The Sennen Cove Diary
May 8th - Thursday
First, I am delighted to report that we were much busier today. Perhaps ‘delighted’ may not exactly be the word to use as it was nothing to do with an upturn in trade. I had ‘things’ that needed to be done and they piled up rather and had me very busy indeed. As far as customers were concerned, like yesterday we had very few and for a going home present day, that was a bit disappointing not to mention concerning.
We had none of the regular orders in the morning so, I set to clearing the remainder of the postcard delivery which included a number of stoneware mugs. I also spent a little time judging whether I could pare down the postcard displays to one stand and decided that, just yet, it would be a bit of a squeeze, so I will leave it as is for now. My next task was to have a crack at the novelties and gifts that arrived last thing yesterday but in order to get some of those out, I would need to reorganise the gift shelves to make some room.
Before I could tackle that, we had two more deliveries. One was the drinks that I had ordered yesterday and was fairly easy to put away and the other was the frozen. I always get into a bit of a pickle with the frozen because, obviously, it needs to be put away in a timely fashion. Not helping this time around was the fact that I had chosen the time of the delivery to call my electricity provider to resolve a charging issue. Had I only just started the call, I might have hung up but as it was, I was fairly close to a resolution and did not want to go through the fag of calling again and starting from scratch.
As I put down the telephone to start organising the delivery into which freezers it would go into, we were flooded by the first and only customer rush of the day. Had the order been as small as the one I had written down for the Missus to post, I might have managed more easily. What I was unaware of was that the Missus had added a second order to it in preparation for a planned crew barbeque at the end of May and there were double the amount of boxes I had expected.
With the orders away, I was able to concentrate on clearing the gift delivery and making room on the gift shelves as I went. It was as arduous as it was tedious. I cannot tell you how many snow globes and decorative gulls I unpacked. The outer boxes were packed with bubble wrap in abundance that needed to be slashed with a sharp knife to deflate sufficiently to fit more readily into a refuse sack. The items themselves, many were boxed in polystyrene foam as well as being individually wrapped in small bubble wrap pouches and were excruciatingly fiddly to extract. Each one also had a barcode label attached by elastic. As we do not use the barcodes, each label had to be removed.
It was time consuming and by the time the wine order arrived, there still seemed to be as many cartons of gifts as there was when I started. Because the boxes occupied enough of the store room floor to make the wine delivery in the way, I had to switch to clearing the wine order before I continued with the gifts. Then, having removed the barcode label from a proliferation of small gulls, I realised that the gulls were too small to attach a price label and I should have left the barcode label on so I could use it to attach the price label. Oh, woe is me.
Under our new Coxswain, we seem to have settled into launching Lifeboats on training earlier than we were before. It suits everyone better and allows more time at sea for training and since we are hampered in the winter by poor sea conditions, it is a sensible move. It does mean, however, that I must cram some tea before the shop closes and since I was knee deep in wine and gift cases, bubble wrap, polystyrene and plastic that was a little awkward. It also meant bits of broken polystyrene in my cheese and pickle which was less than ideal.
I made it to the muster time with everyone else and we wasted no time briefing and getting ready to launch. While the duty head launcher went about his business, I introduced a potentially new member of the very excellent Shore Crew to the ways of the very excellent Shore Crew. She is different from all the other members of the very excellent Shore Crew as she is a very pleasant lady and a nurse too – although that is not to suggest that some nurses are not ladies – erm, except for the ones who are men. Anyway, she has only just applied which means she could not join in but I led her through the various aspects of pushing the boat out and, later, pulling the boat back in again.
While the boats were out, we gathered in the crew room to discuss all manner of matter arising from Lifeboat type things, new popes and famous people who have visited The Cove. Since our new very pleasant lady had not run away when the boats came back into the bay, we might assume that she is either very polite and was waiting to run away later, or was not yet put off wanting to join in.
Both boats arrived back in the bay at roughly the same time, gliding across the bay on perfectly calm waters. We had set up as soon as the big boat left earlier and only required to haul a bit a cable to make up for the ebbing tide. From where I was at the top of the slipway with our new member, I was very able to point out to her what was clearly a textbook recovery up the long slip, near low water and in benign conditions. We were not overrun with crew, especially as we had to furnish the Inshore launch with three to comply with the new measures, but it did not take us long to wash down, refuel and make ready for the next launch. We are, after all, a very inclusive, very excellent Shore Crew.
Somehow looks like a picture of a Hornby 00 gauge scene that some enthusiast has spent hours perfecting. (Photograph courtesy N Curtis)
May 7th - Wednesday
I had a call from my doctor last evening just before I sat down for my tea. When we live in a world where trying to make contact with your doctor requires the sacrifice of your first born and a wheelbarrow full of used notes, having the doctor call you is a mite worrying. He very quickly assured me that there was nothing to worry about, which only made me fret some more. Doctors say things like that just to placate their patients and to avoid expensive law suits when their patient keels over with shock at having been told bad news. He insisted that there really was nothing wrong and that it concerned my recent birthday bloods episode.
I was in two minds about including this in The Diary but since you know more about me than I do myself, and I had already explained the birthday bloods experience, it seemed no harm would come of it. Besides, it would be cruel not revealing the outcome of my story, a bit like telling you my foot was stuck in the sand with the tide coming in without telling you that I was nowhere near the beach. So, here we go.
In a frightening coincidence, I had already looked at the results of my blood tests online that very morning. We have an NHS app on our smart mobile telephones through which we can order our prescriptions. We can also see our medical records, if we are brave enough, which includes the results of blood tests.
Not that I am expert in these matters, but all my results looked stunningly ordinary. I do not need to understand the significance or meaning of each because there is a little diagram that shows the upper and lower limits of the desirable range and my result highlighted by a little red arrow. All were well within the limits set out by whoever sets out the limits. In fact, my doctor mentioned that I have the results of a man much younger than myself. It might be the case, of course, that my bloods were mixed up with some high performing athlete and thus they were indeed the results of a much younger man, but we will hope not, hey.
It was not actually the bloods specifically that my doctor wished to discuss. He had completed something called a QRISK on my behalf, which was very good of him, which takes all manner of data, including my bloods results, my age, weight and height and produces a percentage risk result of the likelihood of me dropping dead while serving a pasties (sorry, MS). Under ten percent is ignored and over 20 percent they send for an ambulance, or a hearse depending on how much over 20 percent you are. Between the two, you get a call from your doctor.
Since my bloods are all good, my weight and height do not ring alarm bells by themselves and I visit the gymnasium three times a week, the only aggravating element that pushed me to an unreasonable twelve percent, was my age. My doctor acknowledged this but nevertheless, recommended that I try eating statins. I did ask if the Missus could grow these at The Farm but apparently it is some sort of pill that will reduce my risk by probably four percent and therefore put me in the ignored pile.
He made it sound all very reasonable and with only a minor risk of side effects against a whole raft of benefits he heartily recommended taking them. That was all very well, but it was not him that was taking them, it was me – potentially. I said that I would research further and if he could add them to my prescription list, I could order them if I decided to. He was very happy with that and so was I and he reiterated that this pill really was the wonder of the modern age.
So far, I have asked two people who were keen to discuss the matter with me and who already had taken these pills. One told me it had given him a stomach ulcer and the other said that he had never felt better. I admit that it was not the conclusive research that I had hoped for.
Hoping that you are still with me, dear reader, we shall move on to matters of the day. The first being that the clear blue skies that we closed the day with yesterday were still with us this morning. Very oddly, when I took ABH out at the last yesterday evening, there was the distinct smell of rain in the air. Oddly, because there was not a cloud in the sky but even more oddly than that, the ground looked slightly damp. This morning there was no such weirdness, just blue sky and dryness and a complete lack of breeze – at last. Not that it did last.
The Missus was super-keen to get up to the Farm, so I managed to get to the gymnasium a good hour before I would ordinarily have done. I had missed out on Monday, so I was pleased that I was able to complete a blistering session today but still in the lower quartile of my performance. Perhaps a good dose of statins will get be back into a more average ranking. I shall enquire.
As is usual, I ran ABH down to the beach afterwards and mindful of the Missus’ desire to get up to The Farm in a rush, we did not tarry – well, too much. Much of my tarrying involves bumping into people and having a chat. It is rude to just walk away I feel but possibly detrimental to my health to talk for too long, especially having been told to get a move on. Naturally, there was someone on the beach that I knew, and they had a dog that ABH likes to play with. Well, she does the playing, and the other dog studiously ignores her. When I came off the beach a while longer than I intended later, there was someone else who I could not just walk by and ignore. How I am still here is somewhat a relief, but I am sure I would hardly have even noticed if I had been taking statins.
While I was absent and just before I came back to the shop, the Missus took in two deliveries for me. One was the normal irregular grocery that I had placed an order for yesterday and other was postcards that I had ordered more than a week ago. Had the postcards not arrived today, I might have called to find out what had happened with the order. I dismissed the idea that they were waiting for cards to be printed because this company seems reluctant to print more, especially of the ones we are missing.
This came into stark focus later. With nothing better to do today, I attacked the delivery, aiming to fill up our postcard display as much as possible before the start of the season. Most of our best sellers, postcards of The Cove, were there but half a dozen others were out of print. One of these was out of print last year and very possibly the year before. I telephoned the company to see what was going on. They told me that they would need to print a thousand of each postcard to refresh them. Our alternate supplier manages to get around it by printing collections of postcards to make up the 1,000 minimum run. Why this company cannot, I do not know.
The end result is that we are losing postcards gradually. I am not keeping ‘out of stock’ markers for postcards that will never turn up and have removed them. The display was looking a bit thin anyway and is now looking downright sparse in places. Hopefully, the renewed stock on the other supplier’s stand will compensate. We have three postcard stands and I would like to reduce it to two. Perhaps I should view this as an opportunity.
By the time the end of the day came around, it was clear it had been the quietest day we have had for a while. The street had been empty for most of it and the only bit of action we had seen was near the end of the morning. The weather was reasonable, although much high-level cloud had moved in soon into the morning, and the wind had remained light, so it cannot have been that which put people off. Mind, initially, I had come back to the shop in a short sleeve shirt. A couple of hours later I changed up for a mid-layer because I was feeling the chill. It is possible that in that time the afterglow of my blistering gymnasium session had worn off. I am sure that I would not have felt it had I been on statins.
Later, I looked up one of the local weather stations and discovered that during the morning, the wind had been in the east. It ended the day in the northwest again but today it had traversed through the south to get there. I was feeling warm in the later stages of the afternoon but could not be bothered to go and change again.
With the postcards almost completed, I still have mugs and coasters to deal with, another delivery turned up. This had been very quickly turned around from an order I placed two days before and contains some novelties and gifts from a regular supplier of ours. It will give me something to do tomorrow but at present, the boxes crowd the store room and will make the bottling up that I have to do in the morning more difficult.
ABH was a little more keen for her after tea walk today. The event was so ordinary that I cannot remember much about it. I recall that we avoided the Harbour beach because a lifesaving club was down there practising their skills. It must have been successful because I did not see them having to carry anyone out of the water. We left them to it and walked around the block instead.
It will be busier tomorrow, and I must gird my loins, but only a little bit, I suspect. Of course, I would not need to bother if I was on statins.
The pea and bean frames the Missus has been working on. Now mostly ready.
May 6th - Tuesday
That chill from yesterday must have settled in my bones. I found it just as chilly this morning as ABH and I took a wander about, even with a very light easterly blowing in again.
I was not to be fooled by that light easterly, either. That was how it started out yesterday and look how that turned out. When I went down to the shop to open up at around eight o’clock, I wore my woolly hooded sweatshirt and was in it all day and needed it, too. It was certainly a pretty day to look at and I did a lot of that; we were very quiet once again today.
The free time allowed me to finish off the beachware order, although I will not be sending it off until next week. I also sent off one of the pre-prepared orders for a much lesser amount and that will arrive before the end of the week and give me something to do. Later, around the middle of the day, the ‘farm shop’ delivery arrived but it was one of the smallest orders we have placed with them. It did not take long to clear at all. I had decided over the weekend not to pursue a big cash and carry order even though it is the week for doing so. We would struggle to make up a minimum order, so I let the cash and carry people know we would be skipping a week.
The delivery that had arrived on Friday containing the playing cards and other Cornwall novelties and souvenirs had sat untouched in the store room all weekend. Since I had so much time on my hands and the need to use it for things other than spending money or simply frittering it away, I decided to open the box especially as the cardboard would – or might be – collected tomorrow. Perhaps I should have opened it sooner as I discovered that it was missing the small flags I had ordered. At least it gave me something to do chasing them up. That did no good either as they were out of stock and would be for the rest of the year. We have an alternate supplier, however.
I had been left in two minds about making a further fuss about the lack of bus service north of the village. I had already written two letters to our local councillor and while he expressed sympathy, there was not a great deal he could do except make our point, which I believe he did and at the highest level.
Two things decided me to write again. Each day I have half a dozen complaints or comments of disbelief that the bus service has been ceased. Many of our walkers use it to bus out and walk back from various points on the Coast Path. Others just for day trips to The Cove while they stay in St Just or the surrounding area. I welcome the comments as it reinforces the detrimental impact the change has had. It is, however, frustrating that I could do little about it but agree.
What clinched my resolve was our neighbour from the Sennen Cove Café who was late to the party in realising the service had stopped. He highlighted the damage that it would do to our businesses, which I had not properly considered before. He was right, of course. Previously, with a direct connection, we could count St Ives as part of our catchment area. No one is going to go through the fag of changing at Penzance to get here, although they might going back the way.
Another factor was that we have just had our local elections and the powerbase at the much maligned council has changed. It is currently in flux while they draw straws to decide which group is going to sit at the top table. Given the mix of parties, that could take some time. Some of the children in the playground do not want to play with certain other ones because of the colour t-shirts they are wearing. You would think that they could settle their difference to act for the good of Cornwall and its residents, but I suppose they all have different ideas of what that is. We await developments.
As expected, the wind ramped up a bit during the day. It also made a broad sweep of the north, starting in the east. I fancy it spent more time than was strictly fair in the northeast blowing at a grumpy shopkeeper minding his own business behind his counter. I was cold for most of the day before the wind moved on through the north and ended up in the northwest and far lighter than it had been earlier.
ABH must have had a bit of a day of it because she made it very clear that she did not want an after tea walk around the block. She had stayed in the shop with me while the Missus went off to an appointment in The Cove. As usual while the Missus is away, she sulked and mainly slept between shouting at passing dogs. When the Missus came back, she was whisked into town on a errands trip and thence up to The Farm.
The Missus spend the rest of the day finishing off her beans and peas project. This is eight large frames up behind the cabin on some ground she took time to prepare to minimise the incursion of weed growth. She covered it with anti-weed matting and covered that with subsoil which we noticed has not promoted much growth at all at the end of the field where we have 100 tons of it dumped. At least it has found some use.
The frames are filled with topsoil and she has built a bunny proof fence around the whole lot. That was the bit that took a lot of time because we have not had much rain lately and the ground is rock hard. The result is a thing of wonder, and all without DIYwoman overalls on, which will clearly tarnish the brand and was no doubt done on purpose. We will be selling and eating beans and peas if all goes well until we are sick of them.
ABH saw the error of her ways before last knocking and let me take her out for a final spin. Usually, this is mercifully brief but because she had not gone out earlier, she had me around the big block. A police car passed us into the Harbour car park, which is not that unusual, but the policeman decanted and made his way to the Coast Path, which is. One of the ladies from the corner house was chatting with a friend there and the policeman stopped to ask if they had seen someone. I lost the thread at that point because the friend’s dog started barking at ABH, but it did seem that another search for a missing person was underway. I mentioned that it was a frequent occurrence down here but usually there is a bit of a gap between them.
I left them all to it and hoped that the matter would be resolved and not involve the boat at all; my bed was looking very attractive after the tedium of the day, which is oddly very wearing.
May 5th - Monday
It is a sad fact that more than our fair share of lost souls migrate to these parts in the Far West. We have, erm, entertained one or two over the years in the shop and in the local news there frequently appears the search for one person or another. Much of the initial information is listed on Face Page, which I am not allowed to subscribe to, at least unsupervised, so I generally miss it until someone whispers the latest in my shell-like. So, it was something of an unwelcome surprise to be in almost at the outset of the latest hue and cry and also the reason it has taken until now for The Diary to catch up on the news.
On Saturday morning, I was asked by a young gentlemen to call a taxi for him. He was not being as clear as I would have liked to my somewhat dysfunctional ears, but I determined that he was in a bit of a hurry due to some domestic emergency. We are often called upon to perform such tasks, mainly for those whose first language is not English and for others, such as this gentleman, who did not possess a mobile telephone. Also, it is fairly commonplace to request the taxi to take them to Penzance to the railway station or, especially now that the much maligned council has cut off the bus service there, to St Just. Definitely not commonplace, and a vague indication that things were perhaps not as right as they might have been, was a request to travel to a city in the north of England.
I reasoned, quite reasonably, that the local taxis, of which there are three, would not be keen to make such a journey. They need much encouragement to travel east of Penzance and I felt that a journey north of Camborne would probably disturb the space/time continuum in some awful way. I called a large firm in Penzance, explaining that if they could not provide the service directly, they almost certainly would know someone who would. I was correct on both counts and wrote down the suggested contact number I had been given.
When I put the telephone down to talk with the gentleman again, things took a turn for the even more, erm, unusual. We came to a mutual agreement that I could provide no further assistance and he walked off in the direction of the OS. It was late last night that the Missus informed me that someone matching the description of my visitor had gone missing in the area. I passed on the information I had to the sheriffs as requested by the online wanted poster. The Missus told me later that a full-scale search was underway in St Buryan where he had last been spotted and I was very pleased this morning when I was informed that the young gentleman had been found safe and well.
I did not feel particularly safe or well when our brisk easterly became more brisk as the day went on. We had beautiful sunshine and if you were looking at today through the helmet of a space suit you were wearing you might think, how wonderful. The rest of us, however, were soon shivering in our boots and finding corners of public houses to sit in for the rest of the day. Grumpy shopkeepers were not so lucky, especially when the wind went northerly at some time in the afternoon and did a reprise of Saturday.
We were decidedly quieter than yesterday. There was no real surprise there. I spoke with a visitor in the late afternoon who has escaped to Porth Chapel on the south coast for the day. He said that it was perfectly sheltered there and warm in the sunshine. That was what we were up against and stood no chance. At least the allure of a hot pasty (sorry, MS) worked for those visitors who were clearly blissfully unaware that there was a south coast to sit on. When I placed the order yesterday, I had it in mind that it would probably be good for two days. While I could be proved wrong tomorrow by a sudden pasty-fest rush of demand, at the moment it is looking pretty good for my judgement.
Another reason why our visitors were eschewing our own beach might well have been because there was not much of it. Additionally, what there was appeared to be cut off by exposed rocks. While the tide is of the small neap variety at present, there is still enough of it to hog most of the beach when it is full as it was in the middle of the day today.
The previous tides have stripped out some sand again, especially on the southern end of the beach. This has once again closed the gap at the top of the beach above the rock field to the north of The Beach car park and also above the reef at the bottom of the OS slip. Both are passable but not as easily as when there is sand there. Conversely, there appears to be plenty of sand up the back of the beach from the new Lifeguard palace, sorry, hut all the way to North Rocks. It is just difficult to get to.
Even at low tide, the beach is bisected by a gully that runs up to the rock field from the tide line. This causes some problems with rips at certain stages in the tide cycle and while most beach users are aware of it currently, if it is still there during the summer, which is likely, many visitors will not. Swim between the flags, for sure if you intend to go in at all. Personally, I find it far too wet.
With the lack of customers, I found myself being lazy again when, really, there are things to do. Half term is creeping up on us and more summer stock needs to be ordered to meet the inevitable, we hope, demand. I have been putting off the next beachware order, balancing it against cash flow conditions – most of it is flowing out. It is a leap of faith, but we have to place the big, expensive order soon or miss out.
I spent some time during the afternoon running down my list. It is fairly well organised, and I can see at a glance what we used last year and what we have left – or had; we have sold some of it. I also noticed, and I missed it at the time, that some of the items at the show discount rate did not show up in our last order. I will need to telephone the company to enquire about these. It will be very poor show if they were not available then but are now because they will want to charge the proper rate for them. I almost telephoned there and then before I realised that it was a bank holiday.
Having eased myself into actually doing something business-like, a number of other things and orders came to mind. I have a couple of orders already made up and ready to send, waiting on the right moment, which is probably this or next week. There is also the small matter of newspapers. I sent my request a fortnight ago and asked for an acknowledgement that they had received my request; I have not heard a dickie bird. I am torn between sending a reminder and waiting until the due date and having a fight with them if they have not delivered. The latter is tempting but might delay my newspapers further and the number of enquiries I am getting is increasing daily now.
Once again, I was happy to close up in the face of the northerly gusts plaguing me. Oddly, it did not seem so bad when I took ABH around the block later in the evening. There was no one to stop and chat with this time around and the Harbour car park was mainly empty. There were no walkers coming down from the lookout to wait for nor any neighbours to meet. Everything looked gloriously colourful in the late sunshine, and we had time to admire it and we stopped and started around the block. How very lovely it all was.
May 4th - Sunday
We were treated to a very pretty morning today. The best thing about it was that it was not laced with a robust northerly. The wind had gone around to the east and had lost its power. This set the scene for the day and although we had some cloudy moments, for the most part we basked in sunshine and pleasantness.
Halfway through the morning we had a visit from the other reader, which was a pleasant surprise. Well, it was not a total surprise because I had been warned in advance of their impending visit, just not exactly when it would be. They even purchased some of our alluring and high-quality gifts and novelties to mark the occasion and later, came back for pasties (sorry, MS). It means that I shall be able to afford a pinch of salt with my gruel in the morning. I can hardly wait.
It must have been the day for visits. In the middle of the afternoon a very pleasant lady came and introduced herself as the niece of the grandparents of L&L, hello girls, who live north of the border that is very far north of Camborne and in a foreign country, although not really. I think that would make her the girls’ aunt, although family trees have me foxed. My own family tree has lost so many branches in recent years it is more a family stump.
What with all these visitations we were quite busy in fits and starts today. In fact, the starts were more frequent that the fits, unless the starts refer to the quieter times at which point it is the other way around. Due to yesterday’s unexpected demand for pasties I decided to cook our frozen stock for today – we would need at least some pasties to sell. I decided to go big because they take an hour to cook and there would be no coming back from running out of a smaller supply and having to cook more. It did the job, but demand dropped off early today leaving us with some left over. It was better than having none at all.
In one of the quieter moments, I set about the boxes of hooded sweatshirts that had arrived yesterday. It was a top-up order to bolster the stock of full zip sweatshirts in the navy. We had purchased an experimental quantity to see how they sold at the end of last year. The fact that we are buying some more should explain that the experiment went rather well. I suspect that whatever colour we choose to get would sell well as they are a particularly high quality and desirable garment. We have been selling them for more than several years and, so far, there has been no real let up in the volume of sales.
To make it easy to identify the sizes of each package in the boxes we keep them in, we stick a small but clear size label to the front of each. I also pack them in size order, small to large, front to back in the box so that mostly I can put my hand in and come up with the right size. I have taken to going into the store room for a packaged one when a customer brings one to the counter. This may seem like an attractive customer service feature that makes me look an attentive and caring grumpy shopkeeper. It is, however, in truth sheer laziness on the grumpy shopkeeper’s part. Each of the hooded sweatshirts in the shop is displayed on a hanger and has an old fashioned parcel label strung to it. If I were to sell the shop displayed one, which sometimes I have to, the label needs to be removed for reuse, the garment taken off its hanger and finally neatly folded. The label then needs to be reattached to the replacement hooded sweatshirt and the garment re-hung on the hanger. It is such a fag and best avoided – still, no need to tell the customer that, dear reader.
We ended the day about as bust as the day before, which was reasonably satisfactorily. As I have reported before, we have no great expectations of the bank holiday at this time of the season. I was also quite pleased to be able to close as the temperature had taken a sharp dip in the latter part of the afternoon and the sun had decided not to help very much by hiding behind a cloud.
I wrapped up a bit to take ABH out for the after tea run and discovered that I probably had not needed to. The sun had come out for its last drive to the horizon and it was relatively temperate down on the Harbour beach where we first went. I was a little cautious because the Harbour tractor was manoeuvring one of the local owners’ punts into its summer position on the western slip. It was just finishing the job, so we stayed on the beach that looked like it had been trampled by a million feet during the day. The effect is helped by the tide now not reaching the upper area of sand on the beach.
When we had enough of wandering around on the sand, we went up the western slip to meet the local boatowner, who happens also to be a member of the very excellent Shore Crew. His mother was there, too. She is a neighbour from up the top who I had not seen for a while, and we tarried for half and hour and had an exceedingly pleasant chat in the warmth of the setting sun. When we moved on, we met one of the ladies who lives in the end house on Coastguard Row who has done such a cracking job of cultivating the area of wild ground next to their property. They have their detractors, she tells me, but I think that it looks absolutely splendid, using plants that blend in nicely with the wildflowers all about. It is like our very own Gardens of Heligan or Eden Project and is free to look at and admire.
Our Eden Project is not quite as mature yet, but the Missus and Mother are still planting seeds. Some of the seeds are old and have been planted just to see if they grow but there are plenty more that have a better chance. The Missus has certainly gone big after a year when we could do nothing. Hopefully, it is a sign of optimism for the year to come in general. I do hope so, but it would not be hard to enjoy improvement on the year before.
May 3rd - Saturday
Yesterday, our friend from not so frozen Vermont, very far west of Camborne, brought the phrase ‘uncanny valley’ to our attention. I had never heard of it, so I looked it up. The phrase came from an essay written by a Japanese robotics professor, Masahiro Mori, which was entitled, Bukimi no Tani, translated as ‘valley of eeriness’. He argued that as robots became more human-like we initially find them interesting and appealing but at some point, the likeness will become too close introducing feelings of uneasiness – the uncanny valley. Of course, you already knew that, dear reader. It is only me who does not get out much. I know exactly what he means, though. I get the same feeling when I look in the mirror.
We started today with some proper potential for a good day. ABH had decided that since it was light outside, it was time to wake up. It seemed that only applied to me because when I eventually had enough of having my face washed by an insistent tongue and got up, she stayed in bed and went back to sleep. I was having none of that and plagued her until she got up also and we were out on the beach as the sun was struggling to climb above the cliff.
The sun was making a bit of a song and dance of it, too. The eastern horizon was aflame with colour. Unfortunately, when it eventually got above the top of the cliff, it found some more cloud to sit behind, and we did not quite enjoy the glory of the sunshine that looked like it might brighten the place up a bit. We had to wait until into the afternoon when the sun eventually worked its way free and then had to contend with a sharp northerly breeze that gradually picked up during the day.
The weather was not the only thing with potential. We had been surprised by an early dash for a few pasties (sorry, MS). Someone had asked for a couple of pasties early on to take with them on the journey home. Since there seemed to be a few people gathering outside, I slipped some additional ones on, alongside the cheese ones and the sausage rolls. I was glad that I did as we went through a fair few orders before the middle of the morning. It then raised the concern that perhaps I had not ordered enough for the weekend. I decided not to be too premature with my response and it proved sensible because later, the day went very quiet in the afternoon.
I had estimated that the weekend would not be very busy for a number of reasons. First, it is not a busy time of the year despite the good weather we have been having. The Isles of Scilly would have taken a chunk out of our visitor numbers with the World Gig Rowing Championships which also would have taken a number of local families out of the equation. Probably more of a draw was the Porthleven Food Festival that is normally held in April, but this year put back to avoid Easter, I presume.
The Missus made today a visiting day. She was gone for several hours. ABH had a very lazy day of it, staying in the flat for the first visit and then with me in the shop for the second that was altogether longer. I started her off on the throne inside the door where she was able to bark freely at all passing dogs. The bleddy hound used to be ambivalent about such things and shouted at very few. ABH is clearly less tolerant, which is unfortunate as it puts me on edge if customers with dogs want to run the gauntlet and come into the shop.
I left her where she was by the first electric sliding door in The Cove hoping that the immersive experience would soften her resolve. I feel that it could be a work in very long progress. Halfway through the afternoon, I moved her into the shopping trolley bolstered by an upside down shopping basket and lined with her bed. It was getting a bit frosty for her inside the doorway.
I had recognised this because it was getting a little frosty for me too behind the counter. After the success of short sleeve shirt wearing yesterday, I had decided to repeat the experience but soon after the middle of the day, I decided that enough was enough and went and pulled on my mid-layer for the remainder of the afternoon. I held on until the Missus returned at five o’clock to rush back up to the flat to get my woollen jacket which by that time was much needed.
That northerly draft was punchy and insistent. By the end of the day, it was becoming quite the irritation and did not invite visitors into The Cove. I was grateful when it was time to bring everything in and head up for my tea. I was less grateful that I had to take ABH out after tea but whether the wind had decreased or I had just got used to it, the breeze seemed less severe.
We spent a little time on the beach then headed around the block. The beach was empty and the car park was only sparsely occupied. There were, however, a few groups of people heading down the Coast Path some of whom were the climbers that had availed themselves of pasties earlier in the morning. If ABH sees anyone coming down the path, we have to wait for them because they might want to say hello to her, or vice versa. There were three couples coming down the steps from the currently superfluous gate at the bottom of the path. It took a few minutes for them to come down and pass us. I thought that we had completed our waiting but, no, she had seen another couple halfway down the cliff, so we had to wait for them too. When they got to us, they completely ignored her.
We were lucky today. She had not seen the two more couples just leaving from the lookout at the top else we would have waited for those too. She is a strange girl.
The mist that I meant to post yesterday.
May 2nd - Friday
The cloud that built up yesterday during the day was still with us this morning. We had retained our temperature and it was still very pleasant stepping out with the little girl first thing. I heard on Radio Pasty that the temperature was set to drop on Sunday, so I had a little geek at one of the weather forecast websites. It is set to drop by ten degrees! I think we might feel that a little bit. I had only just switched to wearing a short sleeve shirt today, too, after being a little warm yesterday. That will teach me.
It might not have escaped your attention, dear reader, that I had been at a loose end now and then over the last week or so. Instead of spending my time gainfully ordering stock, or tidying the store room or something equally businessy I have been dabbling with producing The Diary in the spoken word.
Fear not, dear reader, that I might pop up in your living room to read from my latest script or even read by request over the telephone. That is not going to happen. Instead, I have been leveraging technology to bring the day’s Diary to you in an audio file.
I had the idea when, quite by accident, I pressed the wrong button in the word processor document I was working on. I suddenly could hear a lady’s voice reading out what I had just written. It took me a more than a moment to work out what it was and a while later, how to stop it. It took even longer to discover the button that I had pressed that made it happen in the first place. When I did, I played the text again and was surprised to find that the very pleasant lady who was reading it to me did so in a pitch and with inflection that I might have applied had I read it aloud myself, albeit with an American accent.
That was some time ago and it has taken a little while for the seed to mature in the empty space that my brain used to occupy. If I were to pursue the experiment of producing an audio file to go with the publication of The Diary, it would have to be right. There were several issues to overcome and the first of those was did the word processing software provide the facility to capture the voice into an audio file. I would also need to find a male and British voice, preferably with a bit of a regional accent. Perhaps not a broad Cornish accent as I wanted people to be able to understand it.
Another consideration was how it might be received. After all, I know that reading The Diary might well be a clandestine affair, read in small rooms around the country. Having it read aloud would be the last thing a reader might wish for.
I quickly discovered that the word processing software did not create audio files, nor did it have a suitable voice. I tried two of the top ranking software programs that converted text to speech and tested them extensively. Things were looking very positive with one of them which even allowed me to clone my own voice to allow the AI engine to read my own Diary words. After letting it loose on a few Diary pages and tweeking it for pitch and rhythm, I thought that I had the answer. Unfortunately, it had the tendency to miss words and phrases out at random. The other top program I tried also had the same problem.
I have not entirely given up on the idea. There are other programs to try. I was very impressed that the ones I tried manage to read the word ‘geek’. This would indicate that the AI engine constructs language like we do, from sounds, rather than having an enormous lexicon to work from. Either that or they have a Cornishman chained up in a room somewhere being forced to read texts sent to him.
As if she could read my mind from that distance, our American correspondent, our friend from frozen Vermont, very far west of Camborne submitted her latest report as an audio file. Well, she also submitted a video of the sunrise view from her veranda, or possibly stoop, as she spoke to me. She pointed out various features in view which would be very hard to replicate in the written text, so I shall not try. What I did do was to use my computer to translate one passage of her submission into text. If I could not do text to speech, I would do it the other way around instead.
I had to make a few corrections as even an American word processor could not understand her American accent, so I apologise to her if I got some wrong. To set the scene, our correspondent was telling me that having fixed the fence for her horses, she was going to leave them out overnight for the first time this year – frozen Vermont not being all that frozen any more. She mentioned that the deer would probably visit but that the horses would not mind the deer having seen them about in the forest.
I will let our correspondent from not so frozen Vermont, very far west of Camborne take it from there.
“It's so funny when they see deer in the forest, they are never very much afraid of them. They notice them but they don't start with them the way they do with a moose. Oh my gosh, if you are riding a horse when you see a moose, then hang on for dear life because moose really scare horses. They will act like they are in a complete panic, well, they are in a complete panic, all the way back to the farm no matter how far away you are. I was in moose territory yesterday when I rode. I was keeping a pretty sharp lookout although, you know, I was riding Kimberly who is Mr Adventurer and he might have thought, “Oh that's interesting,” and gone up to the moose but there's something like… have you heard of the uncanny valley? It's when something is just about familiar enough and not familiar enough to be just amazingly spooky, like mummies that have come to life. For a horse, a moose is squarely in the uncanny valley. They're just built all wrong. They are too big, they have too long legs, they have ridiculous shaped heads, and their noses are bulbous. I mean they must seem incredibly ugly and terrifying to a horse. Of course, I want to hang around and look at the moose but, yeah, that's not what happens.”
Talking about farms, the Missus spent all day up at ours yesterday planting things. She reports that she planted another 306 lettuces. Previously, she had planted some 430 and is not finished yet. Mother is still potting away, so there are cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, spring onions, spinach and all sorts to come. She must have had enough of farming because today she headed off to the big metropolis to do some shopping.
It would have been welcome if a few more people felt the same and did some shopping around The Cove. We were fearfully quiet today, especially in the afternoon as the change-over day took effect. I had been pleasantly surprised yesterday when we closed up on the day before, despite the day before looking busier. We must have sold higher priced goods to fewer people, which was clearly a plethora of going home presents rather than pasties (sorry, MS) and buckets and spades. Today, we had the opposite. It felt busier but the end of day was very disappointing.
We may not have had customers, but we had a bit of weather return to us later in the afternoon. Unseen, by me at least, the cloud had been breaking up and somewhere after half past two o’clock we started to see a few bright patches. By half past three o’clock the sun had properly broken through. Out in the bay, the surfers had some luck, too. It did not look like there was much swell but there was a small party of about a dozen picking up some very surfable waves from out the back.
A little after four o’clock I watched as a single cloud descended over Escalls and Sunny Corner Lane. It slowly enveloped the top of the cliff and began working its way down. What I had not realised was that it was a ruse; a feint; a distraction while the main body of fog approached from the sea in the north. That was on us by five o’clock but just as quickly vanished. In the meanwhile, the cloud from Escalls had reached the beach.
While I was watching the next cloud of mist arrive from the north, the cloud on Escalls Cliff had retreated a little and had made a blanket hugging the edge of the cliff down to Gwenver. It is May and May is famed for its mist covered days in The Cove.
The mist continued to come and go and make strange shapes all about us well into the evening. When I took ABH around after tea I had hoped for a pleasant walk in the sinking sun. Instead, I got to walk about in some chill air wondering at the fog patches swirling about. By that time there were more patches than clear, so perhaps it was foggy with clear patches. It would be useful if it was gone by tomorrow as it can play havoc with business; it would most likely be clear a mile away on the south coast and our visitors would migrate there. Unfortunately, May mist can last for days. Fingers crossed, I think.
May 1st - Thursday
It is not usual that the arrival of an electricity bill is cause for jubilation, but I made an exception today. We used 34 percent less electricity this month than we did the year before thanks to our solar panels and a handy bit of sunshine. Had we still been paying the same inflated rate that we were last year, the saving would have been enormous. As it was, with much cheaper rates, it was still more than a little pleasing.
I have mentioned before, I made no expectation of ‘paying off’ the capital over a particular period. As one celebrity commentator put it, you do not look at ‘paying off’ the investment in a new kitchen, for example, so why do it for solar panels. I agreed, happy to just take what I imagined would be a chunk off the bill each month. Having reviewed the performance of our solar panels so far, it is likely we will see the ‘pay off’ in less than five years. That is hugely satisfying.
Based on the level of business we had this morning it is also hugely necessary as well. If we had a dozen customers before the middle of the day, I would be most surprised. As usual in quieter times, we had to wait until the middle of the day to see any action at all and even then, it was a tad slow. I blame the weather.
We had started out with some brightness but as the day progressed the cloud cover increased. It went from a bit hazy with thin cloud to having our brightness dulled with a blanket of thicker cloud. It made the day a bit humid and slightly uncomfortable. The breeze continued from the east, but it had decided today not to blow through the doorway when it would have been rather pleasant if it had. See, dry and warm: terrible weather.
Possibly part of the reason that it was a bit quiet today was that it was Padstow Obby Oss Day. It would have attracted quite a crowd from a large catchment area. I had not thought much about it; it is a bit remote from The Cove and I have never been. There again I have not been to Flora Day in Helston either or indeed Montol in Penzance, and those are a bit closer. I could not miss the Padstow event today because it was all over Radio Pasty. One of the attractions of Radio Pasty is the variety of news stories but today, there was just one. After about the fifth vaguely similar interview, I went and did something else instead.
It was a customer who reminded me that this coming weekend was a bank holiday one and that the Isles of Scilly Gig Championships, the 34th would be held over on the islands. That is also likely to draw customers away from The Cove, although it is not like it will be a spontaneous decision to trip over there. I suspect that if you have not booked your accommodation by now, you will be sleeping on the beach.
On the Harbour beach this morning, I noted that the spring tides are in retreat. There was soft sand up in the far corner by the wall and is the first indictor I generally see that the tide has changed. It is remarkably how quickly the tide changes. I should have noticed by the moon last night that hung in a perfect crescent in a deep hued blue sky alongside a bright Jupiter. I find a crescent moon to be the most alluring of all the phases especially as it was presented last night. I could stare at it for hours but then again, I would probably fall on my face as I had an ABH tugging me around.
Knowing that I had endured a tedious day, the Lifeboat people laid on a bit of a training launch to revive me. Alright, they did not do it for me, but it made me feel good for a while. For a change, it was the Boat Crew who were a bit thin on the ground, erm, deck maybe and on the shore we were over-manned. We gathered at half past six o’clock and both boats launched into a bit of swell shortly after.
We set up for the short slipway as the tide was still coming in. High water was set to coincide with the expected recovery time. I held back on deploying the ‘fishing rod’ from which the boat picks up the heaving line for the span and main cable as it was unclear exactly where the water line would come to. If we deploy it too early and too low on a rising tide, it could be swamped by the time the boat comes in.
In the interim while we waited for the boats to come back, I attended to some administrative work while the rest of the crew had some tutorial on tying knots. It has been a while since I did the knots and had I realised that is what they were up to, I would have joined them. I consoled myself that at least I had a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits while I administrated.
The boat returned at roughly eight o’clock and because I was not doing it, the Inshore boat came in first. It should be noted that recovering the Inshore at high water, especially at spring tide – even if it was in retreat – is a more tricky operation than at low or during neap tides. The Tooltrak needs to be manoeuvred over to near the western slip where the angle of attack is shallower. To make matters worse, just ahead of high water, the swell started to get a bit feisty and there was a heavy run of sea racing ten to fifteen feet up and down the beach. Our Tooltak man who always seems to pull the short straw on such occasions managed exceedingly well, particularly as the Inshore crew wanted to do some inappropriately named ‘dry’ runs at getting the boat onto the trailer.
The swell was not such a nuisance on the short slip. We set the ‘fishing rod’ up at the highest feasible point on the slipway. Even there, the step was being washed by the occasional wave. Had the tide been any higher we would have to have waited for it to abate. If the water rises to the level of the rollers in the keelway of the slipways, the boat will simply roll back out again when it comes back onto the slipway. With the water lower down, the keel of the boat rests on the special surface in the keelway on the concrete tow and friction generally hold it there.
Being Head Launcher and head launcher of the day, I was in the perfect position to observe what was a textbook recovery up the short slip at the highest permissible tide. It is such smooth executions of procedure that almost bring a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye.
After a wash down, we brought the boat back up onto the cradle and reset the turntable to the launch slip for its next service. It takes a bit longer and a little more care than a long slip recovery but with enough trained crew operating in perfect synchronisation, we soon had it done. We are, after all, a very harmonious, very excellent Shore Crew.
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