Chapter One: Penzance Without the Zed

Some people are born British.  Others achieve British-ness.  Still others…well, I would be one of those.

You see: I have just had British-ness thrust upon me. I am an American who has just ten days ago settled in Cornwall. Settled. Why in Cornwall?  My wife, who is most definitely of the born-British variety, had, after the birth of our second child, wanted to be nearer to her family in the UK. Honestly, though, I think it had less to do with family and more to do with Doc Martin, of which she had been watching a lot just recently. 

I basically do whatever my wife says. Don’t ask. Some of you might not need to. As an artist, my wife reasoned, life would be sweet for me in an artistic haven like Penzance.  She had been offered a job there already.  She would earn the bread and butter until I had re-established myself. So we changed countries.  Just like that.

My wife works in…let’s not give too much away, but rest assured that it is perfectly legal…oh, let’s just say “economics”…and had been painstakingly cultivating her prospective Cornish employers from the US via Skype, and with great success, too. 

The job offer had been made, so we signed a lease on a lovely cottage, site unseen, one with plenty of space for my things (I have a lot…I am an American after all, and a painter, as you know by now), these things for which we would have to wait from four to six weeks to arrive.  But we did not care about that.  Living like vagabonds out of suitcases for a month would be sort of fun, knowing that we, in fact, were anything but vagabonds.  Kim had a job; she would support us until I had established myself in the area and begun generating income. Penzance looked rosy and gorgeously inviting. Things appeared to have fallen neatly into place for us. 

Or so we believed.  You know, you can plan and plan and be very careful, and things can still go horribly awry.  So, just ten days ago, I struggled out of my Vauxhall Astra with my peppy four year-old daughter, groggy nine month-old son, ecstatic wife (whose months will not be revealed) and beleaguered cat (whose months vary, depending upon whether or not you count them in cat or human) to find myself in the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen outside of a Peter Jackson film. I half-expected elves or hobbits to step out of the foliage to welcome us.  The scenery had been so breath-takingly lovely on the drive out that my wife and I had quickly run out of adjectives to describe it, endlessly murmuring the same, tired “beautiful!”  We could not help ourselves.

We had arrived. The very day we signed the lease for the cottage and occupied it, that very day, my wife drove off to find a stronger signal for her mobile phone.  I remained in the cottage with my children and asked my daughter:

“Do you know who lives here in this cottage?”

“We do, Daddy.”

“Where are we going to live tomorrow?”

“In this house, Daddy.”

“Where are we going to live the day after that?”

“Here, Daddy.”

“And the day after that?”

“In this house, Daddy.”

“Do you like this house?”

“Yes, Daddy!”

And I believe she meant it.

A few moments after that, my wife returned, stepped out of the car, pale and upset, and announced that she had gotten a voicemail from her employers, who, having rethought their own ability to pay out a new salary, had changed their minds and dissolved her position. How they came to this decision so late in the game is a mystery to us.  Nevertheless, in an instant, the friendly fairyland of Penzance was changed into a bleak, alien, and threatening place.  We were in shock. We could not even have squeezed back into the car and headed for home at that point, even if we had wanted to; we had signed a lease and made the payments.

Take the zed out of Penzance and what do you get?  Our first twenty-four hours here.

We were devastated, and we agonized over whether it would be better to cut our losses and look for a new place to live closer to London, where finding employment would be easier, or to stay here and hope for something to materialize.  And no gradual entry for me, the artist.  I would have to find something immediately, too.

Yet, there was something about this part of the country which truly made us want to stay. So, after a full day of panic and gnashing of teeth, we decided to gird our loins, to remain in Penzance, and try to make a life for ourselves here in spite of this harrowing beginning.