West of Hayle River..1 of 5

Well I thought I'd show willing and be amongst the first to share some of my 5 things you may not know about me..  but as you may expect I will make the fact which is actually quite simple into rather a ramble..

I was born in Redruth! 

There , I said it.. I am not proud of it, but the fact remains and I cannot lie!

There is a great book about the far west of Cornwall called 'West of Hayle River' and it says that in some people's opinion you are not truly Cornish unless you were born 'west of Hayle River' ... I quietly tend to agree but then on the same hand disagree as it makes me not eligible!  But proudly I can announce that all my children are.. just!

I grew up, the formative first thirteen years of my life, in my special special place, a fishing cove way out west, decidedly Cornish by this definition.  But in 1960 the nearest maternity ward was in Redruth Hospital. It must have been a busy place as ladies came from as far apart as Newquay, the Lizard and Land's End, in fact Mum made a lifelong friend in one of the ladies, Hazel Broad of Manaccan, she had a son the day after Mum had me... and hey, they discovered that they also had wedding anniversaries on consecutive days..in December about nine months before we were born!

It must have been a trek to visit as well, about 25 miles each way. Dad didn't drive but I guess with the goodwill of friends visited Mum for three evenings after the Wednesday (when her waters broke after a short sharp shock of an iron burn on her arm my Godmother suspected) with no baby appearing, until eventually on a Saturday night he got a call just when he got home to say I was in the world! They say he didn't see me awake for a week until they brought me home, but seems he heard me then pretty good! 

Mums and babies were transferred after delivery to a maternity ward for a few days, Mum told me that they were in a room where they climbed out through a window and handed babies out afterwards, to get to the ambulance which took them.  Not sure why, maybe it was to short circuit the trip through the hospital?
Redruth for those of you who don't know is a more industrial town in our area, the kind of place which suffered a lot of depression in the years when trendy towns were booming and good old fashioned moning and industry was being replaced by service jobs..  the kind of place they joke about having a million pounds worth of improvements after the recent floods..or where they had a proposal for development, bulldoze a local peak called Carn Brea into the town and raise it to the ground!  so you can imagine thta it does grate rather to say that technically I was born there whilst feeling I really 'belonged' and grew up in a picturesque fishin cove.. but hey, fifty-few years later I can live with it... (the hospital is gone now, new housing sits teasingly where the grey dull building once taunted me.. )