OVERLOOKING PADSTOW BAY

When WWII ended my parents bought a small farm in Cornwall.

I am not sure what motivated them, but we moved to that remote county on VJ day. My mother was to supplement the farming income by taking paying guests during the summer and my father was to build up a small herd of Channel Island milking cows which would provide us with a basic living. He reserved two fields adjoining a tidal creek as a market garden plot on which he was to grow flowers and early new potatoes.

My mother advertised for paying guests by saying that our house ‘overlooked Padstow Bay’. That was true but only from the window of one of our single bedrooms.  To save her from prosecution under some law against over imaginative advertising my father constructed a viewing site in the back garden so that visitors, with a little exertion, could truly see the great bay from the premises. My mother, ever innocent, would encourage the visitors to look inland where they would spot Cornwall’s very small mountains, Brown Willy and Rough Tor, up on distant Bodmin Moor. In her imagination the Cornish version of the Arthurian legend came to life. For her Excalibur might yet reappear from the depths of Dozmary Pool in the hands of the Lady of the Lake. And so, the paying guests occupied our house throughout the summer. We slept in the garage on old camp beds and illuminated our evenings with candles. The garage doors were hung badly and when the fierce Cornish gales blew, we plugged the cracks with sacks and wore our day clothes in bed for warmth.