The freezing temperatures before Christmas 1962 lasted until March. England shivered; we went tobogganing. The school was predictably shut but those of us that lived beyond the village made the most of being cut off. The steep fields behind the road were designed for slalom and anything which presented little resistance was commandeered for sledging; tin trays; corrugated roofing; and for the alpinists, custom made toboggans of tarry timber planed smooth in my father's workshop. The creek froze; not like the Thames, but enough to make an expedition to the other side a real proposition. Like Scott and Shackleton in woollen mittens and pom-pom hats, we set out in a small plywood dinghy and rowed this way and that, cracking and forcing the fragile frost sheet. I was nine years old; my cousin not much older but we were happy and brave as boys were, that lived and played on the water.
Cornwall was beginning to be touched by the sixties. Beatle-mania was growing and for those with TV, the BBC News, following the Big Freeze, was about the Profumo affair; whoever he was. The news in our road was the imminent move to the old farm at Tregarth. My father had plans for a boat yard, one bigger than the small beach where we lived. Apart from dinghies, he had built his first big boat in the garage next to the house, launching her down the road on someone else's slipway. The opportunity for more space came up and through that winter my Dad steadily renovated the small cob cottage: pulling down walls that separated the dark rooms, replacing the box stairways with open steps and adding extra beams to the precarious ceilings. At six foot five; he could only ever stand between the beams and was forever cracking his head on the low doorways.
The cluster of cow sheds with its orchard and marshes was a new world. The ground ran upwards to a bank in front of the cottage which protected the farm yard from spring tides, especially if driven by strong easterlies. Although the road ended on the beach, a well worn track ran on, past the building, hugging the edge of the orchard wall to a spring called crow well. Salt marshes extended out from the well but its waters were always sweet and fresh. We were warned NOT to dirty the waters for the family who lived in the house boat and whose only source of water it was. The orchard was our own kingdom, my brother and I, a place of camps and castles. Old boat hulls were left there to fall apart, an ancient car with leather seats spewing hemp rusted there, and a jungle of pittosporum grew thickly before being cut and bagged for market. Apples and sloes, hawthorn and dog rose gave fruit and the streams were full of elvers and tiny crabs. When the tide crept over the course grasses I leaned to swim and sail in a place known simply as the creek.
S.R. Treliven 2013
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