The Sennen Cove Diary
February 16th - Monday
There were more showers blowing through early in the morning. They were going at some rate, too, in the increasing northwesterly wind. By some quirk of doggery, I had woken up half an hour early and because I was heading to the gymnasium, getting ready was half an hour less again. Both girls were at the front door and keen for a run, early doors, and I whizzed them down to a mid-tide beach for a brief dash around.
Despite not knowing the outcome of my first post-operative visit to the gymnasium, I decided that I would take my weights back – well, one half of them; they are bleddy heavy. I had brought them to the flat with the intention of maintaining my upper body strength at least while I awaited the green light to use the gymnasium again. That has not really worked out – so to speak – because I am inherently lazy, they were in a different room and I would have to move them from one room to another, use them while sitting on a chair I would have to move into place, and move the chair and the weights back again. It was never going to happen with the best of wills and intentions.
Waiting for the green light to use the gymnasium again was also a bit of a red herring – as if I would notice the difference between them, although I suppose they would smell different. There was no one in authority over my rehabilitation to provide it - the green light, that is - and it was down to me to decide when I should go and give it try. I decided that last week, but circumstances decided otherwise, so I was not about to miss the second appointment. I was there shortly before nine o’clock.
Had I not had warnings in the last few weeks, the results of over long and too frequent walks and pulling and lifting weighty objects, I might have been inclined to go at it a little more vigorously. As it was, I reduced my target rowing to 2,000 metres and lowered the resistance friction to about half of what I had been used to. I also knocked a few kilos off my weighted squats and the weights I generally throw around.
The squats against the wall as opposed to grabbing the back of a chair were much more effective and the rowing was pulling at all the right muscles, although I will ramp up the resistance a bit next time. Not going with the full weights was also a very good idea. I practically waltzed out of the gymnasium feeling full of vim and fury and ready to surmount the insurmountable obstacles of the day – the first being what to do with two slices of bread, a pack of bacon and two types of cheddar.
As explained yesterday, I had to get new batteries for my optical sight I purchased recently. The only place I could think of was the independent electrical shop in Penzance. I called first and they confirmed they had the particular cell I was after. For some time, I had been putting off making one of my signature dishes, one that the Missus will also eat, so, since I was heading into town, I would get the ingredients for that as well. Nearly all the ingredients were available from local independent stores in town but for some reason, it is nigh on impossible to get beansprouts, a key ingredient in the dish. That meant a trip to Tesmorburys.
As it happened, I had planned a visit there anyway. I have a little pot that I keep for my used batteries. When it is full, I take it to Tesmorburys where they have an even bigger pot where they collect used batteries. That aside, I also needed a particular brand of tomato juice, which I can only get from one of our suppliers, or, when the shop is closed, from Tesmorburys. Only today, they had every variant in the brand including beetroot juice, for heaven’s sake, but not tomato juice. In what sort of world is it more relevant to stock beetroot juice than it is tomato juice. And it was double faced. To make matters worse, I had already purchased the limes to go with it in town.
One of the consequences of shopping in town, no matter how much or how little is required, is that it takes half a day however much you might care to plan the visit to make it as efficient as possible. I had delayed my departure because it was too close to taking the girls out for their middle of the day run and as a result did not get going until early afternoon. Factor in a slower amble up and down the high street because I cannot be speedy on my pins at present, and having to go back into town after visiting Tesmorburys because I had forgotten to run an errand that was one of the main reasons for heading into town in the first place, and the whole afternoon was effectively wasted.
As I drove back home, I thought that I could at least manufacture some ammunition that might salvage some of the wasted time, but when I got home, there was not much time for that either. I sat down for a cup of tea, became distracted looking for a rear tail light cluster because ours has an MOT failing hole in it and that was that.
The showers of the morning had blown through by the middle of the day. The weather forecasters had made a hurried reassessment of the afternoon from showery to dry late in the morning. Armed with that I might have gone to The Farm instead – but perhaps not. The northwesterly fine-tuned its performance into the afternoon, and it became very blustery indeed in The Cove.
The sun, however, was doing a fine counter-balancing job. There were large portions of blue sky available for it to shine in and, in town, where we were sheltered from the wind, it was impossibly warm. I had to divest myself of my outer layer and my hat was found to be surplus to requirements too. I was also wearing my super new yak-wool hooded jacket which I retained simply for the use of its deep pockets. In short, apart from the wind, it was ideal for working up at The Farm that made the journey into town even more frustrating.
During the lower reaches of the tide, the sea in the Cove was rough and lively. As the tide drove in, the sea’s fury became more and more evident until at last it reached a pinnacle of viciousness. Throwing its weight around, crashing over rocks, throwing itself up cliffs and fair launching itself over the Harbour wall it produced a spectacle reminiscent of a child in an exceedingly awful tantrum. It was marvellous to watch with the sort of remote satisfaction that you were not its parent.
I shall once more endeavour to make tomorrow the day I actually get something done.
February 15th - Sunday
For the first day back shooting in almost a year, the weather pulled out the stops and sent everything it had at its disposal, with the exception of sunshine. It did try a couple of times to brighten up but it was no more than a ruse to get me out in the open without my coat on. To assist in this endeavour, the day of cold that we had yesterday was replaced by a relatively balmy ten to eleven degrees. Having waited for me to remove my coat because I was cooking, the rain would come back all in a rush.
For most of the morning, we could barely see the targets at the back of the range, just 25 metres away, due to the mist. Even the 30 to 35 miles per hour westerly was not doing much to move it along. The rain and the damp air between showers ensured that the paper targets lasted no more than two or three uses before being replaced. Oddly, the wind at that speed and direction would normally be toppling targets and blowing over barricades but did not give us much trouble at all today.
I had decided that I would only do mornings in the few weeks I have left of being able to attend the range. It was a wise decision because there is much running about resetting targets and plates between shooters. By the end of the session, I was beginning to feel the excess movement. I think doing the afternoon session would have been foolhardy, although that never stopped me before.
The session took a while to finish as well. The club has attracted some new and younger members during the year, which is very encouraging. It has hitherto been the preserve of older, mainly male, members so it was refreshing to see several younger people in the mix including some ladies.
When the official session came to an end, I needed to zero in a new optical sight I had purchased. These red dot sights project a red dot onto an optic and once set up correctly, the red dot will always be the point of impact what angle you look through the lens. The products sell between £50 and £100 or well over £200. Because I only use it half a dozen times a year, I opt for a cheaper option.
However, as we all know, ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ and the previous sight had ceased to work after one season. Still not keen to spend over £100 and hoping that the early failure was a one off, I bought another cheap one. This I needed to set up at the range ahead of its use in anger next week. I had fitted it to the rifle the evening before and tested that the red dot showed up when I switched it on. Standing in the middle of the range with a full magazine of ammunition and ready to zero in my new purchase, the red dot resolutely refused to show when I pressed the button. I tried refitting the battery, but nothing happened. Having unloaded and retired to the ‘fumble zone’, I tried a few more options but, again, the red dot did not reappear. It was hard to believe that a lithium battery that came supplied had expired overnight even if I had left it switched on, which I am sure I did not. I must now go into town to purchase another battery to see if it is indeed that at fault because if it is not, the unit needs to be returned within the finite number of days for such complaints.
I had quite forgotten how much of a balls aching task it is cleaning and putting everything away and this time I only had one gun to clean. I still find that I tire more quickly after exertions and after a morning at the range, walking the girls when I got back and cleaning and putting away the shooting equipment, I was quite exhausted. It is a frustration and unexpected that this has carried on so long after the knee operation and is why I decided to make an attendance at the gymnasium tomorrow morning. I shall keep the session short and exploratory to see how much or how little I am able for.
As a consequence, I let myself be idle for the rest of the afternoon and evening save for a few walks with the girls. The rain had apparently cleared up by the time we left the range, and I had walked the girls around the block in the dry. It had become increasingly windy from the west, which had the effect of accelerating the weather from the Atlantic in our direction. I had not long returned from the walk when we were lashed by quite a heavy shower of rain. This continued into the evening and we were lucky to just miss another before we headed out for the last walk of the night.
Someone highlighted that we had endured 40 days and 40 nights of rain, so it has quite literally been biblical in its proportions. Perhaps we should gird our loins for plagues of frogs, lice, general pestilence and, in the summer, flies and locusts. Even I would be ready to consider an exodus after that but quite where to I should not like to venture a guess. I hope all our guests enjoy their holiday this week coming.
February 14th - Saturday
We celebrated moving into the shop and flat 22 years ago yesterday. Well, I say celebrated, it was more of a vague awareness that it had happened. There was no broaching of champagne that we had laid down 22 years ago, or even one we had purchased at our local independent wine merchant more recently – if we knew of one. Just an, ‘oh yes, how interesting’. Perhaps we will be more enthused at 25 years.
I was no more enthusiastic about getting out of bed early this morning. The tyre shop people told me that they were open from nine o’clock and I was keen not to waste any more of the day than I could help. I aimed to be there just before they opened and be the first in the queue. It was therefore something of a surprise when I turned into the trading estate at ten minutes to nine o’clock and discovered that they were not only open but had clearly been so for a while and had two vehicles in the workshop being serviced.
Hailing one of the mechanics, he told me that there was a one hour wait and I should find somewhere to park. The trading estate is a small one and the available parking spaces commensurately few and as far as I could see, all full. There were two spaces reserved for a particular company which were enticing but given that it was early, I decided not to risk using one, despite it being a weekend.
This proved entirely provident because I parked in what looked like a free space but slightly overlapped the company’s frontage. I had just turned off my engine when a vehicle arrived and parked in one of the reserved bays. The very pleasant lady who emerged from the motor car asked politely if I would move, to which I equally politely acquiesced. She offered the second space in her company reserved space which was most generous of her, and I confirmed that I was likely to be an hour waiting. She said that was alright and I thanked her profusely for her kindness.
I waited in the tyre shop’s salubrious waiting lounge taking care not to trip on the threadbare rug or further tear the seat coverings. I will say that it was spotlessly clean, which must have taken some doing in a tyre shop. As it transpired, the hour turned out to be twenty minutes which is much better than the other way around. I must also say that all the staff are polite, efficient and very good at what they do and probably thirty to forty minutes later all four tyres were changed, and I was relieved of a considerable sum of money. I should point out though that while there is no arguing that the amount was considerable, it was also very reasonable, which is why we use this particular tyre shop.
During the time that I was waiting, I allowed my mind to wander onto the tasks ahead of me which were far fewer than the tasks I would have had ahead of me had I not had to have the tyres changed. I was still thinking about these tasks halfway back to The Cove when I remembered that I was supposed to refuel the truck while I was in Penzance. There was insufficient fuel to leave it for another time, whenever that might have been, so I turned around – a feat in itself on the A30 - and returned to remedy my omission.
When I got back to The Cove my intention was to have a quick breakfast and head off to The Farm as quickly as possible. As I dismounted from the truck, I bumped into ex-Head Launcher who was waiting for his son who was at that very moment helming the Inshore Lifeboat on a training exercise. I suggested that he come back to the flat for coffee and more than an hour later, I was once again in the position of about to have a quick breakfast and head up to The Farm.
The day had started out with blue skies and sunshine and the wind that we had endured last night has long dissipated. It was, however, also the coldest day we had in quite a while, but it was ideal for a bit of Farming. It was therefore very frustrating to find myself delayed for one reason or another. When it eventually came time to go, I discussed with the Missus whether I should take the girls with me or not. The main issue being that I would be distracted and unable to maintain attention on their antics for long periods. To resolve the issue, the Missus decided to come with me. She could start preparing the beds in the greenhouse while I saw to the bodyboard stand and the preparations for the IBC stands.
We eventually managed to get to The Farm in the early afternoon and started our respective work at either end of the top of the field. I started on the IBC that needed the small amount of water still in it, emptied. This could only be done by taking off the tap attachment and tipping it. Having done that and washed out as much sludge as possible, I tipped it off the pallets it was resting on and pushed it to one side. When I went to lift the upper pallet I came away with a strip of crumbling wood in my hand. It was no surprise that the IBC had tipped over. Both pallets were completely rotten through, and I had to remove them one piece at a time.
Before installing the pallets some time ago, the second such installation on that site, I had levelled the ground and shovelled some hardcore down. It was not a proper effort, which would have mean digging out a least a foot down and backfilling with hardcore. I had hoped what I had done would be sufficient, but the pallet had sunk into the ground. When I got the level to it, I was lucky that the pallet had sunk almost uniformly. Another few shovels of hardcore should be enough to put the gabion cage down. This would wait for another day as I would run out of time today.
Later, in a chance conversation with the Missus, she told me that she was moving the pea and bean beds to the other end of the greenhouse. When I asked why, it was because she had to move the water pump from the new IBC cluster at that end to the IBC near the cabin currently. I then questioned, if the pea and bean beds were to be moved, whether the IBCs near the cabin would be any use at all. Apparently, they would not. Since I already have a spare gabion cage already set up at the greenhouse end, I would install it there instead. This then pulled into question why I purchased two new gabion cages in the first place. I was going to suggest that buying a second pump and leaving the cabin IBCs where they were would be an awful lot easier than levelling new ground and moving the pea and bean beds but somehow, I was distracted. I will need to pursue this before I make the effort of continuing with Plan A.
After that, I diverted my attention to finishing off the prototype bodyboard stand. This, if you recall, dear reader, simply needed some additional support for the uprights that would support the boards. I put into practise the learning from the previous effort and used a jigsaw to cut the timber. It was the work of a few minutes to add the supports. Without opening another box, I had access to four of our largest boards. They sat perfectly in the new stand, and the stand did not topple over. Hurrah for DIYman.
It was soon after that we decided to pack up and go home. The girls had a fantastic time and even had a visit from their pals, dogs of a friend who lives close by. Before we left, the Missus cleared the last of the tomatoes, dug up half a dozen turnips (swede to you, madam) and three cabbages and we brought them back with us.
There was not much left of the afternoon by the time we came back. The girls, after BB had been relieved of the mud coat she had acquired at The Farm, fell into a heap on selected sofas for the rest of the evening. We elected to try a food delivery, mostly burgers and chips adorned with various toppings, from a relatively new concern in St Just. Ordering can be done online and in advance, but no time is given. It arrives when it arrives. It is not cheap but there again, food out no longer is, and a small charge for delivery is made. The food was excellent and still hot enough on delivery not to require reheating, which is always a risk with deliveries.
During the morning, we had noticed that The Cove was very busy from the influx of half term holiday makers. It gave me momentary cause for thought whether we might have opened but quickly dismissed it for the usual reasons. It will go dead again in a week, and we would be left with all the fresh food with had overpurchased for the event. It has crossed my mind that it might affect the timing of the food delivery, but the order was with us less than an hour after the stated opening time.
Before we stopped completely, I made preparations for tomorrow. I shall be heading to the range, nearly a year on from my last visit. I am on tenterhooks.
February 13th - Friday
Ah, Friday 13th, that will explain everything, then.
Once again, the morning did not look too bad. I do not remember if it was as breezy as yesterday, but a day of trauma will do that to a person. I fancy that it was not and neither was there any evidence that the day would be anything other than pleasant and full of cheer. We revelled in its wonderfulness as we cavorted on the beach early doors.
Talking of which, ABH no longer responds to me knocking on the door to get her out of bed. I inadvertently discovered that playing the sound of a dog barking was much more effective and she would come out running. Fed up with trying to find the appropriate sound on my smart mobile telephone, I also discovered that it is every bit effective to make the sound myself. I have refined it so that I can now call out in chihuahua, ‘come and get me, fatso’ which brings ABH seething with indignation.
Talking of coming out fighting, I awoke with the urge and determination to get things done this morning and to steal a march on the day by getting out of the door early. This worked to a degree – I got out of the door early - but I needed to collect Mother from St Buryan first and collect some dog food from Tesmorburys that the Missus omitted to get when she went shopping on Wednesday. Since I would be passing the door of the car garage on the way, I wanted to stop by to ask a question.
I had booked the truck in for a service and MOT test, although strictly that should currently be the DfT (Department for Transport) test. Either way, without a pass the truck would be in dry dock. From our previous two tests I recalled that the tow bar had come in for some criticism for being rusty. When I had looked, the rust seemed rather superficial and hardly worth worrying about. I was aware, however, that my skills in that area are sorely lacking, so I thought to gain the opinion of one of the mechanics. If he determined that the towbar needed replacing, I could purchase one on the Internet at half the price the garage would charge me and have them fit it, thus avoiding a fail for a rusty towbar.
With Mother in the back, I stopped at the garage, and the mechanic duly came and had a look. He agreed with me that the rust was indeed superficial and to make it look better, I could tap it vigorously with a ball pein hammer to knock all the loose stuff off. I was still revelling in the feeling of satisfaction that I had avoided the necessity of spending £180 on a new towbar, when the mechanic pointed out that several of the tyres were worn. They were not just a little bit worn but at least two of them were bordering on the illegal. I thanked him for pointing this out and since I would be passing the tyre shop on the way to Tesmorburys, thought I would pop in and make an appointment.
The very pleasant man at the tyre shop had a look and agreed with the mechanic’s assessment that three of the tyres needed replacing immediately. He also pointed out that the fourth was not far behind, so I agreed that we would replace all four. The tyres would be available from four o’clock that afternoon but, should I prefer, they were also open on Saturday morning. I agreed that I would come back then.
Already behind on my trying to get going early, big idea for the day, I went on to Tesmorburys for the dog food. That is all I needed so there was no going up and down every aisle that Mother warned me against and that I had no intention of doing in the first place. She is far too used to shopping with the Missus.
Having collected the goods from the shelf I went straight to the automated checkout. Here I swiped the product barcodes and pressed the button to arrange payment by credit card – I am sure that Tesmorburys can afford the card charges. That may have been the case, but they were not keen to take my money either and the machine rejected my card. Assuming that it wanted me to use the chip and pin facility, I duly inserted my card and awaited the prompt to enter the pin. I waited some more and then some more on top of that but absolutely nothing happened.
I returned to the main screen to see if I could back up and try the process again but quickly discovered that the machine was completely locked. I looked around for an assistant. There is usually someone hanging around the automated tills, so it did not take long to recruit some help. The very pleasant lady pressed some buttons and assured me, and herself, that the machine was indeed not working. I asked her where the off switch was to apply a universal reset but instead, she pressed and held two buttons on the card payment machine to reset that.
From the experience we have with our own machine I am aware that it takes a veritable age for card payment machines to reset. Quite what they are doing during all that time, I have no idea. Anyway, the process fixed the problem eventually and left me to explain the delay to Mother. The incident had also diverted my attention from the virtual list of necessities I had in mind to complete during out foray into town, and I was halfway back when I remembered that I should have got fuel as well. I will now have to refuel after having the tyres replaced tomorrow when it will be busy and I shall have to wait.
By the time we got back home, it was time to take the girls out again. I was not taking them up to The Farm because it was cold and getting breezy and some rain had started to arrive. I whizzed them down to the beach where the last of the morning sun was making a proper spectacle of the beach and the lively sea. Largeish waves were starting to lumber into the beach, and the ladies wot swim a bit in the Harbour were making the best of it before it deteriorated further.
It was therefore early afternoon by the time I managed to get myself to The Farm. The weather was starting to close in, and Radio Pasty had announced that the rain would get heavier as the afternoon progressed. I ignored the warning, mostly because I was in train and an unstoppable force of determination, and went up anyway. Most of what I intended to do was going to be in the barn, and it obviously would not rain in there, now would it. The only thing outside the barn, emptying the cabin’s IBC, would happen mainly by itself once I had set it up. While the weather would be irritating, it would not impede my work, I was sure. The small gods of grumpy shopkeepers had other ideas.
It had become dull and grey by the time I arrived at The Farm. I opened up the barn and the tool shed and positioned the truck so I could easily get at my tools in the back. I had quite forgotten at this stage that I had loaded the next two Christmas trees in the back and had to get rid of them first. They are a pain in the rear because the branches curl around each other in the back of the truck and the wires from the fairly lights get twisted around the metal frames. With just four now in the barn, they are using up an inordinate amount of space.
Getting the pump working on the IBC seemed the sensible first thing to do. This would take about half an hour to empty 1,000 litres and I arranged the hose so that it would pump into the lane. I pulled the heavy battery from the cabin and hoped that it still had sufficient charge – which looking at the way things were going today, would not have surprised me if it did not.
Having set the pump in action, I set up the workbench in the barn and collected the timber I had purchased from the woodstore along with the offcuts I had decided to use as the base. Having looked at my original sketches, I had reviewed the design to make it as simple as possible. It only needed to support half a dozen lightweight boards, was unlikely to come under much strain or abuse and did not need to be a work of art.
My biggest mistake in the whole proceedings was to start. Sorry, that just slipped off the end of my fingers. No, the biggest mistake was to think that I could handsaw straight edges on the two by one that would form the backrest against which the bodyboards would lie. Next time I will use the circular saw no matter how disproportionate it looks.
The only really complex thing about the design is that the backrest is hinged so that it will lie flat when not in use during the winter. The only complex thing about making the first prototype was that the wind moved to the northwest, increased to force eight and brought with it a guts of rain. The wind frequently slammed the barn door closed thus cutting off what little light I had to work by and when it was not slammed closed, rain in varying degrees of heaviness, blew into the barn onto my tools, the workbench and my timber – and me.
If I had not been quite so determined to finish one bodyboard stand today, I would have given up halfway through and gone home. In any case, having put together the very basic structure, I noted that the upright frame against which the boards would rest could use some strengthening. Sadly, that will have to wait for another day because cold, blown out and rained upon, I had endured enough for one day and packed up to go home.
I returned to the IBC emptying on several occasions to note the progress. I was keen that the pump was not left to pump if it had run out of water as there is no automatic cutoff. Since I had draped the hose into the lane, I wanted to make sure I was not creating a flood there. Alright, no I did not. I could not give a fig if it flooded the lane which was the whole purpose of hanging the hose out there in the first place. When I checked the lane, there was a stream of water running down one of the wheel tracks. I had no idea that the incline was so pronounced as it was carrying the water all the way down the track in the direction of the sewage works and it was not collecting at all. At least, it was not collecting anywhere I could see which amounts to the same thing.
It took around half an hour to clear away all my tools, the hose and the battery. As soon as I had done so, I fled the scene. I was pleased to see that the stream had dried up and there was hardly any evidence that I had pumped 1,000 litres of water into the lane at all. The rain was coming in harder by then, but it was still in showers, albeit more frequent than they had been all day. The wind had ramped up and blustery had turned to punchy or perhaps somewhat worse.
I think that I got home just at the right moment because from then on, the weather started to get serious. The wind pounded in at 45 miles per hour, according to Land’s End, and the rain became continuous. The temperature also dropped like a stone from nine or ten degrees to three degrees come the middle of the evening. As I sat in the northwest corner of the living room was, I could feel the wind and rain lashing against the windows inches from my face. Later the wind went northerly and the chill became more evident.
It was a very dirty night. I had to venture out twice, once in the late afternoon when the rain had not really got into its stride. I took the girls around the back of the shop, but even there the wind was swirling about. When we went out again at nine o’clock, we fortuitously managed to find a five minute pause in the onslaught of rain. Again, we were only outside for minutes before running back for shelter.
I have never paid much attention to Friday 13th before but today was pulling out all the stops to make me into a believer.
February 12th - Thursday
The weather was looking a bit more user friendly today when I looked out of the windows. Admittedly, it was a tad breezy out; the Lifeboat flag was fair tearing at its moorings from the ministrations of a strong southwesterly when we passed by. It did not seem too bad down on the beach when we got there.
Most importantly, it looked like the sort of day a keen DIYman could get himself up to The Farm and get some work done. To that end, I organised an early breakfast. We are still trying to get through the last of the remaining eggs from our Christmas shop opening. They are dated to the middle of January but have not yet hatched or walked out the door and I still seem to be alive after having some earlier in the week. I had a large portion of scrambled eggs on granary toast. It was bleddy ’ansum.
It also took a little longer than was strictly necessary, but I considered I had a bit of time on hands. My plan was to go up, do some work, then come back to take the girls up there. With the breeze the way it was and a noticeable drop in temperature today, I did not think that, particularly BB, would fair well at the exposed Farm for an extended period. I could then do another hour or so and if BB got cold, she could get into the truck until I had finished.
That master plan very quickly collapsed in a heap on the ground when the Missus told me that she had planned to meet a friend for dinner and would need the truck. She offered to take us all up to The Farm, which on a warmer day would have been a perfectly good solution. Without the truck BB would have nowhere to shelter and even if I opened the cabin, there was no guarantee she would work out it was a good place to go. Additionally, I would be working in the barn which is not in line of sight. In short, being dropped off was not going to work.
It was just plain unfortunate that the Missus has made her arrangements for the first day in a while when the weather was almost favourable. A quick look at the rest of the week showed a return to daily rain and strong winds, not that it meant very much. The narrative that had appeared in the news was that Saturday would be sweetness and light. It was anyone’s guess which was going to be correct.
I was not to be completely deterred. There was still more than an hour before the Missus had to leave, which was an hour I could spend at The Farm and at least get something done. I gathered my DIYman overalls, wellies and a jacket and headed for the door.
The Farm was much more exposed to the breeze than down in The Cove. The cold was far more evident than it had been for a week or so despite the thermometer reading little difference. I was glad that I did not have the girls with me even for that short time, and certainly not for a few hours. I brought the truck close to the site of the solar panel as I reckoned finishing that was the best I could manage in the limited time I had. It had also seemed like it had taken weeks and was still not finished. I was keen to have at least one success to look at.
The upper bracket arrangement was almost complete. The holes had been drilled and proven to be in line. All that required was to test the new bolts. They were the sort where the thread stops a short way down the shaft. The test was whether the nut would tighten sufficiently before I ran out of thread. I tried it out on the nearside and discovered that it tightened easily. I also discovered that if I used a ring spanner to hold onto the nut at the end constrained by the proximity of the solar panel frame, I could not get the ring spanner out again once it was tightened. I had to loosen it again and use the open ended spanner instead.
My next revelation was that having tightened the nearside, the far side bolt was no longer long enough to get the nut on the end. I had to loosen the nearside again and tighten each side in turn to get the bracket roughly level on both sides.
The bottom bracket was always going to be the troublesome one. First, leaning down that far it was going to be difficult to judge that the drill was level. It was hard enough on the nearside that I had good access to, the far side was just hard work because I had to reach around the post to do it. Adding to the problem was a carelessly thrown away telegraph pole that did not allow me to drop the drill low enough to ensure a level hole. In retrospect, I would have brought the solar panel up a foot but even then, I had already run into trouble with the waste pipe I had used to protect the power cable. It was in the way of the rear part of the bracket which only fitted once I had cut slits in the bottom of the pipe.
When I came to fit the bolts on the lower position, the nearside one fitted with just a slight adjustment to the hole. The far side hole was a complete begger. It only worked in the end because I had hacked a hole three times the size that was necessary. It did not matter. The nuts tightened up with ease and the frame is very securely held onto the post. Now that it was fitted and I could see how firmly it sat in place, I wished I had planned it better and had more confidence that it would not fall off. I would have put the solar panel nearer the top. There again, if I had thought to put all my savings in buying Bramley shares in 1980, I would be living on a Caribbean island and not needing to install solar panels on posts in a windy field in the middle of February.
The work took up all the hour that I had at my disposal. In truth, I never expected that I would be able to do very much past finishing off the solar panel install. I packed up all my tools and headed back to The Cove where I was in plenty of time to hand the truck over to the Missus. I was also right on time to take the girls for a walk around the block and started off heading to the Harbour beach. They were already preparing their fits of depression in the absence of the Missus and were not keen to run around, so without delay I took them around the block and headed for home.
At the Lifeboat operations team meeting on Tuesday evening, I rather carelessly volunteered to produce some training documentation for some of the Boat Crew. Each crew member must keep up currency on the various units of activity related to their roles. For example, everyone trained in towing must perform a tow either in anger or in training every six months to remain current in that activity. The training system records when it is done and if it is not done, that unit for that person turns red on the screen.
The issue raised was related to Boat Crew having outstanding currency units for Shore Crew activities, such as driving the Tooltrak or operating the winch. Because it is not part of their normal activities, those signed up for those programmes, do not necessarily notice. I had volunteered to look at the system and print off easy to see sheets of which Boat Crew had what activity outstanding.
Demonstrating the stupidity of volunteering for anything – you would have thought I might have learnt by now – I soon discovered that it was not quite as straight forward as printing sheets from the system. First, the system does not have a print facility, forcing me to do a screen capture and a cut and paste into MS Word. Before I did that, I had to identify the individuals and the outstanding units and get them onto the screen together. It was a little time consuming and produced in the end, six pages.
Because I cannot help myself, I also analysed the results. It seemed to me that may of the Boat Crew signed up for these roles really did not need to be. We already have eleven qualified Tooltrak drivers, including two mechanics who would need to drive the machine as part of that role. We then had three additional crew signed up for the role who had not taken part in a launch or recovery for over a year. On top of producing the pretty coloured sheets, I also submitted my recommendations for dropping certain crew off the list rather than making them catch up with currency. If they had not performed the task in over a year, they probably did not need to be on the list in the first place.
I would have had a conversation about my submission when I went for training in the evening, however, it was unusually busy and I was later than planned. The Coxswain, being the prepared soul that he is and aware that we could not put out to sea, had arranged an evening of playing with navigation charts. Split into small groups, we all had a chance to identify locations, plot courses and understand the various codes and symbols on the charts. I will never need to use such knowledge but it was interesting, nevertheless.
We learnt that reading a position was done the exact opposite of the way it is done on a land map and that the red (it was pointed out for me) indicated the colour shown in a certain direction by a lighthouse; the various flashing signals on cardinal buoys that demonstrate whether they should be passed to the north, south, east of west; the fact that Camborne does not figure at all in determining where the Eddystone Rock is. It was all quite fascinating and the time passed so quickly, I was surprised and quite disappointed when it was time to come away. Another session like that and I will be able to sew a navigator badge on my sleeve.
February 11th - Wednesday
I did manage to misbehave a little bit today, but it was not quite how I imagined it.
The wind had done a bit of howling during the night, so I was mildly surprised when we were not all blown away when we stepped out this morning. Granted, we were not quite as early as I had imagined we might be, but ABH has decreed that she will not get up early under any circumstances. There was still a bit of a blow around the corner of the Lifeboat station, but when we got down to the beach, we could hardly feel it at all.
There was plenty of evidence that it had rained and quite recently, but the sky was suggesting that we were in for a much better day than the previous two. It was enough to convince me that I should make some effort to push in the direction of getting things done. I had the added impetus that Mother had left her Bramley Pad behind last night and you know what nonagenarians are like if you part them from their tech. I was under strict instructions to return it before she went into meltdown.
Since I had to get into the truck to go to St Buryan, I may as well go via The Farm where I wanted to check how much and what sort of timber I had there for one of the next projects. I had to go to the builders’ merchant at St Just to see if they had the right length bolts for the solar panel I was trying to fix to its post and I did not want to waste the trip and have to go again. The timber and some fixings would be required for bodyboard stands that I had intended to make last year for the shop and never got around to it.
In truth, I had no more than some rough sketches of what I wanted to make, so I did not even have measurements for the amount of timber. I would just have to guess. The first unit would be very much a prototype anyway, so if I had to go back, it would not be too much of a surprise. I could have collected the timber anyway, but we have so much at The Farm, it would have been annoying to buy something that we already have. Naturally, having detoured to The Farm, we did not have any of the right size.
Having dropped the Bramley Pad to a very grateful Mother, I headed off to St Just and the builders’ merchant. The bolts they had were not exactly what I wanted, and I may yet have to go back to my Internet supplier. I hope not because it is just four bolts which is crazy to buy online. I had also noted that my screws box was deficient in several sizes of screw and took the opportunity of replenishing those supplies as well.
Timber comes in two standard lengths, 3.6 metres and 4.8 metres. The 3.6 metres would fit in the truck and be easier to transport home. Since I was not bothered about size at this juncture, I duly asked for the 3.6 metres and took myself down the yard to the timber shed to collect it. I searched the shed from one end to the other. There was plenty of 4.8 metre lengths but none of the shorter. After looking again, I telephoned the office – it is a fair distance to walk back – and asked if I was in the wrong shed or something. There was bit of a pause and then the confirmation that the reason I could not find it was that they did not have any. I would have to have the 4.8 metre lengths instead.
This was not a huge problem, just a little inconvenient as the timber would have to protrude out of the back of the truck. I would have shortened it but had not thought to bring a saw. Sticking out of the back of the truck it was then. I had not emptied the back of the truck since working on the solar panel and camera installation, so there was some cord there to secure the protruding timber. I was in the process of tying down the timber when my telephone rang.
It was a call that I wanted to take but would take a few minutes to resolve. It was not the best location or situation to be in to answer some technical questions that required some thought, but needs must. It was during the call that it also started to rain or at least drizzle quite heavily. Had I not stopped to answer the call, I would have secured my load in the dry and been on my way.
Having finished the call and tied up the timber in the rain, I headed back to The Farm to store the timber. It had been my intention to collect the girls on my way back and then take them up for a run while I proceeded to do things. Radio Pasty had gleefully announced the expectation of rain in the afternoon “becoming heavy at times” which pretty much scotched any further misbehaving for the rest of the day. This was very much a shame because I had pulled on my DIYman overalls and everything.
As it was, I dropped off the timber and headed back home. I would need to take the girls out anyway as it was past their middle of the day walk. I had debated whether I should take the trouble to put on my waterproof work trousers – it would require removal of jacket and wellies – but since the rain was abating sightly, I risked venturing out without. The girls were not keen to tarry, and we returned home swiftly after to enjoy a convivial hour or so with ex-Head Launcher who had stopped by for a visit.
That was most of the afternoon gone. I had got nothing done at The Farm but at least I was in a position to do something much more quickly next time there was a break in the weather. The other thing I failed to do was to track down some replacement roof sheets.
These are a veritable nightmare. Most of the suppliers, the ones that do roofing pretty much exclusively, are too far away to drive to. The ones that do a few roofing sheets amongst other things and are closer, do not have the right ones. The roofing sheets are difficult to transport, and the roofing sheet companies charge a lot of money to get them to you. Our preferred supplier charges near £200 which is just about acceptable if we are buying a whole roof’s worth, but when we only need three sheets, they are cheaper than the cost of delivery. The cheapest I found was £150 which I was about to grudgingly accept when I remembered a small farm supplier in Camborne that we had used way back. They did not have the right items on their website but they would be worth an ask. I meant to call them today but ran out of time.
We are told that this current, seemingly endless run of poor weather is due to break soon. While it is only partly to blame for the lack of progress up at The Farm, a bit of improved weather will remove one of the big excuses I have been using to stay at home and do begger all.
In the meanwhile, the rain set in for much of the afternoon and only cleared out at the end of it when it brightened a bit. It was still awful damp out and the walk around the block was somewhat less than a joyful occasion, just necessary interlude. The damp was still clinging on in the late evening with a bit of swirling mizzle. The atmosphere was not helped by ABH getting spooked by some imaginary thing behind us in the dark – well, I did hope it was imaginary. It accelerated our return home almost pulling my arms from their sockets. It was less than helpful therefore, that there was some character hanging over the railings opposite the shop when we got home. The girls were practically hammering on the door to be let in after racing up the stairs. It is a good job I am made of sterner stuff, but I admit that their anxiousness is infectious. Besides, I cannot run anywhere at present, so if we are truly being stalked by some creature with bad intent, I am stuffed.
Some wag at the Lifeboat station with far too much time on his hands produced AI images of all the crew. I am trying to think which of us this is.
February 10th - Tuesday
What I had not appreciated with the new electricity meter is that it has a bright strobe light on it. Actually, several. It is perplexing why quite so many; one would be sufficient and the bleddy geet bill I get every month proves it is working.
There used to be a wheel that spun around that indicated it was working – silent and unobtrusive. I did not notice the strobing light until the dead of night when the room lit up every so many seconds. The other new one does much the same, but with the cupboard door closed, I had not noticed it. The upper cupboard door, behind which the new one resides, does not close properly.
The Missus told me that she was aware of another piece of equipment in there doing the same thing for even longer. I had not seen that one. I do not think she is too bothered by it or has just got used to it and I only notice it if I have my eyes open. It does draw the eye, but I guess the trick is to keep my eyes closed. I will try that tonight.
We swapped our rain for varying degrees of mizzle today. It was heaviest in the morning when I wore waterproofs to take the girls around the block. There was a bit of breeze behind it too so that it was coating my face as we headed across the car park. It was not in the least cold and by the middle of the day we had reached twelve degrees, which is the mildest we have had it in a long while.
I had wondered on the continuous line of low pressure systems queuing up to give us wet and grey weather from across the Atlantic. I had guessed that the Jetstream had dropped a long way south and when I looked, it was over the bulk of Europe. Quite coincidentally, there was an article in the news about it, with the Jetstream being the expected root cause of low pressure systems on a conveyer belt across us. There does not seem to be an end in sight and sooner or later, I will have to head up to The Farm whatever the weather to do the things that need to be done.
For today, though, I had already decided that I would spend another day with my legs in a sling. It took a monumental effort and gritted teeth to will myself not to run off to do other things, but a second day should push me in the right direction. After that I will misbehave again, although the weather does not look at all conducive right through until the weekend.
Assisting in my endeavour to do very little today, Falmouth Coastguard had made arrangements to visit the Lifeboat station. In the past, there have been occasions where Lifeboat managers have not always seen eye to eye with Coastguards on some of the decisions made or level or quality of information shared. Since the irregular meetings started, there has been a greater understanding on both sides regarding the constraints, limitations and requirements each party has to abide by. Some procedures have been amended and better communications developed and the meetings ensure both parties are up to date with changes.
Today, it was good to meet some of the people whose voices we hear over the radio from time to time. There was no specific agenda and we started talking about incidents over the last year particularly and memorable incidents from times before that. It may have looked like so much recounting old tales but by doing so we could see how much had changed and what was and was not still relevant. One of the biggest changes has been in towing casualty vessels.
Very generally, the Institution mandates that vessels are not routinely towed unless there is risk to life. There are other considerations to be taken into account but the decision largely rests with the Coxswain. To assist with the decision making, a checklist and risk assessment is provided. The change came about after a couple of high profile towing accidents. Subsequently, much emphasis is placed on practising towing more frequently. In The Cove, the majority of our calls have tended to result in towing operations and because of this, our crews are very good at it. Other stations are not so familiar and the training for them is more relevant.
The relevance for the Coastguard in discussing this was that they need to be aware of the Institution’s policies when assigning calls. Their expectation that a particular casualty will be towed may differ widely from the Coxswain’s constraint under the policy. Our informal meeting lasted about an hour. I only attended out of interest and similarly some of the Boat Crew attended too. I found the meeting quite frustrating because someone had gone to the trouble of providing some biscuits, but everyone was too polite to open the packets.
Most of the mizzle had cleared away by the time I left the station. This coincided nicely with the Missus leaving on a shopping trip and me taking the girls out for a middle of the day walk.
I had intended to just walk around the block on the level, but the girls were keen to head to the beach. Well, thy were until BB noticed and older couple behind us at the head of the slipway and ran back to greet them. Having got her turned around and heading in the correct direction, she then found it necessary to run back up the slipway from the beach a further two times to greet the same couple. I am not entirely sure how we break her of the habit, although we do not want to stop her being friendly to people she meets. It is the being over friendly and ignoring advice not to go that we have to break.
After we got back home, I resumed the tedium of the previous day. This time I did not even get to watch a pointless film. I took a zizz instead and found that I quite needed it. Maybe the strobing electric meter had more of an effect than I thought.
Proper rain returned in the afternoon, and I curtailed our usual walk around the block in favour of a shorter, more functional walk instead. It was still raining some when I went to our very important operations meeting at the Lifeboat station.
Fortunately, these meetings tend to be brief as none of us really want to be there. Everyone keeps their reports brief and to the point, just like a proper meeting should be. It is a mystery why none of the management books I have read in years gone by have ever suggested holding meetings at a time when all the participants would rather be at home doing something far more pleasurable. Think of the boost to productivity there would be. Gosh, I think I am on to something here.
February 9th - Monday
After weeks of eluding the rain in any serious quantities, it caught up with us today. I rained from almost the outset of the day to the middle of the afternoon when it turned to mizzle under a dull, grey sky.
It was probably just as well because my false knee had started to complain rather vociferously about my excessive treatment of it over the last couple of weeks. I am not entirely sure that it was ready for a fortnight of two mile walks and I pushed it some more even after it had started to complain just a little bit. I rather think lumping heavy bits of kit around on the slip yesterday, was the final wake up call. Oh, very dear.
I still needed to run the girls out a few times during the day but neither they nor I really appreciate being out in the rain for very long. I constrained our ventures to a run – them not me – down to the Harbour beach and around the block if we felt like it – which we did once. The rest of the time, I remain sitting and much of that with my legs up. That does not leave a lot of room to manoeuvre when trying to write about exciting times in The Cove.
Both the Missus and I were out of bed early this morning. The second smart electricity meter man was arriving today between eight o’clock and ten o'clock and had clearly set out early himself to arrive here at around quarter past eight. These chaps must do an awful lot of meter replacements because he was in and out in less than an hour.
Unlike our domestic meter, we do not have a clever little device that connects to our WiFi to tell us exactly how much electricity we are using at that very moment. I agreed with him that for a commercial environment it would be a waste of money as no one would have time to monitor it on a real time basis. I think that I will be able to see the previous hour or so when it eventually established itself. I did install the gadget for the domestic supply, but I have not looked at it since. I think it would be far too scary to watch the pink bars spike every time we turn on the kettle. Also, what is the point; you generally turn things on because you need to use them.
The rest of the day I played the good boy and rested my leg. I watched a pointless and mindless film and read my book, which is a very good book written by a Spanish person in Spanish. Fortunately, someone who understands Spanish and English made a particularly good fist of translating the one to the other. I read another book by the same author a while back and now know quite a bit about the city of Barcelona – at least one that existed between the wars. It is a hardback book, so I am getting some exercise with I sit lazing about.
I did not hear the bin men when they came around and nor did I hear the food waste truck when it came later. What alerted me to the fact that the bin men had been was the sound of our wheelie bin toppling over. I had not appreciated that it was windy on any of the occasions that we had stepped out, so I was most surprised that it had. The wind was in the southeast, and when I checked it was moderate. I am therefore at a loss. Perhaps the bin men had left it in a precarious position, and the merest waft of air had it over. There is always the possibility that it was there when some frustrated soul needed to kick something and could not find a cat.
Sitting with my legs up, poor value films to watch and a to do list up at The Farm as long as one of my outstretched legs, I will bear kicking the bin over as my outlet – when my knee has improved.
February 8th - Sunday
There had been some heavy rain during the night. I heard it on the bedroom skylight and hoped at the time it had all gone by morning, which it had. There were some pretty heavy showers about during the day but all but most missed us here in The Cove. The wind that had plagued us a bit yesterday, remained in the south and the sea state started to pull back a little as the tide receded. All in all, it was the best day in a very long time for pushing the Lifeboat out for an exercise.
I had already decided that I would go to the range today. It would only be for half a day but there is precious little time left of the winter season, and I had to start somewhere. It was frustrating, but a few people at the station had put in some effort to get me back on active service. It would appear ungrateful in the extreme not to show up for the first ALB exercise I was available for since October last year. So, I did.
We gathered at quarter to the middle of the day and took our instructions for a two hour exercise. The Boat Crew would exercise for two hours, and we would remain behind drinking tea and eating chocolate biscuits for two hours. We did very well at both and when the Boat Crew returned later, they complained that there were no biscuits left. We felt that it was remiss of them not to be specific about chocolate biscuit consumption before they headed off.
Normally, after a launch, we set up the appropriate slipway to make it ready for recovery at the later time. On this occasion, the swell was still beating in on the toe of the slipway making the operation unnecessarily risky. I terminated our efforts at the head of the toe and noted that we would return twenty minutes before the boat was due back and set it up then. The exercise had been timed to coincide with near low water when the swell would be at its minimum. We finished off with the agreement we would muster later at the appointed time.
With so much time available before the boat was due back, I returned home and took the girls out for a spin. Since my time was limited, we headed for the empty Harbour beach for a run around. It had been quite busy with people watching the launch a little earlier but by the time we got there it was empty. This is an advantage because BB still runs and greets each person she sees as a long lost friend. This particular worrying if that person is at the top of the slip near the road. She will come back on a whistle but not until she had been met and greeted in return.
We ended our exercise by walking around the block afterwards and I returned to the station for much needed tea and chocolate biscuits. We discussed matters of great import which I clearly cannot reveal here they were that important – I also cannot remember what they were – and drank more tea and had more biscuits. We broke early because today’s mechanic is an enthusiastic and thorough soul and requested buckets of soapy water with which to wash down the boat after its return. Duly armed we switched our attentions to completing the set up of the slipway. Well, me and my operating buddy did as the boat was bearing down on us from across the bay and as soon as we had finished, we needed to be ready to receive it.
I had taken one of the new recruits down with me. He was previously Boat Crew, which we obviously did not hold against him – well, not much, anyway – but he moved away and is currently living outside the minimum distance for Boat Crew, hence we have him. The swell that had been big enough earlier to be problematic was just producing a comparatively gentle run of about six or eight feet on the toe. The movement always gets a little bigger as the boat approached but it gave us no problems, neither did catching and hooking up the heaving line.
For my first appearance in a few months, I managed to get the main line length absolutely spot on and when I ordered the winch up, it took up the line without any delay at all. Had I been the sort of person to blow my own trumpet I might had said that it was pretty much an exemplary textbook recovery, the sort that write textbooks about, but fortunately, I am very modest and will not mention it.
We completed our work by hauling the boat the rest of the way up the long slip where the others of our team washed down and later strapped in the boat for its next service. We are, after all, a very precise, very excellent Shore Crew.
It was already the middle of the afternoon by the time I returned home. It left little time for any other shenanigans, so I did not get involved in any. Instead, I took the hint and put my feet up for the afternoon and did what ordinary people do on a Sunday afternoon. Well, I assume that is what ordinary people do. I must ask one, someday.
Cold water swimmers sitting pretty under a rainbow yesterday.
February 7th - Saturday
It is officially no interest Saturday, so this should be interesting - ironically. I woke this morning more tired than I went to bed with a strong desire to do begger all. Actually, ‘strong desire’ suggests I had some enthusiasm for it; I did not.
The showers seem to be getting a little too frequent for my liking. That is not entirely true, either. When the showers come, they are frequent over that period but not continuous rain. We then have long intervals without any rain at all, just the threat of it. It was also quite chilly in the robust southwesterly breeze which was knocking four degrees off the otherwise quite reasonable temperature.
We made it around the block in the morning without getting wet at all. I was quite pleased with that because I had taken no precautions against it. I was even more pleased, nay, smug, when quite a heavy shower passed through The Cove not five minutes after we got home. And that was that for the next four hours.
The new bolts I had ordered to secure the solar panel to the post up at The Farm had arrived yesterday. I could feel them searing into my back as I sat at the computer begging me to go and use them. I was also mindful of the fact that the gabion cages and the pallet they had arrived on sat in the back of the truck waiting to be unloaded up at The Farm. As time approached the middle of the day, I would either have to walk the girls out on the beach again or find some impetus to wrench myself out of my seat and go up to The Farm.
Somehow, I managed the Herculean task of getting off my behind, climbing into DIYman overalls and going off to fetch the truck. Before I could leave, I would have to load all my tools back onto the truck as I would need many of them. I must also not forget the new bolts, which I almost did and had to come back for them after loading up the girls.
It was pleasant enough up at The Farm. Getting there perhaps not so much. The lane is suffering from not having the hedges trimmed and hefty brambles and gorse bushes scrape against the truck as we make our way up. I really must put some effort into finding someone with the necessary equipment who might be pressed into service and certainly before spring, when it will get much worse.
Putting thoughts of that aside, I concentrated my efforts on deploying the new bolts. It was the work of moments to unload the gabion cages and the pallet, and I immediately set to work removing the temporary wire stay I had installed. I suspected that drilling the hole through the side of the post at the precise point that connects the two holes in the bracket would be tricky. I marked where I thought the holes should start and finish using a level to ensure the front and rear holes would align. I was going to pull the solar panel out of the way, but I reckoned that I could probably drill the hole from the rear with not too much awkwardness.
The drill bit is new and only used once and it bored through the old telegraph pole rather more easily than I imagined. I threaded the bolt into the hole to discover to my amazement that it lined up precisely with the hole in the bracket attached to the solar panel frame. Buoyed up with such success, I repeated the procedure with the second hole on the other side, in an even more awkward position than the first. Again, inserting the bolt, I found that it lined up perfectly. I anxiously awaited a moment or two for something to fall on my head or a crucial element of the equipment to fall apart; things never go that right. The universe held its breath but nothing untoward happened.
Oh, apart from the bolts being too long. There is a finite space between the bracket on the solar panel side and the frame onto which it is welded. If I had a suitably secure vice, I could probably have used the angle grinder to lop a bit off the bolts I had, sadly I do not even have a vice. I will order some more and we will try again another day.
Similar to our last visit, BB had taken herself back into the truck after an initial run around. The breeze up at The Farm was stronger than down in The Cove and the chill was more evident. I am sure it is the cold that has the little girl run for shelter. I was mindful of our last visit and had deliberately not intended to stay very long. It had been a semi-successful visit, although it would have been better if I had managed to drill the lower holes as well. This I could not do without removing the solar panel from its moorings completely, which would have upset its position relative to the holes I had already drilled.
I returned home to resume my celebration of idleness for the remainder of the afternoon. We had been invited to attend a wake at the F&L. This was for the Lifeboatman who had shuffled off just before new year. Judging by the crowd we encountered when we arrived, he was exceedingly popular. The bar was crowded with a lot of familiar faces, representatives of every business and pastime our man crossed in his varied life. There were fishermen, mechanics, Lifeboat people – even from Penlee – builders and, of course, his immediate family, mainly his four boys. It was convivial company, although we could not mingle as much as we might have liked because we had the girls with us. It was a suitably lively send off, nevertheless.
We did not stay all that long and bade our farewells not too late in the evening. It was a glimpse of the evenings that were once commonplace. We should be grateful they are still possible for special occasions.
February 6th - Friday
I had really intended to have a quiet day today. There was no particular reason for it; I have not exactly over excelled myself in recent weeks. I had two chores to run which would have made doing anything else impractical, that and running the girls out in the middle of the day scotched pretty much all else.
There was also no reason that I should not have a bit of a lie in, too, so of course I did not. Up with the lark again and halfway through my floor exercises, the Missus opened the bedroom door. I was almost immediately beset with boisterous bundles of excited fur clambering all over me and trying to extract my clearly desirable ear buds. They were squirting music into my ears loudly enough that the girls’ appearance was a complete surprise not allowing me time to protect any sensitive areas exposed to attack.
Since I would have immeasurable difficulty getting ABH out of the door if she was allowed to go back to bed, I quickly prepared to capitalise on their sudden appearance and grabbed my hat and coat. It was a good move because it gave me a clear run at finishing my exercise, conducting my ablutions and completing the morning administration on the computer uninterrupted. In fact, because of the overall timing, I segued nicely into having my breakfast and catching up on the day. It all came together very smoothly, as it happens.
On discovering that we had run out of chicken for the girls’ dinners last night – I know, I know, but they have quite gone off quail and foie gras - I had sent a note to our butchers asking for a bulk order that we could place in the freezer. I had not received a response but assumed the order had been received and made plans to head over to St Just late in the morning to collect it. The other errand I had intended to run was to trek over to Helston and the gun shop there for primers for my ammunition loading enterprise. To that end, I telephoned first to make sure they had some, which they did not. This gave me some two hours of more of the day which I had not expected to have and threw my plans, such as they were, into disarray.
Since that I now had plenty of time, I left it until late morning to go and collect the ordered chicken from St Just, picking up Mother from St Buryan on the way. It had rained heavily during the night but as we woke to the new day, there was plenty of blue skies and beautiful sunshine. I noted, however, on the way over to St Buryan that there were some darker clouds hanging about and by the time I had collected Mother and started out on the road to St Just, we were seeing some isolated little showers catching us here and there. There must have been a fair few about as we drove towards a close and massive rainbow just ahead of us as we crossed the shoulder between Chapel Carn Brea and Carn Grean.
We were served by several showers while we ventured into St Just and attended Mr Olds excellent butchery emporium and just for fun, Mr McFadden’s as well. I would never purchase hogs pudding from anywhere but Mr Olds and similarly, Mr McFadden has his specialities. To have two excellent butchers within ten minutes of each other is unusual to state the least in this day and age and that both seem to be able to cut a living, even more remarkable.
Having concluded our restocking, I set a course for home. The road between St Just and the A30 at Sennen has seen no improvement since I last travelled it some weeks ago. There are large pools of standing water in the usual places. I know that we are much better off than some parts of the country and that the road is at least passable. However, I would have thought that some action other that putting up signs that say, ‘Flood’, would have been taken by now. It is, or was, a bus route which I thought would have made a difference.
While on the subject of buses, I am hearing some local rumblings that the timetables have been upset by the exit of First Bus Group from the Duchy at the end of January. When I looked at future bus times before it happened, it seemed that the status quo would be maintained. I will have to check and report back … there, I checked and it all seems to be as it was before. I suspect that the complainers just have not looked properly, although I have seen better timetable presentation, to be fair.
We were late back for the girls’ middle of the day walk out. Today, I had intended to give us all a rest and have a simple foray out to the Harbour beach and around the block. Unfortunately, the big beach looked resplendent again under a bright sky and utterly irresistible. Next week it will be up the cliff or not at all, so it seemed churlish to ignore such a clear invitation for a stank across the beach.
The weather had looked about the same as the day before with the more obvious risk of being caught in a shower. Despite that, I selected little boy trousers again because it would be far more comfortable unless the rain was particularly heavy in which case I would suffer a cascade of water off my new jacket and onto my shorts and wet socks – nasty. I reasoned that the rain had not been that heavy so far and on the balance of probability it would remain that way. We were promptly showered upon when we arrived on the sand but, as expected, it was not that heavy as to give inconvenience.
The previous day I had shared some footage of the state of the slipway with other head launchers. On occasion we might be compelled to recover or launch the Inshore boat from the big beach using the OS slipway for the purpose. In its current state with a large drop onto medium sized boulders, it looked unlikely and I sought a second opinion. The others felt it did not look that good and today I noted that a large boulder had shifted onto the slipway near the bottom making the passage too narrow for the trailer. I concluded that l launching from the big beach is definitely off the for the time being.
While the slipway may be constricted, the beach itself was anything but. There were wide stretches of sand available for two energetic and eager hounds and plenty of deep rockpools for them to cool off in. Once again, we set off along the tide line, this time in the company of three racing cocker spaniels chasing a ball. BB demonstrated the ability of her long legs and easily caught up and kept pace with the rearmost spaniel. We headed for Carn Keys again and if this may sound repetitious – and indeed is – it feels like anything but. There were some other people on the beach that we met and stopped for a chat with one as our dogs played together. He had come from Land’s End, and his dog did not look all that eager to make the return trip – it being all up hill and all.
We chilled for the rest of the day, taking in just the obligatory later afternoon and evening walks. I managed to get some chores done like booking the truck in for its annual service and MOT test. For the last couple of days, I had wanted to polish my walking boots that are suffering for the lack of it. The problem is I keep wearing them and they have not had time to sufficiently dry. With a good layer of polish, they repel water quite efficiently and even the additional waterproofing product I use is not effective on wet boots. I might have to miss a day or two of walks out just so I can get my boots polished. Still, I should be grateful that I have the strength of character to cope with such weighty problems set against me.
Exhausted from all the effort, I elected end the evening with a beer and a whisky. Occasionally, such things are entirely necessary.
February 5th - Thursday
It was a bit of a helter skelter morning. I especially got up early because I knew that I would be pressed. I was rather more pressed than I thought and could have done with another half an hour. I found that I had to reorganise some of the things on my to do list and some got put back, such as publishing The Diary.
Our esteemed colleague on the Lifeboat had his helmsman pass out scheduled for the morning. We were to muster at quarter to nine and as is the way of such things, many more people turned up than were strictly necessary. This included our newest recruits on the shore side who are still full of enthusiasm. We are currently running a book on just how long this will last. With so many at hand my presence was in the not strictly necessary category, but I thought that I had better hang around to show willing.
The assessing luminary turned up half an hour late. There was much jesting, joking, discussion and telling of stories and much drinking of tea in the meanwhile. As I had forgotten to put in my false ears, I missed all of the joking and jesting and discussion of things and probably missed someone offering me a cup of tea. It is also entirely possible that no one offered me a cup of tea, it was not easy to tell. I did however receive a telephone call from the driver of the truck delivering our gabion cages. He told me that he had arrived at the address he was given down a farm track but could not find our house. I told him that it was no surprise as the address he had read out to me in St Loy was on the other coast. I gave him the correct address, and he told me he would be twenty minutes, which he was.
The instructor had arrived during my telephone call and shortly after I returned to the room, our helmsman elect gave out a briefing. We all went to our respective crew rooms, and I checked that all our people were comfortable with their roles and would be around for the duration of the exercise, which they were. I made my excuses and went to wait on the delivery driver while the crew went off to launch the Inshore Lifeboat.
I did not have to wait long for the delivery and had the driver drop the pallet across the road where I could dismantle it and load it into the truck a little later. When later came it was highly convenient to have a fellow member of the very excellent Shore Crew on hand to help load it onto the back of the truck. There had been a small delay ahead of that as I had to unload all my tools and the empty boxes from the camera installation first. It was the work of a few minutes to load the gabion cages and the pallet and, once finished, I rejoined the Lifeboating party.
It was not long after I returned that we heard over the radio that the exercise was over and the boat was returning to The Cove. We had been a little concerned that we would have similar issues with the sea state that we had last night. Luckily, we launched a little while after high water and the sea state had gone from rough to moderate. With the tide out a good way, we were able to launch from the sand of the Harbour beach in a much more orderly fashion than last night. This also applied to the recovery one and a half hours later when the waves were hardly noticeable at all. The post recovery procedure took a while as under the watchful eye of the assessor, every ‘t’ needs to be dotted and every ‘eye’ crossed. We were all held on tenterhooks until the very last moment when the assessor assessed that all was well and that out boy passed with flying colours.
I would normally conclude such a discussion in The Diary with a review of the very excellent Shore Crew performance but on this occasion, I shall demur lest it detracts from the very great achievement of our new Helmsman.
The Lifeboat event had taken until the middle of the day to conclude. It had brought me to the very cusp of exercise time for the girls who had viewed my coming and going through the morning with increasing excitement. To pique their anticipation just a little more, I stopped for a cup of tea before kitting up to take them for a walk.
The morning had been fair and bright under a largely blue sky. In the direct sunlight it had been quite warm in our Lifeboat kit, and I made some allowances when selecting what to wear for our walk. I reasoned that I would probably be too warm with my usual attire, so I changed to little boy trousers although I retained a few layers on top. Initially, I had thought to just run the girls out to the Harbour beach and around the block because every day this week they have been on a bit of a major exercise. However, looking at the brightness of the day and how it shone so gloriously on the wide open sands of the big beach, it was impossible to resist.
Another reason that I had considered the shorter walk was that I suspected that I might have over exercised my new knee and it had started to complain a bit. Having looked at the big beach again and the fact that it would probably be the last time for more than a week that we would have the opportunity to enjoy it, I told myself not to be such a big, erm, wimp’s blouse (one has to be so careful with metaphors these days – I await my first complaint from the association of British Wimps) and get on with it. I did tip my hat to a bit of sense and chose not to go on the Coast Path and around; we would head to the beach the conventional way.
It was only moment after we set out that I noticed the large dark clouds to the south which coincidentally was the direction from which the wind – and all the weather – was coming from. We had again seen a forecast for the day that indicated the presence of showers throughout. There had been none nor any threat of one for the whole of the morning until I stepped out with the girls. We made it all the way to Carn Keys and were just turning back when the first spots dropped on us. I had expected a bit of a deluge of fine rain but it concentrated itself into three heavy raindrops, and that was it. Lucky ain’t I?
That was my sole contribution to life on this planet for the day. All my effort ceased at two o’clock or thereabouts and I did not lift another finger for the rest of the day. What a lazy ruin of a grumpy shopkeeper, I hear you say and I cannot argue with you, dear reader. I shall no doubt pay when the great ledger is opened at the end of it all but given that the taxman has already given me enough grief, I am hoping that he will weigh that in my favour.
My new coat arrived shortly after we returned from my walk. It was a substitute model to replace my discontinued one. There seemed to be a lot less bulk to it but compared side to side, it was difficult to tell how. It is possible the material itself is more lightweight. Having worn it a few times, it is perfectly adequate for the role I need it for – everything and everywhere – and is the correct size. If it lasts as long as the last one, I shall be very pleased.
We had to wait at the very end of the day for our last walk before bedtime. The rain that we had been expecting had arrived in some abundance maybe half an hour before we were due to go out. It was just leaving us according to the rain radar. We caught a little of the tail end, but it was just a few spots. I had noted earlier just how mild the late afternoon was. After the rain had passed, the temperature had dropped and the air was full of moisture. A dew had formed on the grass and the shrubs, and my breath was visible in the air. It was strangely fresh and pleasing. Perhaps I am just easily pleased.
The Harbour on Wednesday evening. Helicopter exercise taken through the Tooltrak window.
February 4th - Wednesday
It is no use. It still does not feel like a Wednesday to me. It is of no great importance, really as I have things to do and which day of the week I do them on makes no difference, unless of course it is an appointment.
I was up early this morning for no particular reason other than it felt right. The girls were not bothered about getting up with me, so I left them dozing while I prepared for the day. It was a good couple of hours before they felt like joining me although BB had stuck her head out momentarily to make sure was not missing anything.
The conundrum about the location of the second Farm camera came to visit me during the early hours of the morning. If I affixed the camera to the rearmost post, the front post would be in its direct line of sight. I could either cut down the front post or raise the camera up on an extension similar to the one on the cabin. The fact the installation on the rear post would be much easier won the day in the end – at least at three o’clock in the morning it did.
I had not made any plans to go up to The Farm today. Planning a day ahead when the forecast for each day is rain but the experience it mostly sunshine, is utterly futile. The only way to decide what to do is to look out of the window on the day and have a geek at the rain radar. This is precisely what I did today and seeing that on the balance of probability it would not rain, I made to decision to continue my work at The Farm. The only wombat in the pantry was the wind that looked punchy from the east, or thereabouts.
On the experience of yesterday, I decided not to take the girls with me. It was very likely that BB had got cold yesterday which is why she went and sat in the truck. There is nothing of her to keep her warm, so I thought it best to leave them behind and let the Missus run them out in the middle of the day. It meant that I was not tied to time, so I left almost immediately.
The only thing that I really intended to do was to install the water pipe to carry the cables down – or up – the post. When I arrived, that went out of the window, and I prepared to make the increased height post for the camera to attach to. This, like the one on the cabin, would be a block on a stick arrangement with the block sitting on the top of the post and the stick, screwed onto the post to secure it.
We have plenty of spare wood in the wood store and it did not take very long at all to identify some likely offcuts. I only had to saw one length to make the layered blocks that made up the big block that sits atop the post. Today, I had remembered to bring the waterproof connection boxes, one for the terminals of the camera wiring and the other for the spare length of the ten metre power line extension.
Before I attached the camera, I hoisted the ensemble onto the post which required me to climb to the second run of a step ladder. At this point I almost changed my mind about which pole to attach the camera to. I could get to any side of the front pole, but the rearmost one had other bits of telegraph poles, brambles and foliage behind it. It meant that I could not arrange the steps to the rear of the pole so that I could easily screw in fastenings to the tail of the camera post. I consulted the Missus who told me that she did not want cables run across or under the ground, so short of running the power across the top of the two poles, using the frontmost was out.
I did consider installing on the front for a moment but reasoned I would find a way to insert screws to the rear of the rear pole. While the camera post was heavy already, once installed I would need to go to the third or fourth rung of the ladder to install the camera subsequently. That was definitely not going to happen, so I took the camera post back into the barn where I had set up my temporary workshop to attach the camera there.
My next worry was with all the elements now attached to the camera post, I would have to find a way to secure it while I screwed in the retaining screws. The camera post on the cabin sits comfortably without the restraining screws and in theory, so would this one. I was however not all that confident, it was windy and it is an expensive camera. As with yesterday, I resolved to use electrical wire to hold it in place while I arranged to get the drill and screws ready to make a more permanent solution.
The theory sounded good in my head, but I failed to think through that I would need to hold the camera post in place with one hand and somehow tie the electrical cable in place with the other. While I swayed about on the ladder, holding the post in place with one hand, stringing the cable around the girth of the pole with the other and holding the loose end in my teeth, I noticed a convenient nail sticking out of the front of the pole at about the right height. Between the teeth and some surprising dexterity of the fingers of might right hand, I managed to knot the wire with sufficient confidence that I could let go of the tail of the post. Thus unencumbered, the second wire was installed with relative ease.
I had to reach around the post with my right hand to hold the screw in place while I used the power drill with my left. It was awkward and my weight was not even on the ladder, so I was precarious as well. I only used three screws which was quite enough even if it was not. It was not until afterwards that I considered that I would have to change the retaining arrangements for hanging bolts and nuts so that the post could be remove more easily if I needed to get at the camera again. I would have to do this quite soon while the screws could still be removed. I had screwed them into a line in the centre of the wood and the angle grinder would never get to them if I needed to cut them out.
The last job of the day was the job I had intended to do at the outset: attach the waterpipe to drop the power cable down. I am sure that the power cable would have bee perfectly alright had I just tacked it to the pole; the one on the cabin survives without covering. Here though, there is a join in the cable that I thought would be better under cover.
Having measured the length required, I went with my pipe cutter to extract the amount needed from the roll of thick water pipe that had sat surplus to requirement in front of the tractor for several years. Once cut off, the length remained curved, which I thought would straighten when I attached it to the pole. Sadly, it is a thick and unforgiving type of material that would remain curved for eternity. My effort to straighten it resulted in the top end, which I had already used a bracket to attach to the pole, tearing the bracket off its moorings. It was very clear that this was not going to work.
Happily, we also had a suitable length of wastepipe, a little narrower in diameter but useable, nonetheless. This is straight in the first place and not designed to bend. The right length would be almost perfect apart from my brackets now being too large to hold the pipe in place properly. I used them anyway, but they will need to be replaced.
With all the elements in place, I connected the power cable connection and switched on the battery. Everything worked perfectly first time and the signal from the WiFi unit is adequate even though I have not yet installed it outside the cabin. I spent a few minutes tidying up the cabling and then put my tools and equipment away. I will have to spend a few minutes clearing the back of the truck from all the accumulated packing, but you cannot have everything all at once. I will do it another day.
Earlier in the day, there had been a flurry of communication on the Lifeboat messaging board. One of the Boat Crew is taking his helmsman examination tomorrow and the Coxswain had arranged for a final bit of practice with the Inshore boat in the late afternoon. The arrangement was to meet at five o’clock, an hour before high water. When I arrived to add my assistance, the plan had changed as the Coastguard helicopter had requested an exercise with us since we had a planned launch.
It has been a long time since the last exercise with the helicopter mainly because arrangements have to be fluid and coordinating both services is not easy. We do not turn down requests when they come because they are so rare. Despite the deteriorating sea condition as we approached high water, we launched the boat anyway on the far side of the Harbour slipway where the angle of attack is shallower. Launching was unremarkable but the swell in the Harbour was clearly increasing.
We are fortunate enough to have some new recruits on the very excellent Shore Crew. Ordinarily, we would have given them some Tooltrak time on the beach while the boat was out. Since what little beach we had kept disappearing under some rather hefty waves, we repaired to the empty Harbour car park for a run around the perimeter. It was while we were here that the helicopter arrived, so we stopped to watch the several attempts at landing the helicopter crewman onto the moving Inshore boat. We heard later that the swell was so large that the crewman was elevated and dropped more than ten feet during the attempts.
Having successfully but uncomfortably landed the helicopter crewman a couple of times, they recovered their man and made off in the direction from whence they came. Shortly after that, the Inshore boat headed back to the Harbour where we had returned with the Tooktrak the moment we understood what was afoot.
I observed from the top of the slipway as the Inshore boat made a couple of attempts to come astern onto the trailer. There was much adjustment going on with the trailer and the boat as both were tossed around in the heavy swell of high water. Our soon to be new helmsman is a consummate professional in his boatmanship and expertly put the boat in the trailer on a third approach. We very quickly came away and rested at the top of the slip for a wash down. The beauty of a high water recovery is that there is no sand to clear away and we were washed and finished in short order. We are, after all, a very efficient, very excellent Shore Crew.
February 3rd - Tuesday
Apparently, it is Sunday today, according to my head. No matter how hard I tried to tell myself it was not, I could not quite shake the conviction that it was. I will be alright by tomorrow when I will think that it is Friday. Please, do not ask.
I cannot have started the day thinking it was the weekend. My tax rebate has still not appeared, and I resolved to call the good people at His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to see if I could shame them into paying me what I was due. I could not have done that if it was Sunday. I decided to call them myself as I had asked the accountant twice and twice I was told to leave it a couple of weeks. I had been informed previously by an online robot that I was not permitted to ask such impertinent questions if my accountant had filed for me. I sought to see if they had changed their mind.
It is my suspicion that HMRC does not want people calling up to talk to them. Having called the advertised number, I was told, if I was self-assessment, please call a different number. I redialled furnished with this information and was met by a swiftly speaking, very pleasant lady whose regional accent I could not understand. She was also speaking so loudly, the sound was distorted. I worked out that I could not understand some of it because she seamlessly went from speaking Glaswegian to speaking some foreign tongue that I did not recognise. Since I could decipher none of it, it made no difference and I resorted to talking to the robot on the computer again.
One of the questions it asked was when did I first make my claim to get some money back. Since I had no idea, I looked up my messages from the accountant and in doing so discovered that the accountant had, not five minutes prior, sent me a message. By some uncanny coincidence, the accountant had, that very morning, chased the tax office to see what had happened to my rebate.
I am told that the good people at HMRC are so very busy taking money off people that they had not found any time at all in the last eight weeks to process my claim to get some back. Apparently, they were very apologetic – of course they were – and they processed my claim while the accountant was on the telephone to them. I might expect to wait ten days for it to clear but should it require investigation, it could be another twelve weeks. I shall be rather miffed if that is the case since HMRC had already had eight weeks to get it done. There is little consolation in the fact that HMRC will add interest to the delayed sum because they do so at one percent less that the Bank of England base rate. Had the money been righteously in my own account, I would have received a much higher rate.
The matter must have riled me somewhat and disturbed my equilibrium because I suddenly had the urge to rise up, not exactly to rail against the machine, but to go and install my solar panel up at The Farm. First, however, I had to go and collect Mother, which might well have, in my fragile state, have been the outset of my thinking it was Sunday.
I took the girls with me to The Farm. The visit would serve instead of their main walk of the day. It was rather a shame because the big beach looked every bit as enticing as it had the previous two days. We had a large amount of blue skies, a few fluffy clouds and only a small risk of getting wet in a shower. It was terrible having to make the choice of beach or Farm, but I reasoned that we had been to the beach thrice and The Farm not once. I packed the girls in and we headed off.
My new coat has not yet arrived, nor do I expect it very soon. There was the threat of rain and had discovered on my trip to pick up Mother, a bit of a breeze coming in from the south. We felt none of it in The Cove, in fact it was perfectly temperate and windless. Up at The Farm, I knew we would be in the thick of it and showers would be harder to avoid. I was not about to take my posh coat, so I pressed my old one back into service and took a belt in case I had to stop it flapping open.
I cannot recall exactly when I had purchased the solar panel for the camera. Certainly, it was several years ago. The box was not even open until I took a quick peek inside a few weeks ago to assure myself that it was indeed the solar panel I expected it to be. Had there been any setup instructions they were not in the box and had they been elsewhere, they would certainly be lost by now. There were limited options for cabling, so that was good, but it was a shame I could not say the same about fixing it to the ground or a post.
My plan to attach it to the ground was losing its attractiveness. A none too robust wind would probably pull the rebars out of the ground quite easily. I know that I had said that attaching it to the post would have me worrying about it being blown off its fixings but the more I looked at it, the better that option seemed. It looked particularly attractive if I could attach it to the post nearer the ground. If it was blown off, which when I looked at the fittings seemed unlikely, being nearer the ground would reduce the risk of serious damage. The only one thing against me, and it was quite a major thing at that, was that the post connecting kit was for a much thinner pole – think road sign post.
In one of the many self-help videos on the Internet, I vaguely remember seeing a demonstration on how to fix two things together with wire by twisting the join tight with a screwdriver. While this seemed like an eminently good idea, there were obstacles. First, I did not have any wire of the sort I remember seeing and what I remembered seeing was so vague it was next to useless. There was some electrical cable in the cabin that I had recently used for its designed purpose, so I tried using that. Since I could not remember exactly what to do with it, I ended up using inappropriate knots and twists that barely brought enough tension to hold the unit in place on the post.
With enough applications and enough twists, the solar panel did hold in place about a foot off the ground. I will need proper fixing but for now, it will do. I also found a small pallet and a not quite robust enough basket to place under the panel to support it. I decided that if I could shave enough off the post, I could purchase some extra long bolts and attach the panel in the manner for which the fixings were designed. Later, I used the supplier I had found to provide the hanging bolts which had just the thing at a reasonable price.
The enterprise had taken far longer than I had anticipated. In the time I was up at The Farm, I had hoped to install an old water pipe through which to run the electric cable so all that was left would be to install the camera. I had not planned to install the camera today because I reasoned that the battery on the solar panel would need charging. Surprisingly, after several years, I discovered that it was still charged up.
I had also changed my mind about the camera location. There are two poles one in front of the other. Plan A was to install the solar panel on the rearmost and the camera on the front post and run the power cable through the water pipe underground to it. During the installation of the panel, I thought it much more convenient to install both the solar panel and the camera on the same post. It would save me much time as well.
During my extended installation, the girls were most patient. They had run about and cavorted around the field for a while, then BB either got bored or cold or both, and retired to the truck. I leave a leeward door open for them for just this purpose. BB had sought shelter early on and stayed inside while ABH continued to wander about, even when we endured a couple of extended showers. After I called a halt to my work, I hauled BB out of the truck to give her a quick run about. Having spent all that time hiding, she now felt it a good idea to run about a bit. I spent the next twenty minutes watching as they used the best part of half an acre of ground to run and chase each other.
That was it for me. I had achieved most of what I had intended and more importantly, had broken free of the malaise, otherwise known as bone idleness, that had pinned me down for the last several weeks. All I have to do now is keep it up. Better weather would help as it is no fun working in the open and having to duck showers or try and avoid getting too cold.
I rewarded my efforts with a slack rest of the afternoon. It was hardly a treat as I had been doing it for the last couple of months. By and by the showers cleared up and the sea increased its wrath. It is quite remarkable the difference between low and high water. Earlier, the sea had looked quite benign. The swell was still there and it was clean enough to encourage a few surfers into the water over towards North Rocks. As we moved towards high water, great turmoil was evident over Cowloe, waves thundered over the Harbour wall and great plumes of white spray launched themselves up the cliffs opposite – a proper Jekyll and Hyde of a sea.
It had returned to some semblance of normalcy when I took the girls for their last walk. We tend to walk along the front of Tinker Taylor, the big thatch at the head of the Harbour, and turn up Stone Chair Lane. There was not a soul about but as we advanced up the lane, BB kept turned to stare back the way we had come. I turned the torch on to illuminate the lane, but there was nothing and no one there. She persisted until I dragged her around the corner into Coastguard Row but despite assuring myself that no one was following us, it was most disconcerting.
Time for stories around the campfire – it was a dark and stormy night …
February 2nd - Monday
I am finding it harder and harder to drag myself of bed in the morning. What a time to find my lazy streak just when I should be mobilising to change the world up at The Farm. Oh, well.
If I am finding my lazy streak, ABH is leading the charge. It is the devil’s own job to get her out of bed in the morning. This morning, she did not even respond to my trick of knocking on the front door that most times brings her running. I had to drag her kicking and screaming out of bed. When we eventually got to the beach, she sat at the bottom of the slip rebutting all of BB’s attempts to draw her into a race or a fight. The pair of us gave up in the end and we came home. Looks like we’ll have to get the little girl a playmate – no, I jest, I jest.
I let them settle again while I took breakfast and waded through a few chores and checklists. Part of this was gazing aimlessly out of the window and wondering where the promised rain for the day was. I thought it unlikely that the forecasts would get their guesses wrong three days in a row and if they kept forecasting rain for each day, by the law of averages, they would be right eventually. I had not realised that we were quite so advanced through the morning and when I saw that there was indeed rain coming, I decided to stir myself to take the girls out again before it arrived.
Looking at the rain radar, I estimated that we would have plenty of time for another stank along the big beach. Spring tides and the convenience of low water in the middle of the day come once a fortnight. Those days do not always coincide quite so nicely with a bit of fair weather or when I am booked to do nothing else. Therefore, advantage should be taken whenever possible.
We had the plain walk out and back yesterday, so it was our turn to walk up the Coast Path again. This would give me the opportunity to do better on the steps at the outset of the path. This time I arranged the girls to my left and pushed my luck that they would not be under my feet if I made a small run-up to the step. There are half a dozen steps, and I successfully mounted five of them. I nearly came to grief on one of the middle ones. In mid stride, ABH chose that particular second to be distracted by an interesting niff slightly to the left and behind her. The effect was to pull me back and to the side as I attempted to throw my weight forward. As luck would have it, BB was at that moment tearing forwards and her impetus saved the day by providing just enough counter force for me to evade disaster.
We may have made it out before the rain, but we had the full effect of a strong easterly breeze. It was quite refreshing as our exercise warmed us up, but it had generally lowered the temperature in The Cove, and I had certainly felt it in the flat during the morning before we left. I had removed my woolly hat in the latter part of our walk yesterday but today I had no inclination to do so at all. Nevertheless, it was a very pleasant stank out and when we arrived at the beach, we discovered that it had every inch of it to ourselves. It remained that way until we were halfway back along the road in the direction of home.
With the main exercise of the day out of the way, I decided to at least get something done. The next task on the list at The Farm is the second camera. The first part of that is to set up the solar panel that will power it. I had toyed with the notion of using a supplied bracket to mount the panel on a convenient pole. I thought it through over several nights and concluded that every time we had a bit of wind, I would fret about the panel being damaged. I would therefore install it on the ground even though that would be a less efficient position.
Even on the ground, the panel would have to be secured, and I thought I would use rebars bent in half and used as tent pegs over the solar panel stand. There would need to be additional devices, but the rebars would be a good start. This meant a trip up to our builders’ merchant on the moors above St Just. While I was there I remembered the angst I had endured as the result of having no cross head screwdrivers in my tool kit, so I remedied that omission while I was there.
The rain had commenced on my journey out and had become a little more continuous on my way back. It was not heavy, which was probably a relief for many who have to travel that route a lot. There is standing water and flooding at all the usual problem spots along the road. The worst is at the dip by Nancherrow Farm just past the Higher Treggifian campsite. It is pretty severe there, flooded from both sides of the road and does not seem to have gone away in months. I had thought that the much maligned council would take some action as it is quite a dangerous spot although I supposed that they would claim lack of funds to work on a road that was not important. I was quite wrong; some flooding expert has been along to place a sign that says ‘FLOOD’ on it either side of the spot.
I excelled myself in the afternoon by ordering a couple of gabion cages on which to place the IBCs (alright, it has been a while – IBC are the 1,000 litre containers we use for water storage). The current arrangement of pallets is collapsing and a replacement needs to be done or the Missus will not have enough water for the summer – unless it rains a lot. That is two things I did today.
Exhausted from my efforts, I did begger all for the rest of the day until it was time to take the girls out again in the late afternoon. It was still raining on and off by then and we had half the walk dry and half the walk wet but again, it was not heavy rain. I was happy that I had done better today. I just need to keep it up tomorrow.
I shall end today on a sad note. A very dear soul and gentleman departed us today, a long term Lifeboatman and most latterly a member of the very excellent Shore Crew. Thousands of visitors would have known him as he plied his trade as photographer at the Land’s End sign post for many years. While poorly at Christmas he made what would have been a mighty effort to attend the Christmas party at Land’s End. Just a few days ago, he and his wife brought flowers and a thank you to the Missus for organising it. It had seemed then that he was looking forward to improvement which made the news even more abrupt.
Something by Kelly Roper
Oh dear, if you’re reading this right now,
I must have given up the ghost.
I hope you can forgive me for being
Such a stiff and unwelcoming host.
Just talk amongst yourself my friends,
And share a toast or two.
For I am sure you will remember well
How I loved to drink with you.
Don't worry about mourning me,
I was never easy to offend.
Feel free to share a story at my expense
And we'll have a good laugh at the end.
Bright beach from Sunday, empty beach on Monday
February 1st - Sunday
Crikey, January disappeared quickly. I had best get my finger out. I think the shop is open in seven weeks and I do not think that I have done half enough of anything. It would be disappointing to reach the end of March and not be able to point back at something heroic, although I do not think we will be matching making a greenhouse.
It has not helped that the weather, or rather the weather forecast has been against us. We had very poor weather penned in for today and, sure enough, we had a bit of rain first thing before I took the girls out. When I looked again, the skies were clearing and although I was late taking them out, it was still in the first part of the morning.
Once again, the Harbour beach was clean, smooth sand. There is something about getting to the beach first with the sand pristine and unmarked. The only thing we left behind when we eventually left were our foot and paw prints, and the scuffs where they had skidded and collided in their play. The sea was way down the beach and any waves, and there were still a few and noisy too, were just tumbling in around the end of the wall. We had a look under the slipways. Even more rocks are exposed under the short slip, and it would be difficult to get through, so we did not bother.
Nothing much happened for a while as I picked my way through breakfast and a few chores. As I procrastinated, the outside world became more and more attractive under a mainly clear sky. There were a few white fluffy clouds and bags and bags of sunshine pouring its heart out on a wide spring tide (almost) beach. It had surprised me the previous evening to see a near full moon peeking through the mottled cloud. These things creep up on a fellow who is not paying much attention. It got to a point where I could stand it no longer and reached for my hat and coat and two small girls to drag off for a beach walk.
I did not bother with the walk up the Coast Path today. This was straight onto the beach at the OS and let slip the dogs of phwoar, as they raced off to the nearest rockpool. Despite being an hour later to the beach, we had plenty of time today in front of the tide. We took a detour to the south of the beach to start so the girls could play in the rockpools that are in abundance on that part of the beach. Then we ambled up the tide line to the black huts of Carn Keys before turning back again.
Up at the neck of the steam out of The Valley, some older boys were building a dam. It was a favourite pastime of mine once long ago and wherever a small stream flowed, a dam was essential. We should have let them finish as it would have been easier to cross the wide delta spread out below them.
There were other dogs aplenty and, off the lead, the girls integrate well. They are cautious of some and playful with others and generally return when called. BB is more adventurous, but she is yet young and will learn by and by that all that glisters is not gold and sometimes has sharp teeth and a nasty snap. She is attracted to small children, which can be problematic because she will jump up. While she weighs nothing, she is tall on her long legs and can frighten the little ones. We left a trail of traumatised children when we eventually left the beach.
There was much collapsing in a heap when we got back, and the remainder of the afternoon was quite restful. I had suffered a little having walked to North Rocks and back with Big Sis and Edward the week before. I was suitably pleased that I managed a similar walk and probably faster paced with no ill effect at all today. As soon as I have my replacement ear buds, I will resume rowing maybe a couple of times a week. I could not contemplate a reasonably lengthy row without some musical distraction.
I left our late afternoon stroll until half past five o’clock today. There was still plenty of light at that time, although dusk fell quite quickly afterwards. The sea was making a proper spectacle of itself from the middle of the afternoon and ended up, once more, thundering over the Harbour wall and making a mess over Cowloe. It had looked reasonably benign at low water but from the level of the beach as we traversed it, the waves further offshore were at least head height.
There will be much girding of loins tomorrow as I prepare to apply myself. It may come to nothing but we must have hope, surely.