Drat, No Pirates at Penzance

I've been planning since Wednesday to take this trip today--a 10am bus to Penzance. Well, it's a hired coach, actually, organized by Pat from St Mellanus church in Mullion. Once a week, the coach takes folks to several points local, only £3.50 return fare, compared to £8 by public transport. Today's a shopping day in Penzance--a monthly occurrence according to the schedule tacked to the St Mellanus church public bulletin board outside the cemetery.

It is very windy on the mile walk from Criggan Mill into Mullion to meet the bus. I feel free and unencumbered, and lift my arms and face to it all. My skirt billows around my ankles; wind whips my hair and cools my bare shoulders against the morning heat. Glorious.

I board the plush hired coach at the appointed spot in front of a Mullion art gallery, and Pat sets down the ground rules for shopping. We are to start at the top of the hill and work our way down the street, where the bus will be waiting for us at the bottom. We can wander farther up and off the main road if we wish, just be sure to be back to the bus by 2:10. It will leave promptly.

I look around the bus and am not surprised by the turnout. Seated around me are mostly elderly women, two with their husbands (presumably), and two solo-traveling men who are also OAPs ("old age pensioners," UK-speak for senior citizens).

Our quarter-full bus starts out over some of the same roads I traveled yesterday to St Michaels Mount. But today I am high enough in the coach to see over the hedgerows in many places. Beyond are field after field of potatoes growing, cows grazing, hay waving in the wind. Clear to the horizon. We occasionally stop along the way to pick up more passengers.

Penzance is a shopping mecca--full of tourists coming to buy souvenirs and our busload of locals coming to buy what can't be bought in Mullion, which is just about everything beyond groceries, sundry gifts, crafts, paintings, and hardware crammed into a general shop or two.


I do only shopping for myself today. Most of the interesting shops (non-clothing, -sports goods, and -drug stores) have the same kind of imported goods I find in the US. Scarves and skirts from India, lots of gemstone-and-incense shops, and jewelry from Mexico and Tahiti.

The one Cornwall-crafted shop sells delightful things that are too large or fragile to carry--paintings, wood sculpture, candlesticks made of stacked beach stones (I can just imagine myself shipping a pile of rocks home--Christy, do you need any more on the Vashon beach?), glass fish, ornaments, wall hangings, mosaic mirrors, and the like.



Local bakeries offer an amusing collection of "American Cookies" and "Mickey Mouse" meringues in addition to the usual fare of muffins, biscuits, tarts, and so on.


I shop for incidentals I need--sports tape (Elastoplast) at a Boots drug store to replace the black stuff I bought in Olympia that keeps gumming up my socks and turning my feet black; liner socks at a hiking store to replace the old ones I brought that are now hopelessly gummed up by the black sports tape; a travel set of water colors from a cramped little art shop; a multicolor shoulder purse from that India store, to go with my black skirt; leggings from a dancewear shop to go with the same.

As in London and Bath, I enjoy wandering the streets and back streets, peering into shop windows, asking clerks for directions and getting mixed information from them, then wandering around some more and stumbling upon another source for my needs. I like this following my intuition, going without a map today. I'm better at it than I would have given myself credit for before.


On the road at the top of town, I hear the strains of a harmonica playing "Shenandoah." An American folk song in Penzance? I follow the tune to its source: a street musician who looks like he's been transplanted straight from a Louisiana bayou. All he needs is a jug of moonshine stamped with XXX to complete the image.

By now he has launched into a spirited rendition of "Oh Susannah," whereupon I just have to ask for a photo and record him playing. He obliges with magnificent fanfare, and I am happy to leave him a pound coin in his open leather pouch on the ground.

I stand against the railing of the elevated side of the main street to people-watch as I eat a lunch of steaming steak Cornish pasty. Across the street, a well-muscled man, tanned, balding and white-haired, strides by in shorts and a muscle tank shirt, a bulky knapsack slung from his right shoulder, a walking stick held horizontal and swinging unused in his left hand. He is covered in tattoos. They are on his legs, arms, back, neck, and chest.

Those kinds of things stay with you, tattoos do, as reminders of rites of passage or records of rash decisions. Here is a man who had undoubtedly aged into them, and I wonder what he thinks of them now. I often wonder the same about the youth I see today who use their bodies as human canvases.

What will these people be like in 20, 30, 40 years, when the significance of the imagery--and how that imagery reflects who they are today--may have worn off? Clothes we can easily change and discard as personal style evolves. Permanent artwork stays with us. No surprise that I haven't committed to a bumper sticker for my car, let alone a tattoo for my body, although I've been thinking of donning a small one (a tattoo, not a bumper sticker) for years.


I take tea and lemon cake for dessert at a bakery near the waterfront, and end the day with a visit to the breakwaters of the beach. In some places the undertow equals the flow, and waves seem to stand still--a row of white rolling in place until the currents shift and the curl fades or is pushed forward.

I stand on the boulders to salt spray on my face and arms, salt air in my nostrils, and inhale deeply of sea and wind. It is a few minutes before 2pm. For now, walking to the bus can wait.