You can't go home again

Wednesday July 7th.

They say you can’t go home again…but that’s precisely what I’m doing today. Tony has made his pilgramage in the past few weeks….this is mine.
So, after another sumptuous breakfast….this time in the long family kitchen or day room (It’s grey day with light drizzle….the first we’ve seen in almost three weeks) we load the car and feel as if we are leaving real friends.
We’re off to Newquay - once a quiet and beautiful Cornish family seaside town - now a holiday mecca and venue for schoolies week ( Think The Gold Coast!) I am told to expect Blackpool, so I am armed and resilient.

From the ages of eight to fourteen Newquay was my home and everything I remember that was good about my childhood is linked to that one place. WE first went there when I was only 5 ½ and my Dad was the young comedian in a show which actually starred two west end performers. They were a dud - my Dad was a huge success; they were fired and he was made the star of the show. It was the first summer I remember spending with my Granpa Charlie and Granma Ella, my Mum’s parents - who were also a well known act in the variety theatres and played the Palladium, London’s premier variety theatre. ( My Mum played it while she was only 11). We lved in a big white house overlooking Porth beach and it was an endless summer.

Two years later we returned - my Dad as the star of the summer show Gaytime at a little theatre called The Cosy Nook, right on the beach in the centre of town. Once every season Kevin and I would perform with my Dad in a midnight matinee for charity. He became the town celebrity and locals bought up the last night tickets of the season months in advance. He always ended the season with a parody of These Foolish Things pertinent to the town. Later I copied it for my own Act.
It was the town where I had my first crush on a teacher - graduated to high school, was sexually abused by the husbands in TWO separate families paid to look after us (thank god it was just hands under the covers) Received my first French kiss from a boy called Michael Cornish, kept a hedgehog as a pet, drank milk straight from the cow with a warm froth of cream on the top; ate the best Cornish pasties on earth ( until my Mum learned to cook them) from a shop called Hooper’s; walked the mile and a half up the tree shaded path to St Columb Minor Primary school with my brother Kevin - the hedgerows were full of blackberries and we would stuff ourselves with Fruit as we walked. It was where Adrian, my first boyfriend, played drums for Dad’s show, and I wanted him to notice me because he was always looking at one of the chorus girls who didn’t like me It was where the theatre company played beach cricket every week with one of the major hotels on Lusty Glaze beach….toughly 200 steps down from the top of the cliff. The hotels would bring staff laden with tea urns and scones and cream and climb all the way down and all the way back up again. We had a beach hut for the summer and virtually lived there till it was time for dad to go to work. I can still taste the cold pork sausage and HP sauce sandwiches! My parents were happy then and all who knew her in the following fifty years were regaled with stories of Newquay, It was a magic time of innocence and love - and I was going back there to say one final goodbye.
We stopped at Taunton for a quick visit with the last of Tony’s nephews and his bohemian wife…. We shortchanged them I’m afraid as I was impatient.

Then we drove, and when the signs started to show Newquay, I felt queasy in my stomach. The signpost said St Columb Minor and I thought I saw my old school. I remembered Jimmy Rushton was the teacher I idolised and Mister Golly was the headmaster ( I had to convince Beloved I wasn’t joking). Then down a road I didn’t remember and there’s the gorgeous manor hotel…. We check in, drop the luggage in the attic bedroom, and drive to Newquay. So much is new…but the Barrowfields are still there, and so is the Kilbirnie Hotel and I remember Ken and Eva Barlowe and the fancy dress nights and Beetle Drives they threw for guests ( Does anyone except me remember what the game of Beetle is?) This was the fifties….life was simpler - yes, in many ways it was better. Into Newquay itself, driving round the streets - so many of the beautiful grey stone buildings with their distinctive French look are there - but now the facades are garish and lit with neon signs. The average age seems to be about 17 and all are in wet suits with surfboards….not like the days when we had curved woorden body boards and wet suits were a thing for cissies.

My old high school has gone, and so has the Cosy Nook Theatre and the Rep Theatre and there is no summer season any more - but there’s the entrance to the Newquay Football club where I would go with my whole family to support the team and mostly because I lusted after the Pollard twins David and ???? (Adam? Alan?) Identical blonde blue-eyed twins - Cornish Gods, too beautiful to be real. God, how I wanted to speak to them, but I was too shy. I remember my address - 51 Bonython Road. I was in High School by then….an all girls’ school. The headmistress was an old hawk called Miss Wood. In the lunch break we girls would dance to Gramaphone records in the assembly Hall. Mrs Davies cultivated my lifelong love of history by getting the form to act out Hannibal crossing the alps. The teachers wore black academic gowns and I won the form prize for both Form 1A and 2A - Leather bound books with the school crest on them. I still have them. It caused a furore when I - at age 12 - chose Edgar Alan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination!

The memories come flooding back, and I have no need to see anymore . We head for the hotel and a wonderful dinner and then watch the World Cup in the bar. It’s friendly and jovial but something is niggling in my head. Where is Porth House? Where is Miss Spence’s sweet shop and post office? Why don’t I remember this very grand house? And then I remember….. I’m in the wrong road - and this is the house that used to be largely hidden from sight where the film star Anne Todd and her husband Nigel Tangye summered with daughters Francesca and Lucinda…. Lucinda was the first girl I ever knew to own a horse and I so wanted to be invited into that house but I never was. Now I’m sleeping here - courtesy of a special rate through Late Rooms.com. Tomorrow I’ll find Porth Bean Road. The past is waiting just around the corner.

Thursday 8th.

And there it is - it hasn’t moved…it hasn’t even really changed, not like Newquay or so many other places in my life. Only I am different.
We fortify ourselves with a great breakfast looking out on the croquet lawn and the bay below….golden sand and the little bridge leading to the island where so many lovers trysts took place. I say a silent prayer for my friend Martin, who brought his wife back to this special place where they fell in love, just months before her death. We get in the car - drive to the beach - and running parallel to Porth way we find Porth Bean Road.

There’s Porth House, looking nowhere near as grand as I remember - and a sign indicating the site of the old post office… All Cornish white wash and slate. I recognise the leadlight bay window and realise the connection to the leadlight bays in my house now in the hills. It was the post office and a sweet shop and Kevin and I spent sixpence each a week on lollies there. What was her name - The lady who ran the shop who seemed old to us but was probably in her thirties. Was it Miss Spence? I remember I loved Bullseyes that were kept in a big glass jar on the counter. Porth would be a worthy location for Doc Martin, except it’s smaller and a more eclectic mix. I take photos…. Though I know I will never look at them. Then up the road that Kevin and I travelled each day. We stop at what I thought was my old school…..but it isn’t…though there’s a new primary school next to it. “New” meaning 40 years or so old. Bitterly disappointed I tell Tony to drive on. Then…only a hundred yards or so on - there is is - in all it’s Victorian Austerity- St Columb Minor Primary School - and there’s the window to my classroom - and a parking area ( it’s now business units) that used to be the sports field where Kevin excelled at everything while I had my head stuck in books and tried to ignore the boys teasing me because I already wore a 36C bra at age 11.

I take more photographs…and then I start to cry - I cry because I can’t bring back my dead brother or parents - and I barely know that girl any more. And because, finally, this really is goodbye. I cry all the way to Truro and beyond as we travel back to Hartney Witney - and Beloved silently sends waves of love to me. Mission accomplished. Don’t look back.