Send Me A Watchman

The swans failed to breed successfully in March. At the end of the month they return to chase away last year’s young. Elaborate games of Grandma’s Footsteps are played out on the water as the children sneak closer to where the local café sometimes throws food out for the swans. As soon as a parent senses their presence and turns around, the young will scatter. This game can run for half an hour or more before eventually the parents prevail and the offspring slink away to forage elsewhere.

It soon becomes April and the swans must try again to breed. Once more last year’s brood are free to roam their old territory unmolested. Easter brings the sun. When the sky is a deeper blue, untouched by clouds, Cornwall becomes a different country. In the drab and the grey it is undoubtedly England, but for now it is Mediterranean – just ignore the breeze as it knifes through you with the cruelness of spring.

There are many spots here to sit outside and read. Across the bridge and into Devon’s sweet embrace, a sheltered estuary where wind and rain can be avoided. Underneath the Coombe Viaduct, peering up as the trains go past or waking up surprised by a passing dog (plus owner). Here it is not possible to sit at high tide as water covers the ground. At Saltmill Park the most recent storms have gifted a watchman, a sturdy fellow of wood to stand guard while I read. When the overnight wind knocks him down (Storm Dave), I have to bend my knees and push upwards to return him to his rightful position.

Reading outdoors is a Cornish thing. I don’t think it was something I ever did before, certainly never a daily routine. You can travel anywhere in the mind while essentially remaining in the same place. In Penzance there was Bolitho Gardens. Or the churchyard of St Mary’s (a hideous grade II listed church, that had replaced the beautiful original back in the early 19^th century). Or out on the rocks just past Newyln Harbour, which entailed crossing a narrow ledge that sloped down precariously towards a sharp drop into the ocean. With Cath we’d read to each other in quiet corners of Morrab Gardens with its sub-tropical profusion of palm trees and other exotic plants and shrubs.

Moving from one favoured spot to another was never predetermined, it was a gradual drift. 'This summer I shall mostly sit here' - for changes inevitably came at the start of the season and not in the depths of winter where only the necessity of finding escape from the wind might determine your location.

Reading outside is like going to church. It is assigning a special token to the act of reading, it is celebrating its importance in the way of things.

This is my church. This is where I heal my hurt.

The late rapper Maxi Jazz wrote those words about club goers and the colourful dancefloors that were their sanctuary. Thus it is for me, among the changing tides and the surrounding wildlife – the heron, the seagulls, swans, blackbirds, magpies and more.

Give thanks not to God but to Iris Murdoch or Jan Carson or Lucia Berlin. To the Cornish greats like Daphne Du Maurier and John Le Carre. To Hans Fallada. To Philip K. Dick. To short stories and short novels. To new discoveries and old friends. To page turners and mind alterers. Come one, come all. I will steal all your stories and then dutifully return them within the allotted three weeks, back to the library where they will wait for someone else to liberate them.

People sometimes give you strange looks when they come upon you sitting somewhere remote reading a book. Some will apologise for disturbing you. Others will wish you the best for the day or comment on what a grand spot it is you’ve selected. Some will be envious, many confused.

But for now I like my watchman, silent and unquestioning. He is impermanent, on loan just as the seasons are on loan, just as the books are on loan. He casts only a small shadow. When I peer up at him as I turn a page, for a second I can think he is real, a spy sent to discover all my secrets.

But he is only wood. A gift of the tides. And I am only a drifter, a man of books, with no secrets worth the knowing of.