Award-winning pasty anyone?

Ijust had a wonderful week in the depths of the Cornish countryside. Miles from anywhere, with civilisation represented by the nearby gastro-pub.

I say nearby, but the walk home involved a one in five climb up one of those tunnel-like lanes that practically need a torch even at midday.

High banks, no pavement and impenetrable overhanging greenery. And local drivers who think nothing of haring along at 50mph while muggins here, struggling with two dodgy knees and an even dodgier back and blinded by undipped headlights, gets intimate with the brambles at the side of the road in order not to meet an untimely demise.

My fitter friends higher up the hill attempted to flash morse warnings with their phones. “Danger! Fat old bloke in road!”

Anyway, I survived, despite absolutely everything in the county, from National Trust gardens to quaint market towns, being built on similar slopes.

I’m sure the exercise was good for me, though at the end of the day I inevitably found myself literally crawling up the ladder-like stairs in our rented farmhouse.

What nearly didn’t survive was my oft aforementioned trio of goldfish. Perhaps I should have looked at the small print more closely, but I simply didn’t realise that their slow-release holiday food capsules had to be unwrapped before being placed in the aquarium.

I thought they were like those dishwasher tablets with the dissolving plant cellulose wrapping.

Just shows you, if they can survive on zero rations for a whole week, think how much money I could save over a year.

Mind you, I have never been welcomed home so enthusiastically by the pet contingent of my family!

Though I was rendered doubly guilty in the recollection of the mountains of fabulous seafood devoured on my vacation.

But with a bite-size crab roll going at £18 in one tourist trap establishment, I think the residents of Kernow saw us coming.

When we were kids, our great aunt Maude used to send us a sweating, greasy tin of Cornish cream from St Just every year.

I didn’t notice any signs for ‘Cream by Post,’ perhaps they don’t do it anymore.

But we did note the proliferation of businesses advertising “awardwinning pasties”. Five in one small harbour town alone.

In fact, famously grumpy old man Arthur Smith, a frequent visitor to Bath Comedy Festival, once offered an award to anyone who could find him a pasty in the West of England that wasn’t award-winning. I think the prize was an award-winning pasty!

I do like a nice pasty.

I have a ritual on returning from my holidays in tropical climes, I always have a jet-lagged pasty on Reading station.

So enraptured was I once with this welcome-back-to-england snack, it wasn’t until I alighted at Bath Spa station that I realised I had left my suitcase in the pasty shop.

So, it was straight back to Reading, where, reunited with my luggage I just had to have another pasty. Award-winning, of course!

Ralph Oswick was artistic director of Natural Theatre for 45 years and is now an active patron of Bath Comedy Festival