At Tiverton Parkway we changed from train to bus in the drizzle, and at Plymouth, where we changed from bus to train, it was damp and windy. A woman with big hair and small, mincing steps crossed from left to right in front of the terminal. She didn’t slip once. At St Erth we ran across the connecting bridge and just made the train to St Ives. At St Ives we arrived, in the drizzle.

Some weeks ago I invited some people ’round to a picnic. Wouldn’t you know, that summer Saturday came around and London was grey and nippy – like a seagull, come to think of it, or an old heiress’s gnarled fingers. “Change of plans,” I texted. “We will picnic in the living room.” “You are so not English enough,” Dan wrote back. “This,” he said, “is perfect picnic weather.” Still, he sat uncomplainingly on the carpet with everyone else, and traded stories with John of great British days out at the beach. The English will sit in their cars, they said, it will be raining, and the English will sit in their cars unfazed, eating sandwiches and looking at the sea. The windows will be fogging up, they said, and they will be eating sandwiches and looking at the sea in the rain and drinking tea, perhaps, out of a thermos.

I tell you what, late this afternoon we arrived in St Ives in the drizzle. The cars were pulled up along Smeaton’s Pier, and inside them the English were eating their sandwiches and cupping hot drinks in their hands.



We looked over the edge of the stone pier, me and Olive, to where a fisherman was dressed like a fisherman (white beard, check; yellow overalls, check) in his boat and the seals popped their heads up above the water with hope in their eyes. One of them, it was clear from his face, is called Harold; the other, I don’t know, maybe Seal?



Like seals ourselves we had fish for dinner tonight, grilled and with flakes of sea salt glinting on crispy skin. There is a DVD player in the rental flat, and we have seen a four-disc Indiana Jones special for £20 at the Woolworths up the street.