Pilchards

A Huer hut revitalized in Newquay, Cornwall

   One might think of sardines or even anchovies...but pilchards?  Yet here in the Cornish country the word is as embedded in their history as it is on a few menus (and in the town of Newquay, the pilchard is their town emblem). And lest we forget, as cardiologist Mimi Guarnari said in her lecture series on The Science of Natural Healing, one must think of S.M.A.S.H. when ordering healthy seafood...Sardines, Mackeral, Anchovies, Salmon (wild, she emphasizes), and Herring.  High in Omega 3 and heart-healthy, the early Cornish must have been granted celestial nutrition advice as they  harvested, ate, and exported the plentiful schools (mostly to Italy which used both the fish and the oil extracted from them).  Those of you who may have peeked at the television series Poldark (based on the popular books and now filming its fifth season in the nearby town), the sighting of a school of pilchards was a cause for celebration and often a savior from certain starvation for the many poor of the time.  And I should note that I've since been corrected that here in Cornwall, a "school" of fish is considered little more than what would fill a large home aquarium...the term is "shoal."  But pilchards were as instrumental to this town's development, at least as much as the various ores mined from the cliffs (primarily tin, but sometimes iron).  In the early days, "huers" whose sole job was to spot the runs and alert the town were as much a part of the community as a farmer or butcher would have been, with huts built just for their often cold and fruitless job, even with the beautiful lighthouse-like positioning and scenery; they would often yell out "hubba, hubba"* or "heeva, heeva" to tell the town's people that "here they are" and then carefully direct the fishermens' boats with hand signals to encircle the shoal.  At the end of a cold day, they would return to have a warm cake waiting, a simple one made of lard, flour, sugar and nutmeg, and appropriately called a huer or hevva cake and one making a touristy revival in some 8 the coastal towns (the  picture on the left shows a closer view of the typical stair construction of the 14th-century structure, allowing easy access to the roof to signal both the town and fishermen).

Typical view from a Huer hut (in this photo the tide is out)

    It had taken a bit but after a few days to adjust out of the jet lag I had to admit that I was rather enjoying our nightly gab sessions at the place we were staying.  We were already more or less friends with the inn owners (having stayed there before) but now we were being accepted as well as welcomed by their regular coterie of friends.  They were teaching me the ways of the town and of the Cornish culture.  Want a job done?  It'll be gotten to drekly (their take of "directly" which basically meant whenever they got around to it...when one of them noticed my shocked expression at how long he had waited to get his retina fixed so that he could see better he shrugged, smiled, and pointing to his other eye, from which he couldn't see at all, said "and when I get this one done I'll see even better," then winked and chortled off a "they'll get to it drekly"...he's been waiting two years).  And while the group of them tired of hearing about Brexit everyday and on what seemed every talk show on the tellie (the showdown for Britain's departure from the European Union is supposed to take place in March of 2019), my wife and I found ourselves in bliss at the limited time that the media gave to U.S. politics (generally 30 seconds or less).  Which is not to say that they had no shortage of Trump jokes, for the word trump there is the traditional slang term for farting...or having excess gas.  Here's one of their jokes, political correctness aside: A bigot, a racist and a sexist walk into a bar and the bartender asks, "What can I get you Mr. Trump?"  Or this one of both Obama and Trump in a movie theatre watching a western when Obama bets Trump $1000 that once the horse rider in the movie rounds the corner he was going to take a tumble; Trump accepts the bet, the rider falls, and Trump casts a sour face but Obama fesses up and tells Trump that he really can't take he money because he'd seen the movie before and knew that the rider was going to fall off, to which Trump replies, "Well I've seen the movie before too but I didn't think the git was stupid enough to fall off again!"

    We had to laugh, if only because it made us realize how silly all of the ranting and raving we had left at home was being viewed as a farce abroad, something to be joked about even as fingers controlled buttons that could unleash nuclear weapons; here in the country of sorts the entire world of political upheaval simply came down to the basics of what could the everyday person do other than perhaps yell "hubba, hubba."  From this coastline of a country that was also once a world power, the locals could almost watch politics from afar and perhaps see its ebbs and flows as certainly as the tides.  And as they bickered about whether England would be better off leaving or staying in the European Union, we could gaze at their debate from afar as well.  It felt good to get away from it all and just have a jolly old laugh about what really mattered, that of taking the time to just sit and chat, to unite rather than divide.

The first pub/hostelery in the town of Newquay

   So we rode buses and sat in pubs (one being the first and original hostelery in the town, as such establishments which served as both pub and hotel were then called), discovered that our time clocks made us hungry just as eateries stopped serving at 3 PM (causing us to eat lots of supermarket cheese and crackers before we learned to both start and finish our hikes a bit earlier), and that many of the people we met had moved there within the past 10 years...observations all, mind you, but that's what we bumped into.  We also found that while craft beers were still making the rounds (with such names as Treacle Treat and Timothy Taylor's Landlord, both delicious dark ales), there were an equal amount of gins available (far more than scotches or as they're described there and throughout 99% of the world,  just whiskys** few bourbon choices exist being American and all).  One unique rum emerged at the quaint Smugglers Inn in the town of Cubert, a place still holding out as a freehold pub*** and resisting the all-embracing corporations buying out local pubs everywhere, one pub in another town having gone through five owners before finally succumbing to a developer to it tear down and erect apartment units); this particular pub's own rum?...Dead Man's Fingers (and no, we were not near Bodmin Moor, although this area of Cornwall does have quite the history of pirating).

   We  were perhaps fortunate to be in a nether world, getting a glimpse of both the old ways and the new.  In some ways not much had changed but in others (such as home prices) much had.  As with many vacations we were having the time to listen to others and perhaps listen to ourselves, to watch the time drift away and yet recognize that we were also in that riptide of life.  Things were changing onshore but we had quit struggling to get back in, content to pop out and join the 18-year olds at their coming out party held at our stay (so young!)...full of life and so much to experience; one could almost feel their exuberance but then we were scheduled at a private party the next night, a friend of ours playing in the band (us old folks?).  It was the town of Newquay, home to one of the first night-time surfing the dark competitions (what??).  Change was coming...but one must be patient for that's the next story.


*This from the brochures that dots every inn, even though the background of the word "Hubba, Hubba" is hotly debated; and while the phrase might be considered passe in today's world of slang, New Zealand brought it back from a safe sex campaign:  No Rubba, No Hubba Hubba.  Honest!

**Here's a bit of trivia from Men's Journal on the whiskEY vs. whisKY debate...only two places in the world still use the KEY spelling of the word, the U.S. and Ireland.

***If you want to enter a real discussion starter, perhaps even larger than Brexit, just mention the word Witherspoons in a local pub, the massive corporation buying out the majority of struggling pubs and efficiently running them by adding more craft ales, menu choices, and sponsoring events throughout the U.K....but in the process, losing the character and individuality of the pub itself.  Those few pubs which are able to turn down such buy-out offers and still maintain themselves financially (and can thus choose which lagers or ales to carry vs. being told that only certain ones can be served, are called free holds and proudly announce such outside their walls).  As an observer, we found many of the Witherspoon pubs more crowded and drawing in all ages, the prices and décor little changed but the noise jumping up several notches; the beer and wine choices were many and the menu items we had proved tasty and varied, from pizzas to quinoa salads.  But walk into a free hold and the casual atmosphere is immediate, the pace down several notches, the staff patient and eager to chat and the history of the place seeping into you like a misty fog.  One good result, most of the freeholds have upped their own menu choices, more limited in scale but generating that home-cooked feel; when I ordered the Cornish sardine salad (relabeling the pilchards as Cornish Sardines is the latest effort by the Cornwall area to revitalize the nearly dead industry blamed partly on overfishing by large fleets from other countries), I received an unexpected but rather nicely presented "salad."