Here in Harleston, (pronounced Walberswick for the benefit of those unfortunate enough not to live hereabouts) we are doubly blessed to have a proper cheesemonger, selling, inter alia, proper cheese.  One of the proper cheeses she sells is a very fine Yarg, which as I'm sure you all know, is Cornish and is so called because it was first made by someone called Gray, Yarg being Gray backwards.

 

However of late there have been a couple of new Cornish cheeses arrive which are a sham and a fraud.  One is called Cornish Tiskey and has sun dried tomatoes in it.  First, you don't grow sun dried tomatoes in Cornshire so stop putting them in your cheese, and second, what the hell is a Tiskey?  Or was the cheesewright too tissed to spell piskey?  Perhaps our favourite tyro saint and soi-disant fount of knowledge on all things Cornese can enlighten us.  I've forgotten the name of the second new cheese but it contains parsley coriander and something else and is not nice.  On the Yarg principle, I suspect it may be called Parc.  We're off down to the cheese shop shortly, where I confidently expect to find a tasting dish containing Bleugh, the new Cornish cheese with kumquat and parsnip.

 

I shall quote you in its entirety a news in brief piece from yesterday's Grauniad:

 

"A man died after eating half a jar of pickled onions while 3.5 times over the drink-driving limit. A coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death on Melvyn Martyn of St Austell, Cornwall"

 

a)  Is there really not enough to do in St Austell?

 

b) Would anyone want to drink that much Tribute?

 

c)  If they did, is there not a better ways of taking the taste away?

I think a Tiskey must be a cross between a tit and a piskey; the latter being a mythical creature and the former being the sort of person who is dumb enough to buy cheese from them. On the other hand your cheesemongrel could just be dylsixec!

 

Anyway, I suspect that the whole cheese enterprise seems somewhat fishy as my mines expert has told me that Cornwall only has soup mines and there are no naturally occurring veins of cheese ore. Yarg, incidentally, is a slag by-product from the soup mining and gets its name from the noise humans make when they are confronted by irate dragons who have just been interrupted in mid-souping.

 

A propos of the Great St. Awful Pickled Onion Incident I can only respond as follows:-

 

1) There's only one worthwhile thing you can do in 'St. Ossle' and that's leave

 

2) Anyone dumb enough to live there might just be dumb enough to try it. Or maybe he'd just lost the will to live

 

3) I think the only thing that could possibly completely take away the appalling taste of Tribute would be a tonguectomy

 

PS. Another trip to Threshers tonight or did you manage to carry enough back last night. I have just emerged from 36 hours of culinary misery feeding the resis, the ems and the artyfartys. I stopped off on the way home at the Thresher and have purchased myself a one-way ticket to Planet Zog.

 

To oblivion and beyond!

It wasn't kumquat and parsnip after all - they decide to go for the true taste of Cornshire and made it regurgitated pasty and seagull poo.

 

Talking of matters touristique, which we probably weren't. I've just noticed an article in today's local rag.  Apparently the good folk of Southwold, having decided that the entry level price for a house in the town should be about £37m (with electricity and water as optional extras), and then flogged off their beach huts and fishermen's' hut for up to £45K a pop, mightily pissing off some fishermen in the process, have now started selling off the jetties on the harbour.  For £12,000.00 each.  Now I've seen these jetties, and a lot of them look like they were slung together on a stormy night by someone with a very tenuous grip on reality and an G minus and bar in carpentry.  Oh yes, and they're on the southern bank of the river, which means they're not in Southwold at all.  (You've seen this one coming, haven't you?)  They're in Walberswick.  So there we are.  If  Apparentlysoontobe St Pinwheel wants somewhere to tie up his coracle, all he needs is the Blessed Barclaycard and Bob's your uncle. The coracle is still part of the kit for the well turned out Celtic saintish person, isn't it?

 

Must go.  I've got to go and oversee the completion of the new underground pipeline from Threshers to Poho.  VinoPLUTO

 

PS  Do not cast nasturtiums about our Cheesemonger.  She has an enormous, very heavy, very sharp knife capable of slicing Parmesan into shavings in mid air, and she knows how to use it.  And it's a great shop, so big up to Gill and Dot.

Well, that sounds about right. At least it's authentic.

 

I must admit my sense of geography is not great but if there is something south of t'Southwold shouldn't it be called Middlewold? Anyway, I can't see the proto-saint having any navigational difficulties as he frequently appears to be talking a load of coracles.

 

PS. Devon forbid that I should be accused of slandering a good fromagier. I know how difficult it is to get hold of any decent stuff this day. There's nothing I like better than a good cheese and port feeding frenzy. Do they sell on the internet because there's bugger all worth buying around here.

I think it is Middlewold, but it's pronounced Walberswick; I thought we'd got that clear by now.

 

I have to go and see Gill tomorrow to get my 100g of Colombian Medellin Excelso (she doesn't just do cheese).  I'll ask her if she sells it over the internet, but I've no idea how much bandwidth you'd need for 500g of finest Morbieres, or Wensleydale, or indeed Buxlow Paigle.  I'm sure though that delivery could be arranged for a small charge, say a bathfull of Doom Bar....