Who would have thought that our first paid job in Cornwall would be cleaning the very same caravan that we stayed in on our honeymoon a year and a half ago - the first time that we came to Cornwall together, when our lives were still very much in Brighton?
Let me back track a little.
Brighton. May 2011. We go for dinner with Becky, a friend from church. We're engaged and we talk about honeymoons and how we don't really know where we're going to go. Becky suggests her parent's static caravan in Cornwall, calls them then and there, gets us a good deal and before we know it, it's arranged.
Gwythian Bay. September 2011.
We stay in said caravan, sheltered behind the sand dunes of a beautiful golden bay. We have an amazing week exploring the land, and we imagine living down Cornwall-ways, but reckon that's just because we're on honeymoon and on holiday and that everyone probably thinks that. While down there, we see Becky, who has now moved to Cornwall herself, who tells us about a House of Prayer.
Brighton. October 2011.
We didn't have time to visit the House Of Prayer whilst on honeymoon, but we look it up when we get home, and see they want volunteers, and think: hmmm maybe we'll do that some time.
Brighton. March 2012.
We apply to volunteer and before we've even had a response we get a message from Stephanie who has recently moved to Cornwall and has met us a couple of times at church events and she is so excited about us coming and thinks we're moving down for a few months. We tell her no, just a couple of weeks. She says the last people who came to visit ended up staying.
Castle Gate (near Penzance), Cornwall. May 2012.
We rock up to the House of Prayer, not really knowing what we've got ourselves in for. I am sick, Llewellyn is sad, it's been a tough few months. We're in a caravan again, smaller this time but with an amazing view. We meet a whole lot of lovely people. We pray, we get creative, we walk, we rest, we surf. We think we could picture ourselves living here. We hear about one of the bungalows becoming available in a few months. We think about it more. We talk. We suggest it and receive excited responses from the people we've been hanging out with. Stephanie might have been right.
Brighton. June 2012.
We return, rested and more ourselves than we have been for a while. We tell some people about our thoughts of moving to Cornwall. Some don't say much. Some don't want us to leave. Many encourage us. We decide we'll go for it, sometime in 2013.
Castle Gate, Cornwall. April 2013.
Almost 10 months later, and we make the move. We're here. In the bungalow on top of the hill with a beautiful view and a caravan in the driveway. And the people we met down here used to clean the caravan we stayed in on our honeymoon. And suggest us for the job. And we take it. And we chat with Becky's parents who own the caravan. And they have some good stories about the different places they own that we will clean. And we have another connection in that they worked at the same school in Zambia that my parents did, only a few years before we went there. And a previous head boy from that school is currently staying in one of the other places that we cleaned yesterday...
yeh. so.
Many connections. Coincidences, perhaps.
perhaps not.
either way, I don't think it's a mistake that we are here.
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