The smell of Cornwall

It doesn't look anything sitting there on the plate, does it? But if you could smell it as I do, you wouldn't be able to wait to get your teeth into it. Wendy from Redruth in West Cornwall has moved to our town and has started her Cornish Kitchen, selling these wonderful pasties, baked to order. I ordered a dozen and salivated all the way home as the car was suffused with the smell of pastry, potato, swede, onion and meat. If you've ever walked down the main street of any town in Cornwall at lunch time, you'll know what I mean.

They've been a vital part of the Cornish people's diet for over 200 years. There are hundreds of stories about the evolution of the pasty's shape, with the most popular being that the D-shape enabled tin miners to re-heat them underground as well as eat them safely. The crust (crimped edge) was used as a handle which was then discarded due to the high levels of arsenic in many of the tin mines. No chance of my discarding my crust....Wendy's pastry is divine.

The size of mine here is relatively modest, by Cornish standards. I've been in pubs where they fill the whole plate....too much for one person. Favourite way to eat them is straight from the bag, sauntering along the Prom - fighting off the seagulls.

A Marriage of Cultures

I've strained my brain for hours to figure out how to post videos. Here's a beauty of Irish and Spanish dance from River Dance, posted in error originally on my Gardening blog. (I've left it there for them to enjoy too). This is the full 8 min. video and there's a treat also for devotees of Jean Butler.



From my early days at school on the Country Dancing team in the 1940s, I've loved dance. Flamenco grabbed me in the 1950s when I saw Antonio at the Coliseum in London and hung around for hours, without success, at the stage door for an autograph. I drooled at the Albert Hall in the 90s when Joaquin Cortés appeared, more over his uncle's dancing to be honest. Now, I live right in the thick of it in Andalucia. How good is that.

Silence broken

My, oh my, nearly the first quarter of the year over and nothing written. Now why is that, I wonder. I've done a lot of reading, been out and about, worked endlessly in the garden and, yet, have felt nothing of value or interest to say on here.

I know many bloggers do the odd paragraph almost daily. Others I visit regularly write so superbly and about such interesting things that I feel that sense of unworthiness of my efforts creeping in, so do nothing. I know it is ridiculous to have this self-judgement sitting on my shoulder, but I can't seem to shake it off. I have put my toe in the water on my gardening blog because I got all fired up about chillies but that was that.

I'm hoping that having given voice to these daft feelings, I can launch myself off again......we shall see.