Welcome to my home town: Bodmin beyond the Beast and Jail

 (Written for The Independent, originally published here.)

This storied Cornish town has long suffered from a dark reputation – but it’s finally finding its feet, says Will Marlow.

When I tell people I’m from the Cornish town of Bodmin, many ask excitedly if I’ve ever seen the so-called ‘Beast’ of Bodmin Moor. Cornwall’s version of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster is a – sometimes phantom – big cat that preys on the local livestock. It’s been the subject of many a blurry photo and unverified sighting since I was a kid, but was the least of my worries while I was growing up there.

Hunkered down in a valley, Bodmin’s ominous-looking police station looks down on the town from one side while the distinctive Sir Walter Raleigh Gilbert monument looks down from the beautiful Beacon Nature Reserve on the other. These two structures perhaps better represent my home town’s enduring reputation – as a place that struggles with drug crime, and as somewhere better known for what it used to be.

Bodmin’s dark reputation within the county was probably formed when it became the home of the County Lunatic Asylum in the early 19th century. Later the hospital was named the more palatable St Lawrence’s, and my parents worked there throughout my childhood, giving the young me some empathy for people with mental health issues.

To most locals though, the sprawling hospital was a ‘scary’ place, with its classic horror-film-asylum look and tall stories about its inhabitants. It was joined in the town by another fearsome-looking building, one with supposedly more ghostly inhabitants – the Bodmin Jail. It’s been a tourist attraction for as long as I can remember, rundown when I was young: badly dressed dummies acting as the building’s former prisoners, and bats and weeds taking over the more ruinous parts. 

The Jail gave me the first inkling that Bodmin had a more colourful history than the tired town I grew up in suggested. As someone who will take to city streets to exercise my democratic right to protest, it gives me pride that my home town launched a number of uprisings against the policies of Tudor kings. All failed, but you have to admire their spunk. The people of Bodmin do – each year the town celebrates its part in the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion with Heritage Day in July.

I would take part in Heritage Day as a child, dressing up in 16th century garb and dancing with the other school kids up the high street to the tune of Bodmin Riding – a tune I could hum to you to this day. Sunny days were also spent with my friends walking and cycling around the Beacon Nature Reserve (“the Beacon”), and up and down the Camel Trail, a 17-mile former railway line that takes walkers, cyclists, runners, and horse riders to Wadebridge and then on to Padstow.

But these sunny memories are outnumbered by those couched in Cornwall’s infamous grey drizzle. I would often use those same Beacon lanes to avoid school bullies on the way home. And I grew up in uncomfortably close proximity to drug crime and the town’s dark underbelly. It wasn’t unusual to find myself at a friend of a friend’s place where someone was taking heroin.

Bodmin wasn’t for me, for those reasons and more. Like the smalltown boy in Bronski Beat’s famous song, I left at 18 with everything I owned in a case. As a budding young gay man, I wasn’t going to find the answers I needed there. 

It took a pandemic to bring me back. When the country shut down, many of the reasons I lived in London – the music, the history, the gay culture, the food, and, most pressingly, the work – were taken away. The city suddenly felt as oppressive as Bodmin had when I was growing up. For the first time in my life, my home town seemed to offer some solace.

I’ve returned to a changing town. While many of its issues remain, it no longer has to be the town tourists drive around to get to the rest of Cornwall. The looming buildings have been transformed – St Lawrence’s is now a leafy residential area – and I can see the beginnings of a town easing towards a more prosperous future. 

Visit Bodmin once travel restrictions ease and in the future you might be able to say you went before it was … dare I say it … fashionable.

Bodmin Jail Attraction and Hotel

Gone are the lousy mannequin prisoners of my youth. Now, Bodmin Jail is an £8.5 million immersive experience that opened in October last year. You can learn about the harsh lives of the prisoners, take the ‘Dark Walk’ to get a taste of the wider county and its long history of miners excavating the windswept countryside and smugglers navigating the rugged coastline. If you’re game, you can also follow in the footsteps of the condemned – to the fully working Victorian Hanging Pit.

The rest of the ruins have also been converted in recent years – into the long-gestating Bodmin Jail Hotel, which finally opens its doors for guests on 17th May. It was a hard building to renovate: drills weren’t strong enough to drill the limestone walls, there were no copies of the original plans, and one of the biggest bat populations in the UK lived there (they now have a new roost on the site). Five years and £40 million later, Bodmin now has a beautiful and highly unusual 4-star hotel to draw tourists in.

Up the Beacon and Down the Camel Trail

The lanes around the Beacon Nature Reserve weren’t very tourist-friendly when I was skipping school in them, you had to know your way around. Now though, they’ve been tidied up and given signage, which takes the fun out of it for me but will make navigating them easier for you. Parts of the hill are closed off to benefit local wildlife, but there’s plenty of wild and windswept greenery you can traipse through.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve relived feeling the wind in my hair cycling down the very steep hills from the Beacon to the Camel Trail. The abandoned concrete pipes at the start of the Trail that my friends and I would hang out on are long gone. Now, there’s a car park and a map that will direct you along the old railway line, following the beautiful tributaries of the Camel River.

Food and Drink, But Mostly Drink

One thing Bodmin has never been lacking in is pubs, and there’s some great ones. Ten minutes down the Camel Trail is the Borough Arms, which is well-known for its carvery. Back in town you’ll find the Mason's Arms, a proper locals’ pub, but welcoming, with low ceiling beams and a living room atmosphere. There’s also an actually-quite-nice Wetherspoons, the converted Chapel an Gansblydhen (locals naturally call it “Spoons”). Down the other end of town is the Hole in the Wall, another cosy pub with chatty locals. Ask them about the pub’s mascot, the taxidermied lion you’ll see on the way in. 

Quality eateries are harder to come by in the town, it’s mainly takeaways and pub grub. But the exception is the high-end Flory Restaurant on the town square, serving a Spanish-inspired menu with Cornish ingredients. There are also a few cafes (selling pasties, naturally) and cream tea at the Camel Trail Tea Garden.

Bodmin’s Past in The Present

There are two museums in the town: one about Bodmin itself, and the better-known Bodmin Keep, which explores Cornwall's military history. Near the latter is Bodmin & Wenford Railway, a 1950s-style train station from which you can take a pleasingly windy 2-hour steam railway journey. Plus, for a glimpse of Bodmin’s prettier past, a short drive will take you to National Trust property Lanhydrock House, whose beautiful garden I ran around in many times as a kid.

Rebuilding your resilience at work after burning out from stress

 (An unpublished blog written for Hoxby – a freelance collective with a focus on flexible working.)

Not everyone is born resilient, a lot of us build it through experience. And sometimes the 'bounce-backability' we develop is weakened by stress. Writer and digital content manager Will Marlow explains how he’s rebuilding his resilience after burning out.

In 2019 I reached breaking point. I sent an email to a colleague angrily explaining why my team hadn’t done the piece of work he kept asking about. I told him he should be aware of the difficulties we were facing at the moment. I told him he should cut us some slack. Of course, I immediately regretted it. It was over-the-top, unnecessary and woefully unprofessional. I realised I was no longer in appropriate control.

Two things about this incident told me I had a bigger problem than just my huge workload to solve. Firstly, techniques I had learnt over the years to manage anger or frustration at work were no longer working. I didn’t delay my response and take some deep breaths. I didn’t go for a walk and respond when the anger had gone. And I didn’t ask myself the key question that can immediately burst a swelling bubble of frustration – will I care about this in five years’ time? (Answer: I can’t remember what the piece of work was just two years on!)

Secondly, this was a colleague I got on with. He wasn’t a colleague whose approach to work differs so much you have to work at working together. This was a man I’d had many honest and useful conversations with, an ally in the office if you like. That I’d lost my temper with him told me that something had gone very wrong. Stress was overwhelming me.

The signs of burnout

Often, you’re unaware of a workload growing into full-blown chronic stress. It happens gradually. My busy workload became a highly stressful job through a series of unfortunate events and bad timing, most of which I had no control over (more on that later). I took on more responsibility than I could handle – some of it (with hindsight) unnecessarily. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But there were clues it was very much not the right thing.

Unable to relax or sleep

I would have stress dreams where I would find myself working again at my first job, but completely unable to do the things I used to do with aplomb. When I was with friends, I’d find myself talking about work all the time; nothing else got a look in. I’d skip the gym as my brain was so tired; I just wanted to slump on the sofa and zone out. Work polluted everything.

Unable to organise

Without realising it was happening, I’d lost control of my working day. There’s a difference between being flexible and just being reactive. I became the latter, finding myself busy all day without ticking much off my to-do list. I lost perspective and my ability to prioritise. Attempts to organise my time no longer worked because I felt overwhelmed.

Unable to appreciate the wins

I became increasingly negative about the work both I and the organisation were doing. I was lucky enough to spend some time with a career coach last year and it was a revelation to me to have someone point out all the stuff I did achieve in the past few years. I hadn’t really noticed. 

Instead, I became focused on what hadn’t been done yet, what should’ve been done better, or what couldn’t be done. When things were completed, I just ticked them off and moved on to the next thing. I no longer had the space in my head to reflect on work that was done and done well; to understand and appreciate that I was achieving things.

That negativity inevitability spilled into work conversations. I wasn’t the only one – we all like a bit of a moan or rant about difficulties at work. Indeed, I’d say those conversations are useful to 1) keep you sane, and 2) facilitate problem-solving. But a constant stream of negativity becomes unhelpful, and reflects on you badly. I’d find that even when my pointing out a potential issue prevented that issue occurring, I was still mulling over the other things that nearly caused that issue. I’d lost the ability to acknowledge and enjoy when a problem was solved.

Unable to care about the work

For me, this came in the final stages of being overwhelmed by stress. I plummeted from caring too much to not caring at all. For someone who prides himself on being a conscientious and helpful colleague, this was devastating. But my drive had left me.

Returning to resilient working – and enjoying work!

I’ll be honest – recovering from burnout isn’t easy. Prevention is always going to be the better option. If you get even a hint of any of the above happening to you, then apply all of the following without hesitation. Resilience is key to everyone’s working life – not least in the past year and as we continue to work through the upheaval of a global pandemic.

Prioritise your physical and mental health

Where I would skip the gym in favour of trash telly for my tired brain, I’ve since learnt to separate these elements of my life. Rather than allow work to affect my exercise routine, I switch from Working Will to Exercising Will. My focus shifts to exercise rather than remaining on work after I’ve switched the computer off.

Factoring time for rest and renewal is a key part of maintaining your physical and mental health. Working long hours and weekends is a key factor in burnout. Understanding when and for how long I’m at my most productive has been so useful in managing my workload, and is why I was drawn to Hoxby’s ‘workstyle’ philosophy. I’m not a morning person, but I do power up naturally around 11am. Plus my brain is oddly creative between 11pm and 1am! Being aware of that has helped me work out the best times to rest through the week.

Other health tips you might have heard many times before – because they work! Move more, eat healthily, cut back on caffeine and alcohol, practice mindfulness or meditation, have good sleep hygiene (such as not looking at screens before sleeping). All of these have helped me rebuild my resilience.

Approach and respond to things positively

Easier said than done! But I have been learning how to question the negative attitude and responses that became ingrained when I was stressed. I now ask myself, is there another way to look at this situation? It sounds cheesy, but… is this a problem or an opportunity? I’ve found that optimism facilitates resilience, pessimism eats away at it.

I’d allowed less friendly work relationships to deteriorate when I was burning out. Some colleagues became obstructions in my mind, rather than people with shared business goals. Positive communication with all your colleagues – and being able to ask for and offer help – is essential for avoiding bad days at work.

One tactic I’ve learnt (or relearnt) is approaching situations or conversations (especially potentially difficult ones) neutrally. Rather than go in to something expecting a battle, go in with no expectations. It makes for much nicer and more useful conversations. 

Another tactic is letting go of what I think ‘should’ be happening. Whether something ‘should’ or ‘should not’ take place, the reality is sometimes different. I’m learning to accept that when it happens and take things from there. It saves a lot of time and argument.

Know what’s important to you – and what you can control

You have a huge amount of resilience when you care about the work you’re doing. But I lost focus on what my goals at work were; I became overwhelmed by the bigger picture – things I had little influence or no control over. I’m learning now how to keep my focus on what is important to me, what I can influence, and what is achievable. 

Many people get stressed about making mistakes at work as well. One thing I have long understood is that a mistake is always something to learn from. You’ll gain new information about your client, customers, colleagues, organisation, yourself – or all of them! I’m also learning to remember that failure isn’t permanent – there will be successes and triumphs to come.

I’m more comfortable asking questions now as well – you don’t know what you don’t know, but you can control that by asking questions. Scarily, the more knowledge I do gain the more I realise how much more there is to learn about the world. I have 25 years left of my working life; even learning every day I’ll have barely scratched the surface when I retire. And that’s okay.

Find out more about how Hoxby's experts can help your HR team develop a happy, fulfilled, and highly productive workforce. And discover how The Hoxby Foundation is popularising #workstyle – flexible working that everyone can access, no matter their challenges in life.