Passing the Thyme

You may remember I got overly emotional about the disappearance of the Norfolk Stuffing Mix packet (Remembrance of Tins Past 26/2/08). This was the one with the smiley pig and his endorsement of the product as 'Highly Recommended'. Well, as you can see, all is not as lost as I'd imagined. Those of you familiar with this blog and its environs will know that a certain butcher in Uppingham is rewarded with many walk-on parts, mainly for his pork pies. The shop stands at the eastern end of the High Street, with a bright red blind and a green and cream door open at the top like a stable. I was standing in there this morning, glad that there were a few people in front of me so that I could cast my eyes over the scene. Much chopping and hacking on a big butcher's block, meat in various stages of dismemberment like a Tibetan sky burial. String suspended from the axe and cleaver rack, carrier bags with farmyard animals on them. And then my eye casually rose above the pork pies (oh yes) to the top shelf. And there he was, Mr. Pig from Norfolk. They've modified his smile to be more of an expression of pathetic resignation, but I shall take his new recommendation of being 'The Original & Best' and make sure I get a good stuffing tomorrow.

Suspending Belief

I am currently being kept out of trouble by photographing and writing a book on engineering-reliant structures in Britain, for a firm of civil (very civil, as it happens) engineers to celebrate a milestone anniversary. Here's 'one I made earlier' of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge. Made famous by appearances in Billy Elliot and Auf Weidersen Pet, it is so defining of Middlesbrough that it's also on the council badge. In 1911 a bridge was required here that gave access to Port Clarence and yet still gave headroom for tall-masted ships. The solution was to suspend a gondola from a 160 feet high gantry by what are known as trolley wires, in order that this strange craft could ply (as it still does) across the River Tees with foot passengers and up to nine cars. I was fortunate enough to be taken up to the top, a hair-raising ascent that was like going up into the clouds through a gargantuan Meccano model. I just hoped that the nuts and bolts were better secured than those of my unfortunate boyhood attempt to build something similar on my dining room table. Certainly the Middlesbrough bridge's endurance record is more impressive, having survived raids from both Zeppelins and the Luftwaffe.

A Drive in the Country

No, honestly, I'm not going to go on about cars again. Well, not very much. Here we have the 1952 Motor Show Number of Country Life, the essential top shelf mag. for top rural people. Of course there's page after page of Singer Roadsters, Austin Herefords and Bristol 401s, but, as now, it's the property pages that make me go cross-eyed. I know it's all relative, but in 1952 you could buy a country house near Wimborne in Dorset with 3 sitting rooms, 9 principle bedrooms and 3 bathrooms for £8,500. Oh, and agents Turner, Lord & Ransom (really) would throw in a servant's hall, lodge house, and garages with 'a flat over'. And I bet Mrs. Miniver waiting to see her dentist still looked at the monochrome ad. and went "How dare they? How can it possibly be worth that". So, back to the cover. This evocative watercolour is by Rowland Hilder, a prolific artist who lived in Blackheath and whose work can be seen in Shell posters and books. To my eye the car isn't a specific model, and, although there's something of the Allard about it, one can imagine the editor in Country Life's Tavistock Street offices briefing Hilder to keep it anonymous- "Don't want to upset any of those motor chaps, eh Rowland?".

Down Rover!

Right, I just need to get this out of the way. The Rover 3-Litre saloon is the Unmitigated English motor car. I can't even start to tell you how much I need to be driving about in one of these with a Capstan on, an unrequited love that started when I made a model of it from a Revell kit in about 1963. This, oddly enough, is the year of my brochure, and also the year I fantasised about using one to force my geography teacher in his Triumph Herald into the ditch between Leicester and Melton Mowbray. The brochure has the Biro'd figures of a buyer-to-be on the cover, workings-out that suggest he was going to be relieved of £241.6s after part exchange. The full price appears to be £1,936.6s. Could this be right? And what was that six shillings for? "A radio can be supplied as an optional extra and fits neatly into the central parcel compartment." I have stared longingly at them for years, even growling when Margaret Thatcher was still using one as PM in the early eighties. And working on the BBC Restoration thing five years ago I curiously saw the backside of an unrestored burgundy example poking out of a delapidated garage near Exeter. "Wood cappings on all doors are of African Cherry to match the fascia".

Kitchen Confidential

My cottage is what estate agents used to call 'bijou'. Apart from certain crab-like manouevres required to go from room to room upstairs, living here means adopting a very ergonomically-led lifestyle. None more so than in the kitchen, where everything has to be neatly in its place, or I end up sliding fried eggs up off the floor and slicing bread on the gas hob. Imagine then my horror yesterday evening as I stood in my living room and heard a noise not unlike sixty tons of scrap metal being tipped-out of a lorry through my kitchen window. I didn't rush in, thinking I would be overwhelmed with old dustbins and iron bedsteads. I waited until the noise had subsided and then cautiously poked my head round the door. All that had happened is that my cooking utensils rack had decided to flee from the wall with the attendant noise that only colanders, seives, bottle openers and an Ikea alarm clock can make when hitting a table, floor, cooker and 'worktop'. Of course I put it all down to an aftershock of last week's earthquake, but my son-in-law tells me that my cast iron griddle and chestnut roaster positioned at one end, and the fact that I'd used entirely the wrong screws and rawlplugs, didn't help. Do you need to know all this? Probably not, but the resultant heap of shiny objects was somehow reminiscent of the poster, sans ashes and broken dolls, used for Len Deighton's book Bomber.

Sepia-Toned Baking

Could this take its place as the Unmitigated Cook Book? I was reminded of its existence in the Ashley Archive this morning when my sister-in-law and I had a meaningful discussion about the making of cheese straws (called cheese fingers here), and she was reminded of this little book being given by my mother to her new daughters-in-law at their 1960's weddings. Fishing it out I was reminded that its boldly-lettered cover loomed large in my childhood. Mum's copy had a hole punched in the top left hand corner to facillitate its hanging by a piece of string to the side of her speckled-blue and white enamelled New World gas cooker. It was just at head height, so I would thumb through the baking-stained pages in order to point out what I'd like for my tea, just like Miss Be-Ro on the cover. Spiced Buns, Granny Loaf, Custard Tarts and Dropped Scones that, when told about them, I assumed had to be hurled across the kitchen after baking, much as I had done across the garden when first presented with a plate of tripe. All the recipes revolved around the use of Be-Ro Self-Raising Flour, produced by Thomas Bell & Sons in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Nottingham. It was with great excitement that I first spotted their big brown Albion lorries out on the road, presenting flours to the post-war housewives of England. Be-Ro, and the cook book, is remarkably still available to those who like to get a bun in the oven after a Sunday roast.

Sunday Palate

I couldn't resist this. A Sunday morning coloured abstract in Market Harborough, speaking for itself. Of course I do have to say that it's the juxtaposition of shape and colour that appeals, and the pillar box adds so much. But what of the blue box next to it? Being occupied with getting a bottle of claret to go with my leg of pig and the prospect of a couple of pre-lunch stiffeners in a little favourite Leicestershire pub, I didn't study it closely. Perhaps it's a receptacle for a spare pair of trainers and Lycra cycling shorts that seem to be de rigeur these days amongst the younger generation of postmen. That's it really, except to say that in there amongst the apples and new potatoes there's a poster stuck to the door for an Ian Hunter gig. All the Young Tubers.