It was sunny on Monday so I took the children swimming in Mousehole harbour. It was almost empty but a woman sanding a boat on the quayside scowled at me. She couldn’t hear the children’s Cornish accents, which might tell her that I live here.
There have been tensions for years between native Cornish and the incomers who buy houses and drape them with nautical-themed junk. With pandemic, they have developed into hostility. A sign appeared on the bus stop in Mousehole: ‘If you have travelled from a hotspot area outside Cornwall (like London) you are putting vulnerable people in this village at risk of death. Please come back when the virus peak has passed, until then travel is selfish and unkind.’ But it was grey and windy that day, and the sign blew away.
Tourism brings £1.8 billion a year to Cornwall and employs one in five people. Tin mining has gone, and fishing is declining, so the Cornish usually greet incomers — ‘emmets’ or ‘ants’ — with phlegmatic grace. But not when there is a pandemic, an ageing population (Cornwall is beloved by retirees), widespread ill-health (it is as normal to see a mobility scooter in Penzance on a Saturday morning as it is to see a person walking), and only one major hospital at Treliske. Cornwall has 15 critical care beds to serve a population of more than half a million. They had to release in-patients after going over capacity in January. They won’t confirm the numbers of critical care beds available now. They don’t want to frighten people.
It’s too late for that. It is widely believed that there is a case of coronavirus in Penzance, and another in St Just, the most westerly town in Britain. As I write, there are at least 25 cases and seven deaths.
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