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| CROOKED SPIRE OF A CORNISH CHURCH |
Living in Cornwall has a great many benefits and a few disadvantages.
The population in Cornwall is relatively sparsely distributed which allows one to breathe more easily than if you were to live in London, for example. It tends to be mostly rural with smaller villages and narrow roads.
Cornwall is definitely a tourist destination with staycationers (people who take their holidays at home rather than abroad) and a goodly number of Germans who have read the works of Rosamunde Pilcher and they come to indulge themselves in the magic of the Pilcher books. This means that during summer the place is heaving with people, while in winter, the place seems to be empty.
To accommodate the excess summer population, one would need more AirBNBs than are available, so the shortfall is made up of second home owners obtaining a useful income to help them afford a better life-style through the use of holiday lets.
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Near where we live is a village which boasts quite a large church with crooked spire – something that seems to be very much a Cornish church tradition possibly due to the builders’ distressing reliance on the local tipple – Scrumpy - while they work. Well, God doesn’t seem to mind providing nothing falls down on the worshippers.
The village is so arranged that houses cluster close to the church, and because owning one of them is most desirable to those who can afford one as a second home, inevitably a couple are just that – second homes.
The villagers have become used to this situation so that they know which properties are likely to have some lights switched on during winter evenings – and which are dark and with curtains drawn.
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Recently, one of the local residents passed what was well known as a second home, and the lights must have been on so, being friendly with the second home owner, he phoned to ensure that it was the owner rather than a visitor. The owner answered the phone – probably from London – and asked if there was a problem ?
We simply do not know the details of how it moved on from here but the owner assured the caller that the place was not let to anyone at that moment.
As to whether there was an agent who looks after properties in their owners’ absence, or whether there was something more to this event, we shall probably never know, but it transpires that it was being used as a bordello – and beside the church, at that !
When I heard the account first of all, I wondered whether this was an attempt to drum up visitors to the church to share their secrets with the priest “Father, I have sinned. . . . .” to gain absolution after a romp; but immediately discarded this idea as we don’t have any male clergy in the parish at present. How would one address the priestess ? “Mother, I have sinned. . . . .?”
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Dare I let this account circulate on social media or not ? I’m not sure that The Cornish Tourist Board would want Cornwall known for these particular delights however delectable they might seem. Or is it that they don’t think Cornwall can possibly compete with De Wallen in Amsterdam ?
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Hilarious!
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