LARDY CAKE

It had rained overnight. The air had that freshness to it and the pavements and road were still dark and shiny. I wrapped my hoodie around me and set off up the High Street.

Cars, parasols, shop front signs and railings were all damp with rainwater. Even some of the bustling crowd still had umbrellas, though the sky was just breaking with sun.

Flags fluttered outside the grand St Mary’s Church, advertising their coffee morning. Opposite, Costa was bristling with the early morning rush. Someone appeared from a pink doorway carrying a plastic Elvis. Another lady was setting out metal chairs under a rain-washed awning. Elvis was in place as I walked by, sitting mid-heartbreak-hotel on a bar stool, as though it were still somehow 1957.

I walked on. I like a seaside town for its melancholy, and this morning, on the way to the bakery, Weymouth wasn’t disappointing. The gulls swooped and squawked above the nautical rooftops. In a distant street, presumably round the back of some pub, someone emptied a tonne of glass bottles into a skip. The air was still and glorious, as often morning air can be.

My Mum’s taken to trying to guess what those nautical rooftops might originally have been. One, a triangular slate roof with carved stonework and round porthole windows, another with tall Corinthian pillars and grand apex portico. Still others look Georgian with large, sometimes curved windows. A bank? The old guildhall? A hotel?

I don’t think she appreciates me flippantly saying ‘Freemasons, probably’ whenever I catch her looking up at the windows over Tesco Express or the Poundstretcher. 

Anyway, this morning while I ambled through the early morning streets, the Intrepids were still asleep. And it was my turn to take it all in.

“Do you have any lardy cake?” I asked when I finally got to Belle’s Bakery at the top of the street. Belle did (I assume it was Belle anyway) so she slipped a slab of it into a paper bag and made me swap it for two pounds. Then I crossed the road, went over to the Esplanade and dreamed out over the sea.

The sand of course was darkened by the rain. The smart white railings were jewelled with droplets and all the attractions, the Punch and Judy, the zorb pool and the trampolines were drenched, waiting for the sun.

Out in the bay, the gentle waves were lapping at the shore, whispering as they softly collapsed on the sand. The sea sounded as though it was breathing - in, out, splash, ripple, pool back, the great rhythm of the ocean, tiny wave after tiny wave.

The smell of lardy cake wafted up, deliciously, and I realised I needed to get it home before it compelled me to eat it. Having got up early, breaking the tiredness cycle, it would have been a shame to have got the day off to a start by scoffing a lardy cake. A real, delicious shame.