Monday morning–my first sugarless day– I was awakened by the sound of birds singing and cows moo-ing:

Since I was still the only one up, I went round the cottage filming the window fixtures and talking to myself:

When I finished this catalog of domestic quotidian, I took off my glasses to polish a lens and unaccountably snapped one of the arms in two. I looked at the two pieces in my hands and thought, how could this have happened? The arms are made of titanium! I taped them together with sticking plaster (that’s English for Band-Aid) and the broken side flopped on my ear like the wounded wing of a bird.

Meanwhile Sue was up and had broken a tooth and a filling had come out.

Wendy was okay.

Then I noticed that my hiking shoes reeked of something foul. At first I blamed the peat of Scotland but later decided that it had to do with them being cooped up in an airless bag for two long. I put them outside the front door to take in the sea air. By the time I discovered my shoes smelt and had made the general announcement that I was parking them outside (no one cared), Wendy and/or  Sue had done a washing and Sue was taking the clothes to the clothesline in back.

By now we should be having our morning tea and cake but we hadn’t gotten out of Morvah so we walked around the corner to the old Morvah Schoolhouse, which has become a Café and Gallery.  Wendy and Sue scored over me with their lemon drizzle cake (which is a thing, lemon drizzle cake, a Mary Berry thing) saying that it had neither sugar nor gluten in it. I ate my oatcake and bought a bar of lemon soap because I couldn’t have the lemon drizzle.

After we left I was surprised to hear Wendy and Sue’s assessment (complaints) of the experience. The server had certainly taken her time and she had barely looked at us or asked if we needed anything else. She was too busy talking to her colleague who had come in with a pile of vegetables. Said colleague was the same person who had (supposedly) cleaned our cottage and Sue said she had done a slapdash job or words to that effect. But apparently the lemon drizzle had been good.

While we were in the neighborhood, we visited St Bridget’s across the road from our cottage.  It’s was a tiny little sanctuary, freezing cold and smelling damp and old. Catnip-stuffed church mice were going for a couple of pounds a head. I bought four for some of my cat friends. Then I played “Roll Out the Barrel” on the pump organ.

I visited Alec’s enormous cow, Doubtful, and the chunky little Neptune. Doubtful was feeding ferociously near the fence. She took one repressive look at me and continued crunching. Neptune froze a little way off, then advanced, stopped and watched me for whatever most worries a cow about a middle-aged woman cooing from the side of the road.

I asked Sue and Wendy what was the most noticeable thing about my American accent. Sue said it was the way I drew out all my vowels. British vowels are more clipped and with fewer diphthongs. I tried speaking more clippy and Wendy said I sounded like Miss Piggy. We were to have many conversations about the differences in American and British speech and I spent a lot of time muttering to myself trying to zero in on the pronunciation of words.

This first conversation about speech took place while we were trying to find the Madron well. (Madron is accented like Madris, something else I muttered to myself whenever we talked about Madron or passed road signs.) This Madron well was something I had read about; Sue and Wendy had gone looking for it but so far hadn’t found it. The guidebooks are coy about exactly where it is and Google maps is hopeless. The gist of all our sources was that the ancient Madron well is in a field off a path. There’s a sign on the road that gestures toward the path so we parked and set off down a lane, which turned into a path arched over with still green trees and bushes and which pulled us into a wood.

path to the well

A mile in we came upon the ruins of a Celtic chapel with a nave and a well but not the particular well we were looking for. A half dozen young people were hanging about in the ruins, reeking of weed and acting stupid so we continued down the path. We could see fields beyond the woods but nothing to indicate which field contained the sacred Madron well. Finally we came upon a hole with a stone covering it.

“This looks like a well,” Wendy said. “Could this be it?”

Sue looked at her scornfully. “Is this a field?” she demanded.

Celtic Chapel and Wishing Well sign

We gave up on the field and the well but as consolation we saw the Cloutie Well. (pronounced “clootie,” which means cloth.) Colorful strips of cloth hung from branches and twigs that grew around a pond. As the clouties disintegrate in the wind and rain, the ailment they represent leaves your body. I tied up a tissue  because I didn’t have any clothes I wanted to rip for even such a worthy cause as arthritis. It was a used tissue and Sue said that wasn’t very respectful.

Cloutie Well, Madron. Photo by Sue Cooke

From Madron we carried on to Mousehole, one of the many charming fishing villages on the Cornish coast. At Hole Foods (get it?) I had a gluten-free pasty that had to be the finest meal I had ever eaten but then I was hungry and hadn’t had any cake.

The Mousehole is a shop that I remember from 1980. The woman running the shop seemed to have been there since 1980 without sleep, a meal or even a wee break. (Wee is English for pee.) She followed me around sighing loudly every time I left a card so much as a quarter inch askew. She followed me into a section of lotions where I picked up a little pot of foot salve called “Socks.”

“That’s for feet,” she snapped contemptuously (or so it sounded.)

I wanted to asked, “Does that mean I can’t buy it?”

Evidently it wasn’t just me who who buzzed her antennae. Later Sue said she felt like saying to her, “I’m going around the corner now. Do you want to follow me to make sure I don’t steal anything?”

We finished the day in Penzance where there was no joy for my broken glasses (no pirates either for any of you who would appreciate knowing that.) I was still held together with sticking plaster, which a helpful optician made worse by adding a blob of cello tape (that English for Scotch tape.) Sue got a temporary filling kit at Boots. 

We came home tired and pulled our day’s bootie out of the car. I raced Sue to get the washing off the line and we draped the damp clothes on all the radiators in the cottage. Then cups of tea.

A Mousehole Street

Mousehole Harbour

The Mousehole