The British Beach, Bloody Good Fish, Bake 'Em Anywhere Scones and Emergency Jam

Monday

Simon has just gone out to watch England v France, for the second night running….  Yes, he went out last night, even though we both knew last night was Sunday, and the football was on on Monday.  Lord only knows what we’ll be like when we really start losing our marbles properly.

Beach in Looe this morning, with a visit to Pengelly’s for fresh fish.

If we were doomy gloomy types (which we sometimes are…), the beach would have been an utter nightmare.  Sitting there, with an umbrella of dark grey cloud, watching the bright blue sky over to the west - in fact, over Polperro.  And the dog beach was shut because the steps finally slipped into the oggin, so His Royal Hairiness had to be returned to the confines of the still-slightly-sick-smelling Shazmobile.

However, the girls’ sheer joy at being beside the seaside beside the sea is so friggin’ tangible that you can’t help but be swept up by it.

So, several hours, huddled in a scarf, taking the odd photo...

(including one of my foot - why?  Nobody knows...)


...and finally succumbing to slipping into my pyjamas (which I had slipped into my handbag at the last moment, justincase), slid by in no time.

Fish and chips for lunch.  Yessss.  Well, fish and chips for O & S, a pasty for M and a portion of chips with mushy peas for me.  No batter, see?  Oh to be able to eat wheat in Cornwall of all places.

Then we picked up our Pengelly’s fish, bought on the way down to the beach.  So, bearing in mind, Pengelly’s fish monger is slap bang next door to the main fish market in Looe, and they have the pick of the day’s catch, and we were there nice and early, this is some seriously good fish.  We have fresh mackerel (oh mama) for dinner tonight.  We’ll just roll the bastard in oats, grill it, and serve with samphire which will have been verrrry briefly tossed in hot butter.  Lazily, I got the monger to fillet them before he monged them to us – heh heh.  Yes, I know it’s easy but I’m on holiday.

We also have monkfish, for dinner tomorrow (except we have fallen amongst thieves and been invited out for Coddy Shack shish and fips tomorrow night with the incomparable J&G*, so monkfish will have to wait until Wednesday), to be served with streaky bacon and tomato salad, plus endless amounts of fresh mixed crab meat, cockles, mussels, tiger prawns and shrimps to take on our walk to Talland Bay tomorrow – assuming it doesn’t piss down all day, which it’s supposed to…  We shall see.

* Coddy Shack Fish and Chips – FABULOUS!!!  Go there!!!!!!  Now!!!!!!!!!!  I know, too many exclamation marks, but you will understand when you go.

So, the day is drawing to a close, and as the girls delight in their mackerel in oats with sautéed samphire, I realize that if I don’t put the following recipes down now, I will forget them.  Because in the interim, I have improvised strawberry jam and scones!

Actually, I photographed Marguerite Patten’s scone recipe from the 70s before we came down here, but there’s no scales here, so this is a recipe for scones which you can do wherever you are!

The basic measure is spoonsful, and I used dinner spoons.  Yeah, er, dessert spoons?  You know, the kind of spoons wot you eat off of, which are not soup spoons or teaspoons.

SCONES

Take 8 heaped spoonfuls of self-raising flour – I used Dove’s Farm Gluten Free, by the way, and it worked fine.

Stick this in a bowl and add a pinch of salt, a heaped spoonful (the same size as the flour spoons, including height of heapage) of butter, and two teaspoons of baking powder.  If you’re using plain flour, use double the quantity of baking powder.

Rub, or fork, the butter into the flour.  Add a heaped spoonful (blah blah as above) of sugar.

Add enough milk to form a soft dough.  If using gluten free flour, you will not be able to roll the dough out because it will be too sticky and will not hold together.  In this case, oil your hands and make scone sized lumps of dough – place them directly on the baking sheet.  If using proper flour, I dare say you could roll it out and cut shapes. 

Bake in a hot oven (my photographed instructions said 425f, but I had no idea what that means, being eddicated abroad, like, with no Imperial points of reference and no conversion chart about my person, so I did 230c) for about 10 mins.

JAM.

Take one punnet of strawberries, top them, and slice into four or five slices each, straight into a hot saucepan.  Add a couple of teaspoons of elderflower cordial (recipe to follow - or did I already post it - anyway, recipe on here somewhere) and a splash of balsamic vinegar, plus about 3 or 4 teaspoons of soft brown sugar.  Bring to a rolling boil and keep it there for 5 minutes without stirring.  Turn the electric ring (gaaaaaah!!!) off, and stir occasionally as it cools down over the next 10 minutes or so.  If using a proper hob (i.e. gas – sorry, but really?  Electric?  For proper cooking?!) just take it down so it’s not bubbling crazily any more, then lower the temp every couple of minutes over the next 10 minutes.  Pour into a teacup and allow to cool.

Yes, you could sterilize a jar and do all that stuff, but let’s face it, if you just made the scones, too, it’s not going to last long enough to go off, is it?  In fact, I have to stop writing now because I need to wrestle the teacup off the two children, one of whom abhors jam in all its forms…  Or not any more, it seems.

Remote Blogging, and why Plan AA is normally the best plan.

Remote Blogging, and why Plan AA is normally the best plan.

So here we are in Polperro.  Hurrah.  Hang on, more emphasis required - HURRAH!!!

That’s better.


I'm writing this now but will have to post it many days hence, as we are luddite-like in our technological isolation, here.

It’s raining absolute cats and dogs, and right at this minute, I’m very glad I’m not one of the seagulls who live on the very tall, exposed chimney stack which I’m keeping an eye on out of the kitchen window, but I’m also feeling almost as content as it’s possible to get.

We arrived two days ago, after what could be described as one of the worst journeys we’ve ever had.  

We were allowed in the cottage from 3pm.  Working backwards, we figured out that we should leave home by about 12ish, maybe 11.30, to allow for stopping at the butcher’s in Tideford (Paul Bray & Son, if you happen to be passing) on the way here.  I further figured out that this would allow me to teach my Friday morning Zumba class, get home, shower, and head on down.  Timing could not be more perfect – tight, but perfect.  So we got the packing mainly done on Thursday, and while I sloped off to teach on Friday morning, Simon heroically loaded the car, in the sure and certain knowledge that no doubt I would arrive home from class and criticise his loading.  I know.  Unreasonable.  What can I say?  I never claimed to be an angel.

So I raced home from the village hall, showered in double quick time and packed the last few bits I couldn’t pack earlier (shampoo, conditioner, hairbrush, sweaty Zumba gear for washing!), made myself a sandwich to go with the ones Simon had made for the girls, and we all - me, Simon, girls and His Royal Hairiness - leapt in the car with a loud hurrah and general shouting of “WE’RE OFF!”, well on schedule and gagging for a week’s R&R in beloved Cornwall.

Which is when problem 1 reared its ugly head.  The.  Car.  Would.  Not.  Start.

I know, right?!  HiLARious.  We thought so, too, as you can imagine.  Totally dead.  Not even the slim ray of hope of the sad chug-chugging, which eventually dies out, anyway.  Nothing.  No-thing.  Not a thing.

So began an entirely grown up and relaxed (was it BOLLOCKS!) discussion about how to approach a solution to this shitty problem. 

Clearly, it was a dead battery. 

Various options swum into view, and swum on by. 

As it happens, we have a fresh, new car battery (long story, but to cut it short, thanks, Dad – wouldn’t it have been perfect if that had been the solution!?) sitting in the hall at present.  Did we know how to attach it?  No, we didn’t.  Arses.  So although it was probably fairly straightforward, we decided that this particular moment of crisis and extreme tension was probably not the time to get our CSE in Basic Car Maintenance. 

Luckily, despite many other areas of things having gone west of late, we still have AA membership.  Without any further ado, I went back in the house, looked up the number (yeah, it should be on my phone, I know), and rang the very nice men up.  I explained the predicament, with a bit of giggling and wringing of hands, followed up by a slight break in the voice – you’d have liked it, I promise – possibly my finest performance to date – and the very nice man said that he’d send on of his very nice colleagues along, and he’d be here within 45 minutes.

Good.

Meanwhile, I had thought that we would try using Car B and some jump leads to start the battery of Car A, and if we got it started, we could ring and cancel the very nice man. 

This was clearly a good and sensible plan.  However, meanwhile, gorgeous husband had had the bad and senseless plan of trying to bump start the car on the drive, which, although (in his defence) is quite steep, is also (in blatant attack) about 2m longer than the car – i.e. by no stretch of the imagination long enough to get a bump start.   This daring plan had therefore resulted in Car A being half way across the road, and diagonally across the drive, absolutely buggering up any chance of getting Car B close enough to the bonnet of Car A to attach the relatively short jump leads.

Sigh.

Back to Plan AA. 

I was supposed to drop off a key with my lovely friend A on the way to Cornwall, so I rang to explain our delay, so that she wouldn’t think we’d buggered off without dropping it off.  Very kindly, she offered to come and give us a jump start.  Who were we to refuse?  So she whizzed up, we got the cables connected with just about enough space for a careful car to pass us up the lane, and followed all the instructions.  Nothing.  Either the battery had had it, or the jump leads were SHIT.

Back to Plan AA.

Right, girls, out of the car, come on, bring HRH, we’re going to go and eat our sandwiches in the kitchen instead of the car. 

So this we did, in bizarre suspended world, bit of cricket on the telly, trying not to get the kitchen all crumby for coming home to.

Meanwhile various other friends, and bless you all, offered their services and the services of their faithful car batteries for jump starting, but we were by now too fearful of failure to waste anyone else’s time.

At 43 minutes after the original phone call to the AA, Gorgeous Husband started commenting that it would be nice if the world could actually surprise us for a change and someone could fucking well turn up on time.  I was quietly (well, I say quietly…) rolling my eyes and sighing at this, as the tirade continued until about 10 seconds before the deadline when – knock knock knock woof woof woof!  YES!  AA Man.  Bang on time.

Girls!  LOO, NOW!  CAR, NOW!  Chug chug chug, vroom vroom vroom, ooh, that WAS flat, don’t stop for petrol for 45 minutes, give it a good chance to charge up, thank you very much – girls, wave goodbye to INCREDIBLY nice man and HURRAH!  WE’RE OFF!!!!

Goodbye home!

M3, A303, hello, Little Chef – whoosh – hello Popham little planes – whoosh!  Oh oh… helllllllooooo sssslllllooooowwww ttttrrrraaaafffffffiiiicccc.  Oh bugger.  Crawling crawling crawling.  From well before Amesbury for hours…  Hhhheeeellllloooooo, Ssssttttoooonnnnneeeeehhhheeeeennnnngggggggeeeee….  And so it went on, for HOURS.  And we tried swapping the A303 for an early leap onto the M5, but within a mile we’d hit another jam.  It was uncanny.  Wherever we went, so did everyone else.

In order for this blog not to end up as long and boring as the journey, I am going to cut it short.  Suffice it to say that it DID take hours, Littl’un eventually gave up and threw up volubly all over the back of the car, including dog bed, golf clubs, colouring in book, Gorgeous Husband’s hat, seats, carpet blah blah blah bleugh bleugh bleughed. 

We had meanwhile realized several things.

1)   We were going to get to Tideford well after the butcher closed, leaving us with nothing for dinner.  This problem was easily solved thanks to Steve Jobs’s Excellent iPhone invention.  Googled the butcher (which is illegal in 99 states) and rang the order through, arranging to collect it from the pub if they’d all gone home.

2)   Slightly more worryingly, we remembered that the key for the cottage is housed in a tiny key safe screwed to the front door.  We hadn’t been given the combination for said safe.  VERY safe, in that case, no?  Further googling, however, produced a number for the owner.  Who didn’t answer.  So we spent most of the (long) journey somewhat concerned that we would arrive and not be able to unload and get in, and as our phones don’t work in the village, we’d be bleddy stuck, m’loves.  In the event, we got the number at the eleventh hour, but it was a bit sticky for a mo.

Anyway.  Whatever.  We got here in the end, and the chippy, which threatened to close while we were in the pub, actually stayed open until we finished, so we had fresh hot chips with our gorgeous Cornish steaks and salad.  So that's enough moaning from me - there was other stuff, but with a tummy full of excellent steak, a glass full of good quaffing wine and a snootful of good Cornish sea-air, me old love pops, I'm now, frankly, beyond caring.

Night night.