Cornwall Day 7 (This Is My Cornwall)

We were just finishing our (lamb!) dinner when I casually checked the Train app. For tomorrow, my son would take the noon train to London. 

But a glitch appeared. A glitch to end all glitches!

"Oh my word, your train has been cancelled."

There was a silence, followed by rapid laptop clicking on his side of the table. 

"Mom. ALL the trains for Friday and Saturday have been cancelled - it's a strike." A familiar but dreaded feeling came over me as I pictured him stranded overseas, as stuck as that cow in yesterday's bushes!

He stood. "I'd better go pack! There is a 9:40 to St Erth."

Mad dashing took place. We got to St Erth (friendly cabbie) only to be told there really would be no trains to London until Sunday. "Everybody else already left today, madam, all day long. You should have seen this place, bustling with twice the normal number of passengers. Crammed in like sardines, they were. Where we put them all, I'll never know." This was not helpful, but it was interesting.

Then an angel, in the form of a Great Western Railway agent, took up our case and helped find him a National Express coach that could take him north the next day. There were only 5 tickets left, but if he got his skates on he might just make it.

And he did get them on and he did make it! It all happened just fine, as if a red carpet were being laid down for him, and all he had to do was to step out. It entailed renewed packing of previously crammed-in belongings, a short night's sleep, a quick cleaning of Pier House (for it was changeover day for the SconeLady), a cab to the coach stop in Crowlas, and a bit of a nervous wait as we stood at the curb. The coach was a minute late. Then two minutes. Three - and - oh joy - there it was in all its National Express glory!

As I watched his bus pull away, I thought about the strangeness of strikes when so many thousands of people depend upon the trains. But one of the locals told me THAT IS WHY THEY STRIKE, and didn't I know it? Well, yes I guess I did. But I was looking at it from MY side of the equation, not theirs. Oops.

The remainder of the day was somewhat flat, with my son gone. It had all ended in such a hurried, breathtaking way. No leisurely goodbyes. 

"Bye mom!" he had called out, waving and smiling. "And remember, I'll be listening to the Fisherman's Friends along the way!"

"Me too!"

We love the Fisherman's Friends, so much that I was going to their concert that night! There weren't any tickets for when he was here, but I would tell him all about it afterward.

And the concert was splendid! I love the Minack Theatre, starkly built at clifftop height overlooking the English Channel. Every single song was better than the one before it, as they warmed up the crowd and laughed with us... and a little bit at us. 

My favorite, among the many, was "Cornwall My Home":

And no one will ever move me from this land

Until the Lord calls me to sit at his hand

For this is my Eden, and I'm not alone

For this is my Cornwall and this is my home

I am listening to it now, as I write to you. We sang along at the tops of our voices, and I thought I saw a tear or two on the faces of some. It was the sweetest thing.

I love Cornwall, and think of it as a home - a second home - in this wide, strange world of ours. I can understand the Cornish love of independence, of pasties, of scones with the jam on first and the cream on second, and its Methodists, upright and smart and faithful, its endless sea everywhere you look, and the mysterious light of the sky. Incomparable. 

It is my Cornwall.

See. you along the way!

the SconeLady