The Sennen Cove Diary
April 10th - Friday
We get a daily price list from one of our fish suppliers during the working week. It comes with deal of the day in the headline. Today was double sucker octopus, which is probably just the arms of a big one. Allowing for a reasonable margin, available to you dear customer at around £16 per kilogram. You could have a whole small one at £13 per kilogram. On the other hand, your average lobster which last year you could pick up for £25 per kilogram is now – wait for it - £45 per kilogram and I would have to cut my own throat to sell it for such a tight margin. Gosh.
That, dear reader, is about as exciting as it got today. If I had said it was quiet other days this week, I was grossly understating the term – or was I overstating it, erm. The quiet today stretched from early morning right through to near the end of the day. It was interrupted spasmodically by a few families or people just leaving who had forgotten a present or two to take home. If this was a change-over day, it rather looked like everyone was changing and going home. I think that part of the problem is that not many people are staying in The Cove. The lets here are still very expensive and I suspect money is tight.
Another highlight of the day was a visit from our fire extinguisher maintainer. He has been coming for 23 years and I think has represented three or four different companies in that time. We only seen him once a year, but he feels like an old friend, and we get to chat about this and that while he is here. He lives over in Hayle, which is common talking ground and he fills me in on changes that I might not have been aware of. Apparently, there had been none in the last twelve months, so it must have been a slow year.
We had a little flurry of activity in the middle of the afternoon, but it was indeed a little flurry. It happened just after I started doing something long and detailed on the computer, so that will teach me.
Another element not in our favour was the weather. The morning was horrid. We managed to get to the beach and back for our morning walk out and I got the shop ready, but shortly after we opened, it started to rain. It rained quite heavily at one point and was still going a little bit when I took the girls out again after I got back from the gymnasium. For the first couple of weeks of opening, the ten hours of standing were clearly not doing my ex-dickie knee leg any favours. This week, however, there has been much improvement and the leg movement on the rowing machine was much more equitable across left and right. We are getting there, me and my legs. Together we will rule the world one day.
While I revelled in the wonders of my new leg, the weather outside improved a little. I had spoken with a walker last night looking for somewhere to set up his tent along the Coast Path. I told him that much of it was National Trust and they frowned upon such things, but I think we both agreed that it was dark at night and the likelihood of rangers being out was slim. At the time, the wind was in the northwest, but when I looked at the next 24 hours for him, it was clear the wind was going to veer all the way around to the southeast by the morning. If he had set up camp on the north coast he would have four hours on belting northwesterly to cope with and if he set up on the south coast, the first four hours would be sheltered but after that he would have a belting southeasterly to enjoy. We settled on somewhere near Nanjizal where he might possibly find shelter from both.
Fortunately, I did not get to feel much of the southeasterly in the shop. In fact, if was so calm that I was surprised when a youth came by later and told me that it was blustery out and about today. It was still not exactly warm in the shop. To think that on Wednesday I had almost considered retiring my woolly jacket. I was back in it again yesterday and definitely needed it today. A good book to read would have helped as well.
Just to show that we should never despair, because according to Mr Tolkein, despair is for those who see the end beyond all possible doubt, we had an 18 caret, veritable five minutes to closing rush. We were truly inundated for a while there. One of the parties inadvisably purchased – although I was not the one to inadvise them – a couple of fishing rod kits and some stronger line and lures. Later we spotted them at the end of the Harbour wall. I do hope they had fun.
April 9th - Thursday
All change: blue skies and sunshine, one step back; full cloud cover and mizzle, take centre stage. Still, there were no waves coming over the Harbour wall, so that was something. The heat from yesterday was but a mere memory, spirited away by a stiff northwesterly that kept the temperature down for the rest of the day. At one point it sent a line of squally showers through which was definitely not as advertised.
Our visitors duly stayed away in droves, certainly during the morning. I took the opportunity to clean the pasty oven (sorry, MS) a task that was outstanding since we opened. I had no interruptions and even when I started my breakfast, I was permitted to complete it in peace. We had a few customers coming and going by the time our soft drink order arrived. I had left this for a week or so and consequently it was quite a bulky order. Even this I managed to get the majority of out and into the drinks fridge so that it would not clutter the store room. By the middle of the day, I felt like an achiever and, my, it feels good.
I think, on the whole, I would have preferred to feel like a successful grumpy shopkeeper but there was no chance of that during the morning, at least. Also, at the middle of the day, the outside world brightened considerably, although the wind continued to hang in there. We did start to see an increase in our customer appearances, but the visits were sporadic and variable in quality. I had one lady turn up for a small purchase and struggled to find her payment card. She told me it was lost amongst the too many loyalty cards she had. That struck me as ironic, or at the least a contradiction in terms. Surely, having multiple loyalty cards is the exact opposite of loyalty.
The big beach was a different place to yesterday as well. I spotted a couple of little camps down under the car park, wrapped around with windbreaks, but that was it. The Missus took the girls down there in the early afternoon with acres of beach mainly to themselves. Given the stiff onshore wind there was not much in the way of surfing either and only the committed – or possibly those that had been – were likely to be taking a dip today. Having said that, there were two young ladies doing just that in the Harbour this morning when I took the girls down. It was a bit more sheltered down there, but they even made me feel cold when the ventured in.
I did not need anyone walking into the sea to make me feel cold by the end of the afternoon. The wind that had been banging in from the northwest all day somehow managed to swirl around the doorpost and squirt directly at me. I do not know if it actually did, but it seemed like it had got colder as the day progressed. Perhaps it was just the continual onslaught, instead. I checked the weather station at Land’s End, and the wind had increased a little as the day went on and the temperature, an ambient 10 degrees, was registering as a 5 degrees windchill. No wonder I was cold.
The latter part of the afternoon brought us some wandering souls, fed up with staying indoors or who had been out all day and were in search of succour. Sadly, we were clean out of succour, but we had some pasties and for a thin day, we did quite well and very much in line with my estimations and my order for the weekend that I had place at around half past midday. Of course, my estimations still need to be proven over the weekend, so I will not celebrate just yet.
Quaintly, we had a five minutes to closing rush, which having been quiet for much of the day, was most helpful. As is quite often the case, the till reflected a much better day than it had looked. Regardless of the weather being unhelpful, there are still visitors about and if they filter through slowly, I tend to forget the cumulative effect. Shopkeeping in The Cove and probably in wider Cornwall is all about averages, not just over one year but several. I rather suspect, though, that this five years will be rather more difficult than ever before.
I consoled myself in the evening with a rather large malt whisky. Well, why not.
April 8th - Wednesday
The bay was showing all the hallmarks of something in the region of a rip gribbler of a day in the making. It was obvious that the sky was clear blue even though it was masked by a thin veil of mist that covered the entire bay. It was like a new sports car under a silk cover, waiting to be revealed to the world.
There was enough beach to take the girls for a spin down on the sand in the Harbour in the morning. It was still a little chilly, but it was a dry cold, and the air was particularly fresh like it had been scrubbed clean ahead of a new day. I probably did not need my woolly jacket, and I certainly could have done without my hat. I am not sure that the sun had risen but it was very bright. I was all for going straight back home but the girls wanted to walk around the block, so I let them. Like them, I found myself sniffing up the air and the fragrance from the three cornered garlic all up the hillside.
The sea was still pounding a bit but not in yesterday’s league. I had not expected it to be pounding at all because our Coxswain had called a training exercise tonight. Apparently, it was the last weather window before the end of the week and Thursday would be too rough. Anyway, at least the Lifeguards had not red flagged the beach today.
It was just as well that they did. I think that there would have been insurrection had they not. When I looked at the outset to the afternoon, the beach under The Beach car park was a mass of small camps as much akin to a summer’s day that you could get. The rest of the beach was dotted with surfers coming and going and people just enjoying the space. There was a whole host in the swimming and bodyboarding in the assigned area, most of which had come through the shop on the way down there.
We had been quiet in the morning as the mist cleared and the glory of the day revealed itself. It was still quiet when I headed to the gymnasium halfway through the morning and it was also quiet when I came back. When it started to get busy was the second I unwrapped a brae bit of chicken to have with my morsel of bread. It then when stark staring mad – obviously.
After yesterday’s mass abstinence, the resulting glut of pasties (sorry, MS) and a similar number arriving this morning, I had decided not to place and order for tomorrow. By midday, I was starting to waver on that decision and by half past twelve, after an astonishing run of pasty buying, I capitulated and ordered a similar amount for tomorrow.
As is ever the case with beach days, we hit a slow patch during the middle of the afternoon when everybody had bought their bucket and spades, snacks, drinks and wherewithal and settled at their chosen spot on the sand. On summer days when they are down there earlier, we jest that a shower of rain in the middle of the day would be useful to get them back into the shop again for a while. It also generally ends up with a bit of a rush at the end of the shop day when they all pile off the beach to go get some tea. I therefore thought it prudent to have a bit of tea of my own before the fight started as I would have to rush over to the Lifeboat station as soon as we closed.
I was getting a little concerned by half past four o’clock. We were still quiet and there was no sign of a beach exodus. At five o’clock we started to see a few, then a few more. It was all looking very promising when it all collapsed again. There was not even the smallest of five minutes to closing rushes but it did allow me to close up on time and head across the road.
As I have explained before, I assign roles now before we arrive at the station. There are so many on the very excellent Shore Crew qualified to run the winch, drive the Tooltrak and carry out the head launcher role that they need to be rotated fairly. Most of us use the station chat group to indicated if we are attending and I use that to determine who is next to fill a role who will also be available. This is sometimes thwarted by crew who sign in late or just turn up at which point I sometime have to rearrange assignments at short notice. This evening, I had to do it three times.
Again, I had the new recruits shadowing experienced people in the roles of winch operator and Tooltrak driver. This meant that again we were short, particularly on the big boat launch and I found myself on my own with the head launcher. Given that I am in the ultimate position to arrange things so that I do very little, this did not work out at all well. Fortunately, the Inshore boat launched ahead of the big boat and the crew from there retuned to help with setting up.
Once again, the boat would return to the short slip for recovery. The tide was three hours out from high water and as we are going off spring tides we did not expect the short slip to be overwhelmed with water at any point before the boat came back. The sea state, however, was a little feisty and even two hours ahead of high water, there was a little floshing over the Harbour wall. It caught out a father and young girl who had wandered to the end and were just returning. It stopped them in their tracks for a second before they hurried back ahead of the next wave.
The Inshore boat returned first and the big boat half an hour afterwards. This again was useful as one of the Inshore team came free to help with the recovery. I was particularly grateful because until then I was on my own again with the head launcher directing from the long slip. From where I was standing at the top of the short slip I had an excellent view of what was clearly a textbook recovery in moderate to rough sea conditions at the end of the slip. Since I would be the person recovering the ‘fishing rod’ line deployment tool from the bottom of the slip after the boat was in, I had the opportunity to set it up a little higher than we would normally do. It meant the boat crew having to use a boat hook to recover the line but most importantly it meant that I would not get my wellies wet when I went down to retrieve it. We are, after all, a very forward-thinking, very excellent Shore Crew.
April 7th - Tuesday
The calmer sea had been replaced overnight with a ground sea that at near high water was sending large waves hurtling towards the beach. As they crossed the bay, they met the robust easterly breeze coming the other way. The result was a sea filled with marching waves curling back at the top with acres of spray reeling out behind them. The shoreline from Cape to Gwenver was a mess of white water with waves jumping up Creagle almost to halfway. Gwenver could not be seen behind the wall of elevated spray.
Once again, the morning was slow going. So slow was it that I said to a local boy who I had not seen for a while that I was surprised to see him two days in a row. It turns out that it was earlier in the morning I had seen him, not the day before. Even the beach took a while to fill up as the tide was in for a fair part of the morning. After that, the Lifeguards had the beach red flagged. I thought that they might relent at low water but there was nothing doing. At low water, the waves were running in long and flat, so there was not much there even for paddling. Excellent for a bit of skimboarding though.
Our farm shop cash and carry arrived in the middle of the day which gave me something to do. We had, of course, started to get a little busier by then but not so busy a little diversion was not welcome. Over the years the company has supplied us with some interesting and popular products. I have of late, however, had cause to be a little irritated at them as they have stopped stocking certain of our favourites. It seems that we just get into our stride with a product, the little tubs of hummus being a prime example, when they suddenly decide not to stock it anymore. I am sure they have good reason, but it is frustrating nonetheless when we cannot find a suitable alternative.
I have just ordered some tubs of pate from them. They will either still be on our shelf at the end of the season, or they will sell tremendously well and be discontinued by the middle of summer. On the subject, our little tubs of fish that attracted some interest last week have now stopped moving and the Cornish pasta has stirred no interest at all. The former I expect to shift as soon as the families go home but the pasta, I fear, may have been a mistake.
What has not been a mistake is sticking with some of our local artisan gins and other spirits which continue to sell very well. Against the odds, our most expensive gin, the squid ink one in the copper flask, is still the biggest seller. Hot on its heels is the new boy in town from Mount’s Bay Distillery. It comes in ceramic bottles and has sold extremely well since we started doing it last year.
So well has it sold that we ran out yesterday and I planned, not only to order some more of their gin, but to order some rum as well. I had not put any particular priority on placing the order, but when a customer came in and asked when we would be getting some more, I told him I would call today and expect delivery by the end of the week.
Since I could not recall what the minimum order was and I also wanted to discuss which of their rums was selling the best, I decided to telephone rather than sending a message. I was answered by the lady owner in the partnership but was struggling to hear her with some background noise at her end. I had barely started the conversation when she told me that they were on holiday and could I possibly place the order next week instead.
I cannot possibly explain how miffed I was by this. The more I thought of it, the more my miffedness escalated until I became very miffed indeed. We had taken a punt on stocking their product, a new startup and local business, and they had let us down at a crucial moment. If they had run out or had technical problems, fair enough, but to begger off on holiday in the middle of one of the few busy times of the year – what!
There are few busy times during the year, school holidays, basically, and local businesses know how important they are. You either want to run a business in Cornwall or you do not and if it is the former, you do not go on holiday in the middle of peak times. I will leave it a day or so to go off the boil and consider whether I explain this to them. I will also consider, based upon their response, whether to continue stocking their products. While the loss of us as a customer will probably not concern them at all – although it should – if we cannot rely on a supplier when we need them most, they are not worth having.
It did not help a grumpy shopkeeper’s subsequent demeanour one jot that the expected upsurge of afternoon visitor visits did not arrive. Certainly, for Friday and Saturday and to some extent, Monday, our customers had started to frequent the shop in the early part of the afternoon. I had no reason to expect today to be much different, but the early afternoon became the middle of the afternoon with no appearance of our illusive customers. Surely, they cannot all have gone to St Ives a day early.
As if to say, ‘there is no point in hanging around if no one wants me’, the sun duly beggered off too. We spent the entirety of the afternoon under cloud, which did nothing to mitigate the chill of the easterly breeze. Having said that, the chill was not as chilly as yesterday; we gained a good few degrees on the day before. Rumour has it a veritable heatwave is on the way, but you will excuse me if I do not hold my breath for it.
Then the sun came back shortly before we closed. Of course it did. It prompted a small five minutes to closing rush, for which I should be grateful. When I took the girls around last thing, I noted that several of the holiday lets were in darkness and their residents gone home. The big Easter rush is over, which is disappointing especially as I ordered another busy day’s worth of pasties (sorry, MS – I expect you thought you got away with it today).
Nothing like a bit of stirred up sea first thing in the morning. Rather hard to film it with two bleddy hounds handing off my camera arm.
And a couple of stills - which was a feat itself
April 6th - Monday
We kept our clear skies from yesterday, lighting up the bay in the morning. The sea state had diminished and was looking largely flat, and we traded our chilly west wind for a chilly east wind of the same strength. What was not to like? Oh yes, standing behind the counter with the chilly wind squirting at me through the doorway.
Maybe it was the chill that kept our customers away, but business today was not a patch on the day before, or so it seemed. Most of the morning was spent in the doldrums with only sporadic flurries of activity. The beach looked busy with maybe not so many in the water as yesterday, but there were very few people parading the street. We watched and waited.
When I found that I had watched and waited enough, I called the Missus down to guard the shop while I went off to the gymnasium for the first time in a week. I will spare you the sordid details, but I managed to strain my anterior tibialis, and it had taken a while to heal. I suspect my betters and those that know, will tell me that standing behind the counter for ten hours a day is probably not the best method of bringing my leg back to full fitness. However, needs must when the devil wants so much in taxation and a grumpy shopkeeper cannot hide everything, so work he must.
Well, I say work, most of the time it is fighting off the boredom. It was still a bit like that when I came back from the gymnasium an hour later but starting my breakfast sorted that out in no time. It was late in the morning by that time and business had only just begun to stir. Late starts like that make pasty ordering (sorry, MS) fraught. It is too close to ordering time to know if buying will take off or remain slow for the rest of the day. The only thing to do was to assume the former and order accordingly. As it turned out, we sold through all the pasties I had ordered for today and I had to fall back on some from the freezer. I have ordered the same number for tomorrow, so who knows if that will be enough or too many.
So sorry, to disappoint but that was the only excitement of the whole day, such as it was. There were no christenings in the Harbour – which is a shame as the weather and sea state were much more conducive to it – and there was no derring do in the large surf. Customers behaved themselves impeccably and no small children were left behind to amuse themselves in the toy aisle. It was just one of those days.
It was just one of those days when your friendly local fisherman sends you a message from somewhere in the bay to ask if we would like a lobster or two, ones that had evaded an octopus only to caught for cooking. The Missus would normally be the master of such decisions, but this was a very early message, and the Missus does not do early. I took a punt and said, thank you very much and would leave the Missus to cook them later on. At least it only cost cash this time instead of cash and several pasties. Bargain.
The Missus spent a few hours up at the Farm planting and whatever else she does up there. I sent her another list of requests for goodies from the store as we are selling things that need replacing, which is good in my view. It would probably irritate her less if I could put everything we need into the one list. This being the second day of things that I forgot on the first day of things. I will probably find more tomorrow. If I do, I might just leave it a day or two before asking. Just out of interest, we sold a windbreak today.
The other thing that the Missus brought down was the last of our swede that anyone down here would call a turnip. There were about ten of them. The cabbage she brought down a week ago is now on sale in our freeze and it will be the same for the swede from tomorrow. She spent the evening cutting them up, which beats watching television these days.
I was most surprised when I closed the till at the end of the shop day; we were only a hair’s breadth off our business for yesterday. Our customers must have practised ninja shopping as they were so stealthy, I hardly noticed. It might have been that there were fewer but more notable spends but I am sure I would have remembered. I decided that it was best not to analyse too deeply, smile and take the money, which I did. We do love it when a plan comes together, even if we have no idea that we actually made a plan in the first place.
April 5th - Sunday
The sea was already in a state of anxious fury this morning, throwing itself over the Harbour wall and churning up in the Tribbens and on Cowloe. What it did not need was a force eight wind giving it a healthy shove from behind as it went over the wall and sending the resulting body of water halfway across the Harbour. You did not need to see it, either. There was a loud slap followed by a lengthy rush as the droplets cascaded on the water below. It might have attracted a few people out to watch it but for some sporadic heavy showers that were blowing through, marring the occasional sunny spells.
One group who were clearly not bothered made their way down the road early doors, well before the shop was open. I had not appreciated their purpose, but a neighbour told me later that it was a congregation from a local church on their way to the Harbour where they intended to baptise a person. I do not know about you, dear reader, but if I was the intended subject, I would have taken one look at the Harbour and very suddenly decided that Buddhism was a better prospect.
With all my focus on pasties (sorry, MS) and numbers of visitors and when and what they might want to eat and buy, it was very easy to forget the true meaning of Easter. It was only when a lady came in this morning that I recalled that children love a good Easter egg hunt on the Sunday morning. She was after some additional eggs because she found herself five short. We have long since not bothered with Easter eggs but always buy a shipping load of crème eggs. The manufacturer only produces these at Easter, but we buy enough that they are available all year, which pleases some folk greatly. I am sure that Mr Cadbury would take a dim view, but we will not tell him, eh?
By a sheer fluke I had put some pasties on the heat quite early on, even before the street saw the first early wonderers of the morning. The pasties were barely ready when a customer came in demanding one. It is interesting the different approaches during the day. After late morning, we are asked, do we have any pasties left. Early in the morning, even just as we open, customers clearly expect pasties to be ready immediately. They are genuinely surprised when I suggest we wait until it starts to look busy before heating them up. I would have to wait until much later to discover whether I had left enough out of the freezer for today.
By the middle of the morning, the showers had blown through, and the clouds went with them leaving us with clear, pastel blue skies. The wind had indeed gone westerly and diminished a good deal leaving us cold but looking good. It did the trick and soon our end of The Cove was bustling with visitors and they were buying things. We had an absolutely corking day, about what I was expecting on the last couple of days. The onslaught started in the middle of the morning and continued all the way until gone half past three o’clock. There were some small breaks in the flow that allowed me to do my farm shop cash and carry order, which, two weeks on from the last one, was sorely needed.
This year I have almost admitted defeat on payment cards sales. Last year, I softened a little allowing card payments of greater than two pounds but would not go below it except in extreme circumstances. This year I have been beaten into submission as more and more people only have a card or a telephone about their person. If I turn away a few transactions because they do not meet our criteria, that is not too bad. It was now looking like I would now be turning away more than a significant number and the arithmetic did not make sense anymore. I still will not accept a payment card for less than a pound and I will leave our £3 pound sign up for those who can read but otherwise, anything goes.
I am sure that you have been on the edge of your seat, dear reader, on tenterhooks waiting for the outcome of the pasty situation. Allow me to put you out of your misery forthwith. The crowds very quickly dissipated in the run up to four o’clock like someone upstream had turned off the tap. This was just as well because I sold the last of the Cornish pasties at around twenty minutes to four o’clock. I did not have to delve into the frozen, although had the timing been different and I had foreseen the last of the little rushes earlier, I might have got them out and then would have been left with them. As it was, the number I put away worked out near perfectly. Where I did have to seek reinforcements was on the cheese pasty side. I had put these away last week and needed them to make up for the shortage. It was a big vegetarian day today, obviously.
For some weeks now, I have noticed that my new warm woollen jacket has a hole on the pocket. I must have snagged it on a small dog’s baby teeth. The hole had started to irritate and like a sore tooth, could not keep my fingers away from it. I asked the Missus if she had some appropriate wool and it was she who recruited Mother to the task. Today, I left my jacket upstairs and when I went up later it was on a chair with a needle stuck in where the hole used to be. This was just as well because it would have been impossible to see it else. She had matched the original stitch for stitch and I was amazed. It is like having your own personal elf. What a great thing Mothers are.
I did not have a great deal of time to gaze down upon the beach but when I did, it was busy. The sea was full of revellers right through the low water period and slightly less full of surfers as high water approached. There was still a heavy ground sea rolling in and the surf was reasonable for the more experienced. It was not long before it was coming over the wall again, but I think it was less chaotic than in the morning. It was very relaxing to watch the heavy roll across the bay. Just right for the end of a busy day.
Messy sea complete with slopey horizon.
April 4th - Saturday
For some reason I had thought that the weather would look a little better than yesterday. I suppose it did as the wet had gone but it was still pretty grey out there, but I guess I was expecting a more marked improvement. It was not in the least breezy when I took the girls around the block first thing and the cold that came with the wind of late was absent today – along with the expected customers.
The shop morning was entirely bleak. Nearing the afternoon, there were quite a few in the street mainly lining up for the café but there seemed to be a great avoidance of visiting the shop.
Of the few people that we did see were a family who came in to ask about the Lifeboat shop which at that time was not open. I did not notice at first but the two small children in the party had jackets covered in Lifeboat badges from various stations around the country. Around their necks were a couple of lanyards each hardly visible under the plethora of pin badges. The word, enthusiast, did not really cover it. Since the shop was not open and, I suspected, may not today, it felt it a bit churlish to let them go empty handed, so I went and got my key for the station.
There are usually a few things lying about, lanyards, pens, badges and so forth that I could filch and admit to later. Today, nothing. Someone had been diligent in their cleaning up and I could find nothing in the office or crew room. Eventually, I found a box of random bits that I plundered gratuitously. It was not ideal, but at least a gesture and the children were very polite about it. We wish them better luck at the other stations they will visit.
Talking of luck, I have been selected to be one of 50,000 people in the country to take part in a study by University of Exeter. They were looking for people with a brain, so I was glad that they did not ask too many questions before accepting me. The purpose, over a period of 25 years, is to determine details about cognitive decline as people age and were looking for people over 40 years of age. Clearly, my cognition is unlikely to decline very much, being very near rock bottom as it is, but it will still be fun doing their tests every year.
As part of the test, I must nominate a buddy, someone who knows me well and can answer questions about me put to them by the people running the study. I must say I struggled with this because, obviously, I needed someone who would not be too brutal with telling them things, such as the truth, for example. I have not yet done the test but one of the benefits of joining the study is that they will monitor my results over time and should my cognitive decline look too dramatic, they will send me a message to tell me to seek help. This is really useful because I have always relied upon you and the other reader for such things, and I am not overly sure that you would notice, dear reader.
I did very much notice that our business day did not really get going until the middle of the afternoon. As is frequently the case, the café next door was busy and we were not. However, we started to see some overspill in the early afternoon, which was encouraging. I have never really worked out why our pasty sales (sorry, MS) seem to pick up well into the afternoon. I can appreciate a pasty going down well late morning if breakfast has been missed or the middle of the day as a suitable dinner. Why though, would people start eating pasties at half past two o’clock or later when they are a stone’s throw away from having tea. From a grumpy shopkeeper point of view, I am very grateful for the sales, but the timing is a complete mystery to me.
The late rush made an appreciable dent in our stock that has started to again look like a day or two’s worth of pasties too many. I would have kicked myself to order too few, but I had hoped for better out of this weekend and ordered accordingly. I unloaded some to the freezer in the back end of the afternoon confident that I would not need them tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will be cooking them from frozen when we inexplicably face an unprecedented run on pasties at two o’clock in the afternoon.
While we may not have all the customers or visitors that we would like, there are clear signs that the season has begun. One of those is things being left behind. I can appreciate leaving a glove that might have fallen unnoticed from a pocket or a hat blown away in the wind. It is a bit more of a stretch, however, to understand how a person leaves an entire rucksack behind. I left it a while before rifling through it to find a foreign driving licence and no idea how to contact the loseee. Fortunately, she arrived soon after the Missus posted a message on the community face page. She had not seen the message but had remembered where she left the bag, which was a happy result.
Restoring my faith in human nature, my friend from up the hill, with whom I have such wonderfully abstract conversations when she comes to the shop, sent me a message. She thanked me for the cake I had sent up with her daughter who had come into the shop earlier. She told me that there had been a fox in her garden and that she feared for the Easter Bunny, so I promised to warn it when I saw it next. She also said that she was going deaf and had lost her glasses. I asked if the two might be related and that she should check if she still had ears. It went on some after that. I dare not relate the conversation as my cognitive tests may be imperilled.
The day may have been quiet but the late afternoon in the run up to closing was brutally silent. There was however a five minutes to closing rush – if you can call two people a rush - which this time I was open for. It is the little things that count.
When I took the girls out last thing, the wind had really perked up. It had been coming in southerly for most of the shop day but when we stepped out at gone nine o’clock, it has moved around to the southwest and was a bit more noticeable in The Cove. It had ramped up to near fifty miles per hour, so I took the girls along a more sheltered route. It was howling in the wires, which spooked the little girl a bit and she was constantly racing after dead leaves that whizzed by. We did not tarry long. It is due to go around to the west by morning, so I hope it has calmed a bit by then.
April 3rd - Friday
Oh, how very disappointing. We stepped out into mizzle this morning. Probably the same mizzle that we ended up with last night except that I could not see the misty part of it. If that were not enough of a kick in the shins on a looming Easter weekend, Radio Pasty jollily announce a gale of wind on the way courtesy of Storm Dave. As if we would ever use the familiar form of the name for something so vindictive. The storm itself is heading up over Scotland, and we will only get the windy part of it and not the rain, apparently, so that is something. Perhaps it would be better named Hamish.
It was not just the weather that had changed. The sea that had permitted Lifeboat training and a textbook recovery last night had evolved into a raging beast. The bay was in a chaotic turmoil of its own design and there was much floshing over the Harbour wall even at lower orders of the tide. It continued to bang away all day and gave the surfers some decent play when the tide charged back in during the later afternoon.
Business was noticeably quieter than our previous days. I thought that we had a breakthrough yesterday and we were into the holiday big time. It seems that it was more of a break off and it was a cosy up and take shelter day today.
Since there was nothing much else doing, I took a stroll around the shop to survey the damage from the first week. I had been pleased to see some of our more risky purchases making it to the counter, the 3D printed dragons for example had done particularly well. We are also selling some of the new stock of greetings cards which I had taken pains to find new suppliers from the local area.
We have a bit of a reputation for having different greetings cards. We try as far as possible to use as many local artists as we can. One we have used for a few years now, lives at the top of the hill. This is very convenient, especially as her cards sell better than any of the others we have. I had a conversation with a customer a week ago about it and she suggested another local name that I had not heard before. She told me this artist produced some local landscapes that we were good.
I had forgotten all about it but yesterday I found the name I had written down on a notepad. I thought that I had better follow up on it before I forgot again, so I resorted to the Internet to see if I could track the artist down and have a chat about supplying us with cards. It was a more difficult job than I had envisaged; the man shuffled off 25 years ago. While getting hold of his cards may be possible, enjoying some new ones every now and again may be a little more tricky. I do not wish to be discriminatory, but I think we will give it a miss.
For the last couple of days, greetings cards had been the least of our concerns. The Missus had ventured into Penzance on Wednesday with, among other things, the intention of fuelling the truck. She managed to get all the other things but diesel, it seemed, was in short supply. Actually, diesel was not generally in short supply; I looked it up – just dear. It was just here where many people had decided the end of the world was nigh and they had best fill up every container larger than a thimble that they possessed, just in case.
We had looked at alternative sources and kept our ear to the ground but by the end of yesterday, nothing had come up and news was the local stations were empty. I tried calling the petrol station in Trewellard, which is a good fallback sometimes, but they had taken their telephone off the hook, and I cannot really blame them. It would be a bit risky driving over just to find them closed.
This morning I put a message out on the Lifeboat crew group chat. I had quite forgotten than one of them works for Tesmorburys and she sent a screen shot of their system that shows how much of each fuel type they have. They had diesel, just not very much. I despatched the Missus with due haste in their direction and she managed to fuel up around the middle of the day after rolling into Penzance on fumes.
Yesterday, the Missus spent some time at The Farm clearing all the remains of last year’s produce from the greenhouse and the outside vegetable patch. The cabbages did not look their best but were perfectly good inside. She decided to cut them up, blanch them and freeze them in to bags for the shop. There was an abundance of rocket, ten bags of which is now in the shop fridge and the other half next door in the café. There was also enough for six bunches of spring onions which are in our salad fridge. The field is now clear for this year’s growing.
Towards the end of the afternoon and nearing high water, the sea upped its game somewhat. The waves thundering in on the beach were huge and powerful. The Lifeguards had not red flagged the beach and seemed happy to watch the half dozen surfers out there get pummelled under the onslaught. It was utter carnage as I watched surfboards flying into the air and surfers disappearing into the foam. I do not think that the fun lasted more than an hour or perhaps we had just run out of surfers. When I looked later, the decent surf had gone and so had all but one of the surfers.
Our day had brightened bit by bit and the afternoon was a much more user friendly than the morning. We had a slight increase in the number of customers in the shop during the latter part of the afternoon. They were all intentional shoppers, stepping out for this purpose alone. The street was largely empty as no one was particularly keen to wonder about under and uninspiring cold grey sky.
I have not entirely given up on the weekend despite the weather forecast. We will have the better of it on the north coast, although I suspect it will be marginal. Nevertheless, I placed some additional orders for tomorrow in an unusual display of blind optimism. What was I thinking.
April 2nd - Thursday
I had heard that today would be the best day of the week. The sort of day that Penzance would have been proud of. In fact, the sort of day that you rather hoped Penzance was not getting and that we would have the opportunity later to go to Penzance and tell them what a marvellous day we had.
The rumour was not wrong, and we were looking at blue skies, along with a bit of cloud, from the very outset of the day. It had started the previous evening as we took our last walk out. The Harbour was looking lighter than usual and when I looked up, a big near full moon was illuminating the bay from a crystal clear sky. For once, nothing had intervened to spoil it for the following morning unless you can count the breeze going back to the northwest again.
There were very few signs that things had changed on the ground, too. Just a few people that I had not seen earlier in the week coming in for bread and breakfast goods and the fact that bread and breakfast goods were moving a little more quickly than they had in the preceding days. I had fully expected things to amble along until the early afternoon and then see a few visitors haul themselves out into the day for a pasty or two (sorry, MS) and a few ice creams. So, a rush in the middle of the morning took me completely by surprise.
If I had any idea that I might be permitted to feel a little euphoric at the sudden windfall it was easily tempered by the arrival of a mother and her four children. The instant she asked me how long I had been here I knew what was coming. Yes, I was indeed the same grumpy shopkeeper who served her as a child. I am going to have to consider lying in response to such questions. As if being remembered by an adult, now with four children of her own, was not bad enough, there is, of course, the possibility that I traumatised her as a child and she was seeking a lifetime’s compensation. I could think of no greater ignominy.
The influx heralded the arrival of a few families preparing for a day at the beach. Buckets and spades, balls and games and a few trinkets and holiday gifts to go with them. Inevitably, pasties started to go as well, along with a sausage roll or two. It was one of those situations where we reached the point that more pasties needed to go into the oven, but I had no chance of getting to the oven to put them in. I think that we still would have missed the overlap even if I had managed to get away because the remainder of the pasties went very quickly after the point of replenishment.
It was also rather inevitable that I would note how quickly pasties were selling, assess that we would run out before demand did and take out some frozen pasties to fill the gap. What would happen five minutes after the frozen pasties were in the oven is that demand would dry up and I would be left with more pasties than I needed. Such is the plight of the grumpy shopkeeper who thinks he can get one step ahead of the posse by being a smart Alec.
With low water tripping over into the afternoon, it means we are at the outset of spring tides. They are not the biggest of springs, that will come later in April, but they are big enough to make a wide open space of a beach under a bright sun, quite glorious. Not for the first time, there is a huge sandbar over towards North Rocks that does not quite get uncovered by low water. It allowed for a bunch of would-be surfers to saunter out and look like they were walking on water well away from the main body of sand on the beach.
Today, there were not so many surfers around at low water; the better surf would come later in the tide. Even then, with an onshore breeze, it would not ideal. Most of the bodies down there were messing about in the surf at low water but there were less than a dozen. There were quite a few wanderers spread across the beach with one group, chairs out, camped dead centre on the sand. The families had set up camp further up under the car park and along the rocks to the Lifeguard station, expecting to be there for the duration, I imagine. The Lifeguards start tomorrow, I think.
In the meantime, the Lifeboats were starting today. The exercise had been called early due to the timing of the tide and consequently I missed the briefing but just about managed to make it for the launch. This was just as well because I had nominated myself as head launcher for the Inshore boat. It is a nominal role at our station, so it did not matter a great deal that I was late arriving. As it was, I shut the shop early as we looked a little thin on the shore side. Naturally, attempting to shut early evoked a cynical response from the small gods of grumpy shopkeepers and they sent me the first five minutes to closing rush of the year.
I had made whole crewing effort more difficult for everyone by doubling up some of the roles. Our newly passed out members of the very excellent Shore Crew are very keen to progress. This effectively means training to become winch and Tooltrak operators. The training entails, initially, sitting, or standing, and watching while the experienced crew do the job thereby removing two people from essential other duties. I set this in train then turned up late letting everyone else deal with the fallout. It seems to be the way of it these days, so I was glad I was keeping current.
What also seems to be the way of things is for more crew than we have ever had before turning up for training. There were so many that the Inshore had to launch twice to accommodate everyone. We might have been spread thinly on the shore but with excellent management, ahem, and a good deal of goodwill, all our bases were covered.
The launch coincided with high water which gave the big boat a couple of hours after which it would have to wait on the tide abating more to recover on the long slip. There is a period in the tide when it is too low for short slip recovery and too high for the long slip and it was this that the early launch time was trying to avoid. They had taken a number of people from Trevedra campsite as a thank you for a splendid fund-raising effort last year. I am not sure that those who came felt altogether thanked as there was a significant swell out in the bay that would have made the trip somewhat uncomfortable, I would say.
The big boat returned at around eight o'clock and with just sufficient numbers in place, the boat was subject to what was clearly a textbook recovery up the short slip. It was then winched to the top of the slip for a washdown before being refuelled and lashed down for its next service.
Dismissing the big boat crew, I went to do my head launchering for the Inshore boat that was practising recoveries in the Harbour. This was useful for us too as our trainee Tooktrak driver had extra experience. Since everyone else had beggered off, It was down to me to washdown the Inshore boat and see it into the RNLI car park where I abandoned the driver and trainee to put the hose away and lock up. I can only suppose the Tooltrak was put away unscathed as we are, after all, a very trustworthy, very excellent Shore Crew.
Then it started raining.
April 1st - Wednesday
Another change in the weather today, this time an improvement. The mist had cleared away by the time I got around to looking out of the window first thing. It did not look likely that we were going to get any of that lovely Penzance weather, though; we had a cover of grey cloud today.
Apropos of nothing at all, I saw a van drive by as I served the first customer of the day. The company name on the side was Nurture. The tag line stated that it was a pest control company, which struck me as, at the least, misleading or just inappropriate. Perhaps the company used to sell fertilizers and discovered along the way that they were better suited to murdering rodents.
I had quite forgotten that Wednesday is visit St Ives day, even if it was not raining. Perhaps it was raining in St Ives. After yesterday’s upturn in business, it was very disappointing. Monday and Tuesday had both picked up from the middle of the day and at two o’clock today, I was still waiting for it to happen.
It did not mean I was idle. Alright, it did not mean that I was entirely idle. We had a large delivery from our supplier who supplies from a large number of other suppliers such as our Furniss biscuits and Buttermilk fudge. The delivery used to be early along with the milk and pasties (sorry, MS) but for a year or two now, they have been arriving mid morning. This is not much of a problem for us but for cafes and restaurants who need their fresh produce early, it is. I know that next door has mainly stopped using them because of it.
All was well with the delivery until I got to the Kernow chocolate. These are the artisan bars of variously flavoured chocolate we keep on our local gift food shelves. They have inched up in price over recent years in line with the increases in cocoa prices. I expected an increase this year, too, as we have not had a delivery from them since the end of last season but when I looked, the 70 percent cocoa variety had leapt up by £1 per bar. I checked the original supplier’s website where they also sell their own product and noted that their shop price had not changed.
We have had issues in the past where a supplier has increased their price to us but kept their website price the same. It makes it impossible for us to compete. However, I suspected that this time it was with the intermediary supplier where the problem lay. So, I dropped a message to the original supplier to ask if their price had changed and quoted what we had been charged. I was suitably impressed to get an almost immediate reply telling me that we had been woefully overcharged and to take it up with our supplier. If we needed help, the original supplier would be please to intervene on our behalf.
The very pleasant lady I spoke with at our direct supplier, agreed that the pricing looked incorrect and she would pass it onto our sale contact there to resolve. I had expected a more timely response but by the end of the afternoon, I was still waiting. At least we know that it will be resolved and that we will not have to charge a fortune for our chocolate bars. It is a good job I am here. People will not realise just how close they came to paying five pounds for a 100 gram bar of chocolate.
With all that excitement I had quite forgotten that we were to expect a visit from our posh mug supplier. I checked when he called to see if it was worthwhile his turning up. While we have quite a bit of stock, we also have some gaps that could do with filling, so I saw no harm in inviting him over since he was in the area anyway. I would normally have printed off a list of the current stock and been prepared for his visit but, as it was, I had to run around doing it all when he got here. How very unprofessional. I felt so embarrassed I ordered another sixty mugs.
It was a very sedate afternoon with a sporadic flow of customers. Many reported that it was chilly today, but I had not felt it down on the beach this morning. The ambient temperature at Land’s End was a none too shoddy eleven degrees. The wind had gone around to the west and was about the same as yesterday, around 15 miles per hour. It was not until the later afternoon, having stood around doing very little that I decided that they were right.
It was gone five o’clock when it eventually turned into a lovely day. The cloud cover cleared to blue skies as if nothing had happened. Someone, clearly, was having an April Fool joke with us.
I have long since removed myself from the desire to include such foolery in The Diary. For a start, you will not be reading this until the next day when it would have lost its merit. I did not bother to look in the mainstream media for such things either. These days, it would be almost impossible to determine the fact from the fiction.
It is best to draw a veil over a day that for its tedium tested your Diarists resolve and purpose to the limits. Actually, I was unaware that I had a purpose. Forget that bit.