Leaving One's Heart

Just about every day in St Ives was wonderful. Really and truly, up to a point it was wonderful. The 'point' up to which it was wonderful might have had something to do with rain.

We checked this a lot, and it really didn't have a huge impact. But it had some. There was one actual day where our activity level was interrupted, and we did not go. But the rest of the time, the weather didn't matter all that much. You can tell just by looking that the high temperatures were not vastly different from the low; and so everyone just keeps on going.

One day of rain found us upstairs, in The Sloop. The Sloop had already become our favorite local pub, and had given us the best pub food anywhere. Ever. The day of rain made us want to be sure and eat indoors and so we stepped toward the upper floor into a room called The Captain's Table. The food and the prices were the same, upstairs and down; inside and out. And so it was advantageous to try the upstairs/inside place.

It was sweet; it was quaint; it was what every American hopes to find in an English pub, and more.

The ceilings were massively low! The SconeLady herself would bump her head if she did not have all of her wits about her. In the photo above you can see that her head is actually touching the beam above her. It really is. So just think of how a man, or a taller woman, would feel if walking willy-nilly around The Captain's Table. He or she would not like it.

The waitress was just the jolliest and kindest person. She guided us to a window table, overlooking the harbor/harbour, and kept us entertained by regaling us with stories of the town when she was a child. For she, like many of the wait staff in St Ives, had been born there, and stayed. If you ever reach St Ives, and if you ever walk into The Sloop, or Porthminster Beach Cafe, or The Crab and Rum Shack, you will meet locals. They who have stuck by the town and want to raise their kids in it. It is a view you won't find elsewhere.

That's what you get to see when you stay in one place for three weeks or longer. You get deeper into the 'onion' of it all. Peeling back the layers, finding the heart. And once you do this, that heart gets into you. There is no avoiding it. You won't want to avoid it.

The words to a song have kept going through my head, as I think of St Ives. A few of the lyrics I have replaced:

I left my heart in Saint Ives, Cornwall,

And from the hills, it calls to me
With its little cobbled streets, the people that I meet,
The morning mist may chill the air, I don't care

My heart waits there in Saint Ives, Cornwall,
Above the clear and windy sea
I will come home to you, darling Cornwall,
Again your sun will shine for me

-George Cory, Douglass Cross

1953

See you along the way!

the SconeLady