a Cornish holiday of missing

September, but Cornwall is hot and sunny like summer ...

I arrive shaken up by the novel I read on the long, long train ride from London.

I scratch my name absently on a pebble on the beach and wonder who will find it and ask themselves who I am.

I walk, when the tide is out, to St. Michael's Mount, which is like a smaller déjà-vu of Mont Saint-Michel in France. Wrap my head in a bright orange scarf and miss my friends.

I buy fresh seafood from a fast-food stall and watch people remove a dead seal from the beach.

I have coffee and walnut cake in one of the romantic "tea rooms" that abound in English towns and talk to my parents on the phone. Miss them.

I note that I love to wander aimlessly in foreign landscapes, for hours on end, but when the sun sets I'm struck by an anxious longing for safety and home.

I take a day trip to the amazing little town of St. Ives. Buy a flattering skirt and write my journal on a sunny rooftop terrace overlooking the bay.

I marvel at the tides, endlessly fascinating for someone who's grown up by a smaller sea unaffected by the moon.

I wander around Penzance for days and have an ongoing text conversation with a friend who, like me, is having a lonely holiday but somewhere far away. We tell each other we're strong and independent, and feel better.

I want to go into a church but don't dare. Instead end up in a club across the street, drinking wine and listening to good music. Talking to God and texting another friend who makes me laugh across a distance of two thousand miles.

I sleep in a B&B with flowery wallpaper and have breakfast made by a motherly old lady. Read a novel that makes me miss God.

I take the train home while thinking how strange it is to leave a place like Penzance and know that you will probably never see it again. Miss it already.