On Saturday Imagination helps us weather the storm

SITTING in a granite cottage above a Cornish beach during a storm is a pleasurable experience. You can hear the surf boom on the reef just offshore as the wind and rain rattles the windows – inside the old house, everything is warm and cosy as the maelstrom busies itself outside.

It’s a whole different experience compared to being shut inside a stormbound apartment in, say, Basingstoke or Battersea. In any kind of urban environment you’d just say “what a horrible day”.

But as the clouds and big seas roar in off the Atlantic at Sennen Cove, you think “Blimey! Isn’t nature awesome and wonderful!”

You look out and observe the sea conditions, which make you feel very relieved indeed you are not out there on a trawler or even bouncing around on a blooming great big oil tanker. You feel good you’re indoors being protected by the granite. Terra-firma itself seems to cocoon the soul as you snuggle on the sofa admiring the glow of an old lantern which hangs in the dark maw of an inglenook fireplace.

So it is an experience. Which, after all, is what holidays are about. Being stormbound in a Cornish cottage near the sea is fun and enjoyable. Some friends who are with me say they’re disappointed the bad weather has put a stop to the day’s walking itinerary. But even they have to admit that sitting out the rain in a place like this is a different experience compared to when you do the same sort of thing at home.

It’s all about the ‘feel’ of a thing. Which is why I have sympathy for the kind of down-to-earth matter-of-fact people who don’t do nuance and who are not equipped to detect the emotional atmosphere of a place. I know a few folk – perfectly nice individuals who pride themselves on being ‘straightforward’ or being able to call a spade a spade – who would not be able to sense an atmosphere if it jumped up and slapped them in the face.

Their lack of imagination would render them unable to enjoy the romance of this cottage by the sea. Instead of rubbing their hands with glee as the wind howled in the wainscotting, they’d just feel down in the dumps about having their plans ruined.

Those same people were the ones who really suffered during the first coronavirus lockdown. While people like me were delighted by the sudden freedom to be creative in any way we pleased, these individuals were stifled by feelings of imprisonment. If you live in a world of black and white where the ‘doing’ is all that matters, then not ‘doing’ is a kind of torture.

Conversely, dreamers who are suddenly confined to barracks – but free of most everyday work and chores – regard lockdowns as wondrous bouts of freedom where creativity and imagination have no bounds.

Of course, everything has an upside and a downside. If, for example, your imagination allows you sensitivity when it comes to a sense of place, you are going to feel very badly crushed indeed if you have to spend time in a hospital.

Those folk incapable of romanticising will simply shrug in their hospital bed and say: “I’m here and can’t do anything about it – so let’s hope the doctors do a good job and I’ll be up and doing in no time.”

My dreamy nature made me loathe every second of the time I spent in a coronary ward. I could feel the fear and worry of other patients around me – I could imagine the grim outcomes casting shadows across entire families huddled around beds – and I wept thinking of the old boy opposite who passed away one night with a single terrified cry that will haunt me for the rest of my days.

My ideal visit to a hospital as a patient would be to have an injection on the way through the door which would put me to sleep until the day I came out. I’d gladly have lost the whole two-week sojourn when I underwent heart surgery. It was uncomfortable, painful, scary – but, most of all, it was depressing.

I hated every second – just like I am enjoying every moment sitting here writing these words looking out of a window at the wave-tossed wildness of Sennen Cove. The tide is coming in and I’m watching 15 foot waves crashing over The Cowlow – the dangerous reef just off the village slipway and its old capstan house, which is what passes for a harbour here in the last bay before Land’s End.

But now the clouds are lifting and blue sky is beginning to appear out west – and I can just see the low humps of various Scillonian isles 29 miles away as the murk of the storm clears.

It’s all very glorious indeed. No wonder the holiday season is continuing into October – which is certainly what is happening. I have never seen Cornish roads and resorts so busy long after the summer is over.

They’ll call 2020 ‘The Year of Covid’. You could also call it ‘The Year Brits Couldn’t Stop Holidaying at Home’. If the mad rush West continues, visitors will certainly need to adapt to the sound of wind and rain beating upon their holiday cottage windows...

Dreamers confined to barracks regard lockdowns as wondrous bouts of freedom