Pasties, clotted cream and anarchy.

I am now part way through my second week in my new job and what a lot I have to tell you about. So last week I had a fairly low skilled job pouring cider, it was OK but not something I could imagine doing for too long. But this week sees a complete u-turn in my career and I am now mainly serving cream teas and pasties in both the restaurant and tearoom. They have promised me that tomorrow they will train me how to use the till, I think that this is considered a promotion.

Cornwall has two main national foods; the pasty and the cream tea, both of these are of course on the menu. Nothing wrong with that you might think, people come to Cornwall they want a pasty and a scone, jam and clotted cream. Its like when you go to France you'd expect croissants, in Italy you want pasta, Spain its Paella, Thailand you might opt for Green Curry and in Japan you'd order Sushi. But something has shocked me to the core in my new job. So much so that I even find it difficult to write about.

Let me assure you that I am generally an open minded person, I would never judge a person because of their beliefs, how they looked, who they loved or how they lived their lives. But we all have limits and this week my limits have been stretched to absolute breaking point. I'm not even that easily shocked, for goodness sake I've been to Ibiza, seen Celebrity Big Brother, have sunbathed topless and have read the UK-IP manifesto (well a bit of it), but this week I don't mind admitting that I have been deeply shocked. I'm not someone who is bound by convention; I have been known to drink red wine with fish, to defiantly wear blue and green together, I've drunk breakfast blend tea in the afternoon and have even "cast a clout before the may is out". I'm not proud of these things but think they demonstrate my devil may care attitude.

The Cornish pasty is a humble, yet delicious dish; finely chopped potatoes, onion, swede and steak, nicely seasoned with salt and pepper, then sealed in pastry and baked to a golden brown. The pastry seals in the meat and veg juices and when you you bite through the crisp crust you come to the succulent, savoury, moist and fragrant filling.

 Perfect. It needs nothing else.

Well imagine my shock when on my first shift working in the restaurant I noticed on the menu "Pasty and gravy". Yes that's right GRAVY! I have nothing against gravy per se, in fact I am quite partial to some nice gravy with my roast dinner, shepherds pie or chops. But pasty and gravy! They honestly serve the pasty on a plate with a jug of gravy alongside! What is the world coming to? The only explanation that I can come up with, to justify this abhorrence, is that it must signal the beginning of the end of civilisation. Yes in theory the customer is always right, but in this they are wrong, wrong, wrong. It brings up that age old question of where personal freedom ends and anarchy begins.

For those of you not from Cornwall you may think that I am over reacting but I can assure you I'm not. It would be like going to America and asking for apple pie with coleslaw on the side, or going to a wine bar and ordering a vintage bottle of burgundy and mixing it with cola, going to Zante and asking for a Greek salad with Edam instead of Feta or like going to a curry house and asking for a Chicken Tikka Marmalade. Anyway you get the idea.

So the result of this insult to my national pride is that I'm not sure how long I can continue in this job. Luckily I have another interview this Friday and hopefully I'll get this one or I might literally explode with indignation. And in the explosion I may spray a mixture of blood, pasty, jam, my entrails, cider, gravy, teeth and clotted cream around the restaurant. And as they scrape bits of me and congealed food off the wall, floor, furniture and ceiling I like to think that my ghost will taunt them by eerily chanting

"Shame on you and your pasty and gravy. Shame on you!".