Delabole Slate September 2021

Peter Brodey’s London Marathon
On Sunday 3rd October, I will
be running the London
Marathon in aid of iSight
Cornwall. This is a small,
Cornish charity that supports
and provides opportunities
for people in Cornwall living
with sight-loss and eye
disease. This charity does
amazing work for people
right across Cornwall and
makes a real, positive impact on everyday lives.
Although I don’t live in Delabole now, I was brought up on
a farm just outside, attended Delabole School and
Delabole Methodist Church and spent a lot of my childhood
in and around the village. I left Cornwall for university when
I was 18 and spent ten years living in North Wales before
moving back to Cornwall and have now lived in St Tudy
for the last few years. However, when people ask me
where I come from, I say that I always consider Delabole
to be my home and regularly come back to the village to
catch up with friends and village news. If anybody in
Delabole remembers me and would be kind enough to
sponsor me and support iSight Cornwall, I would be
extremely grateful. You can sponsor me directly by visiting
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/peterbrodey
Thank you for all of your support and you may see me
running through the village as I sometimes incorporate
Delabole into my training routes. If you do see me, feel
free to stop me and ask me how I’m getting on - I’ll
probably be happy for the rest! Peter Brodey
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
A long way down!
In the late 1950’s I lived “Down West” where we had an elderly lady neighbour. The lady had a daughter who married
a young, successful Canadian who had made his “fortune” breaking cars in Canada and selling the parts. Every year
the girl and her husband (David) would come over and stay with her mother. Each year David would say that they
wouldn’t be coming back for three years but every ‘fall’ they would be back on what had become the annual visit!
My friend, Hedley, and I had taken it upon ourselves to include David, for a bit of an escape for him from his family, when
going out on an exploratory trip anywhere in Cornwall on a Sunday afternoon. When David was with us the trips had
become “sightseeing tours” which we all enjoyed as aimless travel was not such a common pastime as it is now. I think
Hedley and I enjoyed it as much as David. At that time it was with a van or, if dry, on our motorbikes with David as pillion
passenger to either of us – no compulsory crash helmet wearing back then!
On one of these excursions we had, I think, been up in the Godrevy area and were making our way around the coast
when we came to “Hells Mouth”. We were hanging, quite precariously, over the edge watching the breakers pounding
on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff which in a hot, near gale force, wind made for quite an exhilarating experience.
There is no doubt that he was grateful for the time he got to spend with us. Often over quite a period he had said to us
that he would like us to go and visit him in Canada and that once we had landed there we would incur no expense at
all and that we were to be his guest for as long as we wanted to stay - why on earth didn’t we ever take him up on the
offer?!
David was never one to show great emotion although he obviously enjoyed life and life’s experiences. Later, when we
were moving on again, I said that he must have been impressed by what he had seen at Hells Mouth and I was sure
there was nowhere in Canada / U.S. that had anything quite like that. His response was not quite what I expected. “I tell
you what,” says David, “when you come over to see me back home, I’m going to take you down to see the Grand Canyon.
Believe me when I tell you that I’m going to keep you two on a tether while we’re looking over there because it’s so deep
that if you fall over the side you’ll not be killed when you hit the bottom – you’ll starve to death before you get there!”
Best Wishes to all and let’s hope we have a long, sunny, “fall” of our own this year. I.M.B.