Tales from Our Cornish Island

"... I picked up a couple of anoraks, an oilskin, two sou'westers and an assortment of wooly hats. At the first sign of small boats approaching I peered over the hedge on the clifftop by the house, glaring as fearsomely as I could. I then ducked down, donned a hooded anorak, glared again, ducked, changed to a sou'wester and so on, ducking, changing and glaring until my supply of headgear was exhausted. Then, gathering up all my props, I raced down the path until I found a suitable gap in the hedge on the cliff edge there, and repeated the performance. I hoped that I had given the impression that at least twenty angry people were awaiting any intruders." - Evelyn Atkins, on repelling boarders Once upon a time a long time ago (1964), two English spinster sisters, Evelyn and Babs Atkins, came upon an island for sale, the 22.5-acre St. George's, off the Cornish coast opposite the town of Looe. And they bought it. In 1976, Evelyn penned We Bought an Island, in which she shares the experiences of discovering, purchasing, and relocating to the place. Moving all their stuff offshore during the winter of 1964 was a particularly dodgy undertaking in the face of turbulent seas and high winds. The book ends as they spend their first night in Island House, their new home. Ten years later, Evelyn wrote the sequel, TALES FROM OUR CORNISH ISLAND, which takes up the story the morning of the sisters' first full day on St. George's, and then diffuses over subsequent years as experiences and tales accrue: daffodil farming, treasure hunting, beekeeping, gardening, assorted pets and livestock, mechanical emergencies, storms, and isolation. The most entertaining pages, as evidenced by the passage heading this review, deal with the coping skills required when faced with visitors both invited and not. Regarding the latter group, the sisters finally gave up the fight and began charging a landing fee and serving tea and light lunches. And before Babs retired from her position as headmistress of a mainland school, Evelyn had to pretty much carry on by herself with the help of Conservation Corps volunteers, who posed their own set of headaches. Tasked with year-round and sometimes back-breaking chores, it was hardly the idyllic existence imagined by casual visitors. Both women, and especially Evelyn, had uncommon pluck. I'm awarding four stars for the same reason that I gave four to the first volume. Sometimes, Evelyn gets off track and natters on about times and events totally irrelevant to their island existence. Indeed, the whole last chapter, "The Author's Tale", is Evelyn's summary of her life before and during World war II as she aspired to become a writer - a congenial narrative, but unnecessary. By her own admission, there's a lot more about the island that she could've substituted. TALES FROM OUR CORNISH ISLAND contains a satisfying ten pages of B & W photos, most presumably taken by the author herself, an accomplished and avid photographer. One snap captioned