I am very fortunate that this painting by Stanhope Forbes, founder and principal of the Newlyn School of Artists, is the view I have out of my side window. Just over a hundred years have passed since Stanhope painted it but little has changed, except the preponderance of motor vehicles in and around the Abbey Basin (the pool that allows boats, via the Ross swing bridge) to get into the Penzance Dry Dock.

Whenever the Ross Bridge is open, traffic is prevented from using the main road to Newlyn, and failure to notify drivers of this event, near the railway station, leads to them having to negotiate the Abbey Slip, which if you’ve done it before isn’t really a problem…but drivers new to the steep cobbled hill start to panic and often chaos ensues (especially if the tide is in) and where better to watch, popcorn at the ready, than my side window.

ABBEY SLIP – SUMMER MORNING

From my window, I can gaze out,

When the summer sun is at its zenith,

At the piano keyboard created

By stark light and sharp shades

Upon the slope and steps of Abbey Slip.

People, arrayed in summer garb,

Are coloured pins on a corkboard,

Their shadows gimlet-sharp beneath them

As they move from key to key

In a stop-motion glissando

On their way to the basin below.

There are thirty-six steps

That accompany the cobbled slope

Down, down from the town

From where twin towers

Both ecclesiastical and once-educational

Overlook a Stanhope Forbes painting.

The high retaining wall,

Peeped-over by pink hydrangeas 

And pock-marked by purple campanula,

Keeps the rest of the town at bay;

Cold-shouldering any commercialism

But leaving the weathered ramparts

To hold back the presumptuous tide

That barges in twice daily;

Pushing indolent seaweed

Into bothersome action.

Rust-pitted ironwork, savaged below

By relentless salt and surf,

Is worn smooth at the top;

Polished by Penzance hands.

A quadrangle of standing stones

Petrified by God for singing shanties

On a Sunday, no doubt,

Look on, and remain bewildered

At their presence there.

Beyond them the huge bollard,

A Mad Hatter’s topper in granite,

Stands steadfast. A presence.

Its rope-worn shape tells of many a ship

Hauled into the basin

Or out of the dry dock

By ancient mariners.

I watch the cars descend;

Launched down the slipway,

Newly-named and God-blessed

As they slide down to the dock below.

Their drivers wary, both of the steepness

And the approaching gradient change,

Ease down to the bumper-scouring bottom.

Careful of the coming together, where the cobs,

Those sparse neglected teeth

Loosened by too many altercations;

Grin at the prospect of yet another conflict.                

©graylightfoot