We had a holiday in North Cornwall in the summer of 2022 and camped just outside the lovely seaside town of Bude, we had spent holidays in this area when our girls were younger, so it was one of those holidays of revisiting some memorable haunts. We mooched around the shops in Bideford and saw a lovely looking little café who were advertising their cream teas. It seems obligatory to me that when you visit the West Country to eat two local dishes, Cornish Pasties and Cream Teas, so we went in.
To be honest, I couldn’t remember whether Bideford was in Devon or Cornwall (we passed a sign say that we’re back in Cornwall on the way home) the dilemma was the correct cream tea etiquette, so to play it safe I asked the very helpful and pleasant lady behind the counter whether we should put the jam on first, or the cream. She smiled sweetly at me, clearly seeing me as a holiday maker “I’m a Cornish lass, my husband’s from Devon, so we put cream on first on one half, and jam on first on the other.
I shared my new wisdom with my wife and we did that, the lady smiled, and winked at me as though she had found the perfect solution to a knotty local problem. Isn’t it strange how some things that seem to be of little importance are of paramount importance to some people and irrelevant to others. To be honest, given the choice, I prefer jam first, then a dollop of cream on top and there is something special about having clotted cream when in Cornwall, but that isn’t because I have any allegiance to either place, I just prefer it that way. I guess that my lady in the café in Bideford couldn’t give two hoots if I had slapped on the jam first, and she wouldn’t have chucked me out of the café for offending her.
Whilst I would always do my best to be a law abiding citizen, I wouldn’t claim to be somebody who has to play by the rules regardless when it comes to traditions, and to be fair, some of the things we believe that we have always done and ought to religiously keep doing there are some traditions that are not exactly a matter of life and death and compliance is not just about doing the right thing, it is about trying not to cause offence.
If my opinions were the only ones in the world, life would be so much easier, but the success in relationships lie in us getting on with each other, and in the grand scheme of things jam or cream doesn’t really matter to me, but it does to some and I would always do my best to respect their views.