Knowing Where You Live

I got an email this morning from Len, a lovely gentleman who writes a column for my website, www.Englandsouthwest.com. In it, he included a photo of the block of flats where he lives, and where I, also, have a holiday residence. It's really a very uninspired looking block (see photo, by Len Chester, left), despite Len having gotten a very good angle on it and a good photo, to boot.
But the truth, of course, is often hidden in a plain wrapper. The Methodist Chapel had once stood on the site, and the great preacher John Wesley had visited it at least five times, the last in 1789. At the time, of course, the United States had just recently become a nation in its own right, something portions of England's West Country, in which the block of flats stands, have done from time to time.
Indeed, Cornwall has not yet given up the fight. On a recent visit to Polperro, I noted a commercial van bearing the company name and the location: "Cornwall, near England."
Those who would have Cornwall be granted greater autonomy note that the county has never been formally annexed to England via an Act of Union. They claim it is a duchy, a distinctive nation. To that end, the Cornish nationalists want the Crown to recognize Cornwall as one of the constituent nations of the UK, not unlike Northern Ireland.
One advantage of gaining that independence might be a certain distancing from the current Duchess of Cornwall, whom many non-Cornish see as a usurper of various sorts. The former Camilla Parker-Bowles is almost certainly more popular in England than in the U.S., of course. Yanks cannot seem to forget the beautiful young princess, Diana, whose trials and tribulations are at least partly due to Camilla's influence over Prince Charles. Perhaps Camilla herself will want to dump Cornwall when Prince Charles becomes King Charles and she, as is planned, becomes HRH The Queen Consort. Queen trumps duchess any day, I should think.
Still, regardless of the high doings of the royals, many Cornish want autonomy. Cornwall is, like Sicily, at the far southern corner of its parent nation. Like Sicily, it has a cultural life somewhat different from that of the mother country, although, unlike Sicily, as far as I know, it has not contributed crime families along with Cornish pasties, as Sicily has contributed Mafia lineages along with veal marsala.
Some locals, even those from Devon (where the apartment block is), think official England is trying to turn the southwest into a sort of chilly Disneyland. If this is so, it is because of the relative lack of industry in the region now that the tin mines are played out. The beaches, though, are magnificent. And, despite the pallor caused by rising damp most of the year, the British do love their seaside sojourns.
As an outsider hoping to become an insider, it is only talking through my hat I am, to put things into a sort of Celtic cadence, Cornish being a Celtic tongue close to Irish and Welsh. Still, knowing a few things about one's home, or even one's habitual vacation spot, seems the least one can do not to become just another tourist, but rather a resident, if only an intermittent one, of the area.