Anyone for a Cornish Pasty?

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When you go to Cornwall for the day there is something you really must try… an honest-to-goodness real Cornish pasty! Don’t worry, you can’t miss them because there are pasty shops at every turn. We were starving after our drive into foreign territory, and it was lunchtime, so Roland bought ours from the first pasty shop we came across. And very delicious they were, not too big nor too small, the pastry was crisp and buttery; and inside of each was a perfect ratio of steak to potato, onion and swede; and the steak was tasty and tender, without any hint gristle or bone (as sometimes detected in inferior pasty shops here in Devon).

In fact, our pasties were so appetising that a seagull landed on the roof of a car close to us and plotted his methods for appropriation. It was clear that he was a nice seagull and not experienced or interested in using the tactics of many a nasty seagull in Dawlish – like dive-bombing or swooping down with an open beak; he was more timid and even turned away when we glanced at him, no doubt feigning a lack of intent. He wasn’t a very good actor. At last he summoned the courage to step forward and appeal by dint of his youthful good looks and a charming bashfulness; I was nearly taken in – I stood up and approached him with an outstretched arm holding a juicy morsel of pasty… He moved another step closer… And…

“Don’t do it,” warned Roland, “Or next he’ll be taking food from children’s mouths.”

“Quite true,” I withdrew my hand, remembering the incident, years ago, of a sausage roll being pecked right out of my nephew’s hands when I was taking him out in his pram through Dawlish Brook (I hope James can’t remember – bet he is terrified of Hitchcock’s film, “The Birds”).

But I threw the tidbit onto the ground and the seagull had a nice mouthful of Cornish pasty. Well, you can’t go to Cornwall and not try a Cornish pasty.

 

Mortified

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“You could have been more careful with your big feet walking up the newly tiled steps,” I said accusingly to Chris, my husband, who had been up for hours before me.

“But I didn’t even walk on the steps… I stayed at the bottom and dragged off the sheets of plastic from there,” Chris answered a little horrified that I could think him so careless, especially after all my hard work the day before.

“Oh, well it wasn’t me,” I said huffily and my mind wandered swiftly to our guest, Roland, who seemed to be the only other likely candidate, considering there was nobody else to blame in our house and Hilda’s place next door (with which we share the lower steps) was empty.

We looked at the damage – several gouges and scuffs, shaped like the toes of shoes, in the still soft new concrete covering the risers of the bottom steps – and we agreed that it could have been worse (it might have been on every step!). At that moment two workmen came out from Hilda’s upstairs front door and the penny dropped… over breakfast a little earlier I had noticed, from our kitchen window, the same workmen going in through the bottom – accessed by the shared steps.

It began to rain yet again so Chris and I replaced the large sheets of plastic across the new tiles with their soft grout and risers.

“I had better make a sign for the workmen and put it at the top of the steps – DANGER OF DEATH ~ YOU COULD BE MORTARFIED!” Chris laughed.

(And shh! Please don’t tell Roland that he was under suspicion – he would be mortified!)

 

Cool Dogs in Looe, Cornwall

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The dogs in Looe are so cool on hot days like today because they are sensible and wear hats…

The Gift

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“Do you think you could find a home for Mum’s piano?” asked Jules, the son of our next door neighbour Hilda, who passed away last year.

“But don’t you want keep it, or even sell it?” I responded.

“No, none of us play the piano and we’re not bothered about selling it, little Sally,” he said. (He always calls me that – Bless him! – hope he’s not being ironic.)

“Well, my niece Katie might like it,” I suggested, “If you’re sure…”

“How lovely! I think Mum would be pleased to know that her piano was going to a good home where it would be appreciated,” Jules assured me.

That night I spoke to Katie and she informed me that now she has a piano. Chris checked out Ebay and found that two other pianos of the same make and era were on at around the £1200 mark. I could see the pound signs in Chris’s eyes!

“That could be one fare to Australia,” Chris said gleefully.

My brother Rob, who is a piano tuner and instrument maker, agreed to put his feelers out and help us to sell the piano. That was a couple of weeks ago.

Last weekend I was having a cup of tea with my sister and her two daughters, Lizzie and Katie, when I happened to mention that we still had to move Hilda’s piano from next door because the house is up for sale. Lizzie’s eye’s lit up. Now Liz has a piano already but it needs new felts and key covers, and it was always rather an ugly big brute, even when it could be played. On the other hand, Hilda’s piano is smaller, younger, much prettier – and it works (though it will probably need a tuning by Uncle Rob).

“I’ll pay for it,” said Mary, ” and it can be a birthday present for Liz.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I answered, “we’re family.”

Later on that afternoon Liz came around and Chris and I took her into Hilda’s place to look at the piano.

“I’ve never had a pretty piano before!” Liz exclaimed.

She broke into a beaming smile and then I thought I could see tears of joy in her eyes.

When on our own I asked Chris:

“You don’t mind – do you?”

“No, of course not. When I saw her face I felt thrilled for her. I’m so happy that she’s going to have it,” said Chris.

“Me too,” I agreed and gave my husband a kiss.

And I’m convinced that Hilda would have approved, and I hope that Robert doesn’t mind having to move another piano, especially as there are fifty-one steps up to the road… Well, he is a piano man… and she is our niece.

 

Bookworms and Greek Gods

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We hosted the bookclub meeting yesterday afternoon. Actually, Chris isn’t a member of our bookclub (he’s not a “clubby” person – cuddly, yes, clubby, no!), nevertheless, I use the term “we”  because the group came to our house; and, whilst I saw to the edible refreshments beforehand (thus enabling me to devote my entire attention to book matters), Chris was in the background but on-hand as tea-and-coffee-boy for the duration.

As always, our book club meeting was informal and friendly. The bookworms sat in the lounge-room and enjoyed my butterfly cakes (which hadn’t suffered too much from their three day spell in the freezer) as they began the discussion on “The Long Walk to Freedom”, the brilliant book by the late great Nelson Mandela.

Our treasured fellow bookworm, Robin, phoned to say that he had difficulty finding our house and Mary (my sister) and I went out to the road in order to hail him down.

“Your hair looks nice!” I said by way of a greeting to Robin.

“Oh, it’s just the rain – made it curly,” he answered.

Once seated in the lounge-room and handed a cup of coffee and a cake, the subject again turned to Robin’s hair.

“Gee your hair looks nice!” said Katie.

“It really suits you longer,” agreed Diana (or was it Elizabeth?).

“You look like a Greek God,” said one of the other male bookworms (perhaps a little facetiously).

“I don’t know about Greek God – more like ‘Oh God, the Greek!’ replied Robin, maybe a little embarrassed, and we all laughed.

Bearing in mind that Robin is a leading light of the bookclub, he might also have been called a “Geek God” but nobody said it, not even our non-clubby coffee-maker, who was doing his bit in the kitchen at the time.

A Busman’s Holiday

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Never let it be said that Chris and I deprive our guests of having a good time; if it gives them pleasure to scale a long ladder and paint the top of the third storey of our tall Victorian house – why not? After all, he is a painting contractor at home in Australia – we want him to feel at home here too.

And whilst Roland was painting the front of our house, facing the sea, I was having fun laying quarry tiles on the steps leading down to my studio on the other side of our house. It might not have been so wonderful for me had I been tiling on my own (cutting and laying) but somehow, in between holding the ladder and sorting out paint and brushes for Roland, Chris cut the quarry tiles that needed cutting and, therefore, I was able to lay all the tiles. Thus, I was very happy.

Actually, Chris and I were especially happy because we had just enough tiles to finish the job (with a bit of ingenious mosaic work under the railings) and not one tile was left.

“It’s a hard grind,” laughed Chris, picking up a half-tile and putting it against the rotary blade of the cutting machine.

We enjoy to have a joke while we work. Of course, we don’t talk much because it’s quite hard to hear (even though my hearing has returned to normal after using Otovent!) owing to the noise produced by the tile-cutting machine as it grinds through quarry tiles.

Another little joy to be experienced during the cutting operation is the shower that gets sent up, in all directions (particularly over the operator), as the blade rotates at high speed through the red-tile coloured water in the tray underneath the blade. The photographs neglect to show the wet red patch over Chris’s shirt – all over the stomach area.

“Django!” exclaimed Roland when he had finished his painting, joined us by the steps and saw Chris’s shirt. (“Django” is the name of the Quentin Tarantino film we watched the other night – needless to say there was a bloodbath.)

You’ll notice in the photographs that I haven’t grouted yet – perhaps another little pleasure to be shared with Roland over the weekend…

 

If You Had Come to Tea You Could Have Had a Butterfly Cake

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And only three of us here to eat them… Don’t worry about my diet, ten of them have gone to good homes, six are in the freezer (just waiting to be brought out for book club next Sunday), three have been consumed and the rest are for Chris and Roland… unless we have any visitors.

The Season for Swans – Cockwood Harbour

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Almost exactly a year ago I took photographs of the swans at Cockwood Harbour – the harbour was full of them and, it being early morning, the swans were all asleep and had their heads tucked under their wings. Now I’m not normally a particularly early riser but this morning I awoke at six-thirty with the impulse to go for a bike ride to Cockwood and Chris and I were away within the hour.

The sun was shining and the gentle breeze had the coolness of morning, making it a very pleasant ride, and even more-so because the roads were pretty well free of traffic; it was too early for the morning dog-walkers and sightseers on the cycle-paths and the serious cyclists (in Lycra) kept to the roads.

The tide was out and the slender snake of water remaining was still trickling out under the railway bridge and into the estuary; disappointingly, all the boats were sitting on mud and the harbour was bereft of swans. Nevertheless, we parked our bikes by the railings and strolled around to the bridge. When the tide is out you can walk under the bridge, stand on the other side and take in the view of Exmouth across the water; and, as we discovered, you can see also a flock of swans silhouetted against the sun and the glistening water…

Fishing off the Point at Teignmouth

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The point of fishing cannot be just to catch fish, especially when you’re on The Point. As you can see from the photographs, it was a sunny day with pretty blue skies and puffy clouds, and we tried a different fishing venue – the Point at Teignmouth, where the river flows out to the sea, and where there is always a deep channel regardless of the state of the tides. For bait we made a change from our usual squid and, instead, used live rag-worms, frozen sand-eels and plastic fake sand-eels. It didn’t make any difference – we still didn’t catch anything except for two peeler crabs and two tons of seaweed!

A Painting in a Day

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We were going to go fishing, but that was when it was still sunny; of course, it rained, and it was far too windy for fishing anyway (the cast out would have blown back into our faces).

“What would you like to do instead?” I asked our friend Roland.

“What do you suggest?” he replied.

“Well, we could all stay at home and play games,” I began.

His face dropped.

“Or we could watch Calamity Jane on the television…”

Roland pulled a face like King Kong.

“Or Chris and I could carry on with our work as per usual and you could watch something to your taste on the television…”

“I don’t really want watch television,” he said, pulling another face.

“I have work to do anyway,” said Chris.

“Why don’t I paint your portrait in a day?” I suggested, “But it might not be very good because it normally takes me weeks – I expect it will have to be very loose or impressionistic.”

So that’s what we did. Roland sat very patiently (most of the time) while I spent six hours painting to my heart’s content, and this is the result…

 

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