To stop myself disappearing into a world of carpet slipper domesticity, after finally getting myself into my old/new cottage, I prise myself away for a Cornish mini-break before returning to the school exam season.

Away from the Shire I hit the coastal paths of Cornwall and soon become obsessed with the inscriptions on some of the benches that have nabbed the most stunning views out to sea. Admittedly, the Cornish weather is so variable that it is not always easy to see the coastal path, let alone the bench, but I like to think of the human story behind each inscription.

Some call me nosey. I prefer, curious.

I am walking these coast paths with someone who knows the area well, and he is much less romantic about the inscriptions. ‘All this sea mist is ideal if you want someone to suddenly disappear out to sea; the inscriptions are probably just a way for the offender to cover their tracks.’ I drop back a little to allow greater distance between us, in case he feels I am becoming too annoying. I also take the opportunity to note whether his walking boots may hide an ankle tracker from public view.

The next bench reads: ‘Michael: Sadly Missed, Never Forgotten. Always in our Hearts’. I am not too keen on the sans serif type face the family have chosen – or the split infinitive – but the bench has a cracking position and I wonder how many times Mike/Mick/Micky has looked out to sea from this vantage point and how many people are ‘sadly’ missing him.

The next bench is minimalist and has been dedicated to Daniel. No life span is noted, but instead there is a beautiful carving of a shoal of fish. ‘It is probably not dedicated to someone departing this earth,’ my companion opines, ‘more likely to be a parent making an investment to point out to a broken-hearted Daniel that there are plenty more fish in the sea’. ‘A debenture?’ I mutter, and I drop back a little further in case my coastal furniture pun is not appreciated.

Thankfully, the next bench is positioned strategically at the top of a steep coastal incline. It would be rude not to rest a while and get the heart rate down. The sun has finally come out and a family of seals are floating plumptiously in the bay below, pretending that they have not noticed the crabbing nets spanning the bay in a convenient and seal-friendly fashion. This bench is dedicated to a woman after my own heart:

‘Pat: She had a smile for everyone’.

‘This is how you want to be remembered,’ I say to my companion who is now sitting beside me and munching on a pasty. ‘Yes, but we will never know what she was smiling about, will we?’ he says with his mouth full of pastry.

Next morning I decide to run the same coastal path again, this time in a vain effort to burn off some of the Cornish cream teas that have been foisted on me during this mini break and to see if I can out run my companion should things turn dark. I find myself thinking of the bench inscription that has allegedly appeared in Bristol recently:

For My Love
06.09.69-25.12.23
Husband, Father, Adulterer
Yes Roger, I knew.

I always like to believe that it is the hyphen between the birth and death date on a grave stone or bench inscription that denotes a life worth living; if this bench inscription is not just an urban myth, this particular hyphen denotes a novel I would pay to read.

Back at the cottage, drinking coffee on my own wobbly garden bench – donated and built by my good friend when the cottage was uninhabitable and the garden was the best room in the house – I wonder how I would want my own bench inscription to read.

‘Thankfully, she’s back in the house’. Stand the search party down’.