East of Varley Head: Stories from Port Isaac, North Cornwall, 1944-1950 [Paperback]

The place was the little fishing village of Port Isaac in North Cornwall. The time was just after the Second World War, although since the place was world enough for all who lived in it, time was an incidental. What mattered to them was their pink pool, the flushing lake, a clasp knife able to set a figgy duff trembling, a well-raided bunch of grapes on the church pulpit, blocks of water ice cream, the school playground hanging over the harbour cliff, rock-cracking waiters, fish aplenty, wreck, and that was only for a start! If the local boys, whose steady escapades in seasonal pursuits are sown like errant seeds through the pages of this book were no better than they ought to have been, they were probably no worse either. Port Isaac residents looked out for one another and did themselves down as best they could. The book is a tribute to the village and their daily lives, warm in the support of the constant sea, fields, woods, and valleys, written with wry humour and warm affection. All gone? Well, maybe, but forgotten? Never!

A few weeks after publication of the book, a few comments on it have been emailed to me by some readers, and although their words don't quite amount to reviews they are worth setting out briefly for the record. Those readers who currently live or once lived in Port Isaac in Cornwall, which forms the setting for the book, have in one case liked it, in another case loved it and in as third instance had got to chapter 16 and found it excellent. In the classic mould of Mandy Rice Davies (who in a few words provided the greatest quote of the 20th century in cutting big egos down to size), my response is, well they would, wouldn't they? Another reader let me know that he thought I exhibited a great fascination with my childhood, and seemed to view my years of growing up as idyllic. There was an implied note of criticism in this, although if idyllic is the way that what I wrote in the book came over to him, then that is how it was at the time. The comment that I liked best came from a publisher based in London, which wasn't far out of tune with the idyllic perception. He wrote that he thought the book described a way of life that contained too much of Enid Blyton and not enough of Angela's Ashes. I wish I could have received that comment in time to put it on the book's cover! When I mentioned it to someone else, he responded that when he was growing up, he couldn't ever remember it raining in the summers - and for that matter nor can I.

The author, James Platt, was born in Port Isaac in 1939. A professional mining geologist, he currently lives in the Netherlands, but continues to maintain a close association with his village of birth. He is living proof of the adage that you van take the boy out of the village, but you can’t take the village out of the boy. "East of Varley Head" is his first book. Please buy it!

There it was, scrabbled up against a hard and rocky coast and demanding at least a half hour’s walk on the part of anyone who wished to reach the nearest road unadorned by a line of grass along its crown.

It was a village named Port Isaac, secreted away in the mouth of a narrow valley right in behind a little cliff-shrouded harbour. A stream dribbled from the valley and braided itself in thin strings across the harbour beach.

The way that anyone took to enter Port Isaac was pretty much the same as the way they were subsequently impelled to go out again. It made no difference to that reality at all whether the available mode of transport for them was on foot, on the National bus, on one of Prout’s buses, on a bike, or even in a motorcar.

Of course it was not that there was not something of an element of choice involved, although it is unlikely that many residents of the village thought much about that. Of three options offered to reach the main road linking Delabole with Wadebridge, they almost invariably chose to go along the gentle and familiar course of Trewetha Lane and so on up over Poltreworgey Hill.

Port Isaac was a village that seemed designed to be passed by, and as far as travellers were concerned, as often as not the design worked in their favour.

The two alternative routes out of Port Isaac involved either ascending the dauntingly steep Church Hill along the west side of the valley and then winding onwards around a jigsaw puzzle of hedges to St. Endellion, or heading out to the east via Port Gaverne and on up Weathered Hill to China Downs.

The problem with these alternatives was that neither was especially practicable for motorcars. An official signpost placed at the top of Church Hill registered impracticability for motors in cast iron terms.

There were very few among the population of Port Isaac who owned motorcars in any event, so that associated impracticalities were the last things on their minds. It followed that anyone who owned a motorcar had almost by definition to be a foreigner.

Foreigner was a term characterised by a total lack of kindness of intent. It was used to effectively blanket each and everyone who had the misfortune to be born outside the boundary of St. Endellion parish, within which parish Port Isaac was the only significant centre of population.

From the top of Church Hill the view inland, assuming a vantage point on a hedge to gain extra height, took in the scattered roofs of the hamlets of Trewetha, Pendogget, (all of two miles distant), and naturally St. Endellion, the latter being the common destination for nearly all of those who ascended Church Hill.

The square granite tower of the unimaginably ancient parish church at St. Endellion stood proud in silhouette a mile or so away from the top of Church Hill, prominent on the height of land. A dark line of wind wracked scotch pines along a hedge in front of the church failed to hide the church entirely, but fared a lot better with respect to the nearby rector’s house.

In the graveyard around St. Endellion church, generations of the remains of the Port Isaac born lay in timelessly silenced rows, presided over by memorial chunks of granite or great flags of worked best quality Delabole slate. Such gravestones, said Jim Creighton, were plonked down to provide the final assurance that those resting in coffins beneath, under a six foot cover of stony clay, would be certain to be held down, never to rise again.

The opposing view out to sea from the top of Church Hill covered a mighty sweep of Port Isaac Bay curving from Varley Head clear around to Tintagel Head. If it was not raining, it might be additionally possible to catch a blink of Lundy Island, floating like a ghost out on the horizon.

On the far side of Lundy Island it was rumoured that there was an edge that boats under the control of careless navigators were apt to fall over. Any implied threat of disaster however was entirely offset by the fact that no Port Isaac fishing boat was ever going to venture within hailing distance of Tintagel Head, let alone Lundy Island.

The Port Isaac born were not worried about falling over any edge anywhere, out at sea or not. They were blessed not only with essentially no motivation at all to set foot outside the parish boundary, but also with very little desire to even the village precincts behind on any basis at all, even on wheels.

"Foreign travel," anyone who came from Port Isaac was happy to tell any foreigner prepared to listen, "Is not for the likes of we".

To come from Port Isaac it was essential to have been born in Port Isaac. Those who were thereby intentionally or accidentally honoured were rarely loath to demonstrate a remarkable lack of reluctance to so inform anyone who wasn’t. A special form of gloating was reserved for passing the advice on to foreigners who spoke in accents that had little of Cornwall about them.

If anyone happy to be numbered among the Port Isaac born held any regard for foreigners, it was normally kept buried good and deep. It was the bounden duty of the former to be ready in an instant to do the latter down. In the absence of any foreigners to do down, the Port Isaac born were quite adept in undermining themselves, by which means they kept their skills adequately honed.

There were many occasions when foreigners in Port Isaac were scarcer than no bananas. This state of affairs was most common during the autumn and winter of the year, when it was claimed that anyone firing a gun down Fore Street would be sure of hitting not a single foreigner (although some thought it would be worth trying anyway just in case).