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PROPER JOB
Mary G. Barry, MD
Louisville Medicine Editor
[email protected]
I
n Cornwall that’s a compliment (mostly)
and also the name of a locally brewed St.
Austell IPA (bleah). For us, in our August jaunts around the Penwith peninsula,
a proper job meant a happy day’s travel,
enough clotted cream to solidify our most
pristine arteries, and something - a sign, a
comment, a place - that was quintessentially
British.
We had no pirates to contend with. But on
August 16th, after several earthquakes, the
Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland erupted,
and, remembering the complete meltdown
of the European airspace after Eyjafjallajokull in 2010, we braced ourselves for disappointments. Luckily my husband made it
over the ocean first to collect his mother Dr.
Hertha, and I a day later, after several more
eruptions and upgrades from Iceland air
authorities to the “red alert” stages. We met
at Heathrow on a lovely cool Friday morning, toured around, paid our respects to Sir
Alexander Fleming, and rolled out Saturday
from London Paddington for the 300 mile
Great Western Railway ride to Penzance.
There are very few things I love more than
riding on a train in a window seat, peering
into backyards, pastures and vegetable plots,
speed-birding, reading, and eavesdropping,
which was lively. It was the final weekend
before British primary schools started back,
and we were headed to the coast. Children
were cited for “moaning” and “being chippy” and “hanging about,” and parents for
being both “beastly slow” and “prodding.”
Farther west, at every port people crowded the sands, perched on the seawalls, and
stared at the Channel.
We drove (left-handed, with significant
co-piloting) to our cottage in Lelant Downs
above St. Ives. It sat in dripping woods, with
a super rope swing, an antique cannon in
the front yard, and a near-total lack of internet connection (spotty, slow, cellular, no
computer cables, only working at odd “low
traffic over the airwaves” hours). Half our
family was unmoved, but the American
half was crestfallen. Thenceforth began our
quest for wi-fi, and our gradual appreciation
of the particular history of Cornwall and
her anci