CORNWALL 2005
And now some points for reflection on our trip, all jumbled together, as they come to mind:
The English language. We've kept wondering throughout these 13 days of travel what all those English courses that we Italians systematically subject ourselves to, whether compulsory or not, ever since we were children (at school and elsewhere) have been for, if then in daily use the simplicity and immediacy of this now universal idiom makes us realise that with about a hundred basic words and two or three phrasal verbs (like the ubiquitous "to get") you can amply cut a fine figure. Provided you're not afraid of making mistakes, of throwing yourself in without shame, of listening a lot to their turns of phrase and of having an acceptable pronunciation. Of not being ashamed to speak in a foreign tongue, as often happens to many Italians abroad, whatever the language.
Let's learn one basic thing: language is always evolving, it isn't static, the grammatical rules we were stuffed with change and often aren't even applied in daily use (and so why call them rules if they're now disregarded by the majority?) and pronunciation varies from place to place in a marked and surprising way (as with us, after all). On this linguistic note, we recommend the likeable autobiographical essay by a likeable writer (who by trade works as an interpreter in Brussels, at the EU), Diego Marani ("Come ho imparato le lingue", Bompiani Saggi).
English cuisine and its bad reputation. Regarded as a minor cuisine compared to ours, to the French, Spanish or Chinese. Nothing could be more wrong and untrue. There are some specialities, highly original combinations, very Cornish, of meat and fish ("surf & turf" is an example), hard to find in our Italian culinary experiences. Composite dishes, excellently prepared and presented, more suited to sating ravenous appetites. Let's trust the menu of the day blindly: when the chef recommends "the catch of the day" we can be sure these English won't con us.
The catch will truly be of the day! Our best experiences were at "The Fire Engine Inn" in the village of Marazion, with a spectacular sunset view over the island of St Michael's Mount at high tide, and at "The Mousehole Inn" in Mousehole, a few miles north of Penzance, a picturesque and evocative fishing village heading towards Land's End and The Minack Theatre. And then we Italians should try not to always be the usual ones when we eat abroad: let's try to forget pasta, pizza and mozzarella and entrust lunch to one of their Cornish pasties and a good beer. We won't regret it! And the prices? Sky-high like they say? No more and no less than in our ultra-expensive Euro-land.
Of course, you just have to stay away from the wine (expensive) and the mineral water (indispensable for us Italians, for them a soft drink like Coca-Cola), relying instead on their stupendous beers (here as all over Great Britain called "ale" to distinguish them from the continental "lager") from the St Austell area. Beers that go well with meat as with fish (obviously fish & chips above all). Beers with little head, according to British taste, not excessively cold and icy as American fashion wrongly teaches, slightly amber in colour, some with a spicy aftertaste. The "St Austell Brewery" produces an excellent ale that won the world Oscar in 2004: TRIBUTE, it beat far more established breweries and multinational giants among brewers. You'll find fish & chips everywhere and trust me (it's almost always cod) that the portions are generous and richly accompanied by various side dishes.
So a complete meal at a controlled and modest price. Indeed, when restaurants and pubs are closed or no longer offer food (almost always after 9.00 pm), the only hope for refuelling is to find a fish & chips, even takeaway, still open.
Driving a car. The English and especially the Cornish are very disciplined and polite in the car. But not idiots, quite the opposite... Roundabouts, the rotaries, they invented them (the famous "roundabout") and they validly replace traffic-light intersections in many cases, with lower risk of accidents and less congested traffic. They seem to slow you down, but it isn't true! The fear of driving on the left is overcome within a day and, with a hired car, an English one — therefore with the steering wheel on the right — you're helped compared to driving with your own car with the steering wheel on the left. Of course you have to be careful and remember to look, the other way, to the right, when merging into traffic and overtaking. After a bit of adaptation the fear and tension disappear.
When an English driver flashes us, that is, flashes with the high beams, it's only to let you pass and courteously give you the right of way on a "one carriage road". And there are many in Cornwall, where many roads are really small ("narrow") and provide passing places, as on single-track trains. With us, instead, the flash only serves to warn you of the proximity of a Highway Patrol or a speed camera, or as a rude response. Here's the fundamental difference between us and them when it comes to driving.
The seagulls of Cornwall. The famous "seagull" are dear, beautiful, elegant, gigantic, but very very annoying and dangerous. Woe betide you eating an ice cream cone on the quay of a little harbour: the seagull can swoop down on you in an instant and eat all your ice cream in a second, even risking pecking you and therefore injuring you. They're voracious and omnivorous, they eat everything. We witnessed on the beach-quay of Porthleven the hunt for leftovers carried out by a flock of almost enraged and starving seagulls on the remains of a human banquet. They devoured everything, smashed crockery and glasses and put the diners on the restaurant's outdoor terrace to flight. From a little girl not even three years old, in her daddy's arms, the seagull literally snatched the ice cream from her little hands, amid tears and screams of fright.
That's why everywhere, to deter these birds and break them of their behaviour, tourists are urged "please don't feed the seagulls, it's very dangerous".
Obviously the sunny weather played in our favour for the whole period, an unusual warmth for this latitude (20° C in the sun and at night we slept with the duvet!). I was forgetting a nice detail: the owner of the hotel, Mrs Teresa Terry Jeavon, had reserved for us two Italian guests the most beautiful, cosy room, with a canopy bed and a splendid glass window overlooking the bay of St Ives and Carbis, presided over by the famous ocean lighthouse immortalised by Virginia Woolf in her famous novel "To the Lighthouse".
For any and every other piece of information, don't hesitate to contact us: within the limits of what's possible and of our knowledge we'll be glad to give useful suggestions and addresses.
fabrizio and rossana, milan
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