Penzance!

I wake to the sound of gulls crying.

As I lie in bed, London seems a distant dream. I’ve left the ancient stones of Avebury behind me and have gone south and west for yet another change of scenery. Here I am at the coast in Cornwall. I chose to visit Penzance because it’s where the Gilbert and Sullivan play The Pirates of Penzance was based and why not plan trips around chances to sing?

Tarantara! Tarantara! Tarantara.

The sun is out and soon enough, so am I. I’ve found an online self-walking guide that will take me by the main points of interest. I wander along the harbor, see the Lifeboat House, take pictures of the lighthouse, view the outsides of a bunch of inns, see the art deco styled Jubilee Open Air Bathing Pool. It’s closed for the season and there are men doing some repairs at the edge of the pool.

There are very few, if any, pirates that I’ve seen so far.

I head over to St. Mary’s Church. A man sits inside at a table with a computer in front of him. I ask if it’s okay to wander around.

“Go right ahead,” he says. “If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them.”

“You’ve got all the stories then?”

He’s a little hard of hearing, so I have to repeat myself. And he takes that as a request to give me a tour which is fine by me.

“It starts over here,” he says, heading over to the entrance where a series of photographs are hung on the wall. 

He tells me that the original church was probably there since the 14^th century. In 1836 (or thereabouts), someone thought it’d be a great idea to tear down the old church and put up a new one. “I wish they hadn’t. It was a very interesting building.” He takes me back to his table where he has a three-ring binder with pictures showing the different buildings, the people (by name) who sat in the original boxes, and how the layout changed over time.

We go into the sanctuary and stand up on the platform just beneath the stain glass window and the altar.

“Say something,” he says.

“Hello!” I say and my voice echoes back at me.

I hate to admit that I only think of singing long after I’ve left the church, and I didn’t even think of singing a Pirates of Penzance song. Which seems a real shame, all in all.

“That accent,” he ponders a bit, “Canadian or American?” Later he tells me he throws the Canadian part in because 1 out of 100 times the person is Canadian and they’re so delighted that they say, “Let’s go have a drink, mate.”

He tells me that he lived for years and years in Victor, Colorado. Small world, I think, and we talk about how much Colorado has changed in the last fifteen or so years. He tells me about his daughters, about working for the railway, about the time he lived in D.C. and how much he hated it there, how he told his daughters the instant he got to Kansas he was going to get out of the car and kiss the ground.

“You’re a good listener, aren’t you?” As if that’s the segue, he asks me about myself. I tell him a little.

“Well, I’ll be blowed. You’re the first novelist I’ve ever met.” He ponders that for a bit, and it must be true because he doesn’t retract the statement. For a moment, there’s silence and then he’s onto another story. Eventually, he comes back around to the church and starts to tell me about the bells, “You have a little more time?”

I shrug. I do. I love bells and the chance for a bell tour would be fun.

“The tower is closed, but come on.”

Though my dreams of a bell tour are so quickly squashed, nevertheless, I follow. We go back into the foyer and he says, “We need a wine glass for this. But not to drink.”

With a second dream squashed, we head into the little kitchen and he takes a wine glass out of the cabinet and uses it to show me how the bells work. I know a little about change ringing from a book, of course, but his wine glass instructional is fascinating.

“You’ll be in the country long enough to go to a bell ringing practice,” he tells me. “But they won’t let you ring them. You have to have at least two months practice with an experienced ringer there beside you to do that.”

As I tell my new friend thanks and goodbye, I hope his proclamation will come true about me finding the time and place to see and hear the bells rung. What a fascinating day that would make. With the fresh air on my face, I wander through Morrab Gardens with its lush greenery and sub-tropical plants and all the flowers and then on down to the promenade where I watch the sunset and see the sun-glinted windows of St. Michael’s Mount off in the distance.

Tarantara. Tarantara. Tarantara. 

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