Sad day

St Michael's Mount, Penzance Bay

On the face of it, today is just another rainy, windy Cornish Saturday in July, an all too familiar scene during a summer that seems to have given up and gone away.Despite the obvious lack of opportunities to re-establish summer beach life (see June post), the downturn in the weather at least isn’t all bad. It’s given us a chance to catch up instead on ‘home life’ – well housework anyway – cleaning, and ‘sorting stuff’ - like tackling (culling?) that pile of things the kids need mending (“Oh dear, just put it there love, mummy 'll fix it later”).There’s a kind of cosy battening down the hatches feeling around here, an excuse to watch telly during the day, and eat chocolate before breakfast .We quite like it really.

But actually, something monumental is in progress as I write this.With a sad sigh of resignation this morning I realised that the roof of the new flats being built at the bottom of our road totally obscures our sea view from the back bedroom window.I guess it could have best been described as a sea “glimpse” really – a tantalising line of blue (well, grey on a day like today), and the tops of a few masts in the quay car park, seen between the surrounding roofs.From my calculations of where everyone’s windows are, I reckon ours was about the only house in this historic terrace with its own “sea glimpse” at the back.

Admittedly, it wasn’t the kind of view you would sit at the window admiring with the morning papers and coffee, far from it, but I now feel I didn’t appreciate it enough - such is the pace of family life.It was however a lovely thing to behold on the daily weather check, almost the first thing we do – a triangular sparkle of hope – if it was clear and bright.It also occurred to me that the occupants of this lovely little granite cottage have enjoyed that tiny glimpse of PenzanceBay since this house was built around 1850.

We have been watching with interest as the dilapidated garage at the bottom of our street has been fairly rapidly transformed into new housing.As they pulled the Victorian red brick unit down, we were disappointed to discover that it was to be replaced by flats, rather than much needed family houses, but then relieved to learn at least, the building wouldn’t be over two storeys high.We were even more relieved when the façade started to be clad in gorgeous Cornish stone and the new build was shaping up to be a considerable improvement on what was there before. It never occurred to me that the building’s roof, now in situ in skeletal form, would hide our little glimpse of blue.Barely noticed by us, it is now gone forever.