{"id":646,"date":"2020-05-05T11:41:14","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T14:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/?page_id=646"},"modified":"2021-04-14T14:41:44","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T17:41:44","slug":"story-i-can-see-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/sails-tales\/story-i-can-see-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Sails & Tales | Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I can see the sea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

David Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My family had a few games we would play while in the car back when I was a kid. Classic pastimes like \u2018I spy\u2019, \u2018I\u2019m thinking of an animal\u2019, \u2018who can keep a werther\u2019s original in their mouth the longest?\u2019 and \u2018cows those cows are my cows\u2019. One of my favourites was \u2018I can see the sea\u2019, in which we all tried to shout \u2018I can see the sea\u2019 when the first glimpse of blue peeked above the horizon. The first to do so would get a single coin, whatever change was hanging around the footwells of the car, usually a twenty pence piece. Since there were usually seven of us in the car, this game was the most hotly contested. Most of the time we didn\u2019t get pocket money, so a weekly opportunity to get some change was worth fighting over. Any claim of \u2018I can see the sea\u2019 had to be reviewed and supported by at least one other member of the vehicle, though usually multiple people were shouting at the same time anyway. We drove to mostly the same beaches\u2014Polzeath, Daymer Bay, Summerleaze, and Hawker\u2019s Cove were our typical destinations\u2014on mostly the same routes, except for weekends when the Land\u2019s End to John O\u2019Groats cycle race was coming through. Eventually we learned just about when the sea would be visible on the drive to each beach. It was slightly easier in the winter, when most of the trees lost their leaves, clearing a lot of the view, but for the most part there was an earliest moment one could see the sea and we each learned where it was. This game had us memorising the space around. An image from our readings that really stuck with me was David Weale describing his son \u2018ingesting\u2019 Prince Edward Island\u2019s landscape as he stared out the window driving around the province. I\u2019d usually bring a book on longer drives, but for the fifteen minutes to an hour we had to drive, depending on the beach, I\u2019d stare out that window and ingest the trees, the hills, the sky, until I knew exactly where the first sight of sea would pop out from beneath the clouds. I can\u2019t say I know the UK, even the isle of Great Britain past my patch of Cornwall and a few spots elsewhere, but that area I do know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Or, knew. Studying islandness regularly involves introspection\u2014examining the relationship one has with an island, how that relationship has formed oneself and one\u2019s outlook\u2014as well as examining place. I often feel myself looking in from the outside. I don\u2019t have any roots in PEI, I\u2019ve hardly spent three days outside of Charlottetown, and even there my accent pits me as a foreigner. I also don\u2019t know that I have those roots back home anymore. I haven\u2019t visited Cornwall since I was eighteen. It never feels quite like a visit. I always stay at my best friend\u2019s house, in the same room we had sleepovers in back when I was five, with the same view of Launceston Castle out her window. But Issy moved to Oxford two years ago. My old school friends all got jobs upcountry or work the farms further south. The sweet shop where I\u2019d spend my hard earned money has closed down. Roberto\u2019s<\/em>, the restaurant we\u2019d go to for special occasions\u2014where I\u2019d always get pasta alle vongole with extra clams\u2014closed maybe eight years ago now. It\u2019s difficult to have such a clear view of a place and have no use for it. It\u2019s difficult to see the winding path we\u2019d have to walk to Hawker\u2019s Cove, but not get that salty smell in the air, or feel the tug of brambles against my legs. It\u2019s even more difficult to not know if any of it\u2019s the same, if I\u2019m remembering it right. It\u2019s difficult knowing that it is not the same, at least some of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Another game we\u2019d play is \u2018I can see the trees\u2019. On the A30 westbound by Lifton there\u2019s a copse of beech trees to the lefthand side of the road. Some folks know them as the nearly home trees, others know them as Cookworthy Knapp, they were just the trees to us. We\u2019d only play this game when we\u2019d gone up to Devon, or further north to visit family, but few images or feelings have stayed with me like those trees. \u2018I can see the trees\u2019 isn\u2019t a competitive game. When you see the trees, you tell the rest of the car, and then we all knew we were about three minutes from crossing the River Tamar back into Cornwall. There was no prize for seeing the trees. Getting close to home was reward enough. I remember the relief every time we crossed the river, reading \u2018Kernow a\u2019gas dynergh\u2019 and knowing I was about fifteen minutes from my bed. I haven\u2019t found that feeling anywhere else. I got to play \u2018I can see the sea\u2019 back in October when my grandmother visited the island. She won. It has been almost four years since I played \u2018I can see the trees\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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RETURN TO SAILS & TALES<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can see the sea David Phillips My family had a few games we would play while in the car back when I was a kid. Classic pastimes like \u2018I spy\u2019, \u2018I\u2019m thinking of an animal\u2019, \u2018who can keep a werther\u2019s original in their mouth the longest?\u2019 and \u2018cows those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"parent":582,"menu_order":24,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/646"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1382,"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/646\/revisions\/1382"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/projects.upei.ca\/mais\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}