Clay country
My Cornish Roots Author Angela Britnell lives near Nashville, Tennessee, but as she tells Kirstie Newton, her heart remains in St Stephen, near St Austell
and the sense of community I remember is one that emerges in my writing now.
How did you come to move to the USA? I met my own tall, dark, handsome stranger and fell in love! After leaving school, I joined the WRNS and after about five years was drafted to a small NATO headquarters on the Jutland peninsula in Denmark. A certain US Naval Lieutenant was stationed there too; within four months, we were engaged and married nine months later. This April, Tell us about your earlier life in Cornwall Richard and I celebrate our 38th wedding I was born in what was then St Stephen’s anniversary, so I’d say it worked out. After post office, where my father was the Denmark, we lived in Sicily for two years and postmaster for many years. Everyone knew then moved to Monterey, California, which me as “Mr Golley’s daughter from up post was the first time I lived in the US. Now we’re office”. It was a small village: the vicar and based in Thompson’s Station, a small town the policeman were my best friends’ fathers, about an hour outside of Nashville. so there was little chance of getting into any trouble! I went to the village school and then What do you miss most about Cornwall? to grammar school in St Austell. My parents My husband’s joking answer is “The weather were from the area – my dad grew up in St and pasties!” That simplifies it, but I do miss Austell, my mum in Mevagissey, where her the more moderate climate - my fair Cornish father was harbourmaster. I suppose it was a skin has never got used to the extreme very old-fashioned childhood in many ways, heat and humidity of a Tennessee summer. n 50 |
My
| Volume 2 Issue 70 | February - March 2022
