THE TOMMY MATTHEWS SUCCESS STORY ROLLS ON!

I’m delighted to report he’s now passed the £2,000 mark with money raised for Cancer Research UK from sales of his book, GAME OF TWO HALVES.  The first reprint is well on the way to selling out and there will be another if demand warrants it. If you would like to register your interest, please message Tommy by email at tommyscharitybook@gmail.com or text him on 07780 478554 and he will send you back a pro-forma reply with details of prices.   

BLOW ME – SEE WHAT I LEARNT BY BEING NOSY!

It’s been a while since I introduced you to any of my “Point People” – my fellow dawn walkers around Pendennis headland (and Falmouth seafront).

So here goes with a little chat I had yesterday. I don’t know his name, but I had several times seen him pausing – usually standing – just to the west side of the point and gazing across the bay. 

 

Speaking ahead of thinking, as is my wont, I said: “Forgive me, but let me take an inspired guess.  I reckon this little stretch is at least a strong candidate for where you’d like your ashes to be scattered.”

 

Instead of telling me to mind my own business, he replied: “No. I’ve left clear instructions with my family – that’s where I want to be left.”

 

And he pointed to the bay.

 

Then, explaining that he had been “a Navy man,” he added: “And in my burial shroud I want the final stitch to pass through my nose, just to make sure I stay down.”

 

Hmmm . . . I’m still not sure whether or not he was joking with that last bit.

 

But a little research subsequently informed me that such a practice did exist, or at least in myth form – see https://www.britishtars.com/2020/03/the-last-stitch.html

 

Back to yesterday’s chat with Matey, and I duly informed him of my own wishes. My finger pointed right across the bay to the other side and my favourite little beach, Sunny Cove.

 

“My wife is fully aware that I want my ashes scattered there,” I said.  

 

But I forgot to add, as I usually do when mentioning this: “Janet just says ‘I’ll dump them in the bin!’”

THEY MADE A DIFFERENCE: DAVID PENHALIGON, ‘CORNWALL’S GREATEST POLITICIAN’

They obfuscate . . . they waffle . . . they prattle. Anything to avoid giving a clear, direct answer to a question. 

 

Don’t you just love the way our politicians go to such extreme lengths with their well-rehearsed, well-practised techniques, in media land and the debating chamber?

 

How we could do with a blast of fresh verbal air the like of which was routinely supplied by one of Cornwall’s best-known MPs of yesteryear.

 

David Penhaligon, Truro MP from 1974-86, is fondly remembered in so many ways, not least for informing Michael Parkinson: “We Cornish are part of a special tribe . . . we are born in the centre of the civilised world.”

 

David, whose life and Parliamentary term were tragically cut short in a car accident, was variously described as “the best leader the Liberals never had” and “Cornwall’s greatest politician.”

 

As much as anything, he was liked and remembered for his down-to-earth personality and his no-nonsense, “proper Cornish” way of speaking.  

 

Three years after his death, his widow, Annette, published a biography in which she wrote: “Florid parliamentary language was never his style. When he disagreed with parliamentary colleagues, he would say ‘That’s plain stupid; no-one outside this madhouse will understand what we are up to.’”

 

The “madhouse” was, of course, the House of Commons. Throughout his long career at Westminster, he never allowed himself to be seduced by it to the extent that he lost his rustic, no-nonsense manner – or the bluntness with which he expressed strongly-held views. 

 

That was the essence of his appeal, the reason why he was able to turn Truro into his own Liberal domain.

 

SLD leader Paddy Ashdown is quoted in Annette’s book as saying: “I learnt my politics from David. What he had done in Truro was always a beacon for people like me who felt that was the way to go about politics.”

 

People did listen to him and it proved to be one of his greatest assets as a politician, but the gift did not come easily.  As Annette recalled: “I have seen him deeply depressed when he got something wrong. 

 

“Yet he always learnt from the experience. Being amusing on a platform does take planning and David would take immense trouble to discover how best to put across the argument.”

 

David himself argued: “I do believe that if you can think of an amusing way to make a serious point, you can make it far more effectively in that manner. I think one of the problems politicians have in Britain is that people never listen to what they are saying.”

 

At his roots, he remained very much a constituency man with a real commitment to his task and, consequently, an enviable parliamentary voting record. 

 

David was born on D-Day and was a cousin of Susan Penhaligon, hailed as the “face of the decade” in the 1970s and “Britain’s answer to Brigitte Bardot.”

 

In Parliament, he regularly entertained his fellow MPs, and occasionally mystified them, with his delightful Cornish accent and turn of phrase.  

 

Here are a few samples from a Hansard report of David talking about Concorde:--

 

“I know from walking around my constituency that the (sonic) booms are a regular subject of conversation. I am frequently approached along the lines of '"'Ere, Mr. Penhaligon, when are we going to stop these booms?".

 

“ . . . There are regular complaints of cracked tiles and of china falling off shelves, particularly in caravans. Mothers worry that the bump is baby falling out of bed and rush upstairs to find that, fortunately, that is not so.” 

 

“ . . . In the Camborne area, which has a slight schizophrenia about

noise because of the earth movements as the old mineworkings fall in, many people are genuinely worried that the noise is their back garden dropping 40 or 50 feet.”

 

Just a few weeks before his death, David was Michael Parkinson’s guest on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs programme. (He also guest-presented The Jimmy Young Show for a week.) 

 

Michael introduced him as “once described as a reforming radical oft performing as a Cornish comic.”  

 

David agreed that we Cornish are “part of a special tribe,” but resisted Michael’s suggestion that we are “outcasts.”

 

He countered: “We Cornish are born in the centre of the civilized world;  there are just enough people around for life to be pleasant.  It’s when you get up in these great urban areas where you get fed up with people.  The Cornish have got the balance just right.”

 

And not for nothing did David earn this tribute from Stephen Gilbert, then St Austell & Newquay Lib Dem MP, on the 25^th anniversary of his death in 2001:

 

“He is still remembered and talked about to this day and his inspirational words and rhetoric were instrumental in my desire to become a politician.  His passing was for many one of the saddest days in modern times throughout Cornwall.” 

SO MUCH TO SEE, RECALL AND PONDER IN A 10-MINUTE STROLL THROUGH TOWN

I found myself with a wee bit of time to kill the other day before Falmouth Reference Library opened for one of my favourite pastimes, immersing myself in old Falmouth Packets in pursuit of material for my blog.

 

(Whisper it, but the really funny thing is when I occasionally come across a big page one splash with my name on it from 50-odd years ago which I just can’t remember at all!!)

 

Anyway, I decided to fill in that time by taking a roundabout route, which turned into a veritable Memory Lane job – with the sort of observations and thoughts that only come about from a lazy stroll rather than a fast dash from A to B.

 

First, it was up Quarry Hill, which I’d not traversed, slowly or quickly, for quite a while.

 

Once upon a time, starting off in my early teens, I was there every Saturday to collect their to-die-for fish and chips for lunch, for myself and Mum and Dad.

 

Would it still be there – same name, same business - some 60 years later?

 

Absolutely yes, albeit sporting a bigger, more sophisticated menu.

 

Cue thought:  what other businesses are there in Falmouth today which have existed for as long as the Gem and whose name, location and basic service have remained unchanged? (The business was actually established in 1933, I later noticed in an advertisement.)

 

Next, I was walking along Harbour Terrace prior to heading back down towards the top of High Street.

 

First, I looked across the inner harbour towards the Greenbank Hotel and couldn’t help noticing that its name in those big white letters along its quayside still has a discernible gap between Green and Bank, making it two words rather than the now more familiar one.

 

That’s how it started out – two words – but at some point in the mists of time it was decided to join them up, and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember.  Except on that quayside, it seems.    

 

Along the left of the road down to that hotel – again way back in my childhood – my Mum would take me to my first dentist, Captain Norman Black.

 

A dentist’s drill in those days was truly something to fear – or at least it was for me – but I nonetheless remember Captain Black as a charming, kind gentleman. 

 

I also seem to recall – and I’m talking purely from memory here, long before the Google era – that Captain Black was an accomplished fencer. Anyone elaborate?

 

Between his premises and the top of High Street - where the open green space and benches are now – there was for many years a “boot and repair” shop owned and operated by Richard Martin.

 

Hard to imagine now, but there was a time when you could have chosen from TWENTY shoe repair shops in Falmouth!

 

Next on my stroll it was High Street itself, and towards the bottom there was the John Miles photography shop for many years.

 

And this was the scene for one of my favourite jobs in my early trainee reporter’s days on the Packet. 

 

That was in the late 1960s, when everything was still physical and manual, and it was my role late on a Monday afternoon to call in at that shop and collect John’s weekend photos – mostly weddings – for publication in the paper’s next issue.

 

As well as John, there were three lovely young ladies who always greeted me with big smiles and a lovely bit o’ chat – Jackie Dominic and her colleagues who I believe were Diane and Hilary, although I may have got those wrong.

 

It was all quite a contrast to today’s instant “send” email option, although not quite as stark as that outlined in my recent piece here – “The Overnight Challenge That ‘Terrified’ Sally”, blog post September 25. 

 

And so to the bottom of High Street, with the Reference Library just round the corner.  I walked past The Baker’s Oven (now The Natural Store) where Mum used to take me in for a scrummy cake treat before strolling out, hand in hand, to the Prince of Wales Pier.

 

In those days you had to pay to get onto the pier, and just before the entrance Mum would take me into the long-gone aquarium to the left. 

 

Notalotta people remember that one now. Indeed, a year or three ago, a local newspaper reported the opening of “Falmouth’s first aquarium” in, I believe, Church Street – but it was NOT the town’s first!

 

With about five minutes still to library opening time, I sat down on the pier and gazed upriver.

 

But right in front of me was a more immediate memory, of something else long gone, and that was the sight of the old coasters that used to come right in alongside and discharge their cargo into the old Harris’s coal yard, literally a stone’s throw from the pier.

 

Boy, how this boy marvelled, wide-eyed, at the site of these ships so close up, doing their thing, with their cargoes being grabbed from deep in their holds and swung over to be sent crashing into that yard. 

 

It’s just possible, I guess, that this was the beginning of my lifelong love of shipping – both personal and professional.

 

In fact, it very probably was!

 

In closing here, feast on these four lovely shots of the way it used to look with those coasters so close to the town, courtesy of the DAVID BARNICOAT COLLECTION.

 

 

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE . . .

. . . well, it’s not really a Jaws moment, but, good grief, what’s this* I’ve been reading these last couple of days all about a “purple jellyfish invasion” not a million miles from our shores?

 

Apparently, it led to swimmers being taken to hospital with “chemical burn”-style injuries.

 

It reportedly happened when a group of around 120 people came across two swarms of mauve stingers during a swim challenge off the Isles of Scilly.

 

Thing is, I did hear of something very similar occurring off Falmouth’s Gyllyngvase and Swanpool beaches several weeks ago.  

 

There were “masses of them, everywhere,” I was told, and at least one regular swimmer was said to have suffered quite severe stings all along his arm.

 

We were already well out of the main summer season, which is when we normally expect the greatest presence of jellyfish, although not normally the “purple” variety.

 

That period had passed relatively peacefully this year. I heard no more “purple” reports after this recent episode, so I dismissed it all as something of a one-off and carried on swimming at peace with the world.

 

But now . . . I reckon I’ll keep an eagle eye open when I take my Gylly dip in around half an hour’s time!

 

At least I’m not anticipating anything resembling a remarkable “invasion” incident in Falmouth Bay back in late September, 1965. I wrote about that one in June last year.  

 

Just  to make all my fellow swimmers feel really comfortable, you might want to read it again, especially as I see there is something of a real sting in its tail! So here it is:--

 

FALMOUTH BAY INVADERS ‘DROWNED’ BY ROYAL NAVY 

 

. . . . . Let’s just hope that we can have at least one more summer with no sightings of the dreaded Portuguese Man of War, notorious for a sting potentially much more dangerous than that of a jellyfish.  (Technically, of course, the PMoW is not actually a jellyfish.)

 

Wind the clock back to late September 1965 and there were reports aplenty of this menace in Falmouth Bay and along its coastline.

 

They were enough to call a halt to deep-sea exercises by Royal Navy divers three miles off the harbour entrance,

 

The Falmouth Packet  reported:  “They had to stop what they were doing when a shoal of the jellyfish (sic), with their iridescent plastic-like bladders, floated among them.

 

“The men were in danger of being stung about the face and more than a score of the fish were ‘drowned’ by the divers, who harpooned their bladders, causing them to sink to the bottom.

 

“Two of them were netted and brought back to Falmouth aboard a motor fishing vessel.  One is on show in a local fishing tackle shop.”

 

The Packet  added:  “With the prevailing southerly winds, quite a number of the shoal are finding their way on to the local beaches.  They are unable to swim, but their inflatable bladders act as tiny sails and they are completely at the mercy of the winds.

 

“Their sting can at best resemble a severe bee sting and at worst can also paralyse a limb. 

 

“Their appearance in waters off the Cornish coast seems to come in cycles of ten years or so.  Last time they were reported for Cornwall was in 1954.”

 

So . . . safe until 2024-ish? 

 

*     https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9527gjkz4o