Thanks for the help on the road trip thing. I've realized I'm a third of the way through the Cabinet book now, and wanted to see if I can bang out a second film script before I pick it up again, particularly as that kid's thing has fallen through.
I don't like doing treatments particularly: I think they're a real art, and some people more or less make a living off them, but I much prefer going in with a completed script. So I've had this idea for a road trip story that mixes in another genre knocking about for ages now, and it's quite fluffy, and the sort of thing you can practically make up as you go along. I got about half-way through it this weekend, which I never expected. I wandered into town for a break and realized I was on a proper writing high, which I never really get doing work for other people. One of those things where you look at what you've written and it's exactly what you wanted it to be. The high lasted until some youth screwed up his pasty wrapper and dropped it in the gutter, right it at my feet*.
If I was a bit more together, I'd have hurled it against the back of his head (I've done this before, it was most cathartic), but instead I seethed for about thirty seconds and then shouted 'BIN!' when I was standing amongst four or five other people who were totally innocent. They scattered like gazelles who've just realized that funny-shaped bush they've been grazing around for the past hour is in fact a lion wearing a twiggy jacket, it was great.
* I was stepping round some nice American tourists, although metaphorically I was looking at the stars.
24 comments:
Oo, life (almost) imitates the Curious Cabinet. Unless this kind of thing happens a lot in the Land Of The Pasty?
Errr, did that make any sense?
I think so, yes. And yes. If that makes sense.
I love the idea that the staple fast food for urchins in the south west really is pasties. The final bastion of England yet to succumb to MacDonald's et al...
I say 'England' rather than Britain, of course, as in Scotland they all eat fast haggises and in Wales they have fast rarebits.
Mind you, the Cornish don't like being called 'English', so 'Britain' is possibly safer.. But yes, as fast food goes, it's pretty nutritious, and packed with protein, and different kind of veg, which is good.
"Britain" is probably a more accurate description of Cornwall and Wales than anywhere else in the UK, seeing as how the residents have a good chance of being descended from bona fide Ancient Britons, rather than Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Normans, Vikings and whatnot.
Just don't get me started on the Picts...
Oh God, that sounded a bit Daily Mail, didn't it? It wasn't meant to, I swear.
Panic not - coming from a pseudonym who lived a couple of millenia before the Roman Conquest, it sounded pretty damn far-sighted.
Being of viking origin and having immigrated to Britain a dozen years ago, I feel particulary British, though I cannot say I think much of cornish pastry. A Three course meal baked into a pastry, what is that all about?
Cornish 'Pasty' not pastry. You've probably eaten an apple turnover with steak in it, and got confused.
And a good pasty, with steak and NO BLOODY CARROTS, is like God's Own Food. With lots of ketchup. Yum.
The urchins (or "Neds")in Scotland (particularly the west of Scotland)allegedly subsist on deep-fried Mars Bars and deep-fried pizza, , which provides an nice cross cultural mix, including as it does both the USA and mainland Europe. I think it's the deep-frying that's important though (deep-fried, battered trainer anyone?)
Also, I think that if I hailed from the South-West of England, I'd call myself "Cornish" because I really like it as a word - very satisfying and yes, the pasty (genuine Cornish variety) is one of the finest things these islands have to offer in the way of food. Just watch out for the bloody seagulls!
Are you a Scot, Marsha? I have to say (and I'm a bit wary because last time I said this I got shouted down) that in all my 21 years in the North of Scotland, I never saw a single instance of a deep-fried Mars bar. Although deep-fried battered pizzas there were aplenty. Mmmm. Or not.
Cornish PASTY... yes those... three course meal baked into a pastry... I'm sure that is what they tought me at catering college, or whatever it was I spend all my hard earned money on when I was young and naive.
Should I get my money back?
PS: I like Ketchup
Ketchup? Surely the only thing suitable for pasty accompaniment is branston pickle...
During a brief sojourn to Edinburgh I did once experience the joy of a deep-fried Mars bar, and it wasn't in a touristy part of town so I presume it wasn't just a gimmick. It was nice, though.
Yes, I'm a Scot and no, I've never seen a deep-fried Mars Bar either (although they are reputed to exist in the chip-shops of Glasgow). I think though their real function is to provide a certain section of the London-based food press with a convenient shorthand for abysmal food, thereby allowing them to loftily pass comment on the inadequacies of the Scottish diet and the poor quality of some restaurant food, while conveniently forgetting that a good deal of the top-quality produce they routinely dine on in the course of their professional activities is, in fact, sourced in Scotland! Oh dear, I've gone all bitter and twisted again, haven't I?
No, not at all. I'm so delighted to have found someone that backs me up on this - I thought I was going mad. I've got a feeling that the deep fried Mars bar started out as a media joke about the Scottish diet (as you say), and since then has actually been brought into existence to amuse tourists, Southerners and the like. It's not authentic. Whereas the deep fried pizza most certainly is.
And pause, you *ate* one of those things? And lived to tell the tale? Congratulations!
Sorry James to hi-jack your blog to discuss the authenticity of Scottish fare!
No, carry on - I'm knee deep in my film script at the mo, so it's nice that it's all ticking over on its own...
I've been to Scotland once, and didn't see any deep-fried Mars bars. We did go to a chip shop that was selling deep-fried Creme Eggs once, but that was in Derbyshire.
I did live to tell the tale, but must confess I didn't have to wear glasses before that.
No need to worry about a mis-spent catering course, sparkling, the original idea of the pasty was to have meat in one half and something like jam in the other (possibly - but not necessarily - separated by a dividing line of pastry).
The idea of the thick roll of crust along the edge was so that your Cornish tin miner (for whom the delicacy was apparently invented) could safely eat his steak main course and his jam pudding, whilst holding the pasty by its crust with his work-dirty hands, and then just chuck the crust when he'd finished.
But you probably all knew that already.
*big sigh of relief*
When I lived in Darlington (shudder) there was a chippy near the station that deep-fried Mars bars and pretty much anything else that wandered within range. Deep-fried sticks of rock were a speciality. Needless to say their chips were ghastly, what with the cooking oil being full of burnt sugar, chocolate, trainers etc.
I have a brilliant image in my head of a lion in a jacket bearing a Warholesque print of Twiggy. Big fan of Twiggy, is yer average big cat. Yer.
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