Tuesday 6 August 1996. It's raining hard as we have breakfast and we hear a rumble of thunder. There's a prolongued discussion about what to do and where to go and we eventually head for Mevagissy where we have never been before.
The car park at Mevagissy involves driving along the sea wall with water at the bottom of the sheer drop to the left and cars leaving the car park squeezing between you and the safety of the bit of road next to the buildings! It was still dark enough for some of the street lighting to be on.
The rain had reduced to showers every now and then and the water was crystal clear even in what was obviously a working harbour. Huge rocks stretched out from the stone-built harbour wall, showing how little the builders had reclaimed from the sea, and various kinds of seaweed waved gently, green, red and brown, ten to fifteen feet beneath the surface.
I took this from the edge of the road as we walked from the car park on the edge of the harbour towards the town. We had arrived a bit faster than Frank and Joyce and they drove past us towards the car park going very gingerly along this stretch. I had done the same myself! Dropping off the edge would not be nice!
We decided it was time for a morning coffee and sat in a cafe on the harbour wall. Lookit! Sunshine!
Somehow I'd lost my hat and had to get another. I had to tighten the flap at the back which meant that a couple of inches of flap was whipping my earhole! Gill generously offered to pose so that this could be recorded for posterity...
Mevagissy was beautiful. I went with Steve into a shop selling paintings and he noticed that they were all by the same artist. "I think this must be the Kevin Platt shop!" he began. I guessed it probably was just that and to stop him before he made any derogatory jokes I said "I expect so..." and turned immediately to the woman behind the counter. "Are you Mrs Platt?" I asked. "Yes I am, actually!" she beamed. I almost felt Steve check himself! Her husband had certainly done some very nice paintings. I bought a print of a tin mine with St Michael's Mount in the background.
The village had very very narrow streets and yet were carrying traffic in both directions. There was a traffic warden kept very busy sorting out which of two head to head cars, each with a long queue of other cars nose to tail behind them should reverse to let the other pass. If ever a traffic warden earned his pennies it was this guy.
As we left the village, I was behind Frank's Peugot estate which was being driven by sister-in-law Joyce, who was at that time just learning to drive. A delivery van in front of her stopped on a steep incline on one of those narrow streets and I put on my handbrake, prepared to wait but she screeched the wheels and shot through the narrowest gap you can imagine.
Fran said "Well Joyce got through so you can!" but I went through very slowly! The following day Dad described the event as follows: "Frank was saying 'You'll have to slow down, SLOW DOWN! ...well maybe not...'"
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