Shin Kicking (Part 6): Saucy Chaucer: The Canterbury Tails

Once they've left, though, Campden reverts to its carefully preserved beauty.

In the late afternoon, the high street seems to glow in the setting sun, and if you try hard enough, you can just about imagine what the medieval market town must have looked like centuries ago.

Failing that, you can always rent an X-rated video.

The tourist office doesn't like to brag about it (I can't imagine why), but Campden served as a film location for an adult version of The Canterbury Tales, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1971.

The choice of Campden was a neat coincidence. The oldest house on the high street was built by William Grevel, a wool merchant roughly the same age as Geoffrey Chaucer. Indeed, the two men probably knew each other from their dealings in London.

Both were important players in the wool trade (albeit on opposite sides of the law), with Chaucer the customs official in charge of Wools, Skins and Hides, while Grevel was a wheeler-dealer and moneylender to Richard II, a factor that no doubt helped him win a pardon "for all unjust and excessive weighings and purchases of wool".

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer satirised Grevel's type as the archetypal Merchant, a spiv who brags about profits even though he's secretly in debt.

How times change…

Nearly six centuries later, Pasolini axed all of Chaucer's religious stories to focus on the bawdy ones in what is best described as Saucy Chaucer: The Canterbury Tails, a tacky spaghetti-sex flick featuring a mostly English cast dubbed in Italian.

In other words, you can read the actors' lips (along with the subtitles), but what you hear is Italian.

"Pasolini wasn't too bothered about the acting," a bit player recalled. "When one actor forgot his lines, he was told to just count to ten and it would be dubbed into Italian later."

The X-rated film's "stars", such as they were, included Oscar-winner Hugh Griffith (best supporting actor in Ben-Hur) and Charlie Chaplin's daughter, Josephine, in "The Merchant's Tale" episode; sex farce stalwart Robin Askwith as a hooligan who urinates on a crowd before being killed (something that never happened in the Confessions series, unfortunately); Tom Baker and his, um, sonic screwdriver three years before he took over as Dr. Who; and finally, Pasolini as Chaucer, four years before his murder at the hands of a rent-boy.

At the risk of making it sound more interesting than it actually is, the movie features bare bottoms and bodily functions galore; full male and female nudity; assorted straight, gay and three-in-a-bed sex; adultery and prostitution; fellatio, sodomy, masturbation, voyeurism, flagellation and torture; as well as surreal shots of a friar in bed with a watermelon and some chickens, horned demons buggering humans in Hell, and close-up shots of Satan's anus as he defecates sinful monks in a bout of friar-rhoea.

The whole shebang ends with a fart and a hymn.

For the scenes in Campden, the crew transformed it into a medieval market town, complete with dirt and straw covering the high street, serfs and geese gambolling around, and an apothecary selling his potions in the market hall.

Hay bales acted as fig leaves for the indecencies of 20th century development.

Even so, eagle-eyed viewers claim you can spot rogue TV antennas in Campden's high street.

What with all the naked flesh on display during the rest of the film, though, these nitpickers were clearly missing the bigger picture.

* * *

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Darkie Day (Part 6): From Darkie Day to Mummers' Day

Two weeks after its "scoop", The Sunday Independent reported that the National Front was planning to fight an election in Cornwall for the first time in 19 years under the banner of "Keep Cornwall White".

"NF supporters believe they can pull in a large slice of the votes—especially following the Darkie Day race row," it said, quoting an NF spokesman as saying: "We fully support the rights of white people in Padstow to celebrate Darkie Day. As for Bernie Grant and his ilk, they would be far from these shores, back in the Caribbean and Africa, under the National Front's humane repatriation and resettlement programme and no longer able to interfere in our country's internal affairs."

Padstow's Darkies were horrified.

"Whatever the National Front are saying is not what the people of Padstow believe. They are not welcome," one declared.

Nevertheless, many observers predicted that Padstow's Darkie Day would soon come to an end. "And we can only hope it's not a violent one," lamented The Western Morning News.

The only other Cornish village known to have a similar tradition quickly whitewashed its Darkies to avoid a similar controversy.

Calstock, an hour from Padstow, had revived its "ancient" blackface tradition in 1983. Locals claimed that singing Cornish Christmas carols and collecting money had nothing to do with blacks or slavery; its roots were in the medieval traditions of "guising" and mumming, when people would darken their faces and entertain the crowds for food and money.

In a canny move, the Calstock Darkies officially rebranded themselves the Calstock Guisers (pronounced "geezers") and painted white crosses over their black faces, forming the Cornish flag of St. Piran.


An artsy take on St. Piran's flag, courtesy of ArtCornwall.org

Padstow's Darkies also agreed to some alterations after meeting with the police and the local branch of the Commission for Racial Equality in the run-up to Christmas.

"But we refused, point-blank, not to go out," one local said. "The police didn't want us to dark our faces up or anything—I mean, that would've made a mockery of it."

So they compromised.

The Padstow Darkies became the Padstow Mummers, with black faces but no minstrel-style white make-up around their eyes or mouths. Most importantly, they agreed to substitute "mummers" for the word "niggers" in their songs.

Even so, a national broadsheet revived the controversy the following year with an article threatening that the National Front might march in Padstow.

Throughout the furore, though, few (if any) of the journalists, politicians or other outsiders who commented on Darkie Day ever actually saw it.

After all, who in their right mind would want to spend Christmas or New Year's with a bunch of "racist rednecks" in Cornwall?

* * *

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Shin Kicking (Part 5): Trollopes and Knickers

In any event, Cobbett has had plenty of company, past and present, in critiquing the Cotswolds.

A cleric visiting in 1836 declared Campden "a dull, clean, disused market town".

More recently, Joanna Trollope, the grande dame of cottage-in-the-country fiction, dissed her native Gloucestershire in terms that made the Cotswolds sound like the Third World.

"Children in these honey-coloured villages go to school with no underclothes," she claimed. "Teachers in the beautiful Cotswolds find pupils scavenging through rubbish bins."

Fellow Cotswold resident Jilly Cooper gamely agreed: "The county has got jolly rough areas… Where I live is ravishingly pretty. There's a gorgeous village school. I have no idea if the children in it are wearing knickers or not. But there are problems in some areas with poverty."

A famous Trollope's remarks about knickers were bound to have outsiders in stitches—"Rural Idyll Caught With Its Pants Down," sniggered The Guardian.

But the residents of Britain's biggest "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" were not amused. After all, talk like that can drive down property prices.

"We just hope people do not take her comments too seriously," a tourist official said. "I have never seen anyone knickerless in the Cotswolds."

Well, that's a relief.
Knickers firmly intact, Campden manages to attract plenty of well-to-do outsiders, including retirees, weekenders and "merchant bankers (who) buy mansions with their bonuses," to quote Trollope.

For moneyed newcomers, Campden represents the best of both worlds: a typically English setting, complemented by the finer (foreign) things in life.

It's the kind of place where you could easily hear a transplanted Londoner say: "Dinner at the taverna sounds fine, dear. I'm going to nip to the shop for some marmalade and Le Monde."

In short, the town is the epitome of England's "in Europe, but not of Europe" stance—the equivalent of having your cake… and eating it.

Inevitably, Campden is also a magnet for whistle-stop tourists looking to "do" the Cotswolds in as little as 24 hours.

In 1931, a travel writer walked 20 miles around the area without seeing a single car; nowadays, you'd be doing well to walk a mile without seeing 20 cars.

"Too… many… visitors," complains Ben Hopkins when I ask him about the changes he's seen in the newly styled "Capital of the North Cotswolds".

"Tisn't the traffic so much—it's the coaches, stop in the middle of town, spew out about 50,000 foreigners a year. I don't think they do the town any good. They walk up and down, and then they get in and go. Half an hour, hour, and gone."

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Shin Kicking (Part 4): The Most Beautiful Village Street in the Island

Strolling through Campden today, it's hard to imagine that this affluent, honey-gold town in the Cotswold Hills was once a virtual Mount Olympus of shin kicking.

With its artists' studios, antiques shops, and upmarket hotels and restaurants, Chipping Campden seems too well-heeled to have ever hosted a blood sport like shin kicking (the "chipping" prefix is a reference to its former status as a market town, rather than the damage inflicted by footfighting).

For many visitors—Brits and foreigners alike—the Cotswolds in general and Campden in particular represent their dream of the English countryside made reality.

Green fields and hedges surround the town, and its gently curved high street seems to have been hewn from a single block of grey-gold Cotswold stone.

G.M. Trevelyan, a popular historian of the 1940s, called it "the most beautiful village street now left in the island", which naturally made it "the most beautiful in Europe".

Chipping Campden Market Hall by John Davis

Much of this beauty dates from the era of the Golden Fleece, when England's wealth came off the back of Cotswold sheep.

Campden's oldest mansion, built by a wool merchant in the 14th century, features a sundial, gargoyles, and a novel form of ventilation for the time (chimneys rather than holes punched in the roof).

Further down stands a timber market hall, the Jacobean focal point amid the rows of Georgian and Regency-era houses, wood-beamed tearooms and pubs and coaching inns with arched carriageways leading off into courtyards.

At the end of the mile-long high street, the large church towers over what little is left of Campden's 17th-century manor house, the exotic fantasy of Sir Baptist Hicks, one of the richest Britons of all time.

Still, not everyone has been bowled over by Campden and the Cotswolds.

William Cobbett slated the area in his Rural Rides in 1826. In the first place, he wrote, the name was all wrong: "Cotswold Hills" was a tautology, since wold means hill. Worse, he thought the region was "an ugly country" with "less to please the eye than any other I have ever seen".

Maybe that was because back then, the buildings were whitewashed, covering up their golden stone.

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Shin Kicking (Part 3): The Beginning of All That

However, their biggest stunt was yet to come.

"We dug our own graves on Dover's Hill," Ben says.

While a marching band distracted the crowd, Ben and Joe, wearing neckerchiefs and old-fashioned shepherd's smocks, slipped into their shallow graves covered by coffin boards and turf.

After the band finished, two men disguised as poachers came walking up the hill carrying a jug of cider.

"I got a rabbit down 'ere!" one of them shouted and started digging frantically.
To the crowd's surprise, the poachers soon discovered the graves and lifted the shin kickers onto the ground.

"They lay us down, give us a drink of cider, and we started shin kickin'."

The BBC was on hand to record the event in a black-and-white newsreel that opens with pastoral music and scenic shots of Campden and its Olimpicks.

"Among the villages of the Cotswolds was found renewed proof last week that the Festival is Britain's," intones a tea-and-crumpets voice. "At Chipping Campden, it was marked by seven days of celebrations, including a revival of the Cotswold Games."

Cut to Ben and Joe locked in combat, swiping at each other's legs. When one of them swings, the other jumps back.

"A favourite item then was always a shin-kicking contest, brought to life again this day by two local young men. They have volunteered to resurrect this duel and show how shins were broken years ago."

Ben and Joe kicked and feinted until they got tired, having decided beforehand who would lose.

"I lost the toss," Ben says. "It was really good, I thought. And that was the beginning of all that."

* * *

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Shin Kicking (Part 2): Best Done Among Friends

In the spirit of revival, the organisers decided to resurrect the sadistic sport, if only for show.

Ben was roped in when his best friend, Joe Chamberlain, volunteered. "I didn't mind, I thought it was a bit of fun," he chuckles. "We were young and silly."

Both married and in their thirties, Ben and Joe could have been siblings, what with their hooded eyes and jutting jaws.

In a photo from the time, they're standing side by side laughing, brothers in arms, one in a pinstriped jacket and paisley tie, the other in a flat cap and overalls.

Although Joe worked in town at the chemist's and Ben was a farmer, they lived next door to each other in Campden; the couples would nip into each other's houses for tea and conversation—"very sociable, like".

And shin kicking—even the pretend kind—was best done among friends.

One over-enthusiastic swing would be enough to infuriate anyone and turn a good-natured display into a grudge match. Ben and Joe tried to check their blows, kicking hard enough to make it look realistic but pulling back just before impact. They also had padding sewn inside their trousers.

"Not real padding," Ben says. "It was just a double thickness on our trousers."

"They Call It Sport, But We Say It's Plain Crazy!" a newspaper exclaimed, with a photo of Ben kicking wildly at Joe's bare shins (but missing by a country mile).

Shin kickers of yore supposedly prepared by deadening their legs with hammers. So Ben pretended to do the same for reporters:

"Tom Barnes, a 79-year-old local blacksmith, skilfully swung his seven-pound hammer to fall with a thump on the shinbone of 34-year-old farmer Ben Hopkins. And Ben, he winced a little, then—'A little harder if you please, Tom,'—he said.

Tom obliged."

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Shin Kicking (Part 1): Ye Olde Bloode Sport: Shin Kicking at Chipping Campden

Not many men live to dig their own grave, let alone climb out of it. But Ben Hopkins was planning to do just that in the summer of 1951.

The Festival of Britain had revitalised the nation, boosting morale at a time when there were still shortages of food and housing six years after World War Two.

In London, the organisers of the five-month extravaganza strained to look to the future, commissioning fantastical attractions called Skylon, the Dome of Discovery and the Outer Space Pavilion.

However, in the old Cotswold town of Chipping Campden, the locals planned to celebrate their Britishness by doing what came naturally: reliving the past.

The festival's timing happened to mark nearly a century since the abolition of a little-known event that linked England with the ancient Olympian Games and the modern Olympics.

England's very own "Cotswold Olimpicks" had been held since at least 1612 on Dover's Hill outside Campden and survived until 1852, when rowdiness gave the authorities an excuse to shut it down.

Ninety-nine years later, the people of Chipping Campden decided to revive their old-fashioned Olimpicks as their contribution to Britain's Festival.

Instead of standard track-and-field events, these Olimpicks would feature tug-o'-war, sack races, morris dancing, greasy-pole climbing and "throwing the sheaf"—hurling a hay bale with a pitchfork.

But it fell to Ben and a friend to re-enact the most infamous sport of them all: shin kicking, a brutal form of wrestling once common in England, Wales, and parts of America.

Contestants would square off, lock arms and hack at each other's shins until one of them was thrown to the ground.


Photo by Emma Wood

In the old days, shin kickers wore metal toecaps on their boots, leaving losers—and winners—with permanently dented shinbones. Some were crippled for life, and a few even died from their injuries. As a result, the pastime itself died out by the early 1900s.

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Darkie Day (Part 5): Crackers and Coconutters

The debate soon turned into a Town vs. Country clash with a Cornish twist, pitting critics from 'up-country' against the salt-of-the-earth 'Westcountry'… "politically correct zealots in the big cities" vs. "two or three dozen Padstow people"… and the "London media" vs. local papers that were "Flying the Flag for Cornwall" (the motto of The Sunday Independent).

Most importantly, the uproar seemed to reflect the ancient conflict between the English, the offspring of Anglo-Saxon invaders, and the Cornish, who regarded themselves as the country's true natives.

Whereas callers to a radio chat show in London loudly condemned Darkie Day, most letters to newspapers in Cornwall supported the tradition. For natives, Darkie Day became a symbol of their dying culture.

"Some people will always try to put us Cornish people down," wrote a man from St. Columb. "If there are people out there not liking 'Darkie Days', they can always cross the Tamar Bridge and leave us Cornish people in peace."

What's more, the controversy came at a time when many traditional aspects of British life were being denounced as "politically incorrect".

A couple of years earlier, Granada TV reportedly imposed a "blackout" on the Britannia Coconutters of Bacup, Lancashire, because they darkened their faces with boot polish as part of their Easter dance routine.

The "Nutters" argued that it had nothing to do with race—in fact, the blackface routine may have been imported in the 19th century by Cornish miners who were mocking morris dancers (though one theory holds that the word "morris" comes from "Moorish", which may explain why morris teams such as the Flag Crackers of Yorkshire still wear black makeup).

The Bacup Coconutters

In their defence of Darkie Day, the Cornish kept coming out with statements of shock and dismay that were just too innocent to be believed—at least from an urban perspective.

"It is an old Cornish custom, and they are not taking the mickey out of coloured people," a woman from Plymouth said.

"They just go round singing and dancing dressed up with their faces darkened," shrugged Padstow's mayor.

"Although the word nigger in several songs could be seen as inflammatory nowadays, it is not meant in that way," another Padstonian explained.

One local admitted that as a girl, she didn't know the day after Christmas was called Boxing Day; she knew it only as "Darkie Day".

The Western Morning News blamed the uproar on "an increasingly censorious urban attitude": "To brand the people of a small Westcountry fishing port redneck racists who deserve to have their town turned into a minefield is a disgraceful slur and entirely counterproductive to genuine racial harmony."

By the end of the article, the paper turned things around, somehow arguing that the condemnation had been "so offensive and bigoted" that it was effectively a "racist attack" in its own right—against the Cornish!

Against this "racist attack", Padstow found an unlikely defender in a big-city black journalist. "You can make yourself see racism anywhere, if you look hard enough—even in a Cornish town on the day they celebrate the abolition of slavery," wrote Darcus Howe in The New Statesman.

The pundit and broadcaster had first visited Cornwall back in the 1960s and returned many times since. Chiding Grant, who was the MP for Tottenham—"not exactly a Cornish constituency"—he added: "May I offer a little local history lesson for our metropolitan radicals?"

Then Howe regurgitated an unlikely tale about the event's origins: "Slave ships used to anchor in Padstow to avoid storms. The slaves would disembark and entertain themselves and the local people in a song and dance routine," he said.

Citing a "local expert", Howe concluded that Darkie Day was really an anti-slavery celebration: "The critics maintain that Darkie Day is some time-warped throwback to the bad old days of The Black and White Minstrel Show. The reality is the opposite; but the politically correct brigade never stopped for long enough to find that out."

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Darkie Day (Part 4): "A Dark Day for Tradition"

WOULD YOU BAN IT? shrieked the front page of The Sunday Independent a couple of weeks later.

The Plymouth tabloid—no relation to its highbrow national namesake—specialised in shouty headlines, announcing everything in bold-faced capitals that made even the most innocuous news look alarming: ASSEMBLY 'YES' the paper would cry, or SCHEME WILL DO A LOAD OF GOOD.

But for Padstonians, nothing good could come from the paper's "exclusive" about Darkie Day, with its front-page photo of local men, women and children in blackface.

Posing with their drums and accordions, the whole dark-faced gang was cheesing for the camera, blissfully unaware of the national controversy about to be set in motion.

"To a West Country community it's a bit of harmless fun," the article began. "But to race watchdogs it's evil—and they want it banned NOW."

"I'm not black and it offends me," huffed Eileen Bortey, the 'chairperson' of Cornwall's new Race Equality Council.

"Padstow is a beautiful place. It's a great pity it is being defiled in this way. If we need to kick up a stink, we will. It has to be condemned."

Compared with the offended white woman, Britain's best-known black politico, who sometimes wore African robes to Parliament (even though he was Caribbean), was initially a model of restraint.

"I thought the days when white people dressed up as black people were well behind us," London MP Bernie Grant was quoted as saying.

After a token defence from "Ziggy", Padstow's lone black resident—he called Darkie Day "great fun" (but then, he would say that, wouldn't he?)—the report ended with locals vowing to continue the tradition, while the police warned that it could be banned if it stirred up trouble.

"What do YOU think?" the paper enquired, sensing it was on to a sure thing. "Write to Race Row, Sunday Independent…"
And so, in just 16 paragraphs, a local tabloid took an obscure tradition—so back-of-beyond, in fact, that hardly anyone in Cornwall had ever heard of it—and transformed it into a national scandal.

Within days, follow-ups appeared in national papers ranging from The Guardian and The Daily Mail. "A dark day for tradition as the race police sail into port," rued the Mail, alongside a photo of Ziggy posing on the pier.

On national radio, a shock jock branded Padstonians "racist rednecks" and urged listeners to boycott the town. Rumours circulated that previously obscure groups like the Cornwall Race Equality Council were threatening to bus black protesters into Padstow with 'lighted up' faces.

And soon enough, Bernie Grant cranked up the rhetoric with a veiled warning to Padstonians: "If they want their nice idyllic little town to turn into a minefield, that's up to them."

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Darkie Day (Part 3): Maybe It's Nothing

As Anita was mulling this over, and wondering whether she should buy a card—or anything at all—she couldn't help but overhear the attendant chattering on the phone.

"Are you coming down tomorrow?" the nice lady asked her friend on the other end of the line. "Yeah, of course, it's Darkie Day, isn't it?"

"And immediately, it was like someone had jerked my head on a string," Anita recalls. "I snapped my head to look at her, and it was so fast, I—I almost cricked my neck."

Red-faced, the woman spluttered into the phone, "Oh, uh, okay, Jean, I'll call ya back, I'll call ya back."

But Anita was already gone. As she stormed outside to take the sea air, she kept asking herself: What the hell is Darkie Day?

Unfortunately, she was bound to find out: they had reservations at Rick Stein's on New Year's Day. The celebrity fish freak owned four eateries in town, as well as a hotel and a Seafood School. Foodies travelled from around the country to eat at his flagship restaurant in "Padstein". So they couldn't just cancel their reservations.

In the car on the way back to their cottage, Anita began to worry. "Oh my God, did you hear what she said?" she asked her future in-laws.

"Oh, what was that, dear?"

They had never heard of Darkie Day—and they'd been visiting Cornwall for 30 years.

They were educated, highly progressive people; in fact, they were so colourblind—in the well-meaning sense of the word—that they didn't seem to understand why she might be concerned.

"It's probably nothing," they said.

But that didn't make her feel better.

Usually, when she went to Cornwall, she was the only dark face around—you didn't see many Asians, and certainly in the winter, you didn't see any outsiders. When you walked into the locals' pub—their pub—everyone would stop, and they'd register you; you were a curiosity. And God only knew what the Cornish did when everyone went away and they were left to their own devices. Who knew what happens in the depths of Britain? Darkie Day didn't sound exactly positive for black people, did it? It was like "Coon Day" or "Racial Slur Day" or something.

From the woman's reaction, Anita couldn't tell if it was something innocuous or sinister. It was like some sort of secret ritual they were planning, that outsiders weren't meant to know about. Was it some sort of local Ku Klux Klan?

"Irony: It strikes at the best of times"

At the very least, it was probably going to be very uncomfortable and embarrassing; at the very most—well, who knew? Possibly a white-sheet job. If she got a sniff that it was even remotely Ku Klux Klanny, she would be out of there like a bat out of hell.

By the time they returned on Darkie Day—that was the other weird thing, they didn't call it "New Year's Day"—Anita had just about rationalised away her fears. Maybe it's just an expression… maybe it's nothing… maybe I'm overreacting.

Even so, she couldn't help but feel apprehensive.

Just before lunch, it started pouring down rain, so they took shelter in a pub next to the harbour. And when Anita walked in, all the regulars stopped to look. Maybe it was because they didn't expect someone with a dark face—or maybe it was because they knew what was coming.

Suddenly, the doors were flung open, and there was a flurry of noise and music. Two-dozen people rushed in, all blacked up, dressed in rags, with big white circles drawn around their eyes and rouge lips to make them look big and fat, and these dreadful Negro wigs on. And they were singing in thick Cornish accents, bursting into laughter, cheering and stomping—it was obviously the big event of the day.

The cavalcade continued around the pub, and… everyone thought it was completely normal.

But for Anita, it was really horrific.

There she was, on New Year's Day, hoping to have a quiet drink, and suddenly there was this assault on her senses—and sensibilities. It wasn't threatening; it was shocking.

This is modern, multicultural Britain—and people are running around dressed up like 'niggers'!

* * *

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Darkie Day (Part 2): Some People Would Find These Offensive...

What the hell is Darkie Day?!?

"Anita" had no idea what she was in for. Her parents were Indian, but Britain was her home, and she'd been to Cornwall several times with her boyfriend, who hailed from the West Country (albeit genteel Somerset).

She and Ian liked the Duchy so much they decided to spend New Year's there, relishing the chance to see one of Britain's top tourist destinations in the raw, without too many daytrippers around to spoil the atmosphere.

Off-season, Padstow felt like a close-knit fishing community; by comparison, St. Ives seemed positively cosmopolitan.

Although Cornwall one of the whitest counties in England (which is saying something), Anita and Ian never had any problems there—unlike parts of south London, where you risked assault simply for passing through the neighbourhood on the train.

Occasionally the Cornish would stare, but more out of curiosity than anything else: mixed-race couples were a rarity, and Anita's dark skin and black hair contrasted sharply with Ian's very English lack of pigment.

The day before New Year's, the two of them visited Padstow with Ian's parents, strolling along the small harbour and dipping into the shops in the Old Town, which was little more than a knot of streets next to the waterfront.

While browsing among the watercolours, Cornishware and alabaster tiles decorated with crabs, Anita happened to notice something else in the corner—a small collection of golliwogs.

Let it go, she thought.

One time she and her sister had been shopping in York, and they'd spotted some of the googly-eyed ragdolls on display.

"Excuse me," her sister told the attendant, "some people would find these offensive—black people, for example."

"Well, black people don't have to buy them, do they?" snapped the Yorkshirewoman behind the counter.

And it turned into a massive row.

As a journalist and self-professed member of north London's chattering classes, Anita's natural instinct would have been to jump on her high horse and get all Guardianish about it: "This is outrageous!"

But she wasn't the kind to make a scene, especially not in front of her future in-laws. I'm with Ian's parents, let's not start a massive row. And anyway, people in Cornwall would have no idea what she was talking about, and they wouldn't really care. You could moan all you liked, and they would think, 'Well, you're the first dark face that I've seen in God knows how long, so if I'm selling golliwogs, and they're selling like hotcakes, then to hell with political niceties."

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Darkie Day (Part 1): Of "Coloureds" and Cornishmen: Blacking Up in Padstow

Now, don't get the wrong idea—most people in Padstow will tell you they're not racist, at least no more than anyone else in this once-great country.

"Coloureds" are welcome to stroll along the harbour or dine in Rick Stein's restaurant or stay in the Metropole overlooking the Caribbean-blue waters and golden beaches where the rich and royal come to play. The Cornish wouldn't treat them any differently to any other outsiders.

And anyway, how can you be racist if there aren't any blacks around to be racist against?

Except for one, of course—good ole Ziggy, a West Indian who's lived here for years (or did he move away?).

At any rate, it never bothered him. And the former mayor, why, she used to march in London to Free Mandela, and she never thought twice about the pot calling the kettle black, so to speak.

All of which goes to show why on Boxing Day and New Year's Day—when there aren't too many emmets about—Old Padstonians see nothing wrong in dressing up like blackface minstrels, parading through town and belting out songs about "niggers".

At first, they seem to come out of nowhere, like the tradition itself. The drums, accordions and voices pulse through "Padsta" like a heartbeat, permeating the air as they make their way down the hill from the social club.

The rough music—an infectious noise—resonates through the winding lanes, but it's hard to tell where it's coming from. Just when you think you're close to the source, it seems to fade away.

Then you turn the corner, and—there they are! Two dozen men, women and children done up as surreal stereotypes: Cornish approximations of Aunt Jemimas, Jim Crows, Uncle Toms, Sambos, Mammies, Pickaninnies and Rastafarians, all with burnt cork or greasepaint smudged onto their ruddy white faces.

The men sport bow ties and sequined vests, plus top hats and bowlers festooned with tinsel and flowers.

A couple of jokers wear black crazy-curl wigs, the kind you see at football matches, while an elderly woman is sporting sunglasses and a Rasta Novelty Tam, her fake dreadlocks decorated with blue and gold Christmas balls.

The rest of the women favour the Mammy chimneysweep look, as typified by a little girl with a smudged face, headscarf, gaudy earrings, long skirt and red apron hanging down to her knees.

No fewer than eight accordions lead the group, followed by a handful of drums, rattling collection boxes, bone castanets and a couple of "lagerphones"—long staffs studded with bottlecaps, so that when they beat the ground, they ching-ching in time to the music.

The movable hootenanny struts through town singing snatches of "Polly Wolly Doodle", "Oh Susanna" and "Uncle Ned", shocking outsiders and serenading friends and relatives before getting down to the serious business of drinking.

At each of Padstow's half a dozen pubs, the merrymakers burst in singing and hollering, fill their boxes for charity, and then stop for a pint (or three).

Whenever a pale-faced local walks in unawares, the women will kiss him and smear burnt cork all over his face. More laughter and singing, and then it's off to another pub along the crescent-shaped quay.

As they roll out into the blinding winter sunshine, chatting and singing, the music swells to a climax. One drummer, his double chin as pink as his face is black, throws back his head to belt out the end of "Uncle Ned", the bit where Al Jolson would have dropped to one knee and brayed:

There's no more work for the poor old maaaaaaaan—
Heeeeeee's gone where the good niggerrrs go, aye oh
He's gone where the good niggerrrs go.

* * *

©J.R. Daeschner

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