Clotted cream is the richest dairy product in the British kitchen, nearly two thirds fat, and it was invented as a way of keeping milk in a county with no ice. The method is older than anyone can trace. Fresh milk from the morning is left in a wide pan until the cream rises, then the whole pan is set over a very low fire or in a cooling bread oven for hours, never boiling, until a thick crust forms on top the colour of old gold. It cools overnight and the crust is lifted off with a skimmer. That crust is the cream, and the scalding is what kept it. Heated that way it lasted for days when fresh cream would have turned by teatime. Devon and Cornwall argued over it for centuries and still do. The Cornish got the legal protection in 1998, on condition that the milk is Cornish and the fat is at least fifty-five per cent, though the good stuff runs higher. The argument about whether the cream or the jam goes on the scone first has split the two counties for as long as there have been scones, and it is the only question in British food that people will genuinely fight over. If you grew up in the West Country it came in a cardboard tub with a crust you broke through with a knife, and it went on everything: the scone, the apple pie, the porridge, a spoon of it straight off the blade when nobody was looking. A pot sent by post to a relative in London was the standard Christmas present from Cornwall for a hundred years. It is milk with the water taken out and the fat left in, and it was the ordinary household food of the two poorest counties in England. The cream tea is now a treat you drive to and photograph. In 1930 it was what a dairy farmer's wife did with Tuesday's milk, and the fat was the whole point of doing it.

Walker: "I nearly bought a wool jumper in town. £140. Nice work if you can get it." Farmer: "I got about £2 for the fleece." Walker: "£2?" Farmer: "Per sheep, per year. Clipped it off her in two minutes, rolled it, bagged it, drove it to the depot. The cheque for the whole flock didn't cover the diesel." Walker: "Then who's getting the £140?" Farmer: "Not me, not the shearer. He costs me more per sheep than the wool fetches. I pay to have it taken off." Walker: "So you lose money shearing." Farmer: "Every year. And I can't not shear, or she cooks in July and the flies eat her alive. The wool's a welfare job that used to be an income." Walker: "Sell it yourself, then. Cut out the middleman." Farmer: "Not allowed. By law it goes through the board. Has done since 1950. I can keep a fleece for the wife to knit with, and that's about the extent of my freedom." Walker: "So where does it go?" Farmer: "Washed in Bradford, if we're lucky. Shipped to China, spun, knitted, shipped back, and sold to you with a label about heritage. By the time it's in the window there are eleven people between us and I'm the only one who met the sheep." Walker: "That's mad." Farmer: "My grandfather paid the rent on the wool cheque. I pay a man to take it away. Same sheep, same hill, same jumper in the window. Only the price of the farmer went down." Walker: "What would fix it?" Farmer: "You buying the jumper. And asking them where the other £138 went."