Cornwall

Do you remember how, when you were seven years old, the summer holidays were always spoilt by the knowledge that at the end of it all, in September, you would have to write some massive 150-word report for school on everything you did? And how the youthful joy derived from such activities as stream-jumping, dog-prodding and Banana Splits-watching was so often mitigated by the sudden recollection – rushing into your holiday-happy mind – that in a few weeks’ time you would have to write a whole sentence about it?

And then do you remember the leaden feeling in your heart as you sat in front of a piece of parental typing paper the night before term began with a green Caran d’Ache in your little fist (the black and all the blues having been worn dry in July, turning your four-year-old sister into Batman), wondering what on earth to write?

And do you remember how the worst of it was that, with the summer gone, you just didn’t want to think about it any more? Tomorrow you’d be in your horrid, scratchy Viyella shirt again, with your knees freezing in your drab grey shorts, your tanned little feet encased again in shoes, worrying about being late for your first day back because of the traffic on Finchley Road. And the last thing you wanted to think about was how happy you had been only weeks ago, when the holidays looked like they would stretch on forever.

Well that’s how I feel now, wondering what to write about Cornwall.

I hadn’t been for years, not since people started talking about it as a place you could eat not only safely, but well. So I thought I’d take a train to Truro, pick up a nice little car without a roof, and tool around there for a few days, offsetting the costs of the trip by filing a series of reviews of the restaurants I found there.

But now that I’m back I don’t want to write about it. It all seems like another century, pointless to recall and painful to recreate. As dead as childhood and as crippling to contrast with today.

I don’t want to write about that first lunch at the Lugger soon after we arrived (the train and hire car thing having, miraculously, worked out) on the sunny deck outside the hotel, looking over the tiny cove where the fish came in, the lobster and chips (not cheap) and the bottle of Cloudy Bay. I don’t want to think about the long, high walks along the coastal path, with shorts and silly stomping shoes and a brolly and no shirt, sometimes warm-skinned and sweaty in the sunshine and then other times cowering under the umbrella as a five-minute rainstorm whistled through.

Pointless here to recall the cliffs and sky, or the bouillabaisse that night that wasn’t one at all, but was all the better for it, the freshest bass and red mullet, the sweetest mussels and scatter of tiny clams in a gentle saffron bisque that sparkled with chilli.

So often in England the very fact that you can see and hear the sea means you can’t get a decent fish supper for miles. The fresh stuff all goes off to London (which is why I live here) and the locals feed on frozen, grey bottom-trawl in greasy bags from chippies that have lost the will to live. But at the Lugger, a single filleted sardine on a bit of salad was a thing to sing about. As was the haddock fillet cooked so gently you could see through it and served with crayfish tails.

They can really do fish here. Didier, the new chef, and Paul (who cooked the haddock) treat the catch with old-fashioned respect and modern enthusiasm, cooking flesh only barely as long as it needs, and not fearing, in traditional preparations, a thoughtful whop of soy or ginger, a dash of aniseed, saffron or chilli.

And the staff were friendly too, with very little of that scary country clunk. And then there was the 20-second stroll under the stars, in flip-flops, across the damp and rope-smelling harbour from the restaurant to the room, to sleep and listen to the sea. None of which I want to think about just now, in London, where the greasy citizens watch television all day and grumble about the price of petrol.

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