The Best Year Of My Life

A Memory of St Ives.

St, Ives born and bred, my family had lived in a couple of houses upalong before moving to 22 The Digey ( the middle door ) sometime in 1967. I remember having my 6th birthday there.  At the time there was a credit squeeze on and my parents could only afford a tiny downalong cottage even though they had sold a large house in Alexandra Road.  Back then the cheapest properties were around the harbour and my poor Mum felt that we had "come down" a fair bit to have to resort to living there, even though she loved the proximity to the beach. My how things do change!
My brother and I enjoyed the best year of our lives living there.  Every day on the beach for hours on end, up to Clodgy or Tregenna Woods or up the Steeple.  Once we took two trips to Seal Island and were gone all day. That was the only time my Mum ever felt a little worried !!!  Like I said ..don't things change.
Even though it was a tiny cottage we took in visitors for extra cash and once Mum nearly threw out a young couple because she had suspicsions that they weren't married...yes things do indeed change.
I remember Donovan coming back to St. Ives and riding through the town in a little horse drawn carriage......do I really remember that accurately I wonder, or have I elaborated it in my mind.......He picked me out of the crowd of children watching from their Digey steps and I rushed down and he gave me a kiss.....No!! That bit is my imagination... what I would have liked to have happened !  
I recall the town full of "Beatnicks", and spending far too long in the amusement arcade looking for threepenny bits that might have been dropped.  I remember leaving my beloved Sindy doll on the Harbour beach and the tide came in and took her away. She returned to me by way of a fishing boat some weeks later completely devoid of her blonde nylon locks....she wasn't quite the same after that.  I remember the Torrey Canyon disaster, my brother being on the news because he was playing on the beach while they were filming it and we all missed it on the telly of course.  A gang of us Digey children picked hundreds of sea pinks and sold them in the Meadow Square to raise money for the disaster fund and I remember crying over dead and dying seabirds we couldn't help.  I remember lining up with all the little boys to have my hair cut by Barber the barber. I was the only little girl in town with short back and sides, no matter how many times my Mum tried to convince me it was an Urchin cut like Twiggies.  I remember dear old Eliza who lived in the cottage opposite, she would lean over her stable door and talk to the passers- by.  We kids thought she was a nosey old biddy but she had our welfare at heart really, she flew out of that cottage like a Formula 1 racing car the day I slipped whilst running up the steps to our cottage, cracking my chin on the granite and sending my lower teeth through my top lip.  She sat me in front of her fire and fixed it up for me......I quite liked her after that.  I suppose you could say we were latch-key children.  My Mum had taken a part time job in "The China Cat" in Fore Street.  After school  we would climb through the bathroom window which was part of what was originally the old fish cellar and one day my brother was in such a hurry that he put his foot straight down the toilet as he climbed in, and had great difficulty taking it out again..... I was no help as I was dissolved in laughter.
My saddest memory of this time was after we had left the cottage and we were staying with my Grandfather in Trenwith Lane.  I left school and habitually ran down the Stenack, through Trewin Gardens into Fore Street then belted along the Digey, up the steps and into our cottage only to be greeted with unfamiliar voices.  I remember the momentary confusion and then quietly and slowly retracing my steps out into the street. I ran  to Trenwith Lane crying all the way with the thought of that other family living in our place. I could go on and on ( even more so!!) and it couldn't have been more than eighteen months because I was eight when we emigrated to Perth in Australia in 1968.  I now reside in Malaysia with my husband and two children who are always very envious of my wild and free early childhood in St. Ives and especially my time in The Digey.
As I grow older the memories seem more important to me. You can take the girl out of St. Ives but you can't take St. Ives out of the girl!!!!
I made a point of telling my family during a holiday back in St. Ives in 2006 that this is the place that I want to end up. I have travelled all around the world and lived in six different countries and it's been wonderful but I am starting to feel a strong magnetic pull towards Cornwall. Only problem is as my son pointed out....."You can't afford it!!!!!"