St Ives, Itself

Early one morning, an idea popped into the head of the 9-year-old. Ideas were always popping themselves into his head, and today was no exception. 

"Grandma, you have been writing things that have happened to us in St Ives. Right?"

"Yes, that's right. I have," I replied. In fact, that was what I was doing at the very minute his ideas began popping.

"Well, maybe you should write a blogpost about the TOWN of St Ives, not just about what happens here!"

"Good idea!" said Grandma, as she often does say. And so, here for you and from us, is the town of St Ives, Itself.

The fishermen and the seagulls are the two most important bits about St Ives Itself, according to the boy. One of these two things we like, and one of them we do not. The fishermen have been here for more than 700 years, and so they are well established and undeniably important. We tourists are individually only a little bit important to the town; we come, and we go. But the fishermen are majorly important because they never go, at least, not until they die. And then there are others who take their place, perhaps even their own sons (unless their sons wish to go to University, or to the City, or to marry some lass from up north - which sometimes does happen).

The seagulls here are important in that they are 'vicious', again according to this boy. They swirl and swing above us, eyeing whatever it is that we might be eating at any given moment. As you already know, one horrid seagull swooped down upon the sister of this boy, and stole her ice cream. And then its brother, or its cousin, or its friend swooped down half an hour later, and stole her second cone. It was disgusting, and the little girl's father declared a 'War' upon the gulls.

Cobblestone streets are a lovely part of St Ives. They weave their way through the town, past old fishermen's cottages that have been there for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, and they never get torn up and replaced with pavement. Never would anyone tear up and replace them with anything so mundane as pavement because cobbles are so much more useful and interesting than asphalt. Every person traveling with this boy loves the cobblestone streets, and wish that they could have some back in California. This is unlikely, for there are so many millions of people that a road builder would never be able to cobble enough streets to hold them all.

There are two lighthouses, one on an island (Godrevey) and another on the pier that the boy is staying next to. The pier lighthouse is short, and is white with a black bottom. The light is occasionally on near the old Lifeguard Station next to the sheds that hold the scales for crabs and fish and the ice room that the crabs and fish get put into. The lighthouse on the island is hard to detect from St Ives, because it is so far out into the sea. It is taller than the pier lighthouse, and it has its light on most of the time - especially during storms.

St Ives Itself is beautiful, with its beautiful rolling hills and cliffs that are jagged and sheer, and its lovely green hills surrounding the town. You can see this beautiful greenery anytime you go walking and care to turn around and look.

Tonight after supper we were wandering along the cobblestones when we saw the large tractor-trailer heading down to the beach. And why was it heading to the beach? It was going to collect the Royal Navy Lifeboat which had been out on the seas for training. We all clustered together at the end of the pier, and watched as the massive Lifeboat was pulled out and onto dry sand. It was what made today what Grandma called a 'red letter day'.

We have one more red letter day left, here in Cornwall. And we mean to enjoy every little bit of St Ives, Itself.


See you along the way!
the SconeLady