The car park at Sainsburys came as no surprise. It seemed I’d picked my moment well though, as one motorhome space had just been vacated as I arrived, and despite the mass of humanity milling over the concourse between their vehicles and the entrance to the superstore, I reversed into it without issue and went in. Here was Christmas, right in front of me, people scowling at each other in the annual bunfight for the last pack of pigs in blankets and chasing about the place in search of cranberry sauce. Does anyone buy cranberry sauce at any other time of year? When did you last have brandy butter with your eggnog in August? I was only here because neither of us had summoned up the nerve to go shopping recently, and I needed something for lunch. It wasn’t my finest ever piece of pre-togging preparation, but some time later I emerged with a sandwich, a bag of crisps, a bottle of something that was allegedly full of pulped red berries, and a fruit salad that had been reduced in price before it started to grow fur. Quite why I resisted a flaky steak pasty from the Cornish Oven just along the road, I really can’t say. I waited for a gap in the mayhem and pulled away from the car park - away from the madness in my escape to sanity.
I used to like the fact that Christmas delivered ten or eleven days away from the office, but now that I don’t work anymore, the one big plus that the festive season brings no longer applies. In fact now that almost everyone else is at leisure too, it’s merely a big noisy headache, full of the same collection of tedious earworms being played at me on an endless loop by people who claim to enjoy all of this enforced jollity. Much to our mutual relief, Ali and I have stopped buying each other presents. We much prefer to spend our money on holidays. All those anxious years of wondering “how much should I spend?” or “how many presents should I get her?” when I knew that she was having exactly the same struggle. Neither of us misses trying to guess at what the other neither needs nor desires each year. All we really want is an untapped supply of cheese and chocolate, and if one of us has a burning desire for a new lens or a sewing machine, we get it when we can afford to. We don’t miss trudging around busy shopping centres in a state of unbridled panic either. Call me Mr Grinch, but I really don’t care. This year I opened junior ISA investments for my two tiny grandchildren, my children each received a copy of “Tales From the Edge,” my photobook of stories from Cornwall (whether they liked it or not), other family members and a very small number of friends received a copy of the Dom Haughton Photography 2024 calendar (again, whether they liked it or not), and that was it. All from my PC in a safe and quiet place where no strangers would invade my personal space and reach past me to grab a bottle of Bucks Fizz before supplies run out. Besides which, we don’t have any Bucks Fizz in the house. Not even at Christmas.
Where I was heading now, things would be much more to my liking. I knew more or less where I wanted to take my shots from, and although it would only be a couple of hours until sunset, it was a place where only a few would venture on an afternoon in deepest December. And finally, after a number of foiled attempts in recent visits, I managed to find somebody who could help me register as a local resident and park here for free. If you live in Cornwall, wander into the hotel reception with your driving licence and they’ll help you save a small fortune in parking charges. Don’t say you never learned anything useful here. Well not if your home is west of the Tamar at any rate.
A few years ago I came to the cliffs between Land’s End and Sennen Cove at more or less the same time of year, no doubt for exactly the same reasons, to take a long exposure of the sunset glow, and despite somehow having left my ball head at home, I balanced the camera on top of the tripod and improvised. Somehow I got a reasonable result that day, but it was a composition I felt was worth returning to. Except I didn’t quite return to it because I was drawn into a telephoto view instead. Sheltering from a stiff breeze in the shadow of an enormous granite boulder, Longships Lighthouse became the focal point once again, as did the sense of depth offered by the waves cracking over the cluster of rocks at the edge of the mainland and the reef in between. I did try a few longer exposures, but the breaking water and the endless movement of the gulls were winning me over. Even on a relatively benign day, there was plenty of action to keep me interested, but I made a mental note to come and sit in the lee of this rock again when things get tasty out there.
Across the land to the east of me, those endless Christmas tunes were being piped into homes and bustling supermarkets, whether the occupants wanted to hear them or not, but here I was safe from the excesses of my fellow humans. And while I would have to rejoin the rest of the world tomorrow and do Christmas stuff, today was all about headspace. Personal space too for that matter - apart from the provisions stop at Sainsbury’s in Penzance on the way here. It was only later, as I opened the not yet furry fruit salad, that the sky put on a technicolour extravaganza. But that’s another story for next time.
