David. 78. Fisherman & retired teacher. 

I was born in St Agnes and lived most of my life in St Agnes; I started fishing when I was 10 years old. My grandfather died and left me a small amount of money, £150 or something like that, and that was enough to buy a little wooden boat and a small outboard. Then as I got into my teens, I was treating it far more seriously: I had a few lobster pots out there, and of course there was no licensing in those days, you could just do what you wanted to. I caught mackerel and took them round the village selling them. I can remember saying to my dad and mum, “I could make a living out of that.” And they didn’t say I couldn’t, but they shook their heads kind of despairingly, I think. Then I had the conversation with a bloke down here who’d been fishing on and off for years, and he told me, “I’m going to buy you a mirror, so you can watch yourself starve to death.” And I thought about that, and I thought of how much I could do in a certain number of hours and realised that it wasn’t really a living. I then thought, “Well, what do I want to do instead?” And decided college, university was the way forward – a degree.

What I used to do was teaching: I taught special needs kids and that allowed me to be both a teacher – well, a proper committed teacher I was, I think – while fishing, boating and beaching kept me on the straight and narrow. I mean that in the sense that working with special needs youngsters was extremely stressful; there was never a dull moment. I ran a special school that brought children in from all over the south west, and they were children with significant difficulties, but they all had behavioural problems and sometimes were very challenging. There was no point in getting annoyed with them or threatening them because they’d been threatened within an inch of their life by different people all through, so you had to take a different approach and yet you had to maintain a level of control. I think that coming down here to the beach and being able to go out on the boat, being able to go swimming, being able to go diving and all the things that you can do here, I think that any stress that had accumulated during the day or over the week, that dissipated as soon as you came down here. Because you were rubbing shoulders with people who were happy and who were carefree and who just wanted to love the place. And that, really, is what the beach is about to most of us down here I think. 

It’s a grown-up community now compared to when I was a child. When I was a child there were nowhere near the number of houses here that there now are, and environmentally I suppose we’ve gone backwards in the sense that there are more cars, there are more people and all the rest of it, but I think the positive side – I think in life you’ve got to look at the positive things – the positive side is that many of the people I know wouldn’t be here had the village not grown up. The downside is there’s a little less space, the beach is more crowded, but the positive side is that the people who come here are, by and large, wonderful people. They bring a different thing to the village, and the truth of the matter is that any person walking on that beach has as much right to it or walking in this village as anybody else has. The fact that I was born here gives me no more rights and nor should it. I mean, I can eat a pasty along with the best of them and oo-ar and all of this, ‘course I can, but it’s not really about that honestly. It’s about enjoying the environment. And when you see people come down here and they’re delighting in the beach, enjoying all the things that I used to do and to some extent still do, you know they’re having the same thrill you had. If you’re going out through a surf and there’s a four or five foot wave in front of you, doesn’t matter if you’re 5 years old or 75 years old, it’s exactly the same feeling. It crunches down on you. 

We all went to the local primary school, which in those days was an all-age school, and so had a secondary school not opened up in Truro, it would have been a womb-to-tomb kind of school in the sense that you would have gone there and stayed there from 5 to 15. And so you made friendships, and those friendships hold good today. That was a very important part of all our lives. I think we would all say that of St Agnes, that if you went back to the 50s and 60s, growing up in that community, it forged bonds… I’m sure it happened elsewhere, I’m sure it still does happen, but it certainly did for me. Talking to adults now who grew up in Perranporth, for example, I think everybody treasured it, and I think many would say that the best days are past us. I refuse to say that: I think my best day is tomorrow. But I do think that a lot of people would say, and I would agree, that they were wonderful days to grow up.

I can say that when I’ve been overseas and have got in with small communities, that there still are communities there. The community spirit is the thing that really pulls it together. I was staying in a very, very remote part of South Africa last year and when I looked around that community, it was a community much like St Agnes in a way. It had the sea, and everybody would go swimming. All the kids were doing exactly what we did – they would pick up a rock and see how far they could go before they dropped their rock. We used to do that and they were doing exactly the same thing. I think that on an English experience, I honestly can’t comment – I don’t know enough to say. But from seeing it overseas, I think the small communities are a valuable part of it, and I think the small communities kind of encourage harmony just as they do here. It’s a pretty harmonious parish, St Agnes, in spite of the fact that it’s now much bigger than it was, and it’s largely down to the beach. It really, truly is. I mean, that’s me saying it as a great friend of the beach and somebody who really values it, but I think it is a very, very important part of it, I really do. The school will come out at 15:15 and by 16:15 there will be kids down here in the waves surfing, and tomorrow particularly because the surf’s going to get bigger. In fact, we wouldn’t be sitting here tomorrow – there would be too many surfers around. 

I think, because we’re on the tip, there’s a certain uniqueness that we’re given. And then we’ve got a history, and we’ve also got songs that are about Cornwall – we stand for our national anthem, Trelawny. We have a beach banquet down here each year – well, there you see modern Cornish culture, in a way. Everybody eats and drinks far too much, I’m sure, but at the end of the day the singing is all part of it. There’s a lot of chat about friendships, and at the end of the evening we all sing Trelawny. I mean, all ridiculous in a way, but there is a kind of Cornish identity that many of us associate ourselves with. I think you’ve got to be careful not to let it narrow your view though, I think you’ve got to be guarded about that. I think if you’re not, your identity can make you into somebody who carries a lot of prejudice and I would hate to feel that. And I think you’ve got to be careful of too narrow a culture in Cornwall, but equally I think you’ve got to enjoy the fact that it is Cornwall and it’s very different. When you stop and consider what we’ve got… Here, tomorrow, it’s going to be a heavy surf; if we want to go boating we just tow our boat down to the other coast 10 miles and we go into absolutely flat water. We’ve got a resource that not many people have, and that gives us an identity as well.

I would say the culture of Cornwall reflects round the sea. I mean, there are beautiful parts in-land – of course, the moors and the walk from St Just up through to St Ives is absolutely wonderful along the Tinner’s Way – but I still think you’re going from sea to sea all the time. We’ve got the Tamar which almost makes us an island. In frustrated times you say, “Ugh, let’s dig the rest out and make ourselves a bloody island!” Ridiculous, of course, but we feel we are different. I’m not sure we accept change quite as readily as maybe we need to, as maybe we should, because, you know, the world is a changing place all the time. At your age you’re going to experience changes in your life far greater than I’ve experienced, I’m absolutely certain you will, and that will carry on for each generation. And that’s got to be a good thing, I suppose. No choice, is there? I mean that [points to dictaphone], a little tiny recorder like that… When I started teaching, and this is absolutely true, I was considered a real whiz-kid of technology because I could use a reel-to-reel tape recorder that was 18 inches wide. I used to run it through to the other tape, press the buttons and record, and I was really considered a whiz-kid. Well, look at it now! It’s ridiculous in’t it? And a polaroid camera coming out – I could take 6 or 8 photographs, whatever it was, and I could get them instantly. And now you look at it and it’s just ridiculous, in’t it? 

I know some people who can speak Cornish, and who can speak it reasonably fluently, but I’ve never ever had the desire or the discipline to learn it. The lady who I was going out with for many years who died of cancer, she was a linguist, could pick up any language very easily. She learned Cornish and could speak Cornish, but it just was never really appealing to me. I don’t know, I would think that in order to be really culturally aware of Cornwall, you would probably need to learn the language. There is a bardic community [of those who are part of Gorsedh Kernow], a few bards living in St Agnes, nice people, and I’m sure they would have a different view of the Cornish language to what I have. It’s never been something that’s drawn me. I’ve lifted odd Cornish words and all that and you can go on the internet and find a dictionary of Cornish, but I can’t honestly say that it’s ever pulled me. It died out long before my grandparents’ time.

A bloke said to me down here when I was about 7 years old, he looked at me and he scratched his head and he said, “Look boy, you come down ‘ere and you enjoy it while you can, because you get to my age (he was 60-odd) and you won’t want to come down here.” He was absolutely, totally wrong. I want to come down here more and more. I come down here every morning, almost as soon as it’s light. I try to swim virtually every day; when it’s boating weather, I’m out in the boat all the time that I can spend here, and the beach just draws me more and more. I find that there’s a community down here, and I know everybody down here and everybody down here knows me. It doesn’t matter if the kids are 5 years old or my age, they chat, they’re friendly. It’s important to me, really – the beach, the sea. There’s a bloke who comes down here – he’s 91 now, and struggles to go up the hill, but he still comes down here because he loves the beach. In the summer he had a bit of arthritis so he goes paddling in the sea and swears that it cures it.

I love the sea because it’s never the same. It’s a slightly different movement, and it’s clear one day, crystal clear – you could swim out here now and you could put your face in the water and you could look down 20 feet and you could see the bottom. Another day you come here and it’s churned up, massive great waves. Today’s a good example – today it’s absolutely flat (well, all but flat), but tomorrow I know it’s going to be up to a 10 foot surf breaking here: big, thunderous surf. That’s what attracts – it’s the changes and the fact that it’s fresh and clean. I mean, I know we’ve got pollution problems to some extent, but I wouldn’t like to magnify those too much. I just think it’s a remarkable environment. I mean, it’s about the only environment that you can go in and you can punch it or kick it or dive under it… I remember being out here diving once and I was standing on top of a cliff, about 40 or 50 feet, and it’s the only environment where you can just let yourself fall, just go gliding down. It was absolutely amazing. I think that feeling is a summary of what I felt as a child down here.

I think there was a stage where I found it difficult to accept the changes, the greater number of people that were coming here. I think I found that difficult, and I found it… I knew it was happening, and I thought, “I’ve got to have a way of looking at this that’s positive.” I was having negative views like, “I don’t want these bloody emmets [i.e. tourists] down here!” and all the rest of it, and I decided that was an unhealthy mindset to have because…because it’s going to happen. It’s like any change: it’s going to happen. I think it made me into a better person in a way in that I decided quite consciously that I was going to embrace the change and I was going to get to know the people. There are a number of people who come down here that I wouldn’t have met had the greater number of people not come. And that would have been very sad because they’re wonderful people and they widen your horizons. There’s one guy who comes down here and he’s going to cycle right down through New Zealand, and he was asking me about different points where he was going to cycle. I was saying, “Do this, you’ll enjoy that,” and he said that when he’s there he’ll send me back pictures. That kind of thing, that’s what makes me pleased that I viewed it in a more positive light. I suppose my mother would always talk about a glass half-full, and I decided that I had to do something. 

I would say to people from outside: don’t change us. Go with us, don’t change us. Just offer us advice, don’t lecture us; chat to us, but don’t try and force change. If there’s a forced change… Well, I think we all resist that, don’t we? I think that if it’s something that’s talked through and somebody comes down here and offers that we ought to change a particular aspect of life down here… I mean, in the Quay Fisherman’s Association we have heated discussions about what we should change – should we get a new winch, should we do this or that – and often people that are contributing to it are people who weren’t born here and have come here. I’m quite happy to listen to them and sometimes to say, “Yes, what you’re saying is a good idea,” or, “What you’re saying we tried 25 years ago and it didn’t work.” I think that those kind of things you’ve got to do. But I think that if somebody tries to force change, that’s something that none of us want. I don’t think as human beings we like that. Reasoned change, somebody who can put forward a good reason for changing something, that’s fine. 

I own a piece of land – 9, 10 acres – and a building company came up to me and offered to buy the land off me to develop for housing. I thought about it, and I thought, “I don’t want that change.” I was in the position where I could refuse it. It was many, many thousands of pounds, if not millions, and I thought: but I don’t want it. I’m quite happy with it. I allow the surf boats to garage themselves up there throughout the summer, I dump lobster pots up there and go and repair them, I dump boats up there and all sorts of things. I didn’t want it to suddenly become a housing thing, and apart from that, the trees that are there have been there all my life, and I look at them and think I don’t want to be a part of destroying that. I love the walk from Perranporth to St Agnes – there are no houses there – and I’m looking at the sea and I’m looking at the cliffs and where the sun’s boiled… I love that kind of thing. I think there’s pressure – well, we all know there’s pressure – to build everywhere, and sometimes I look at the road that’s being done and, alright, it will benefit all of us, but there are times that I become very much a friend of the earth and think ‘stop scarring my land’. But you also realise that it has to change, really – we all want cars, we all want to get from A to B, and we all want to do it as quickly as we can. Difficult, though. I do find that sometimes quite difficult. I do like the wild places, and that’s why when I go away I tend to go to wild places. I go off the beaten track all the time: I spent 3 months in Madagascar and there are places there that are absolutely, totally wild. In the Namibian desert, again, just wild spots that we as human beings haven’t managed to damage at all. 

On a personal basis, my ardent wish is that I die in Cornwall. When you get to 78, you know that death isn’t that far away. A lot of people are dead at 78. I had to go to a solicitor to redraw a will recently and at the end of it she said, “And what do you want to do about your funeral?” and I said, “Oh hell, Vanessa, don’t ask me that now!” But it does make you think, and so I wrote to all my relatives saying, “What do you want to do with my funeral? I will pay for it now, just tell me what you want to do.” We’ll see what they say. So I’d like to live out my life in Cornwall, I’d like to be fit enough to travel, I’d like to continue to boat as long as I can. A friend of mine who’s a doctor, he tells me that when you get to 80 you tend to get feeble, and I said to him, “Rob, that’s two years away.” And he said, “Ah, maybe you’ll make it to 85 before you get feeble.” Well, I hope I can live my life healthily and in Cornwall. 

For Cornwall itself – well, it’s not for Cornwall, really, it’s for the people – I hope that kids who are now being born, I hope they can get from Cornwall what I got from Cornwall. I hope they can enjoy it half as much-... If you, at your age, for the rest of your life, have half as good a time as I had, you’ve got a fantastic life to come. And I really think that. It is about the county, a lot of it – well, part of it is personality, of course, but a lot of it is about the county, it’s about the environment. And I don’t mind if it’s blowing and raining and I don’t mind if it’s sunshine or whatever it is, just accept it, because the county changes every day. I hope that the county doesn’t have to develop too much more, though I fear it will. I still think that the people who come down here… Just respect the place and enjoy it. Get as much enjoyment out of it as I have. They won’t get as much as I have – they won’t, I know they won’t – but if they can get half as much they’ll be doing okay. And I just hope that people can embrace the changes that are going to come. Because wouldn’t it be boring if you knew what was going to happen?