dough!

"they'll put anything in a cornish pastry, they will"

is what i thought a crusty old character in agatha christie's "dead man's folly" said.

walking near london's southwark cathedral, past a fish n chips shop, i saw a sign advertising cornish pasties. pasties! not pastries! d'oh!
visions of daphne du maurier's cornwall, pale-faced unhealthy men, hercule poirot and a full stomach swam together before my eyes. mmm, pasty.

diving into the chipper (thump. crash.) i casually asked for cornish pasties. with the slightest emphasis on "stee" and a hint of a question mark in the air. accompanied by a hint of "aw shucks! i'm just a tourist here, so forgive me for getting your quaint pronunciation wrong" visible in the twitching lines of my face.
very complex.

i don't think i flatter myself, when i say that the hirsute man and his 6 brothers running the establishment gauged the situation perfectly. my doubts about the correctness of the term were laid to rest by the matter of fact manner in which they turned away from me, scratched, yawned and perspired.

several minutes passed. i was lulled into a dreamlike state by the heat in the room, the sound of the rain outside and the general feeling of waiting for godot.

"aah, merrie england" i murmured. it had all come together in this defining moment.

a microwaved beef puff with plenty of trans fat. that's the way the pasty crumbles.