With Christmas upon us and Brighton feeling wet, windy, and cold, I’m delighted to have just taken a phone call from Max Rafferty, ex bassist and songwriter with The Kooks. His call was to wish me a merry Christmas, and during our chat he asks me what I’m doing over the festive period. When I tell him not a lot, he immediately extends an invite to join him and a few friends in a beautiful Cornish bolt hole called Trelights, a few minutes drive from Port Isaac.
The following afternoon I step off the train at Bodmin Parkway station and I’m collected by Max’s friend, Simon. By the time we reach the village of Trelights we have stopped in six village pubs to wish various locals a happy Christmas and been forced to have a pint in each.
The house in Trelights belongs to a lady called Kim and is just about the most perfect place you could ever wish to spend a Christmas. A 17th century farmhouse; albeit the kind of farmhouse originally inhabited by a gentlemen farmer. It has a huge kitchen with a stone floor, a massive long table, and a roaring fire place with a Labrador fast asleep in the glow of the orange coals. Holly bedecked the low ceiling beams and the whole place smelled of cinnamon buns and slow roasting meat. It felt like stepping into a Dickens novel.
By 8pm the last guest, Max’s friend, Drew, has finally traversed his way down from Shropshire on a dozen National Express coaches and the plan for our Christmas eve has been formulated. Kim’s family owns the Golden Lion pub that sits on the harbour wall, and is a regular feature in the TV series Doc Martin that is set and filmed in Port Isaac. On Christmas Eve, it is only open to friends and family, and we have all been cordially invited.
Kim informs us she has booked a people carrier size taxi for 9.30pm to ferry us all there. However by 9pm our little gang of five has swelled to eight with the arrival of several old friends who are home to Cornwall for the holidays.
Max, Drew, and I are busily peeling spuds and sprouts, in between demolishing a bottle of vintage port, and due to the unexpected arrival of Kim’s old friends, we offer to let them take our seats in the taxi to the pub. We inform them we will call another and follow them once we have prepared the veg for tomorrow.
We are all pretty smashed by now and hadn’t considered that calling a cab in deepest rural Cornwall is not the same as calling one in Brighton. We had also not factored in that it is now 9.30pm on Christmas Eve and it seems we have more chance of seeing a camel train than a taxi. The village of Trelights has one taxi, driven by a woman called Doreen, and she informs us that she is booked solid until after midnight.
Max and I are quaffing yet another bottle of something red and fruity whilst Drew has gone to drop his bag in his room and take a shower. Max informs me that it’s not too much of a drama. Port Isaac is only a couple of miles and probably only about 20 minutes walk if we take the ramblers paths across the fields. Drew suddenly appears with a drunken grin. ‘Come and look what I’ve found.’ He giggled.
We follow him up the stairs to his room and join in his merriment as we stare into a large wooden pirates chest. Our host, Kim, works in education and the ornate wooden box is full of costumes and props from school plays. In our inebriate state we are immediately united in our belief that it will be hilarious to turn up at the pub in drag.
Max carries it off with some aplomb. His tousled shoulder length blond locks and pop star bone structure, make him a convincing pre-op. He’s chosen the Cleopatra costume; a white floor length robe with a huge gold collar piece and Egyptian head dress. The same can’t be said of Drew and me. Drew is six foot and built like a prop forward. He has chosen a knee length backless blue dress and a tight curly brown wig. I find myself left with the cast off's and decide on the nuns habit and load the chest with two large grape fruits from the kitchen.
As we set off down the darkened country lane, through the incessant drizzle, it occurs to me that we may get lucky and be able to hail a random taxi coming back into Trelights. However, it also occurs to me that we look like Carry on Cleo, a Sister Wendy Sex doll, and the zombie incarnation of Joan Crawford. It’s unlikely that anyone will stop.
Rafferty is leading from the front and assures us that, despite the drizzle, it’s a twenty minute trek down the fields with nothing more than a couple of stiles to climb over. He tells us he’s done it several times in the past and we’ll be at the pub by 10pm.
After about thirty minutes I have spotted the flaw in Max’s plan. I am dressed as a nun with two grape fruits taped to my chest, I am up to my calves in mud and shit, and I’ve just pulled zombie Joan Crawford out of a stagnant pond full of cow spit and sludge. ‘Max!’, I yell. ‘When was the last time you came down this route?’ Max Rafferty stops and looks back at me with his usual Father Dougal visage. ‘Er, last August, I think, but don’t worry, I can remember the way.’
I didn’t doubt Max’s knowledge of the route to Port Isaac, but the rabbit that pulls the levers in his head had clearly not factored in that this was not some balmy summer afternoon. It was pitch black, pissing with rain, and more like Total Wipeout on the Somme.
After an hour, Drew finally pulled rank and collapsed into a hedge. He looked like an out-take from Predator and it was decided that we needed to regroup. Max’s assurance that, as long as we were heading down hill we were heading to Port Isaac, had proved to be somewhat wide of the mark, as Drew had recently demonstrated by marching straight into a pond covered in leaves.
Drew and I decide we need to head for the nearest lights and ask a farmer for some directions. Max is looking sceptical and reminds us of where we are. ‘Drew, you fucking retard, you’ll end up getting us shot! We’re D.F.T’s and anyone with mutton chops and eyebrows on their cheeks, don’t like D.F.T’s.’
Drew and I are looking confused. ‘Down From Town.’ Said Max, like we should know this.
I’ve only known Drew for about two hours but he strikes me as a man who doesn’t give a flying fuck about farmers and shotguns. Not even dressed like a zombie Joan Crawford and covered in cow shit.
The next few minutes are as hilarious as they are scary. Max and I are hidden in a ditch by a gate and Drew is marching up the chalk path of an isolated and ramshackle farmstead, wearing a blue dress and shaking the rain out of his curly wig. In an act of sheer magnificence, he puts his wig back on and knocks on the door.
We can’t hear what is being said but clearly it has worked. Drew comes marching back to the gate with a small ruddy faced man in a cap. ‘I be guessing you be D.F.T’s?’ said the farmer, in his broad Cornish drawl. His directions made no sense whatsoever, as we couldn’t understand a single word of it. However, his initial pointing put us in the right direction.
At around midnight we found ourselves with tarmac under foot and descended the steep hill that leads into the village. Port Isaac is so pretty; the perfect picture postcard location. The harbour lights flickered over the cobbled streets and the moons glow bounced off the still black water between the fishing boats.
We walk towards the pub and I feel quite privileged to be spending my Christmas in such a unique location. In a minute we will join the throng, soak up the merriment, and get a couple
of large brandies down us to warm us up. Max leads the way, and owing to the fact that he had slid down a field on his arse, now looks like Cleopatra who’s had very bad diarrhoea. However, Drew and I are much worse. My nun’s habit is mud from the hem to the waist, I’ve lost one of my tits and the remaining one is now rolling about in the small of my back. Drew has got so much mud on his face, he now looks more like Papa Lazarou than Joan Crawford.
We walked into a deserted pub, before hearing music and voices coming from above us. Max glanced at the bar clock. ‘They must have closed up and gone upstairs to the flat.’ The three of us jostled our way up the narrow twisting stair case; tripping and giggling as we went, preparing to burst into the flat and cause much hilarity with our attire. As we were about to reach the final corkscrew turn of the impossibly narrow Georgian stair case, a voice rang out below us.
'What wankers have just traipsed mud and cow shit right through the pub and up the stairs?'
The three of us froze before we reached the final step and sheepishly turned around. The once pristine light beige carpet was almost entirely obscured by massive sloppy mud boot prints. The white painted walls of the stair were now covered in big cow shit skid marks and there was a mangled grape fruit bouncing down, step by step.
By about 2.am, and with the help of several buckets of soapy water and a scrubbing brush, we had just about got things clean again.
'How was your Christmas eve?' asked a friend.
'Oh, you know,' I said. 'Nothing extraordinary....I spent most of it in my underpants, scrubbing cow shit out of a pub carpet with one of The Kooks.'
The Great Ones Are Always Cracked. Available at Amazon.
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