Tresco not Tesco

—03.08.2000—

I’m tired at the moment. I stayed up late last night making a necklace out of tiny, yellow, sea snail shells. And today I went over to Gugh and helped Patricia paint their bedroom. The best part, as always, is the conversation. It flowed seamlessly from communism (nice in theory, dreadful in practice), to the sexual mores of the 1970s, to the things you can learn from manual labor. In painting, as in life, care, attention to detail, and nice, even strokes, can go a long way.

So much has been going on lately. I went to Tresco on Sunday with Marco, a guy who’s been here for a while picking flowers. (Some farms still produce them.) He’s great. He’s got this real “Scooby-Doo” persona, well Shaggy actually. Same walk, similar dress, except he’s the English version. So instead of saying “Zoiks!” he says “Blimey!”

Tresco (as opposed to Tesco, the English supermarket chain) is about two or three times the size of St. Agnes (which is to say, it’s still not very big). The whole place is a privately owned estate. There are clusters of houses on both sides of the island but the people living there all work for the same employer. It’s funny to me how different it is from St. Agnes.

There, a big hotel sprawls over several acres and covers the island with generic, commercial architecture, tennis courts, and manicured lawns. It’s a bit like going to a remote conference center. It feels strange and out of place to me in these surroundings.

On the other side of the island stand the remains of a castle King Charles built in the mid-1500s, ill-placed on the top of the island to defend the harbor entrance between Tresco and Bryher, which it overlooks. I say ill-placed because as soon as they pointed their cannons down at the water, the cannonballs rolled out. Surely there’s a 400-year-old word for “Doh!”

Don’t quote me as I rewrite English history here, but I believe that after the Royalists were defeated in the Civil War in the 1600s—The Scilly Isles was their last stronghold—Oliver Cromwell built another castle on the shore below.

We also climbed down into Piper’s Hole, an old smugglers cave, whose entrance lies within the cliffs of Tresco’s north shore. The cavern itself is a tall, skinny sliver, filled wall-to-wall across its lower reaches by a quiet pool that disappears back into the distant dark, beyond the reach of the flashlights. We sat for a while and listened to the water drip in echoes from the arched ceiling. I tried in vain to explore further, equipped with only my wellies. Perhaps a swim is in order the next time I’m over there. Perhaps Jon will be up for it, unless it's full of eels or something.

Marco told me a great story over pints of Murphy’s and fish & chips in the pub at our wander’s end. He had been to Africa the previous year, somewhere near Senegal, where the locals were telling him how rich the English were. He explained that while the English made comparatively more money than the Senegalese, things in England were also much more expensive, and presented as proof the price of a sleeper train ticket from London to Cornwall: £75 ($120) which covers a distance of a few hundred miles. Their response: “Couldn’t you just walk?”

There, apparently, people wouldn’t think twice about undertaking such a journey on foot. Apparently every village has extra huts to house travelers and meals are free. Not bad considering fish and chips on Tresco costs about ten bucks. Blimey!

——

At the St. Mary’s Health Center yesterday a kindly, older English nurse told me that, even though I'd had a run in with some rusty equipment recently, it wasn’t a good idea to have tetanus shot given that there was a possibility I might have had one in the last ten years while being treated for a motorcycle crash, machinery accident, or any other mishap I’ve put myself through. Oh well, better safe than an amputated finger, I always say.

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Aside from all of that there’s a big issue on the table called “What will I be doing this summer?” I could go home after my planned six-month journey and start my graphic design practice up again. Patricia also mentioned that she and Jack will be sailing their 50-ft. ketch up to Ireland and down to the Azores and asked if I might be interested in coming along. Wow... What an offer!

And yet it’s not as easy of a choice as it might seem. I’ve been anxious to put all of this soul searching to good use on some new projects. But a sea voyage, to the Azores no less, a place that I’ve been dreaming about for awhile. How timely. Four-hour watches, guitar-fueled sing-a-longs, tropical islands, sailing, it does sound great.

I will give it some thought.

‌

Thanks for reading,Nik

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