How did we come to go there? Well, my sister wrote to my mother suggesting that we all went on a seaside holiday when she and the girls returned from Kuwait for the summer. My mother asked around and got the name of some holiday lets and booked us all in. And so we went.
The road to Coverack isn't picture book pretty - you criss cross moorland and naval barracks and always with the sense that the sea is near and yet not seen. Across Goonhilly with giant satellite dishes crowning its bleakness and then you turn right along a narrow Cornish lane. And then, oh and then the road falls away towards the sea and nestled in a half moon bay lies Coverack. To see it for the first time was joyous but to return after a long absence was to truly understand the sense of coming home.
As you drove into the village there was Brenda's - shop of all sorts and central intelligence gathering post, the Old Mill Shop with glorious tat for sale and Roy's - Harbour Lights where the old ideas of seaside teas was firmly kept alive. And all this just above the everchanging beach for the wind dictated the sand amounts and they changed daily - sometimes white sand as far as one could see, another time just rocks and rock pools to be explored.
To see the village was to love it - to dream of being a part of it and Mum and I did just that. We plotted and planned, added up our options and dreamt of days spent beside the sea. We both had houses or cottages that were part of the dream package and all looked towards the sea.We were unaware of the Calcutta connection - that Desmond's dear friend Frank Baines had grown up nearby. Once we realised that this was so it seemed almost more apt that we should love it so.
One day we went to an auction sale at the old Headland Hotel - it was being sold up before being turned into holiday flats and cottages. As we walked around its shabby Edwardian grandeur the theme music from Murder on the Orient Express played on the room radios and we looked at views and agreed that this was a very special location. Little did we know that within a year we would own a share of the 22 acres of cliff side and a cosy cottage called Kalimpong to bring the old dreams and the new even closer.
The time came when I felt dreaming should be pushed into reality and together we set out not as visitors but as locals. Two weeks after we arrived Mum was diagnosed with throat cancer and the dream faded as we fought with an increasingly difficult reality. By the time Mum died the dream was gone - our last throw of the dice was an attempt to get her back there but even that failed. The dream was in ashes around us. After I sold the cottage it took five years to go back- but I love it still. Cornwall is a place that heals the heart and feeds the soul. It is the place of dreams and dreamers.
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