels at the station café. Ironically, the inbound train that I arrived on was on time. For the past two years it had been late, and I had missed the connection and ended up with a later train anyway.
It left me arriving at Sherborne in the late afternoon and after booking into the hotel, the one I stayed at in January, I went directly to see the Aged Parent.
I had booked the room on the Internet because they do not take booking over the telephone. It was at least their own booking system, which I find much more convenient. The room I had chosen was accessible at ground level, although there were stairs inside, and was cheaper that the others because the wet room was down a flight of stairs. I had no problem with that and the idea of a wet room where I did not have to drag my false knee over the edge of a bath was attractive.
When I arrived at the appointed time I was heartily welcomed and, oddly, remembered from my previous visit at the outset of the year. I wondered what I had done that made me so memorable. I imagine it was my youthful demeanour and stunningly boyish good looks. I was then show to my rooms which were approached up a set of outside iron steps and across a worryingly lofty gantry. When I express my surprise and told the very pleasant lady it was not the rooms I booked, she suggested that I must have been upgraded. She did go and check and confirmed that I had indeed been ‘upgraded’ into the rooms up the iron steps and across the worryingly lofty gantry and the bathroom – with a bath – on the same level as everything else.
It was a bit of a disappointment but the rooms, like the one I stayed in previously, are perfectly comfortable, clean and simply and adequately furnished. If I were to point to one disadvantage it was that the building being old, very old indeed, that it suffers a lack of electrical amenities such as spare sockets and somewhere to plug in my electric toothbrush.
There was no time to waste with further investigation as I had to make haste to the top of the hill to visit the Aged Parent.
It was only a brief visit as evening was pressing in and we shall have more time tomorrow. I found him hale and in good humour and, having run out of suitably sized stones, has ceased to throw them at the neighbours and passers-by as men of a certain age sometimes will. There is time yet to dissuade him from pinching the bottoms of visiting nurses and I am sure that one day soon he will acknowledge that I am his offspring and not creeping around to steal his lifesavings, although I suppose that he has a point that the two are not mutually exclusive.
I jest, of course - mostly. We often worry that we will have little to talk about but we soon fell into gentle conversation about this and that. It remains to be seen if we are still doing that at the end of my extended visit but I can always go and visit the abbey if we run out of things to say.
November 2nd - Monday
Alright, alright. Calm down you lot. Having been flooded with berating messages, I am now painfully aware that I got the day wrong on yesterday's Diary - and also dropped off Sunday. I am very sorry that it spoilt your, erm, enjoyment and clearly upset your equilibrium for the entire day. I am obviously very grateful that you both took the time to point out the error of my ways. Order has now been restored,
However, they may be further disruption in the days ahead as I venture into lands where electricity is in short supply and access to simple amenities is tenuous, I have heard.
I was thinking that I might have swapped the weather today with yesterday’s until I noted that it was a couple of degrees cooler and the wind had veered to the northeast. It looked sublime, however, without a cloud in the sky and what fooled me, of course, was that I was sitting in my seat by the window instead of behind the counter with the cold breeze coming at me.
For the first time in a while, I was able to let the girls loose on the beach first thing instead of running around the block in the dark. I had cancelled my wake-up alarm and woke up when it would have gone off. I managed a further 45 minutes’ slumber of sorts before I nagged myself out of bed. I had half expected the girls to nudge me since we had gone beyond normal walking time, but it seems they could not give a fig unless it was bright daylight, I assume. I still had to drag ABH kicking and screaming to go out when we did.
I was in and out of the gymnasium before I would have even thought of calling the Missus to relieve me in the shop. I arrived before any of the day crew got there and enjoyed an entirely peaceful blistering session. I must confess to being slightly distracted as I was looking forward to my first scrambled eggs on toast in seven months. They were bleddy ’ansum, by the way.
Shortly after I got back from the gymnasium, the Missus was preparing to take Mother home. She had stayed the weekend after coming along to the auction on Friday. It took me a minute to remember why she stayed; it seems so long ago, now. The Missus was gone for some time as she was helping to make beds for the arrival of the in-laws, I think. I was quite keen for her to come back as I need to drive up to Camborne on an errand, there being few other reasons that I could think of for wanting to go there.
While I waited for her to come back, I took the girls down to the beach again. The tide was not long about going out and was still trying to come back in on occasion. BB rather insisted that I play throw-a-stone for her which involves getting quite near the unstable water’s edge. I had to be right on my mettle to avoid getting my feet wet. I took them around the block after that. It was safer.
Yes, the trip to Camborne. My left false ear has ceased to function again. Mother went to the optician that does ears there and had her unit fixed while she waited. As I am seeing the Aged Parent tomorrow, I felt it best that I was able to hear, else we would end up shouting at each other and the entire neighbourhood would know what we were about. The shop in Camborne is part of the same franchise as the one in Penzance but, being bigger, they have an optician that does ears there permanently.
I set out on my doomed trip as soon as the Missus came back from Mother’s. You may well ask, dear reader, how I knew that the trip was doomed from the outset – well, almost. I knew because as I was going up the hill for the first time in months, it struck me that I had left my false ears behind on my desk and had to go back for them. I may as well have stayed there.
It was also portentous that when I arrived and parted with a king’s ransom to park the truck in a much maligned council car park, I could not immediately find the shop I needed. I was looking in the correct direction it transpired but could not see the sign for the life of me. I collared a passer-by who immediately told me she was not a native of that town – I guessed that because she spoke to me – but she pointed out the shop which was in plain view. Since the optician that does ears has a tag line in its advertising that suggests that the sufferer of poor eyesight should have gone to them for assistance, it was quite apt. I would have laughed out loud but did not want to draw unnecessary attention to myself.
Although the spectacles part of the shop was very busy, the false ear section which was upstairs was empty and I was seen straight away. I explained that it was a repeat and known issue and the very pleasant lady took the offending false ear away for someone to have a look at it. I would have much preferred that they listened to it, but when the lady reappeared, she told me that there was nothing that they could do immediately and I would have to make an appointment.
If that were not disappointment enough, she told me that the unit was indeed working. To demonstrate, she rubbed her finger along the microphone and said she could hear it in the speaker. Trying desperately hard not to reply sharply, I said that sadly, while listing to a finger scraping across a microphone was, I was quite sure, soothing, I really needed to hear what people were saying and that was the required function that was inoperative. I appreciate that they must have people who complain about nothing quite frequently. However, I thought that my records would show that my reports were in earnest and that we had got over this stage of disbelief. I decided that I should not respond when she said that she knew that ‘I did not get on’ with this brand of false ear. It is not that I do not ‘get on’ with them it is because they keep failing to bleddy work.
Unfortunately, I shall now have to conduct difficult communications with the Aged Parent. Perhaps I should take a notepad, just in case.
The final insult was that I could have got away with only paying for half an hour in the car park instead of a full, expensive hour. When I tried to leave, I discovered that Camborne was reluctant to release me from its clutches and threw some one way streetery at me and some confusing road markings. I had to reverse out of the blocked road and take a turn that I was not expecting. I have never been so glad to see signs for the west and freedom.
When I got back, the Missus was still in the shop carrying out Operation Winter. I had thought that her plan had been to simply rationalise the freezers. Had I known she was going the whole hog and moving the furniture about, I would have got in there first and marked their positions on the floor. In order to squeeze everything in, all the furniture and stands have to be precisely placed else they do not fit or customers cannot get past. I have found it immensely useful in previous years to have the positions marked on the floor so they may more easily be put back. Still, ’tis done now.
I repaired upstairs to recuperate from my traumatic visitation east of Penzance. It was good practise for tomorrow when I shall be going much further. I thought to go through the accumulated messages and discovered one from the Laurel and Hardy Newspaper Company. It told me that they were hugely disappointed that I had cause for complaint and they would be passing my concerns to the relevant department. Unless the company had employed an army of clairvoyants, I was not sure how they had determined that I had a complaint as the last one was back in the summer when I had asked what an acronym meant, which I now cannot remember. True enough, they had not replied to that, but I thought it unlikely that was it.
Still perplexed, I continued through my other messages and discovered one nested under an automated response from the Laurel and Hardy Newspaper Company recycling service. It was a response to my request to terminate the service due to the shop closing. The message had acknowledged the request and told me to expect a telephone call from the relevant department – I thought it was the relevant department but never mind – within 24 hours. The message also contained a reference that matched the reference of the ‘complaint’ response. I am not sure that requesting termination of a service is a complaint but for a company that must get a lot of complaints, I suppose it is easier to treat every request as one because the odds are it will be correct.
True to their word, the telephone rang late in the afternoon, and a very pleasant man asked what they could possibly have done to offend me to the point that I felt I had to terminate the recycling service. He was genuinely surprised when I told him that I was very happy with the service, thank you very much, but, as with the previous two years we had used the service, should he wish to check his records, we had terminated at a similar time of year. So completely used to receiving complaints, I imagine, he asked again if there was anything wrong with the service and I had to spend five minutes reassuring him that it was simply that the shop was now closed. Had the very pleasant man not been on the Indian sub-continent as I suspected, I would have asked him around for tea, so that I could give him a comforting hug and reassurance.
It was quite an exhausting afternoon, so I decided that since I could I would sit on the sofa with my book and feet up and perhaps even have a bit of a snooze. I had just started to nod off when ABH decided that another trip to the beach would be a spiffing idea and that since she would not see me for a day or two, we should go immediately.
The tide was a good deal further in than it was on our last visit. We lingered for a bit and walked around the block again. Had it not been sufficiently late in the afternoon and having things to do ahead of my excursion tomorrow, I might have taken them further. That will have to wait until next week now.
Just before we leave the Harbour beach, I should note that the volume of sand had changed dramatically over just a few tides at the weekend. We had made the transition to neap tides but clearly the change had been at the end of the large springs. Where before we could only pass through one arch of the short slip to the other side, now the top two arches have so much sand that the rocks that prevented such passage are almost completely covered. Even the rock pool that the girls like to dip into under the second arch down has been filled in. A more obvious indicator is the car tyre that has been suspended on a rope from the long slip by some daring youth. It swung free for the entirely of the summer now rests on the sand, inert.
I must now away and pack my toothbrush for my sojourn into the unknown – all supposing the trains run and are not subject to SMD or COD or DFG or any other impeding acronym.
November 1st - Sunday
Radio Pasty had us shrouded in mist today. Pah, I say and, what do they know. We have a long history in the Far West of not doing what we are told. We park on pavements, let out dogs on beaches when we are not supposed to and surf on beaches when the red flags are flying.
Today commenced in much the same vein as yesterday except our high cirrus cloud had been replaced by much lower cumulus clouds that hung about the sky in fluffy white clumps. The breeze, however, had backed to the north and it felt much cooler because of it. It also did not help that it was much cooler which would have helped in making it feel much cooler. There, I am glad I made that clear.
The wind direction was far less kind to the surfers today and there were far fewer of them out there. The ground sea had almost completely gone; I do not recall any waves breaking over the Harbour wall this morning. The waves heading into the beach in the middle of the day were all in a bit of a rush and were quite flat and lacked substance.
Talking of things sea related, we sold a lady’s bikini today. A young lady stopped by in the middle of the morning and asked if we had any. I did try very hard to look as if we sold such things this late in the season all the time, but I rather think I could not entirely hide my surprise. Her partner came in shortly after and explained that they had booked a session in the sauna. I had not heard very much about the sauna since the excitement of its installation had calmed down. Early in the season, the attendant was dropping by now and then to purchase oranges. Apparently, they offer them as a complementary refreshment after the session – or possibly half time - and would occasionally run out. I still have no idea how successful the operation has been this year, especially in all the heat, but I presume as they are still there, it cannot have been too bad.
Business was expectedly patchy throughout the day with some notable grocery spends that were very welcome. There were a few people passing through just to wish us well during the off season, which was very good of them. It warmed the cockles of my heart which was the only thing about me that was. That northerly draft was keeping down the temperature in the shop. I did not even have the pasty warmer (sorry, MS) on to keep me warm, so I nestled in the corner until I was needed at the counter. I must blend in behind the counter because a number of customers walking in took fright when I said, hello. Of course, finding a grumpy shopkeeper behind a shop counter when you walk into a shop is the last thing you expect, I am sure.
What did not warm the cockles quite so much was being asked if we had any closing day bargains – the very cheek of it. As any regular customer will tell you, all our everyday prices are so reasonable that every purchase is like getting a bargain. Breaks me bleddy ’eart, so it does. Anyway, I felt that they must have been joshing with me so I told them all that they would be looking a long time if they expected especial bargains just because it was our last day. I would rather give it away after we closed than sell it at a discount. The horror; the horror.
I did have that conversation with a friend and neighbour who could not assimilate my intransigence. We had talking about milk, specifically semi-skimmed that we do not use. I did not say it at the time but essentials like milk do not overly affected by price – unless in competition. A customer either wants it or does not. They are unlikely to buy it because it is a bit cheaper today or more of it, so dropping the price would not sell it any quicker or more of it.
I did manage to do something useful and finished off inputting the invoices that had accumulated in our last week. There will still be a few more to come but most of the grind is now complete. All I have to do is file them and I can do that in the comfort of the flat another time. The Missus seemed keen to wrap up too and took one of the store room freezers apart. She did tell me that some of the content had gone into the near empty shop freezer. I did not quite compute the implications until a customer – thankfully, a neighbour – told me that the bag of frozen chips she just took out had a hole in it. She had picked up a bag of chips we use at home. It was late in the day, but I put a suitable note on the freezer door to ward off other customers. That did not work either because our last customer of the day almost did the same thing.
There was not a great deal of additional work to do to close up on the last day. We generally leave the closing down of fridges and freezers for the next day or during the week. All I really had to do was to clear the magazines which, thanks to the Laurel and Hardy Newspaper Company cancelling most of them, took an additional ten minutes on top of the newspapers. I had already counted the vouchers and prepared the paperwork. There were no changes to make because we had not taken any more tokens, but I had to leave it until the end of day just in case.
Having calculated the final total for the tokens I was able to average it out over the last several weeks since the last token submission. It told me that from the end of September until the middle of October we were making around 15 percent profit on selling newspapers each week. Since we were not selling very many, it was hardly worth the aggravation. Delivery costs were around ten percent of the retail value. In the last two weeks, our profit had fallen to ten percent and delivery was 25 to 30 percent. It is not great reading, so perhaps I should not read it. Ideally, I would stop newspapers at the end of August but stopping is harder and less acceptable to customers than not starting and, besides, there is the cardboard recycling to consider.
I then had the longest hour in history to wind down to the unceremonial season closing of the shop, the lowering – or in our case removing entirely – the shop flags and playing the last post on cazoo. There was not a dry eye in house, I am sure. Well, they might not have been had anyone in the house been paying attention to the pathetic mumblings of a soon to be redundant grumpy shopkeeper.
Then, when I least expected it, we had a five minutes to closing rush. I had to delay publication of The Diary while I had an independent adjudicator ratify – no, really -that having one person turn up at 17:58 could be counted as a five minutes to closing rush. I am very pleased that it was allowed as it very nicely draws a line under the whole shop open season thing. You can now look forward, dear reader, to being bored senseless with grumpy farming for five months.