Who the buggering hell planned the roads in Cornwall - Helen Keller? The ideal Cornish "road" is a single track of dirt with grass growing up the middle, surrounded by twelve-foot high hedges. It should lead precisely nowhere, and have as many blind ninety degree bends as possible; which will deliver you directly into the middle of a herd of cows accompanied to the milking parlour by an old fella with trousers held up by string, face agog at one of these new-fangled horseless carriages bearing down on him.
A short-cut, then, from the local shop back to Dad's house - a distance of four hundred yards - took an entire morning of careering around this maze of primitive tracks, hopelessly searching for familiar landmarks, or at the very least, a signpost. A tiny, unnamed village rose out of the morning like a Brigadoon, and seconds later it was gone, never to been seen again for another century.
Navigating by the sun, we eventually hit the A30 at Redruth - a town so drab, grey and lifeless, the building of a Tesco superstore had the locals out on the streets with rakes and flaming torches and a burning effigy of Jacques Delors as the infernal, satanic bulldozers went about their task - and we arrived home just as a search party was being organised.
"You were a bloody long time. Where the hell have you been?"
"I. Don't. Know."
The emergency rations consumed, we were marooned, starving in a hostile land.
The only thing that ever happened in Redruth was the famous theft of the "Million Pounds in Five Pound Notes" display from the Cornish Goldsmiths tourist attraction. The thieves completely ignored the thousands of pounds worth of gold jewellery, and ran off with the none-more-tacky display case of fivers, containing no more than three hundred quid of real money, and a awful lot of fiver-sized paper. It never once struck the crooks that a small tourist attraction in the arse end of the South West really would have a million quid to put on display, but there's no accounting for stupidity.
Ebay News
Cherie Blair's eBay profile. She's bought Fuck-Me shoes and an Aladdin video, obviously to brief her husband on Middle East policy.
Nice to see someone earning a fortune as a senior lawyer paying 1.99 for a Winnie the Pooh alarm clock. Obviously living next door to Gordon Brown has paid off.
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