Life in a Cornish fishing town
By naming me Lamorna, my mother unwittingly bound me to Cornwall, the county in which she and my grandmother grew up.
As a child, I visited Lamorna Cove with my family every holiday. Standing on the rocks below its crumbling quay, I would look up at its precipitous granite cliffs and experience an inexpressible affinity with this unpredictable stretch of coastline. This is how a land enters your psyche.
Newlyn is just on from Penzance, along the sea road towards Land’s End. Its population, coupled with that of neighbouring Mousehole, is small at around 4,400, but the town boasts one of the UK’s largest and most profitable fishing ports. And it has five pubs, all within walking distance of each other.
Fresh from university and struck by that distinct feeling of rootlessness experienced
