This week - on Cornwall, chemo, and the words that finally came.
Photo by Jackie Morrison: Looe, Cornwall
These past weeks, I stepped away from writing to soak up a new atmosphere. I’ve been writing something new, and our holiday to Cornwall reconnected me with emotions from the past.
Memories and feelings washed over me like the tide coming in as we drove into Cornwall, the most southerly tip of the UK. It’s the other end of the country entirely from our home in Scotland. Somewhere past the Tamar bridge, as you pass the signs welcoming you to Cornwall, boats beckon and the light changes, sea and sky meeting in a new blue. A Cornwall blue.
We drove further into the thick of it: hedgerows high on either side of the vehicle, roads narrowing for a bit as we approached our base, my pulse quickening as we drove through a time tunnel returning to our teenage years.
We’d visited Cornwall as teenagers on our very first holiday together, camping out in small navy-blue tent in a farmer’s field and relishing the warm weather on pale Scottish limbs.
Now, many years married, we moved towards our destination on the coast, aware that we had planned to be here last year - our 40th Wedding Anniversary - but that we’d had to cancel due to the matter of planned chemotherapy for Mr.M’s blood cancer. It hasn’t been a great year. Yet, here we were. This IS a good year. We hoped to make good on our promise to return once more.
Settled at our campsite, we ventured out, the scent of wildflowers in the hedges teeming with birds and insects, leading us onwards down steep hills where houses hid, down, down the coastal trail towards the water.
“There! There!” we called.
Before we even properly reached it, we could smell the salt air, feel it on our faces: a very particular Cornish saltiness tangled my hair so much it couldn’t be tamed for weeks.
LOOE, AND WHO WE USED TO BE
Looe is a firm favourite for family holidays. A fishing town that stretches out on both sides of a sea estuary, with a fine stone bridge linking the two. On that first day, we walked out and along towards the bridge, trying to remember what it had felt like forty years ago.
Boys jumping into the water, small motorboats being hired for fishing trips, crabbing from the harbour wall, ice-creams sold at the quayside.
Back then, we hired a motorboat, and headed to Looe Island, where we nearly perished on the rocks. Mr.M tells the tale that we returned with fish for a barbecue. We did, but that incident around the rocks was perhaps our first ever brush with death as a couple.
Looe feels like a place of contrast. Pale golden sands on one side, stretching further as the tide pulls back to rewrite the shoreline. The walk around the other rocky side reveals secret little rock pools, each one fringed in green, objects catching the light and inviting a hand to reach in.
We have returned to Cornwall many times following that first magical trip as teenagers, bringing our own children, and then our dog!
The pull of Newquay is known to many families, and that’s where our two youngsters enjoyed the beach and the shop selling surfboards and swimming gear. In later years, we’d stay at smaller villages - Mevagissey being our favourite, Mousehole frustrating us in recent years due to the amount of traffic on such small winding roads of an old fishing village (there’s a huge car park up on the hill for those that can walk in!).
The greatest sadness is seeing so many key boxes on the outside of the fishermens cottages, holiday homes now. How can I complain when I’m a holiday maker too?! Regardless, it’s common in areas of Scotland too, and I feel a great sadness for the young people and workers who find it challenging to afford a property in their home county. We take our own little home on wheels and are respectful of where we take it - preferring to moor at a site and walk or take the Cornish buses out to explore.
A PLACE OF SONG AND STORIES
Cornwall is a place of industry (hello Poldark and the tin mining heritage) and fishing. It’s also a place of song, stories, and art. Perhaps this is what makes me feel linked to it.
You can’t hear a sea shanty sung, whether rousing or haunting and not be touched to the core. Stories of the sea and all its magical beings and its dangers are common to all coastal areas but Cornwall has a feeling. Tintagel with its magical elements, tales of witches and wizards and King Arthur, cliffs that seem to conceal stories in their frissures and coves where danger may lurk if you lean too close (and of course utilised by pirates and smugglers back in the day)
BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS
I tracked down two bookshops in Looe, but neither was open at the time. One held a notice about their hours being weather-dependent - which seemed perfectly acceptable. Why live in such a gorgeous place if you can’t get out and enjoy it?!
Daphne du Maurier is arguably one of the most famous authors linked to Cornwall with her gothic romances set in real-life Cornish landmarks - Rebecca, and Jamaica Inn. In the 1980s when I devoured new books every single week, The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley was a huge best-seller. In recent years, the Poldark series written by Winston Graham who lived in Perranporth has been a huge success on UK TV. Rosamunde Pilcher had a long writing career with a global bestseller in The Shell Seekers and divided her time between Cornwall and Dornoch in Scotland. On a holiday to the highlands, I sought out that apartment above the bank where she once lived, and I even looked at that property when it came up for sale. The most recent book associated with Cornwall is probably The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, which has recently been made into a film starring Gillian Anderson. If you fancy a literary tour in Cornwall, there are loads of destinations to visit which are story locations, or authors houses. I’ve popped some links at the bottom of the piece for you.
Photo by Jackie Morrison: Book Shop, Looe, Cornwall
WHERE IT TOUCHED ME DEEPEST
Cornwall unlocked something for me. I’ve been writing about our literal journey this past year, Mr M and I.
Instead of getting lost in hospital schedules, we put our energy into navigating actual routes, attempting to control our way out of a destination we didn’t choose.
Sure, this was a holiday, and we enjoyed every single moment: diving in and out of coves, picking our way along beaches, appreciating the shade of the coastal trails, and of course eating fish and chips - the best outside of Scotland, hands down. I’m not sure which seagulls are the fiercest - Scottish ones or Cornish!
Photo by Jackie Morrison: Looe Estuary/River
In a quiet moment, one early morning when the dog had woken me for a sniff outside, my brain slowly activated, and I knew I had to sit down immediately with my notebook and laptop.
Outside, the light was heralding a new, hot day. Surrounded by trees and hedges, the echo of the sea and circling sound of seabirds made me feel like I was inside a giant shell.
Words flew. Words connecting the younger versions of ourselves with this couple travelling Cornwall today - visiting a year later than planned, with gladness in our hearts.
Words tumbled as I sat in a time tunnel, just me and the page, my brain and fingers working in harmony. I wrote a sort of epilogue to our story of the last year, and I hope you’ll be able to read it one day.
Cornwall held me in a place of magic to compose sentences and paragraphs linking two worlds as I sat inside a motorhome, every window open, sea-salt on my skin, and reached a flow-state.
I have written fiction set in Cornwall, but on this holiday I wrote creative non-fiction - memoir, I guess. Who knows if it will ever see the light of day, but the words feel important to me. Magical too.
We drove out of the kingdom of Cornwall leaving behind the tall walls of hedges holding plants, flowers, weeds, birds, and insects that zing with colour and murmur with the sound of summer.
We came out the other side knowing we will return, the way the tide always does.
If you’ve read (or listened) this far, thank you. This is a different kind of piece from me, and I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.
I hope you stay for the journey while I explore how to bring all of my fiction story-telling elements to something much more true.
Enjoy summer and reading and writing in the sunshine, love from Jackie in the Little Writing Corner in Scotland x x x
Some links for you to explore:
Filming Locations: Beyond Paradise
A FREE SHORT STORY FOR YOU TO READ BY ME!!!
A Clifftop Discovery by Jackie Morrison courtesy of The People's Friend magazine
