I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a queue of traffic, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel and wondering when we might actually move more than ten yards, only to notice the sticker on the rear bumper or windscreen of the car in front of me bearing the legend, “Pasty ur no?” Which of course in the King’s English means, “Excuse me for troubling you this early, but would you care for a pasty for lunch today?” Well you didn’t need me to tell you that, but we do like to use our own forms of communication down here. Not Cornish, you understand, only a few dusty academics converse in a language that fell into daily disuse almost two hundred and fifty years ago, but in the forty-eight summers since my parents brought us here, I’ve learned a lot of local vernacular that would have them scratching their heads across the river. If you’ve been to Cornwall, especially the old mining towns of Camborne, Redruth and the surrounding area where I live, you’ll have heard it. I still usually need Ali, Cornish born and bred with many generations here behind her, to perform translation duties when her eighty-eight year old father, or “Fither” as we know him, pipes up. They tolerate me, and that’s about as good as it gets.
One Monday afternoon, apropos of nothing in particular, the question was mooted. Would I very much like a pasty for lunch - to which the obvious and immediate response is always yes - and where shall we go to get one? Usually it will be one of the two local bakeries, both within a determined walk, or more often a very quick drive, but today Ali had something else in mind. We needed to dream large, and head for one of the more fabled establishments where the county’s national delicacy is baked. And in a land where the pasty is as synonymous with all things Cornish as its famous coastline, it’s serious business down here. Regularly, top ten lists can be found on various social media, with little known out of the way places often scooping the prized first place, and one that always scores very highly is based at a farm out and the back of beyond on the edge of the Lizard peninsula. It was a bakery we’d been planning to go to for quite some time, and today was going to be the day.
Except that Gear Farm was closed on a Monday, so Plan A was consigned to the dust almost as soon as it had been conceived. But then again Ann’s Pasties on the Lizard had a very good reputation too. They even have an outlet on the edge of an industrial estate in Helston, and by now the conversation was making me hungry. With a number of parking options around the Lizard, we were sure to be able to abandon the van somewhere and walk off the calories afterwards, and so Ann’s it was. We wasted no further time and set the compass for Helston. For the very first time, our destination had been decided by which brand of pasty we were having for lunch. Why on earth hadn’t we ever thought of this before?
More than an hour later, after a high scoring medium steak parcel of unmitigated pleasure, we arrived at the National Trust car park on Lizard Point, where we filled the kettle and settled into our camping chairs in the warm sunshine. Soon we’d take a stroll, but for now, a brew was most definitely the first priority. You need a cup of tea after a pasty, otherwise you might have to lie down for the rest of the afternoon, especially if it’s a particularly good one. Here at the edge of the field, we could take in the views and fortify ourselves for a stout walk over the cliff path to Kynance Cove and back.
Today I’d made the half hearted choice, putting the cheap walkabout lens on the camera, and left the bag otherwise empty, apart from a motley assembly of old filters that rarely see the light of day anymore. And to keep the weight down, I’d brought the smallest tripod in the collection. On a blue sky day, with no plans to stay late, photography wasn’t really at the forefront of my mind, but I always like to have the camera with me, just in case.
Ali only ever has one complaint about my pictures. “Everyone likes a nice blue sky,” she forever reminds me. “Well I like a blue sky myself - I just don’t like taking pictures under one,” is the usual response. Only very rarely do I feel inspired to get the camera out on a bright afternoon, and I know I’m not alone in this. Some people have an uncanny ability to generate some atmosphere from a blue sky, but I’m yet to unlock the secret for myself. But today, as we approached Kynance Cove, I saw a view I’d not really noticed before, and gave it a try. Maybe something of a recce shot for a winter sunset, but in the end I quite liked it, and with that woolly old lens, all I needed to do was make it glow a bit to convince myself.
By the way, when we’re talking pasties, under no circumstances do we make mention of a certain mass produced “product,” that is made in a big factory in the east of the county and shipped to the rest of the nation’s supermarkets and filling stations. The one that begins with the letter “G,” although I dare not speak its name. If you really want to upset a Cornish person, tell them you recently enjoyed one of their concoctions and wait for the human explosion. Tell them you had a chicken balti flavoured one and you might regret you opened your mouth, such will be the venting of vitriol that comes in response. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Besides which, everyone down here will tell you that Mither makes the best pasties. They’re quite often right about that too.
