‘I’M NOW A PROVINCIAL FASCIST’
WHAT LIFE IN CORNWALL LOOKS LIKE
Iwas in the village shop when I heard that people were travelling from London to their houses in Mousehole and St Ives, bringing the plague with them. This is exactly how it spread in Italy and France. During the Black Death, half the population of Truro died.
Here in the south-west, we have been lucky: it is the least affected region of mainland UK.
But if there were a major outbreak, there aren’t enough beds for victims. In January, there were only 15 critical care beds in the whole of Cornwall, to serve an ageing population of half a million.
Even those who came before lockdown – like Gordon Ramsay and his family – are, if they get the virus, potentially taking a bed away from a local. They may also pass the virus to others.
I now look for second homeowners and despise myself for it. I look at too-clean cars and too-clean Barbour jackets. A new Land Rover pulled up at the Co-op and I wondered: are they local? I did a circuit to check, a provincial fascist set on denunciation. Probably not. The hair was too smooth. If you want to look local, don’t wash the gull mess off your car. Drop your Barbour in a puddle. Get a dog. (Not a pedigree, unless you have five, then you are a breeder.) The clichés are accurate.
In one village, locals knocked on doors to tell the incomers to leave. That, they were told, was a polite warning. If they didn’t heed it, there would be another, less polite. So, they left, although they didn’t have to. The police have said that, unless they catch people in transit, they cannot send them home.
At least 650 second homeowners have been reported to the council; shopkeepers say they aren’t even keeping two metres apart. Some are refusing to serve people who cannot prove they live here.
We locals are bickering among ourselves, too: can our children paddle? No, say some; the RNLI has said to stay out of the sea. Don’t be absurd, say others: it’s unfair on kids who are already separated from their friends.
It’s awful to see what fear does to a community. I wonder if Cornwall uses the pandemic as an excuse to process her more ordinary fears: of being overwhelmed, of not being cared for, of being used – and if this will ever end.