Some food related stuff gleaned from online newspapers and the internet.

It’s amazing the rabbit holes and worm holes and mole holes that the internet can take you down when you read articles online with their links to all sorts of other interesting stuff. 

It was this article that drew my attention this morning with its sub-headline:

“There used to be hundreds of pie and mash shops in London. Now there are barely more than 30. Can social media attention and a push for protected status ensure their survival?” 

According to the article “pie and mash” is / was the “original fast food”. Really. But only in London, it seems. And besides, surely the “original fast food” should be an apple or some other fruit easily picked and eaten as you go about your business. 

Anyway, reading the article drew my attention to the fact that the original pies would have been “eel pies”, which I remember reading about in various novels set in Victorian and possibly older England. Research told me that as eels became less easily accessible the pies changed to minced beef for some of the time, still served with “liquor”, a sort of parsley sauce made with he water that the eels were cooked in, or with gravy if it’s a meat pie. 

(Personally, I get very squeamish about anything to do with eels. His is the fault of an odd boy who lived next door to us in my early teenage years. He often went fishing and on one occasion insisted on showing me a bucket of eels he had caught and how he could revive them if they appeared to be dead by squeezing their gills. Quite enough to put you off eels for life!)

Apparently TikTokers are reviving interest in pie and mash shops. Some of them are said to like investigating old traditions and this is one such. Some of them get very picky about how the mash should be served.

Originally, my various links told me, pies and mash were sold on the street by “pie men”, sold to workers who perhaps didn’t have the chance to return home to lunch. The “pie men” would set up make-shift shelters so that workers could shelter from the rain while eating their pies. Eventually these morphed into proper shops, like this one, which is said to be the oldest surviving pie and mash shop in the London area. They weren’t allowed to label it a pie and mash shop because the council thought it would lower the tone of the neighbourhood. So it goes! 

I was reminded of the old nursery rhyme:

Simple Simon met a pieman,

Going to the fair;

Says Simple Simon to the pieman,

Let me taste your ware.

Said the pieman to Simple Simon,

Show me first your penny;

Says Simple Simon to the pieman,

Sir I haven't any.

Here’s some information: 

“The verses used today are the first of a longer chapbook history first published in 1764. The character of Simple Simon may have been in circulation much longer, possibly through an Elizabethan chapbook and in a ballad, Simple Simon's Misfortunes and his Wife Margery's Cruelty, from about 1685.”

So what is a chapbook?

Chapbook (c. 1800) of  ‘Jack the Giant Killer’.

“A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was a popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 12, 16, or 24 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. Printers provided chapbooks on credit to chapmen, who sold them both from door to door and at markets and fairs, then paying for the stock they sold. The tradition of chapbooks emerged during the 16th century as printed books were becoming affordable, with the medium ultimately reaching its height of popularity during the 17th and 18th centuries”.

There you go. Lots of useless, but possible interesting, information.

Then there is Eel Pie Island, a real island in the Thames.

Why is Eel Pie Island famous?

“It was once a bubbling cauldron of British rock ’n’ roll. There was a five-month period in 1963 where you could see the Rolling Stones play there every Wednesday. The Who, Pink Floyd and Screaming Lord Sutch all did gigs at the Eel Pie Island Hotel, a rickety nineteenth-century ballroom that was lost to a fire in 1971. It was a place for counter-culturalists, poets and a pretty sizeable hippie commune because… well, it was the ’60s.”

That’s enough about pie and mash. Now for another food: Spanish ham - jamón - used for discrimination purposes it seems. Here’s something else Onread this morning: 

“For all the happiness it brings to people, jamón also has a darker history and it is one that is threatening to re-emerge in our present culture wars. The esteemed place jamón holds in Spanish culture has been used as a tool for social exclusion. The persecution of heretics during the Spanish Inquisition, beginning in 1478 and lasting almost four centuries, particularly targeted Christian converts from Judaism (conversos) or Islam (moriscos), who continued to practise their religion in secret. The consumption of jamón became a symbol of Catholic identity and therefore a huge part of Spanish public life. But it was also a way of excluding those who did not eat pork on grounds of their faith.

As a way of getting around it, morisco and converso families would hang sausages in their houses. Indeed, some people speculate that this is how the practice of hanging sausages and hams in Spanish bars and restaurants started. Others would even cook ham that they had no intention of eating, so that the smell from their houses would waft to neighbours or passersby. The slaughter of pigs became the basis of many popular festivals, a number of which continue today, and the families who did not take part would immediately come under suspicion.”

Think about it when you see all the jamón in shops in Spain! Here’s a link to the whole article.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Deliveries. Packaging. Candlemas.

We have a notice next to our front door informing anyone who arrives that we want NO COLD CALLERS - no random salesmen, no evangelists, no canvassers for political parties, and so on.  However, we need another notice, like the one the next door neighbours have, which reminds friends and relations or people making deliveries to PLEASE RING THE BELL!  It’s quite amazing how many people, deliverymen especially, don’t see or choose to ignore the doorbell but opt to knock with their knuckles against the wood, making a gentle tap-tap-tap which can only be heard of you happen to be standing in the entrance hall. It happened again this morning!

Phil ordered some vitamins from the health-food store, Holland and Barrett. They promised swift delivery and swift delivery was what he got. The first we knew about it having arrived was when Phil received a “your goods have been delivered” text message. Neither of us had heard a ring or a knock. Maybe it occurred when I was in the shower! Anyway, the “goods” were left in a box outside the front door, a reasonably safe place we have agreed with delivery men. Eventually I went to seek it out. Yes, there it was, in the black box. 

Here it is: a cardboard box, stuffed with brown paper for insulation around two small bottles of vitamin tablets. This is why the world is running out of resources. You would think a company that specialises in healthy-living stuff would take greater care of the environment! 

Various posts on Facebook have had rhymes about today being Candlemas, reminding us that the days are getting longer and urging us to put out the candles and eat our evening meal by daylight. Of course now I cannot find them again, or I would have quoted them. 

Anyway, today is Candlemas, also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ - a traditional presentation at the temple of a boy child some 40 days after being born. It’s also known as the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, which strikes me as one of those anti-feminist practices about women who have given birth needing to be somehow ‘cleansed’.

In some countries they keep Christmas decorations up until Candlemas. In others they take candles to their local church to be blessed, these candles then serving as a symbol of Christ, the Light of the World, for the rest of the year.

There’s more. The Virgin of Candles is the patron saint of the city of Puno in Peru, held in the first fortnight of February each year. It is one of the largest festivals of culture, music, and dancing in Peru and judging by the photo it owes as much to South American culture as to Christianity.

“At the festival's core are music and dance performances organized by the Federación Regional de Folklore y Cultura de Puno, consisting of more than 200 dances in more than 150 dance sets. These include "native dances" from the various communities in Puno and sets of dances organized in different quarters of the city, mostly those known as "costume dances". These performances directly involve 40,000 dancers and some 5,000 musicians and indirectly involve about 25,000 people, including directors, sponsors, embroiderers, and the makers of masks, clothing, boots, shoes, bells, and other items, as well as the bandsmen and staff.”

A nice mix of cultures.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Saint Brigid - her day - how to get her blessing. We need a blessing in the modern violent world.

Apparently today is Saint Brigid’s Day, also known as Imbolc or Imbolg, a traditional Gaelic festival that marks the beginning of spring, half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It’s one of four seasonal Gaelic festivals: Beltane - May Day, 1st May, Lughnasadh - 1st August beginning of harvest season - aka Lammas in England, Samhain 1st November -  All Saints Day. 

Sources tell me that Saint Brigid is the patroness saint of Ireland. Now I knew about Saint Patrick, patron saint, but I was unaware that there was also a patroness saint. Do all countries have a patroness saint? Feminists should be demanding that bit of equality. 

In fact Ireland has three patron Saints, the third being Saint Columba, who has hid Day on June 9th, born in County Donegal in the 5th Century and said to be descended from great Irish nobility.

Other sources say that in fact she was an ancient pagan goddess and that, like many pagan personalities and events, was subsumed into the Christian tradition. Anyway, she is also the patroness saint of healers, poets, blacksmiths, livestock and dairy workers, among others. Busy lady! And she has her own cross, traditionally made from plaited rushes. If you make one and hang it outside your door, your house will be protected from fire, illness, and hardship for the year ahead. It’s not clear if it works outside Ireland. Maybe it works for the Irish diaspora.

Another way to get Brigid’s blessing is to leave items of clothing, such as maybe a scarf, outside the house on Saint Brigid’s Eve. Brigid is supposed to walk around Ireland blessing these cloths or pieces of clothing so that they can be used to help the healing process. Once again I wonder if Brigid manages to bless the Irish of the diaspora. Does she have Santa”s magic to travel all around the world in one night?

In the strangely hostile world we live in at the moment maybe we all need Brigid to give us her blessing. 

Here’s a report about Gaza:

“Israel has carried out some of its deadliest airstrikes on Gaza in months, killing at least 30 Palestinians, some of whom were sheltering in tent cities for displaced people.

Despite a nominal ceasefire, the Israeli military struck a police station in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood west of Gaza City on Saturday, killing 10 officers and detainees, the civil defence said. It indicated the death toll could rise as emergency responders searched for bodies.

Another strike hit an apartment in Gaza City, killing three children and two women, while seven more people were killed when Israel bombed tents in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.” 

There was a large pro-Palestine demonstration in London yesterday. 

Demonstrations are taking place in various parts of the USA calling for the end of ICE.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Sunny mornings needed. A bit of stuff about words and the use of language.

Despite the weathermen predicting heavy rain, today began with blue sky and sunshine. It doesn’t make it any easier to persuade yourself to get out of bed but it makes everyone you meet (when you eventually get up and go out!) more cheerful and positive about things. We need more days which begin with sunshine … even if it gets cloudy later.

Here is a collection nicknames for lazy co-workers, sent to me by a friend who enjoys words as much as I do:

Cordless - only works for two hours.

E.T. - always wants to go home.

Kitkat - always taking a break.

Seaweed - just floats around all day.

Sensor light - only works when someone walks past.

Wheelbarrow - only works when pushed.

Adrian Chiles, writer, tv/radio presenter, has been ranting a bit about mis-used apostrophes, in this particular case seeing a sign for “WALE’S LARGEST VAPE SHOP” and being so outraged that he almost missed the fact that the advertising poster went on to announce that they had the CHEAPEST PRICE’S. It’s one of my frequent bugbears. We did once sneak out late at night to remove an errant apostrophe from a notice outside the pub next door! It’s not impossible to teach the use of apostrophes, even to quite small children. Knowing how punctuation works is, in my opinion, more important than learning about fronted adverbials! However it is quite complicated to teach where to put the apostrophe when the word already ends in S.

I

But the writer of this letter published in response to the item about WALE’S / WALES’S knows how to do it:

 “Re Adrian Chiles’s item, while on holiday in Northumberland last year I visited a delightful cafe that sold various local crafts including handmade “Christma’s card’s”.

Jane Marsh

London”

Another bugbear of mine is the Americanisation of the English language. Granddaughter Number Two regularly used ‘gotten’ instead of ‘got’, which I am fully aware used to be standard English, emigrated to America, probably with those Pilgrim Fathers, and has now made its way back. Despite my knowing this, the use of gotten still grates on my ears. 

Anyway, here is a cartoon by Stephen Collins entitled “‘Can I get a sausage roll?’ and other Americanism you should never hear in Greggs”:

By the way, every time we pass a Greggs (which perfectionists might say really needs an apostrophe) some member of the family will remind us of an American friend who declared herself impressed by the goods sold in G.R. Eggs - so impressed that she even punctuated the name for us! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well everyone!

Sharenting - posting pictures of children - not a completely new phenomenon.

 It’s almost February. January is almost over. It’s still cold. One of my nodding acquaintances told me this morning that she had just been away for a few days in and around Torquay where the temperature was a balmy 14° and they had blue sky and sunshine. Blue sky and sunshine we manage occasionally around here but 7° or 8° seems to be our current maximum temperature. Still, the days are gradually growing longer. Today is a changeable day, changing from grey and dull to blue sky and bright. So it goes.

Among the new words I come across from time to time is ‘sharenting’. This is the practice of putting lots of pictures of your children on social media. Some people make money out of it apparently. Others are pressured by family and friends to post those pictures, which seems like nonsense as it is quite possible to post those photos onto a closed group. Some people, like a friend of our son, refuse categorically to allow photos of their children to be posted on social media. Grandparents have always asked for photos of the grandchildren but it used to be actual photos, not digital stuff. Indeed, my bookshelves seem to be festooned with photos of various grandchildren at different stages in their lives.

I suppose children have always been “exploited”. I remember the ‘bonny baby’ competitors that were held in my childhood, the forerunners of the pageants such as ‘Little Miss Texas’. And images of children have long been used in advertising. Pears soap used Millais’ “Bubbles” in an early advertising campaign. 

I read that in 1958, the annual "Miss Pears" competition began, with the offer of £1,000 prize money, and the winner's image to be used on soapboxes and print advertisements for the year.

Even before the competition was instituted they sought out photos of children to use. I distinctly remember being told as a small child that ai could never be a “Pears” photo child as I had freckles. Pears were seeking a flawless image for their product and freckles were considered to be a blemish! Ah! The trials of being a ginger-haired freckly!

 Amazingly the competition continued until 1997, with parents entering their young daughters, many aged just three or four, resulting in 25,000 entries every year. Wow!

I confess to posting pictures of my grandchildren and occasionally copies of photos of my children, which I couldn’t post in their childhood as social media was non-existent.m. Mostly I try to be discreet. Today I have posted photos of art work produced by the two youngest, ages 9 and 6: a joint effort sunset picture 

and a solo effort by the youngest, with a whole story of a mole, complete with pink nose, popping up at sunrise to greet the day.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Protest songs. And a rant about overusing IT and losing human connections.

We’re back to dull and grey here today, but it didn’t rain on me as I ran round the village. Probably because the cloud has moved back in it’s not been frosty. It is still cold however, 3° according to my weather app but feeling colder as there is a damp wind.

It’s colder in Minneapolis. Bruce Springsteen has written and recorded a protest song: The Streets of Minneapolis. Here are the first two verses:

[Verse 1]

Through the winter's ice and cold

Down Nicolet Avenue

A city aflame fought fire and ice

'Neath an occupier's boots

King Trump’s private army from the DHS

Guns belted to their coats

Come to Minneapolis to enforce the law

Or so their story goes

[Verse 2]

Against smoke and rubber bullets

In the dawn’s early light

Citizens stood for justice

Their voices ringing through the night

And there were bloody footprints

Where mercy should have stood

And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets

Alex Pretti and Renee Good

And here is a link to the song itself.

No doubt some of Mr Trump’s people will dismiss him as ‘just a singer’ but we need those singers expressing outrage. We need real, human responses.

Here’s a link to The Long Read in the Guardian, all about how we have grown used to over-using technology in our everyday lives. It is, as you would expect, quite long and points out how we are losing our physical connections with other people.

Here’s a small sample:

“While writing this, I dropped into a casual Indian restaurant I’ve been going to for years, only to find that, since my last visit, the system had changed so that you no longer say your order to a fellow human. Instead, you punch it in on a touchscreen even if someone is behind the counter. I helped the next customer, an old woman who just wanted a cup of chai, figure out the screens for her order. The process took us so much longer than saying “a cup of chai, please” and precluded any human contact with the servers, though at least she and I interacted with each other.”

Now, the writer is based in California where things are perhaps more extreme than here but it’s creeping in. Some examples:

Our bank is closing more branches. We are all encouraged, indeed expected, to bank online but sometimes you might want or really need to speak to a proper human assistant.

Phil recently purchased something online (yes, I know he should gone to an actual shop but it would have involved a trip to Manchester centre in the cold weather!) which turns out not to be suitable. He can’t just return it via the post office but now needs to go online for instructions on how to return the goods! That’s how inertia sets in and people order, and keep, stuff that’s not quite suitable.

I have railed at length about the automisation of supermarket checkouts. Even in our fairly small co-op store in the village as you approach the checkouts, you are assailed by a recorded voice on one of three self-service checkouts, instructing you to “present one item or swipe your Co-op card to start”. There are still two manned checkouts fortunately, which is just as well since the self-service machines only accept card payments.

Of course, a lot of people don’t even set foot in the supermarkets but do their “big family shop” online and have it delivered. It saves time for working people! Yet I remember being a working woman who did my “big family shop” in a supermarket on my way home from work. Not only did I do the shopping but I frequently met old friends and acquaintances and we caught up with each other’s news!

All the online shopping, the online banking, the online working from home cuts us off from contact with other human beings. And even that casual contact with  shop assistants and bank clerks is important to our humanity. The number of people in shops and on the streets, watching out for others is reducing. And so people become nervous of going out on the streets; after all, the media tells us they are dangerous places! And so anxiety increases and other more serious mental health problems - statistics are constantly reminding us of the high percentage of men, women and children with ‘issues’! 

They say that it takes a village to raise a child. Well surely it also takes a community to keep us all sane. I have a nodding acquaintance with a large number of people in our local community. I am more likely to know their dogs’ names than the people’s names but still we stop and chat and look out for each other.

We need more of that and less IT-based stuff. IT generated girlfriends / boyfriends/ friends / advisors / therapists can only replace people to a limited extent! That’s my opinion, at least!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!