At many Saturday afternoon's many years ago I was accustomed to go to Hillsborough to alight on a game of Association Football. In the interval between ends there were sellers and hawkers of all manner of sundries including piping hot savouries for our delectation. I happened upon the finest pie of my entire life at one such. This "meat" pie was of great delicacy and wholesome beyond belief against the wintertide winds and chill, so much that I marked in my diary thus:
"Wednesday stuffed by West Ham at Hillsborough Donkey Sanctuary: best thing about proceedings - the pie"
This was my first encounter with a pie from the manufactory of Messrs Pukka and Pukka, pie makers to gentlefolk.
There dear reader, I have set the scene I hope with a morsel of humour and humanity: I believe it falls to the kind of writer of the sort to which my aspiration is set, to be brief.
More latterly and this very week to be precise, I revisited that earlier reverie and undertook a re-tstaing of that purveyor's produce which came for commercial solicitation at the advantageous price of two pies for two pounds and for myself I regard any pie which costs less than a Guinea as worthy of consideration.
In the absence of good porter or stout, I settled myself at the kitchen table with fresh peas from the garden and boiled new potatoes and a chastening mug of light beer. Here is my offering rendered in coloured pencils, at the moment of it's serving by his Grace, the Bishop of Huddersfield who is a enthusiastic amateur water-colourist, pencilman and gentleman of fine standing. His Grace gave us such a Grace before this repast that my soul was elevated to quite heavenly disposition or through the lacking of any sustanance of any fortiftude that day. Such was the stirring of his Grace's grace that I was overcome. And both he and I were grateful for the bounty the Lord had bestowed on us in this meal - so at least cook was not put to the trouble of pudding thanks to that rare sweetmeat of coconut, from the Indies, and both plain and milk chocolate.My anticipation was not well met. The distant memory of the sporting field was not relieved in taste, or mellifluous odour, or the beguiling velvety texture mix of viscous gravy and lavish portions of meat to gristle. It was my folly to be sentimental of those days. War, economic destitution and social inequality has rendered both footballing success in North Sheffield and the fortunes of Messrs Pukka and Pukka equally dismal dear reader. The thickened glutenous matter such lodged the meat with a mixture of subterfuge and camouflage was such a non-descript brown amalgam that has no hint of jollity or taste in it. That meat there was could scarcely be described as wholesome, but hard as a nut but of less substance. The offal which so often provides relief from chewing was invisible and untasted in the alluvium of the the pie. Only in the crust did I find a modicum of delight. But as he Grace retorted "Madam, this piece of crust is but a facile shadow of the goodness our Lord provides in pastry rough formed in oven up and down the land from high houses to lowly sculleries by daughters and wives for the plates of their fathers and husbands. In short, Ma'am, this short pastry is short on everything but hot air."
My acquaintance with these products across a dining plate may take a decade or more by which time his Grace will be higher in our Church and by that time one might venture, husbands and fathers might be equally occupied preparing pastry for their wives and daughters. Society may only value the prettiest of pies, but this is nothing but affectation. In substance we will judge our politicians, our clergy and our pies and those - like those of Messrs Pukka and Pukka which do not pass muster must by virtue of sporting sufficient meat, be relegated from society.
In the style of Jane Austin (to be read with harpsichord music in background)
No comments:
Post a Comment