Cornish Pasties in July

It's sunny, and I'm dreaming of spending summer lunch hours idly tip-tapping away on my laptop in Soho Square. Sitting in the sun, writing, and people watching, and enjoying a Pret avocado salad wrap, has to be the perfect way to spend a happy hour in this busy little patch of green just off Oxford Street.

I forgot my laptop today, so in my lunch break I window shopped on Tottenham Court Road. I didn't buy anything, but I considered orange lampshades for the kitchen, and I nearly bought a £25 spotty wooden snake.

I noticed an ad for the West Cornwall Bakehouse in the Metro this morning - yesterday morning too, come to think of it. They're offering free drinks if you buy a pie at the moment. I passed a new branch of this shop on Oxford Street today and thought about this. I also saw a branch of the Cornish Pasty Bakehouse just across the road. Six months ago you didn't see these pasty shops anywhere, yet now it seems that you can buy a lardy lump of pastry stodge on every London street.

Six months ago it was November. A hot lump of pastry with a tasty filling would have been a welcome lunch to eat on a chilly day. But who would buy a hot pie to eat in a lunch hour in July? No wonder the pasty places are desperate with their Metro freebies.

One of the pasty shops had an ad in the window, 'New lighter pastry' this sign claimed.

'Good try', I thought. I wonder if next month they may lay claim to 'Lighter pastry with New Summer-cool Filling?'

Crusty starch is simply not summer food. Eating a lump of hot pastry in the sun feels as alien as consuming roast chestnuts and mulled wine on the beach.

The pasty companies have thoughtlessly expanded, as if they hadn't contemplated that they're a seasonal product.

You never find hot chestnut sellers in Covent Garden making the same mistake. They take a healthy profit on their burnt bags of nuts around Christmas, then relocate to the beach in the summer hols to man some ice cream van or hot dog stall. Hot dogs you can eat in the sunshine. No pastry. It's the pastry.

Even if the Cornish shops tried, 'New improved, light, thin as air, summer fresh, extra crisp crust, pastry' it still wouldn't do it for me.

It's still pastry. It's lard. Stodge. Pies are greasy winter fare. Pastry something Dickens characters eat around open fires, with crumbs in their whiskers, wiping greasy hands on fat waist-coated bellies.

They could take away the pastry for summer? Then you'd get hot meat in a bag. It might be tasty. Unfortunately I think the grease would soak through, and you'd end up with soggy see-through-bag-break catastrophes. They'd be sued. Dry cleaning bills.

The best bet for Cornish Pasty summer success is to convert the pastry into bread, turn those hot fillings into something cold and salady?

Then you have a sandwich. Avocado salad wrap anyone?

I like to eat avocado salad wrap in the sun. Sharing the little patch of green with London crowds, sharing the idea that green and sunshine means freedom. Ignoring the crowds, the one-footed pigeons, the Pret-overpricing, the Oxford Street noise. Ignoring the idea that you have to be back at your desk soon, so this isn't freedom at all...

But I go one better than avocado wrap. I know the best thing to enjoy in the London sun is a virtual pasty, made of thin air, made from nothing but words in your head. Light and free as can be, summer happy, lost amongst the crowds of that green. Tip-tap-typing on a laptop, people-watching, dreaming, on a sunny Summer lunch break in Soho square.