The baulks have been craned in to fill the harbour gaps at Mousehole this weekend, a bit later in the year than usual, but looking at these photos you’d hardly think we need to shelter our little port against winter storms. But this practice has been going on since the nineteenth century, when the new harbour was constructed at the astronomical sum of £4500, to resemble a pair of arms embracing the harbour. Before then, St Clements Isle acted as a sort of breakwater, protecting the entrance in what is already an awkward approach, full of running currents and just-submerged rocks.
I sat down on the rocks opposite St Clements Isle this morning and wrote another chapter of the new novel, a 12th century epic called THE WEIGHT OF SOULS, featuring a wild boy captured by the monks of St Michael’s Mount off the Gulval moors, who ends up going to war in the Holy Land with Richard the Lionheart. I love to write beside the sea: somehow it frees my imagination and gives it room to roam. (It was interesting to hear crime writer Val McDermid say the same thing on Radio 4 yesterday: water is good for creativity!) And there’s plenty of inspiration to be had from this beautiful corner of Cornwall.
My family come from down here – in fact, one family member was taken by Barbary pirates on a raid on a church in Mount’s Bay in 1625 and sold into slavery in the Moroccan slave markets along with 60 men, women and children. That little chapter of history was never taught in schools down here! It formed the basis of my first historical novel, THE TENTH GIFT. It also, with the extraordinary symmetry of fate, provided me with a husband, since when I went to Morocco to research the book, 7 years ago now, I met Abdellatif and (as I like to say) got one back for Cornwall!
Abdel has now also been seduced by the beauties of West Penwith, to such an extent that he likes to spend his summers here painting the landscape.
I wish I had his talent with oils, but I shall have to satisfy myself with words and photographs: neither of which can ever do justice to the quality of the light down here (just look at that magical turquoise that is produced when sunlight strikes at a particular angle through the top of the waves at Sennen)!
Do come and visit me on Facebook, or at my website, for more stories and pictures: www.janejohnsonbooks.com
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