The Reality Gap
“Are you going to carry on like this all the way through the series?” Ali had already had enough of the grumbling monster at the other end of the sofa. “They're only using all of these locations to show off the county.” I tried to maintain my silence, but the red rag had been waved and I'd already climbed onto the highest horse in the neighbouring field and was chasing off after it like a hungry zealot. “But this couple live in Mevagissey, the others are so loaded that they've managed to build a multi million pound property at, isn't that Mawgan Porth, and yet they've bumped into each other by total coincidence at Penzance lido! Who goes to Penzance lido when they live at Mawgan Porth for goodness sake? It must be at least forty miles each way. There's a leisure centre at Newquay. We live much closer to Penzance and I've only ever been in that lido once. You've never been in it at all and you were born here! And why are they launching a charity in St Ives? It doesn't make sense!”
We were watching a new drama series on the television of course, and this one was set in our own backyard. Well, bits of it were anyway. Depends on your definition of backyard really. You might have seen it too. I expect the residents of Shetland feel the same and we've been hooked on that since the first series. Ali was right of course. Cornwall was the star of the show while the complex issues around a pair of babies who were accidentally swapped at birth because of an admin cock up were merely a side story. One rich couple, the other supposedly down on their luck - although she owned a restaurant, just as we all do down here, and they lived in a very nice looking house in Mevagissey that many local people can only dream of. But the reality gap is always going to drive people like me around the twist. Poldark was even worse. Holywell Bay one minute, Penberth Cove the next. And five minutes after that, Ross was racing his horse across Bodmin Moor while Demelza had magically appeared in Charlestown. And this was in the late eighteenth century, almost two hundred years before the first Ford Sierra Cosworth with go faster stripes had arrived on the peninsula for goodness sake.
I'm sure the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust really appreciated the negative fictional publicity. They're in the local news enough with tales of misfortune and malpractice as it is, without the screenwriters putting the boot in. I should add for the sake of balance that my children and their own children were all born there without incident.
I've often wondered when the moment would arrive for me to share this one, taken six years ago on a windy rain charged Sunday afternoon in March when the late winter light was doing magical things on top of St Agnes Head. But it was on a stout pinnacle by these very rocks that the villain broke his anger run along the cliff path and stood, gazing enigmatically towards the west as he plotted and schemed his devious affairs, one director's instruction short of beating his chest like a mountain gorilla. As the shot opened up and panned away into the distance, there was Wheal Coates, packed with glorious drama. But may I remind you that his waterfront palace is at Mawgan Porth? Down the hill from Newquay Airport. Did he run all the way then? Is he an ultramarathon man as well as a thoroughly unpleasant chap? If I fancy going for a trot I do it near home. I don't jump in the car and drive halfway across the county.
I'm sitting within this view as I sketch the notes for my story before I forget what I was going to rant about. There's nothing much doing anyway, and I've already got my shots, besides which I need to shift in a minute because it's Friday. Five a side night. It's a beautiful view, but rather than running halfway across the north coast of the county I came here in the car. It's much quicker and allows me to focus a bit more clearly than was done with the plot of a half baked TV drama that we only lasted the distance with because of where it was filmed. Enough said. Time to, erm, run around in a sports hall, and one just down the road rather than the other side of Cornwall.
The Reality Gap
“Are you going to carry on like this all the way through the series?” Ali had already had enough of the grumbling monster at the other end of the sofa. “They're only using all of these locations to show off the county.” I tried to maintain my silence, but the red rag had been waved and I'd already climbed onto the highest horse in the neighbouring field and was chasing off after it like a hungry zealot. “But this couple live in Mevagissey, the others are so loaded that they've managed to build a multi million pound property at, isn't that Mawgan Porth, and yet they've bumped into each other by total coincidence at Penzance lido! Who goes to Penzance lido when they live at Mawgan Porth for goodness sake? It must be at least forty miles each way. There's a leisure centre at Newquay. We live much closer to Penzance and I've only ever been in that lido once. You've never been in it at all and you were born here! And why are they launching a charity in St Ives? It doesn't make sense!”
We were watching a new drama series on the television of course, and this one was set in our own backyard. Well, bits of it were anyway. Depends on your definition of backyard really. You might have seen it too. I expect the residents of Shetland feel the same and we've been hooked on that since the first series. Ali was right of course. Cornwall was the star of the show while the complex issues around a pair of babies who were accidentally swapped at birth because of an admin cock up were merely a side story. One rich couple, the other supposedly down on their luck - although she owned a restaurant, just as we all do down here, and they lived in a very nice looking house in Mevagissey that many local people can only dream of. But the reality gap is always going to drive people like me around the twist. Poldark was even worse. Holywell Bay one minute, Penberth Cove the next. And five minutes after that, Ross was racing his horse across Bodmin Moor while Demelza had magically appeared in Charlestown. And this was in the late eighteenth century, almost two hundred years before the first Ford Sierra Cosworth with go faster stripes had arrived on the peninsula for goodness sake.
I'm sure the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust really appreciated the negative fictional publicity. They're in the local news enough with tales of misfortune and malpractice as it is, without the screenwriters putting the boot in. I should add for the sake of balance that my children and their own children were all born there without incident.
I've often wondered when the moment would arrive for me to share this one, taken six years ago on a windy rain charged Sunday afternoon in March when the late winter light was doing magical things on top of St Agnes Head. But it was on a stout pinnacle by these very rocks that the villain broke his anger run along the cliff path and stood, gazing enigmatically towards the west as he plotted and schemed his devious affairs, one director's instruction short of beating his chest like a mountain gorilla. As the shot opened up and panned away into the distance, there was Wheal Coates, packed with glorious drama. But may I remind you that his waterfront palace is at Mawgan Porth? Down the hill from Newquay Airport. Did he run all the way then? Is he an ultramarathon man as well as a thoroughly unpleasant chap? If I fancy going for a trot I do it near home. I don't jump in the car and drive halfway across the county.
I'm sitting within this view as I sketch the notes for my story before I forget what I was going to rant about. There's nothing much doing anyway, and I've already got my shots, besides which I need to shift in a minute because it's Friday. Five a side night. It's a beautiful view, but rather than running halfway across the north coast of the county I came here in the car. It's much quicker and allows me to focus a bit more clearly than was done with the plot of a half baked TV drama that we only lasted the distance with because of where it was filmed. Enough said. Time to, erm, run around in a sports hall, and one just down the road rather than the other side of Cornwall.