Everyday Cornwall

Ruth Hawkley

Ruth Hawkley is 42, from Cornwall, and lives in her van. She works as an ornament gardener, teach and perform with the Airfish Circus and works with the Acorn Theater in Penzance. “I am not moving around anymore. My engine is not working very well at the moment. I was going to fix it, but now I need that money to live off. And I didn’t want to look like a tourist. Especially not after that backlash towards people coming down in their campervans.

It is interesting; the lockdown made me realise that #vanlife is not the most environmentally friendly lifestyle. And it is not very resilient as you are very dependent on your local community. The lockdown made small things hard, like getting water.

I am lucky. I can stay here outside my industrial unit, where I can train for the circus. And I have been offered so many places to stay —everything from friend’s flats to empty holiday homes. The amount of thoughtful people is fantastic.”

Baptiste Croza, 28: “I am originally from France but have been living in Cornwall for two years. I work as a mechanic at a garage, but the garage closed due to the lockdown. I am lucky, as I still get 80 per cent of my salary and can stay in Cornwall instead of going back to France. However, it is challenging to be away from my family during a crisis like this. We make sure that we talk on the phone every day.

As for many others, Covid-19 affects my life. In January, I started to prepare to become a surf instructor. Now my future employer, the surf school, has lost 80-90 per cent of its yearly income and don’t know when they can open again. I am trying to stay fit and train to be able to take my certificate, but it is hard to feel motivated mentally. So, I am lucky that after this is over, I can continue working at the garage and postpone this year’s plans for 2021.

Except for not being close to my family, the hardest thing about the lockdown is that I can not see my friends. I miss going outside, surfing, socialise or just hugging a friend.

It is strange to think that we can send people up in space, but that the healthcare staff have to work without protective gear. I believe that the government will have to answer a lot of questions when this is over, but I wonder if the world will change.”

Baptiste Croza

Oliver Lambourne

Oliver Lambourne, 15, study photography at Truro College and train and perform with Vagabond Circus: “I am doing my first year at college. We were supposed to work on our final major project of the year, but now we are instead working with weekly tasks. Our lectures are online, and it is still good, but I think that our tutors are figuring out how to make everything work online.

In one way, it is a bit harder to be creative, but at the same time, I am finding myself being more creative than usual. Because, at college, we work a lot with conceptualizing and analyzing our projects, and at the moment I don’t need to do that. So I have been able to d a fair amount of shooting. At the same time, I have realized that there is only a certain amount of self-portraits you can take, family members to shot and locations to use. I guess it is about finding moments of simpler things, which I want to do during the next couple of weeks. I am finding more time to do the little things, like playing the guitar, and I have also been binging a bit of Netflix. My daily routines have changed, and I try to do everything slower. It has been nice to stop and do things at a different pace.

I use social media much more than usual, and I miss the interaction with other people and training with the circus. I have a very good relation with my family, so being cooped up together is not so hard. We live remote, so we feel pretty unaffected in the sense that we can go out in the garden, in the fields or down to the sea. I have friends that are much more cooped up than I am, so I feel lucky. And I can’t imagine being in a big city. One of my friends in Bristol said that it is just much more fear there and that everyone is very fearful. I guess there is no way of knowing if this will change society because we cannot predict the future. However, I think that things will be weird for at least a time when all this is over.”