MOUSEHOLE: LOOKING OUT IN HATS...

Mousehole: Looking Out In Hats

Add colour and the image could be

An ostentatious painting by a Newlyn artist,

Walter Langley perhaps, within a panorama;

For the scene was also maybe staged, cannily,

An essay photographed to reminisce

And create some 19th century seafaring drama…

A boy wears a straw boater,

And sits precariously upon  

A holed, upturned boat, its

Repair not yet done;

Heads are covered by hats:

Berets, bowlers and an occasional cap,

But there are no Mousehole cats, or pesky gulls,

For the focus is the harbour’s grudging gap…

Luggers moored appear to crowd the quay

And, as with arms held high,

Their masts dry salty, stinking nets

In vain surrender to a fractious sea;

Villagers watch and surely sigh,

Whilst a fishwife stands and doubtless frets…

Chimneys, once billowed out belching smoke

But now deter perching gulls with loose wire;

No working luggers the harbour now choke,

For attracting tourists is the main desire;

I’ve sat on those stones too and lazily gazed

Out at Mount’s Bay wracked by gales

And the view from the quayside has always amazed,

For Mousehole’s sheer unchanging fascination prevails…  

Pete Ray

August 2017 

The image reminded me of the kind of painting often associated with the Newlyn School of artists. 

The characters, the sea, the fishing industry all combined to make me think of how so little, yet so much has changed in Mousehole…