>> It Summertime!
It's the summertime: the world is glowing with colour and cheer. At this time of sensory satisfaction, even if the weather isn't game, your local cinema will be: dazzling you with colour, fuelling your imagination and leaving the saliva lapping at your lips.
I wonder if anyone out there has been waiting for a certain film as long as I have. Smitten by Roald Dahl's storytelling at the tender age of six, the images of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory still dazzle me today. The thick lake of chocolate, the everlasting gobstoppers, the Scrumptious Fudge Mallow Delights and oompa loompas are bewitching images, the anticipation of sliding your finger along the wrapper of a chocolate bar to reveal a golden ticket beneath, the perfect movie fodder. Add a spoonful of Tim Burton's directorial magic and a sprinkle of Johnny Depp's acting talent to Dahl's unique mixture and the result should be a very good movie indeed.
All this sensory stimulation has got me thinking. Imagine a Cornish version of Dahl's wonderful tale, set in a place that could enchant young children who gaze up at its mysterious walls, a place that could envelope the peninsula with its tempting tastes and smells. So it might sound stereotypical, but Perran and the Pasty Factory would be a spellbinding feast of warm sensations, bringing the potent and succulent taste of Cornwall to the mouths of its readers.
From a poor family, Perran is only allowed a pasty from Billy Bonka's Pasty Factory once a year, on his birthday. But, on his way home from school one day, he notices a pound coin glinting from a gutter. Scooping it up, he walks to the local bakery and orders one of Billy Bonka's Scrumptious Special pasties. Taking the warm pastry in his hands, he nibbles at the crust before taking a large bite into the filling, too drool-inducingly beautiful for words. And there, to his surprise, amongst the turnip, potato and steak (for this was a proper Cornish pasty after all), is a golden ticket.
With great excitement, Perran arrives at Billy Bonka's Pasty Factory the next morning (along with four other less worthy ticket holders) to be escorted around by Billy Bonka himself. An eccentric and rounded man, Billy Bonka wears a suit as golden as the pastry of his pasties. And, wandering around the magical factory donning tiny aprons with flour-dusted hands, are the strange creatures Perran recognises as knockers. Billy tells his guests how he employed the knockers when the mines gradually closed. Without the corners of the miners' pasties, the knockers would surely have starved and, in gratitude for saving them, they revealed the pasty-making secrets of old to Billy. Hence, Billy Bonka's pasties are the best in all the land.
Perran gazes in wonder at the rivers of warm gravy, the pillows of soft pastry and the great pool of turnip, so creamy you can swim right through it. And, as the other less worthy winners disappear, it is he who is offered the chance to live in this marvellous place so that he may take over from Billy one day. It is he who must take the pasty-making secrets of old into the future and prevent impostor pasties from seizing the reign of tradition.
Inspired. If only Roald Dahl were here today.
Beccy Matthews