How much can one mooch?

Another blogpost from last week.

So yesterday (Sunday) we had a day of mooching round Looe again, the music festival being in its final day.

Chris has concluded she only likes music she already knows, which is an eensie bit inaccurate, but I understand where she's coming from. There are many things that are improved, knowing where they will go, and music benefits from a certain degree of fulfilling expectations: it makes following the tune/pattern easy and aids singing along no-end. This music festival has been informative for me, because it's helped me realise how much making good music relies on having a tune people can follow and hooks that are memorable. Repetition of dull or uninspiring phrases or riffs is not a substitute.

While wandering through the town we came across the little stage we'd seen the day before, only this time there was a girl with dyed crimson hair and matching lipstick standing there with another girl and a chap stood toward the back. The girl called herself Rose Redd – guess it's a gimmick that made her stand out, if a little corny – and was only 19 (looked late 20s to me – what do I know?) and her younger brother was playing bass. They did a bunch of cover songs, all acoustic, and she had a good voice. Of all the acts we'd seen, she was probably the only one we found worth stopping to listen for a while. I'll probably look her up – www.roseredd.co.uk is apparently her home page – when we get back. As usual, mixing wasn't great, though much better than the day before, and the guitars badly needed compression & limiting, becoming thunderous when swapping from picking to strumming.

In the evening we went back to the town for a fish'n'chip dinner. The festival was finishing that evening and the place was packed with fat older women dressed in hippie gear or with dyed hair, groups of teenagers, guys looking like refugees from a merchandising convention in various festival tee shirts and people in their early 20s looking a bit lost. Couples were seen having serious conversations to each other in various places. An odd atmosphere.

We were trying to find somewhere that would provide dinner at a reasonable price. Our legs were tired and we really wanted to sit down, so hoping to find something 'traditional' in the way of a chippy. There were 'real' restaurants that were happy to charge £14 for Cod & Chips, and LOADS of take-aways (we don't seem to do take aways any more – in discussion over dinner Chris reminded me she NEVER did takeaways, which was something my family often did to save money, and she's gradually trained me out of the idea) but hardly anything right.

Eventually we wound up at a place called 'Daves'.

Daves had a queue about 15 people deep coming out of the entrance for takeaway, but they also had an area for sitting down at the rear, with a separate till, so in we went. A traditional chippy, greasy, not too clean, busily serving hundreds of 'skinless Cod & chips' covers to the great unwashed festival crowd. We chose from the menu & I went to the counter to order. An orange sign on the wall said something like “No, we won't do it your way. This isn't burger king, and you'll damn well have it our way or you won't have it at all”.

I ordered cod & chips twice plus drinks, then sat down again.

Cutlery arrived in a tin bucket. The beech wood print formica tabletop had crumbs of food left behind and the place mats splodges on, defying the wiping marks from when it was last cleaned. The walls were also wood-printed boarding and the lights were in round orange shades. From the ceiling hung a net with plastic crabs, lobsters and various nautical nicnacs. Down one side were booths, and in the booth beside us were a couple in their 20s, she pretty with a soft face despite a good figure, dark-hair and wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket with gold scarf around her throat, he shaven-headed in a distressed green tee shirt and jeans. They were fed first, and the girl got a HUGE plate of chips with cheese on top plus onion rings, while he got cod & chips. Behind them were 2 women and a man, probably in their 50s. They'd had some banter with the waitress about getting bread and butter and paying for it.

After a while our cod and chips turned up.

Traditional fish'n'chips. So we piled on the salt, then on with the vineagar – without adding these essential ingredients fish'n'chips are incredibly bland. The fish was fine, but the chips had that texture that suggested they'd been prepared in a way that didn't involve whole potatoes, and they left a slightly bitter taste afterward that seems a mark of modern long-life cooking oils.

We finished, wandered off to listen to the main stage from the far end of the east beach now they had one of the more serious acts on, building up the the finale. They sounded OK but not terribly exciting, though the guitarist was capable of some good stuff. There was one point where they were getting all 'atmospheric' that Chris was reminded of the Stonhenge scene in Spinal Tap, and she had a point about the musical cliches. We went home for her to watch Downton Abbey and for me to read.

Monday was a new day.

If we were to return home now (Monday night) I'd believe the colour of Cornwall is grey, because that's the colour everything has been (apart from Dave's greasy diner). Can't complain though – at least it wasn't raining this morning, mostly.

So we fancied going for a walk, taking the bus over to Polperro (next town along the coast, £5.80 on the bus) and walking the 3 or 5 miles (yeah, right) back.

Polperro is the first bit of Cornwall I've seen that made me think it might be special. Looe is like Hastings in the 70s, only smaller, but Polperro had tiny streets, houses built together in impossible ways, a small river running right through the middle and a harbour that sits comfortably with the word quaint. There are also various shops selling arty bits & pieces, some of it nice, but none of it stuff that sensible people buy except to give to other people in revenge for souvenirs they've been previously given. There was an art shop/studio selling various people's paintings, and while some were excellent, some were so weak that Chris said she would have been embarassed to show anyone if it had been hers, let alone sell it for £125. Different strokes & all that, but she had a point.

So we walked.

It took a good 2 ½ hours to get back to Looe, and our legs had more than had it by that point. What can I say about it, other than it was a walk above the cliffs, with the sea to our right and green to our left. The path was sometimes muddy, sometimes rocky, and with many short but very steep climbs. There came a point where we had gone over the top of a hill & looked down toward a cove about a mile away thinking that we could see the entrance to Looe. Fat chance. By the time we got back it felt as though we'd walked more like 8 miles than 5 or 5 ½.

Chris took the key and went on ahead to slowly climb the steps up to our house while I bought chicken for dinner and a bottle of merlot for later. It seems ridiculous to have got so tired on such a relatively short walk, but there we are. The hills were quite steep, so I guess that must be the reason. Combined with the viciously steep hill that we must walk up every time we go out, we'd more or less decided that was it for the day, so stayed in and read/wrote up this blogpost. Dinner was Tikka Masala & rice, which was fine by me.

Hope we'll sleep well tonight.

Pictures will be along - eventually - probably.