St Ives harbour
St Ives, UK – Whenever English colleagues found out I was a surfer in my former life, their next question was usually to ask if I’d been to Cornwall to surf.
Until recently my answer was no. Instead I’ve surfed Moroc, Portugal and Spain. It hasn’t done much for my carbon footprint, but its certainly helped my wave count.
But with the Great British Staycation all the rage in these recessionary times, I took a week off and shot down the A30 leaving London – and a possible bout of swine flu – behind me.
The destination was St Ives in Cornwall, almost as far south-west as you can get. Surprisingly for a small island nation, it really is a long way from the big smoke. It took us five or so hours driving in torrential rain to get there, but thankfully once we pitched up at our hillside campsite the rain disappeared and the sun came out.
A little about the area. It’s beautiful, in that quaint English seaside way. Neat and tidy houses with low roofs and cheery flower gardens line the narrow roads. Seagulls caw in the breeze (more about them later). Even the fishing boats are quaint, bobbing about in the picturesque stone harbour.
There was only two things marring this idyllic scene (okay three, but rain in summer is just a given): those aggressive seagulls, and northerners.
The seagulls were hated for obvious reasons. They’re big birds, much bigger than your standard Australian gull. And they’re very bloody good at what they do, which is swoop out of the sky and snatch whatever food is not carefully guarded.
At Porthmeor Beach they would hover above the crowd and then swoop down when a stray sandwich came into view, much like a cormorant dive bombing into the ocean to grab a fish. My friend lost half a croissant as she was lifting it to her mouth. Others on the beach lost ice creams, bags of crisps and whole sandwiches.
And its not like they were sitting out in the open, this stuff was snatched from hands. People were lucky not to lose a finger. When we left the beach, one chubby man who had lost a sandwich was looking at the sky and holding a cricket bat, waiting to get his revenge.
Northern invasion
The other scourge was a little more subtle. To my Australian eyes and ears I could barely pick them up, But my friend assured me they were in town. Northerners were making their presence felt apparently, what with their strange accent, football t-shirt and beer belly (I was oblivious, that description sounded like most English people to me).
We couldn’t talk about it openly though. It had to be through raised eyebrows or words said under our breaths. And no one could tell me exactly why we didn’t like them. It seemed to be a vague sense that they were a bit uncouth, a little too loud.
Late on Saturday night in town, while we were piling into the bus to take us back to the campsite, a group of people outside the vehicle struck up a conversation with the driver. It turned out he wasn’t driving where they wanted to go. They called the driver a bastard, jokingly at first, and then a little more drunkenly aggressive.
My friend elbowed me in the ribs. “Northerner,” she murmured.
Then one dropped the C word, directed at the driver but in earshot of a whole bus full of families. There were gasps of shock. The driver slammed the bus doors in their faces and drove off.
The lady in front of us tut tutted, turned to her husband and said “see? Northerners”.
