Dr Polka at Wheal Roots – Notes From Underground Cornwall Plus The Real Caterpillar

I’m Dr Polka. In 1976 I started work at Wheal Roots which became ‘Poldark Mine’.  As  a 16 year old miner I literally entered a new world. Blasting our way through granite, we hooked up with old workings and though I didn’t know it at the time, we bored our way into a skoven, a tin-ground, with a history that goes back to prehistoric times. This experience forms the basis for my fiction story, The Janetta Stone, which is in my ebook, The Horned Whale.  Some day I’ll write the real story of those mining days.  The tunnels we ‘mucked out’ by wheel-barrow during the days of Britain’s Punk explosion - for £16 a week - were later used for the mining scenes representing ‘Wheal Grace’ and ‘Wheal Fortune’ in the BBC’s Poldark drama series.  Somebody certainly made a fortune  but it wasn’t the miners.  Repetitious history.  Down Poldark Mine these days they have mannequins of eighteenth-century boy miners – they don’t actually look a whole lot younger than me and my fellow-‘tinners’ from the seventies.                     

Oh Beejayzus!  The things a fella’s gotta do t’ earn a crusta bread in these crazy days – hmmmm,   let’s see now – where was I?  pppffffssssssshhhhhhhhooooooouuuuuuggghhhh!  Hey, I thought you could just dig money up!  Like in the olden days – but then I always was a bit of an impressionist, like, from back in the Golden Days.  So anyway, there I was, diggin’ and  a-delvin’ like a Devla down ol’ Wheal Roots of a Wendron afternoon, tryin t’ make a kroust, when all over a sudden like I gets the idea t’ try me luck in the litricher trade, just for the halibut like.  So I’m here t’  tell youse about me new book – it’s a noctambulatory masterpiece like, well, it’s a piece anyway – a piece of something…… 

The book’s called The Horned Whale or An Morvil Kornek, by Jeremy Schanche.  Check it out here…
http://yecaterpillar.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/the-horned-whale-by-jeremy-schanche.html

…and may God have mercy upon your soul.

(P.S. – and I really am taking the P.S. now… )  It’s available at most ebook sites and you can get it in a format to fit any device, however suspect.  Most sites let you sample the first 100 pages or so for free.  The ISBN is 9780993490910 and with this you can locate the book.

Let’s Submerge - X-Ray Spex

Mole In The Ground – Bascom Lamar Lunsford

The Beatles – Paperback Writer

(Note the shot of the Hoffner Bass right at the end)

Suspect Device – Stiff Little Fingers

Bal – My mining playlist

Delyo Syvy – Brenda Wooton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language

Are you thinking of going underground?  I’ll see you down there! 

Yours,  Dr Polka