Cornwall, UK. 2018.

In the southwest of England is the town of St Ives. Not to be confused with the other St Ives further north. The one down south, on the coast, is the town they wrote songs about, with Gilbert and Sullivan’s pirate-town of Penzance across the peninsula. In the heart of this southern St Ives is a squat whitewashed building, The Sloop Inn, a pub and lodging constructed in 1312. The building, a bright splash of stucco, faces the North Atlantic and an inlet of Celtic Sea, surge of surf carving a basalt and granite coastline.

I’d returned to St Ives for a mixed-media literature festival. Readings with live music being played at various venues. Twice a year – spring and fall – the town fills with writers, romantics, performers and poets. A bustling haven for artists.

My accommodation was a crooked apartment perched on a bluff overlooking the shore, the call of gulls my white noise. I’d lugged a few books along, a travel guitar and a pack, and would be one of the many creatives to play and perform around town. Having only just arrived, I was looking for somewhere to eat, settle in, savour the medieval landscape. The Sloop Inn fit the bill.

I creaked up some stairs from a laneway, climbing to the restaurant topping the pub. A low ceiling with heavy wood beams forced me to duck, as though boarding a compact plane, my body becoming a question mark. A warm-smiling server, taller than me, also hunched in a vertical ab-crunch, showed me to a tiny table, set by a window, its frame dusted in spindrift and sea salt.

Directly below, in the lee of an old wooden dock with barnacled pilings, fishing boats bobbed at anchor. Tomorrow they’d be back in the bay, line-fishing for pollock and mackerel. The server, now doubled over, suggested fish pie, the fish from those boats, caught a few hours ago. I nodded approval. It all felt rather perfect, as though things couldn’t get any better. Then, as I gazed through the glass at a tourmaline sea, watching the tide roll away, music began to play. The server must have turned on the sound-system for the two of us, or maybe it was the cook. The song? Otis Redding’s (Sitting On) The Dock Of The Bay.

So I was wrong. It could get better. As Otis and I shared that instant, doing the same very thing in what felt like the very same place. Serendipitously thrust into a shared visceral realm, a soundtrack and view that morphed, for a moment, into something surpassing perfection.

Stereo Story #774

 

 


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Bill Arnott is a songwriter, poet, and bestselling author of the Gone Viking travelogues. His column Bill Arnott’s Beat runs in several magazines, and for his travels he’s received a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society. When not trekking with a small pack and journal, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making music and friends.