Hopeless Tagger

I was tagged by Mother at Large re Food. Now, this is not a good one for me, as we have spectacularly bad luck eating out. Food is either burnt or uncooked, we’ve been overcharged and pissed off, so we’ve given up eating out except for two exceptions which are both in Falmouth, Cornwall.

Mali Thai restaurant is in Quay Hill, Falmouth, just off Custom House Quay, conveniently placed for both the Chainlocker and Quayside pubs. We always get takeaways rather than eating in, and the other night I had their vegetarian red curry which was spicy, hot yet delicate at the same time. Definitely worth repeating. I can’t remember what Himself had but it was good and garlicky.

The Clipper café in Well Lane, Falmouth. Here, despite their less than friendly proprietor, the food is consistently good, imaginative and cheap. They use local ingredients and my favourite is toasted tuna and coleslaw sandwich, or hummous and roasted vegetable sarnie. They also do tortilla, home made tarts, a selection of salads and ham on the bone. Their coffee is spectacular and served in huge French style cups/bowls; a sarnie and coffee costs under a fiver which isn’t bad these days. Unfortunately it’s tiny – only three tables, so you either have to get there very early or queue. Or go somewhere else.

I can’t stretch to five restaurants but on Christmas Day we took ham rolls down to Church Cove, having stopped for a quick drink at the Blue Anchor in Helston. (They do very good Spingo if you’re into real ale which neither of us are.) I digress. Church Cove is beautiful and was filled with dogs and people who’d been swimming, warming up in front of a big fire. We walked Mollie along the beach, where the tide was out, then over onto the dunes and up to the top where we had a breathtaking view of the Lizard, north and south and all the way out to sea. Those Atlantic rollers looked spectacular.

On the way back we met a girl in her thirties at a guess, walking along the road. Now the Lizard is very isolated – you can walk for miles without encountering a house let alone a village or person. It was also nearly 3pm and would be getting dark soon so we gave this girl a lift. She’d obviously been to a pub (she reeked of booze) and asked us to drop her back onto the main road as she was lost and staying on a campsite in the middle of nowhere. In between phone calls (her mobile phone rang, endlessly, from her husband) she told us that they’d split up on Christmas Eve, he’d disappeared with the car and she was left alone on this campsite knowing no one.

By this time I was in tears, she was in tears and I think Mollie was too. Himself was moist round the eyes. I couldn’t just drop her at a crossroads, so we took her back to her caravan. She got out, gave me a huge hug, then gave Himself a huge hug and disappeared into the mist.

I promptly burst into sobs, thinking what a terrible way to spend Christmas Day. So lost and alone, unloved and miserable. She couldn’t get back home (Liverpool or somewhere, hundreds of miles away) until after Boxing Day as there were no trains, and the nearest station was Penzance or Truro - both miles away. And how would she get there? There were no buses that far down. Taxis? Doubtful. I couldn’t stop thinking about, worrying how she was going to spend the next few days. What really happened with her husband? Would he come and collect her, to take her home?

I appreciate this has very little to do with food and I seem to have broken all the tagging rules, sorry about that, but it was a Christmas Day I'll never forget. I wonder what happened, and where she is now?