I remember the greengrocer, the grocer and the butcher, particularly the wonderful smells of cheese and bacon.
The greengrocer was Mr Whisker (and the butcher was "Cutts," I kid you not), and he would have sacks of fine fresh looking produce in the front of the shop. But unless you were like my mother, who cast a steely eye over his portly frame, the produce he sold you was from behind the counter, and was nowhere near as fresh.
Most people weren't as brave as my mother, and as a result, waste was minimised and prices kept low. Now we have self service, and people will buy cream dated 2 weeks ahead instead of 1 week, even though they are going to eat it today.
A great story Jeremy. Thanks! Reminds me of how my mum used to say how her grandmother in Glasgow would take her to the butchers and ask loudly for ‘Best’ mince, while surreptitiously holding up her four fingers to indicate she actually could only stretch to ‘Fourth’ best. 😉A different world.
That reminds me of how my mother described her own mother (whom I never met because she died when I was an infant) as a "working class snob". This was in Rochdale, in its time as an industrial mill town, in the heyday of the textile industry.
My grandmother, apparently, would go into the fishmonger's and, if there was nobody in there that she knew, would buy cod (which was widely available and cheap, in decades past); whereas, if there was a customer that she recognised, she would ask for hake (which was more expensive and exclusive, thus letting the world know that she was a cut above the common sort).
I thought this was a hilarious story of a vanished time, when people were deadly serious about distinctions which would be imperceptible nowadays (and might have existed only in the imagination even then). Rather like when we now read about different grades of domestic servants in Victorian times, and how they would emphasise their distinctions in status and duties.
My stepdad used to do deals with his local butcher in the pub. Coming home to mum with a grease proof paper wrapped bloody package of meat. Top quality, but a too Royston Vasey for comfort.
I can't tell you how good it was to read something a little lighter than the dark, heavy, suffocating doom that's filled our news feeds for far too long. Albeit that your piece does highlight a worryingly dark trend, it is well written, beautifully satirical and most welcome! Thank you. - And thanks too for the lol/notlol East 17 Brian story. Ouch! 🫣
Thanks so much Kali. I really appreciate that. I was in two minds about including the Brian Harvey story. It is grim in parts. But it is so tragi-comic I felt readers would appreciate it. Hopefully he has made a full recovery. Has learned his lesson. And now goes easy on the baked potato and mayo!
I’m not sure Dan. Maths isn’t my strongest suit. But I thought since there were 1000 300s in 300 000. It was a thosandth? Maybe someone else can help. I’m absolutely not saying I’m definitely correct!
You're both kind of right. It is a thousandth and it's also 0.1% because 1 % is a hundredth by definition (percent just means per hundred ). Well, you asked if someone else could help.
Btw we used to call going to the high street (butcher's shop with sawdust, Co-op with the meat slicer and the greengrocer's) going to the village too, even though I guess it hadn't been a village since the turn of the 20th century.
When you want to make a number sound bigger you use percent: "The cost of turnips is up 30%" sounds like more than: "The cost of turnips is up by 1.3 times."
I wonder if Poe's Law will get you out of the hate speech charges for this one? I can see the 'Gentrified Incomers-are-indigenous & Like Fermentation', or GILFs for Bread protests coming for you now.
Remember, metaphors are no longer politically acceptable! 😁
Guess we'll just have to be unacceptable then. Low Status Opinions is really the perfect moniker for this work. Keep up the unacceptable writing matey. We need it.
Thanks Scott. I was wondering if you were thinking of doing a forensic explanation of the Mike Lynch yacht sinking, like you did with that bridge strike last(?) year.
Haven't looked into yet. Busy writing a ship security course at the moment, amd preparing for a survey in Norway next week. It's highly suspicious though. The skipper shouldn't have been in weather he wasn't sure he could handle. With the surrounding circumstances, and his business partner/co-defendant also dying mysteriously, my instinct says sabotage of some kind.
With that being said, I've heard horrific accounts of the standards of yacht master training, with numerous British skippers being reported going the wrong way down traffic lanes, etc. Some foreign coastguards now view British flagged yachts as a flag of convenience. So never discount incompetence. A big ship still sinks every 10 days or so, and we don't even bother counting yachts in the insurance stats.
Feel free to DM some sources if you like, and I'll maybe have a stab at it next week. There won't be an official report for a while.
Also, if you've ever watched 'Below Deck', some of the guests/owners can put pressure on skippers to sail when they shouldn't.
I went to the same school as the skipper on Jordan Belfort's yacht. If you remember the scene in Wolf of Wall street where they insist on sailing into a storm, and they all end up smashing loads of drugs and booze on the bridge when the yacht starts sinking? The skipper said it was EXACTLY like that in real life. Worse, even.
Yes Giulia. There’s definitely an undercurrent of anti semitism to this story. Brendan O’Neill picked up on it. And I think the Times did too. But I didn’t read their piece.
Serious question. Do you think they know? —How stupid they look— We use the term cognitive dissonance a lot these days but Jesus! They must know… mustn’t they?
It’s so weird isn’t it Tom? I honestly think they think they are correct in everything they do. And that belief is reinforced by everyone around them. I don’t think there is room for much self doubt in their lives!
Yes I saw that other angle Bettina. I think it plays a big part. But I chose not to include it for various reasons. Not least that other people were covering it. I was genuinely surprised how much interest the original story generated!
I’m in my late 50s. Sawdust on the floor was very common for butchers shops where I grew up in Essex in the 70s. It’s a world away now.
I'm a bit older than you - I remember when the butchers' shops had carcasses hanging on hooks in the shop and maybe some pheasants or other birds hanging outside along with a rabbit or two. The sawdust on the floor was to soak up the drips of blood from the carcasses.
Your story about visiting the shops reminded me of my childhood in the '70s. I also remember the humming, whirring -- and slightly sinister but fascinating -- meat slicer being used to carve slices to order off a ham or joint. Have not seen one of those in decades (although it might be my fault for visiting supermarkets instead of the old-fashioned butcher's.)
There was also a hardware emporium called Wandrus Stores which was the spitting image of the shop in the Two Ronnie's "Four Candles" sketch: a counter with an older bloke in a shop coat who, after being informed of your needs, would unerringly go to the correct cardboard box on the numerous shelves behind and produce whatever size of nut-and-bolt, screw, hinge or other random piece of ironmongery you needed, all of which could be purchased singly, for a few pennies. My father said that, whatever obscure item he was after, they always had it, and always knew where to find it.
Well, I remember, and all the shopkeepers smoking a fag while they served you with your meat, bread, cheese, etc. Our local bakers always had their cat sitting in the window among the cakes. Please note all elfansafety types, we survived. Also if a shop opened we didn't like we went elsewhere.
It’s so true Iris. I was saying a similar thing the other day about pollution in London. It was so thick it would coat the insides of your nostrils. Yes. Bad. But the chances of you getting stabbed going about your business in the West End was infinitely smaller.
Yes, it is difficult to imagine now how ubiquitous cigarettes were back in the '70s and '80s, and how every indoor space contained some degree of tobacco smoke.
Both my parents were heavy smokers (although the distinction barely existed then, because everyone was) and it killed both of them. Needless to say, it never struck me as a cool thing to take up when I was younger.
Nowadays, I think we have struck the right balance by having smokers go outside to enjoy their habit. All the people I know who smoke these days are a generation younger than me, and they all seem happy to step outside when they want a fag -- and that attitude shift is good for non-smokers like me.
It seems so alien now doesn’t it Geoff? I used to smoke. A lot. I could smoke in the shower while washing my hair. Now I’m a pretty healthy living person. I do miss cigarettes though. There was definitely a large element of social lubrication to the habit which we’re lacking these days…
I am surprised by how popular smoking is amongst the young people that I know (in their 20s and early 30s). I used to put it down to the fact that they would all have got used to smoking weed as teenagers (something that I genuinely never encountered myself as a teenager or student). I also wonder if it is a generational effect: my generation (I am in my 50s, same as you) might have contained more abstainers, with the effect that their children decided smoking was cool and rebellious again.
It’s definitely cool again. My teenage daughter and all her friends all carry lighters. ‘For someone else’ I’ve never met this someone tho! 🤣 I think the war on disposable vapes is a big mistake personally. Rather they were doing that!
I remember aged 6 being sent round to the butchers on a Saturday to recite 'a piece of topside for 7 and 6 please' which I'd memorised and rehearsed as I walked round the corner clutching a ten bob note. I'd shuffle the sawdust around with my feet while I waited and then get handed the beef, half a crown change and a piece of chocolate from the kind hearted butcher. I do wonder if seeing all those hacked up pieces of animal flesh and the blood on the chopping blocks and the floor - soaking into the sawdust - wasn't influential in turning me vegetarian from quite a young age! Supermarket meat counters today look so sanitised and not half as scary as those old butchers shops.
It really is sanitised Bettina. I think that’s a shame. I think we have lost a connection with our food and where it comes from. And I don’t say that as a ‘foodie’ or anything. I am very much an omnivore, but as such I shouldn’t be allowed to pretend to myself that ‘meat comes from supermarkets.’
I can’t really remember the old money Bettina. Though I cut a bit from this piece about Tom the Milkman being the first person to show us the ‘new money’. It’s one of my earliest memories. Clear as a bell today. Going from pence to ‘P’ was the start of a lot of things, none of them good….🧐
We were told categorically that going decimal would not mean the prices would go up. As now, they thought the population was stupid and would believe them. I kept a sample of the old money for years to show the kids who were too young then to handle cash. Got thrown out in one of the moves I expect.
This used to be a neck of the woods I knew well, but it has been changed by gentrification. Love the story, and the trip down memory lane, made me think of going round the corner to the bakers, butchers and green grocers, then sneaking into the sweet shop! Not sure I’d go for the up market bakers, tend to prefer a Greggs hot sausage roll and a coffee, especially as a response to that stupid pasty tax!
I love a Greggs P. But I’m kidding myself, and you, if I pretended I’d choose a steak bake over a Gail’s blueberry brioche. I’m also fond of a sausage roll, from anywhere, which is so unhealthy it has turned the bag it comes in, virtually transparent, by the time you go to eat it.
A shopping centre not too far from me (in Cambridge) has both a Gregg's and a Gail's -- and now you have tempted me to go and sample their respective wares.
I admit that I have never bought anything from Gail's after my shock at realising they did loaves for £4 (and that was a few years ago). Also, I might embarrass myself by not knowing the correct "Artisan Bread Studies" terminology for their advanced products.
Currently my limit is the £1.95 ciabatta from Marks & Spencer.
As for pasties and sausage rolls: I grew up in Lancashire, where meat pies of all descriptions are practically a religion. Sadly, they don't seem to have any of those in the south, other than mass-produced brands that are available all across the country.
Makes me wonder whether an artisanal pie shop would be a hit? Or would the elites of Cambridge and Walthamstow look down their noses at such a thing?
(P.S. -- when I first came to Cambridge as a university student, my father used to say that the city centre was a fine place to shop for books and academic robes, but there was nowhere to buy a hot pie for your lunch.)
Sadly Argo, you are only partially correct. Yes, as you say. But in addition, you must not wash your hair for a week or two until it ‘begins to wash itself’. And you must have a dog, or best friend, or preferably both, called Barnaby. Only then is your food truly ‘Artisan’.
Ah yes, how could I forget the skill cape, the 99 skill level, and trashing people who use labor-saving devices as degenerates and disrespect to the craft. Fools like us need knives, while these master craftsmen are cutting their meat and veg by karate chopping it with their knife hands.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip. I can remember even a drab Wimbledon Village in the 70s had two butchers, two greengrocers, a baker, a fishmonger, two delis, a sweetshop/tobacconist (no conflict there), pubs, newsagents - not sure you needed much else. Can almost remember that each had its own smell.
Oh yes Martin. The smells. It’s the sawdust of the butchers for me I think. Also the mustiness of the greengrocer. And now the tobacconist…oh dear, you’ve set me off…
The nostalgic nose is quite powerful. Used to love the sweetshop with the smell of tobacco - you could buy the sweet pretend cigarettes with the red tips and pretend to smoke them.
My wider reception to this is inspired by the film "Judge Roy Bean".
Out on the frontier Bean rescues some young women, slaved into prostitution by bad men (black hats). He kills the men and the girls are grateful. He sets up a town where he enforces the law as Judge, Jury and sentencing, usually by hanging. The town prospers and grows and the early settlers become the respectable establishment. The town's ladies disapprove of Bean's drunken ways and encourage his downfall. Who are they? Why, the erstwhile hookers he rescued so long ago. So if you hear me utter "Judge Roy Bean's whores" apply it to such as Walthamstow and bear it in mind when shopping in Waitrose.
Fabulous article which, as usual , I had to re read as I laughed so much. This is so welcome in these dark and dangerous times.
I would love it if you would write an article on the “Super Six”, those unpatriotic, self serving, deluded idiots who are fighting to win the ultimate prize of winning “Traitor of the Year” award in November.
Thanks so much Kinsey, that’s very kind of you to say. I was thinking of writing about them. But the I realised what non entities they are and I wondered if I had it in me. I think I will as we get a bit closer and they start saying more daft things in the press. I’m definitely backing Kemi at the moment, but with a bit less enthusiasm than I might have a couple of years ago…What about you?
I do not care who wins their ridiculous little “game”. They should be hanging their heads in shame and hiring an old Charabanc to chug their little party to the Morgue.They have not even provided any credible opposition to the 2 Tier Stasi, what a shambles. I will look forward to your article which I know will be fabulous.
Good to have a lighthearted piece instead of the doom and gloom of modern life. My grandmother was born in Walthamstow - her family was newly middle class, having progressed from Hackney and Bethnal Green. Her father and grandfather were businessmen.
Thanks Ndovu! I think it’s probably a nice place to live. But things do change over time. My mum and I were talking and it turns out she lived in some tenements in Kings Cross not half a mile from where I live now. They are all pulled down now of course.
& what's even more disturbing for our self-righteous friends is that this bakery was founded by J......I mean Zionists.
Yes. I saw that Michael. In many ways everything else they say is a smokescreen.
I remember the greengrocer, the grocer and the butcher, particularly the wonderful smells of cheese and bacon.
The greengrocer was Mr Whisker (and the butcher was "Cutts," I kid you not), and he would have sacks of fine fresh looking produce in the front of the shop. But unless you were like my mother, who cast a steely eye over his portly frame, the produce he sold you was from behind the counter, and was nowhere near as fresh.
Most people weren't as brave as my mother, and as a result, waste was minimised and prices kept low. Now we have self service, and people will buy cream dated 2 weeks ahead instead of 1 week, even though they are going to eat it today.
A great story Jeremy. Thanks! Reminds me of how my mum used to say how her grandmother in Glasgow would take her to the butchers and ask loudly for ‘Best’ mince, while surreptitiously holding up her four fingers to indicate she actually could only stretch to ‘Fourth’ best. 😉A different world.
That reminds me of how my mother described her own mother (whom I never met because she died when I was an infant) as a "working class snob". This was in Rochdale, in its time as an industrial mill town, in the heyday of the textile industry.
My grandmother, apparently, would go into the fishmonger's and, if there was nobody in there that she knew, would buy cod (which was widely available and cheap, in decades past); whereas, if there was a customer that she recognised, she would ask for hake (which was more expensive and exclusive, thus letting the world know that she was a cut above the common sort).
I thought this was a hilarious story of a vanished time, when people were deadly serious about distinctions which would be imperceptible nowadays (and might have existed only in the imagination even then). Rather like when we now read about different grades of domestic servants in Victorian times, and how they would emphasise their distinctions in status and duties.
My stepdad used to do deals with his local butcher in the pub. Coming home to mum with a grease proof paper wrapped bloody package of meat. Top quality, but a too Royston Vasey for comfort.
I can't tell you how good it was to read something a little lighter than the dark, heavy, suffocating doom that's filled our news feeds for far too long. Albeit that your piece does highlight a worryingly dark trend, it is well written, beautifully satirical and most welcome! Thank you. - And thanks too for the lol/notlol East 17 Brian story. Ouch! 🫣
Thanks so much Kali. I really appreciate that. I was in two minds about including the Brian Harvey story. It is grim in parts. But it is so tragi-comic I felt readers would appreciate it. Hopefully he has made a full recovery. Has learned his lesson. And now goes easy on the baked potato and mayo!
I appreciate pedantry is the lowest form of wit, but pretty sure 300 is 0.1% of 300,000 even if it is still in technical terms effall
I’m not sure Dan. Maths isn’t my strongest suit. But I thought since there were 1000 300s in 300 000. It was a thosandth? Maybe someone else can help. I’m absolutely not saying I’m definitely correct!
You're both kind of right. It is a thousandth and it's also 0.1% because 1 % is a hundredth by definition (percent just means per hundred ). Well, you asked if someone else could help.
Btw we used to call going to the high street (butcher's shop with sawdust, Co-op with the meat slicer and the greengrocer's) going to the village too, even though I guess it hadn't been a village since the turn of the 20th century.
Think I'm with you until you put the % at the end, then all hell breaks loose
When you want to make a number sound bigger you use percent: "The cost of turnips is up 30%" sounds like more than: "The cost of turnips is up by 1.3 times."
I wonder if Poe's Law will get you out of the hate speech charges for this one? I can see the 'Gentrified Incomers-are-indigenous & Like Fermentation', or GILFs for Bread protests coming for you now.
Remember, metaphors are no longer politically acceptable! 😁
Nothing is politically acceptable now Scott. Except conformity.
Guess we'll just have to be unacceptable then. Low Status Opinions is really the perfect moniker for this work. Keep up the unacceptable writing matey. We need it.
Thanks Scott. I was wondering if you were thinking of doing a forensic explanation of the Mike Lynch yacht sinking, like you did with that bridge strike last(?) year.
Haven't looked into yet. Busy writing a ship security course at the moment, amd preparing for a survey in Norway next week. It's highly suspicious though. The skipper shouldn't have been in weather he wasn't sure he could handle. With the surrounding circumstances, and his business partner/co-defendant also dying mysteriously, my instinct says sabotage of some kind.
With that being said, I've heard horrific accounts of the standards of yacht master training, with numerous British skippers being reported going the wrong way down traffic lanes, etc. Some foreign coastguards now view British flagged yachts as a flag of convenience. So never discount incompetence. A big ship still sinks every 10 days or so, and we don't even bother counting yachts in the insurance stats.
Feel free to DM some sources if you like, and I'll maybe have a stab at it next week. There won't be an official report for a while.
Also, if you've ever watched 'Below Deck', some of the guests/owners can put pressure on skippers to sail when they shouldn't.
I went to the same school as the skipper on Jordan Belfort's yacht. If you remember the scene in Wolf of Wall street where they insist on sailing into a storm, and they all end up smashing loads of drugs and booze on the bridge when the yacht starts sinking? The skipper said it was EXACTLY like that in real life. Worse, even.
To upmarket bakeries and lovely cups of coffee!
Absolutely. Sorry. But I like nice things! 🙄
I don't understand what their problem is if there are alternative bakeries and coffee shops nearby.
Great read! Bread snobs in E17, who'd have thought it. Maybe they're backed by,"those of whom we shall not speak"?They need DEI training.
Yes Giulia. There’s definitely an undercurrent of anti semitism to this story. Brendan O’Neill picked up on it. And I think the Times did too. But I didn’t read their piece.
Another cracker! Well done.
Serious question. Do you think they know? —How stupid they look— We use the term cognitive dissonance a lot these days but Jesus! They must know… mustn’t they?
It’s so weird isn’t it Tom? I honestly think they think they are correct in everything they do. And that belief is reinforced by everyone around them. I don’t think there is room for much self doubt in their lives!
Well it's definitely nothing to do with the ethnicity of the founder of Gail's, that's absolutely certain.
How old are you LSO?? There aren't many of us who remember sawdust on the floor of butcher's shops 😉
Yes I saw that other angle Bettina. I think it plays a big part. But I chose not to include it for various reasons. Not least that other people were covering it. I was genuinely surprised how much interest the original story generated!
I’m in my late 50s. Sawdust on the floor was very common for butchers shops where I grew up in Essex in the 70s. It’s a world away now.
You look way younger, LSO!
Thanks Bettina. I’m 58. About ten years older than you I’d guess…..
🤣🤣🤣
I'm a bit older than you - I remember when the butchers' shops had carcasses hanging on hooks in the shop and maybe some pheasants or other birds hanging outside along with a rabbit or two. The sawdust on the floor was to soak up the drips of blood from the carcasses.
Your story about visiting the shops reminded me of my childhood in the '70s. I also remember the humming, whirring -- and slightly sinister but fascinating -- meat slicer being used to carve slices to order off a ham or joint. Have not seen one of those in decades (although it might be my fault for visiting supermarkets instead of the old-fashioned butcher's.)
There was also a hardware emporium called Wandrus Stores which was the spitting image of the shop in the Two Ronnie's "Four Candles" sketch: a counter with an older bloke in a shop coat who, after being informed of your needs, would unerringly go to the correct cardboard box on the numerous shelves behind and produce whatever size of nut-and-bolt, screw, hinge or other random piece of ironmongery you needed, all of which could be purchased singly, for a few pennies. My father said that, whatever obscure item he was after, they always had it, and always knew where to find it.
Well, I remember, and all the shopkeepers smoking a fag while they served you with your meat, bread, cheese, etc. Our local bakers always had their cat sitting in the window among the cakes. Please note all elfansafety types, we survived. Also if a shop opened we didn't like we went elsewhere.
It’s so true Iris. I was saying a similar thing the other day about pollution in London. It was so thick it would coat the insides of your nostrils. Yes. Bad. But the chances of you getting stabbed going about your business in the West End was infinitely smaller.
My Dad worked up in the City from the mid-fifties. His collars on white shirts were black after one day.
Yes, it is difficult to imagine now how ubiquitous cigarettes were back in the '70s and '80s, and how every indoor space contained some degree of tobacco smoke.
Both my parents were heavy smokers (although the distinction barely existed then, because everyone was) and it killed both of them. Needless to say, it never struck me as a cool thing to take up when I was younger.
Nowadays, I think we have struck the right balance by having smokers go outside to enjoy their habit. All the people I know who smoke these days are a generation younger than me, and they all seem happy to step outside when they want a fag -- and that attitude shift is good for non-smokers like me.
It seems so alien now doesn’t it Geoff? I used to smoke. A lot. I could smoke in the shower while washing my hair. Now I’m a pretty healthy living person. I do miss cigarettes though. There was definitely a large element of social lubrication to the habit which we’re lacking these days…
I am surprised by how popular smoking is amongst the young people that I know (in their 20s and early 30s). I used to put it down to the fact that they would all have got used to smoking weed as teenagers (something that I genuinely never encountered myself as a teenager or student). I also wonder if it is a generational effect: my generation (I am in my 50s, same as you) might have contained more abstainers, with the effect that their children decided smoking was cool and rebellious again.
It’s definitely cool again. My teenage daughter and all her friends all carry lighters. ‘For someone else’ I’ve never met this someone tho! 🤣 I think the war on disposable vapes is a big mistake personally. Rather they were doing that!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE
I do, Bettina!
I remember aged 6 being sent round to the butchers on a Saturday to recite 'a piece of topside for 7 and 6 please' which I'd memorised and rehearsed as I walked round the corner clutching a ten bob note. I'd shuffle the sawdust around with my feet while I waited and then get handed the beef, half a crown change and a piece of chocolate from the kind hearted butcher. I do wonder if seeing all those hacked up pieces of animal flesh and the blood on the chopping blocks and the floor - soaking into the sawdust - wasn't influential in turning me vegetarian from quite a young age! Supermarket meat counters today look so sanitised and not half as scary as those old butchers shops.
It really is sanitised Bettina. I think that’s a shame. I think we have lost a connection with our food and where it comes from. And I don’t say that as a ‘foodie’ or anything. I am very much an omnivore, but as such I shouldn’t be allowed to pretend to myself that ‘meat comes from supermarkets.’
I can’t really remember the old money Bettina. Though I cut a bit from this piece about Tom the Milkman being the first person to show us the ‘new money’. It’s one of my earliest memories. Clear as a bell today. Going from pence to ‘P’ was the start of a lot of things, none of them good….🧐
We were told categorically that going decimal would not mean the prices would go up. As now, they thought the population was stupid and would believe them. I kept a sample of the old money for years to show the kids who were too young then to handle cash. Got thrown out in one of the moves I expect.
This used to be a neck of the woods I knew well, but it has been changed by gentrification. Love the story, and the trip down memory lane, made me think of going round the corner to the bakers, butchers and green grocers, then sneaking into the sweet shop! Not sure I’d go for the up market bakers, tend to prefer a Greggs hot sausage roll and a coffee, especially as a response to that stupid pasty tax!
I love a Greggs P. But I’m kidding myself, and you, if I pretended I’d choose a steak bake over a Gail’s blueberry brioche. I’m also fond of a sausage roll, from anywhere, which is so unhealthy it has turned the bag it comes in, virtually transparent, by the time you go to eat it.
A shopping centre not too far from me (in Cambridge) has both a Gregg's and a Gail's -- and now you have tempted me to go and sample their respective wares.
I admit that I have never bought anything from Gail's after my shock at realising they did loaves for £4 (and that was a few years ago). Also, I might embarrass myself by not knowing the correct "Artisan Bread Studies" terminology for their advanced products.
Currently my limit is the £1.95 ciabatta from Marks & Spencer.
As for pasties and sausage rolls: I grew up in Lancashire, where meat pies of all descriptions are practically a religion. Sadly, they don't seem to have any of those in the south, other than mass-produced brands that are available all across the country.
Makes me wonder whether an artisanal pie shop would be a hit? Or would the elites of Cambridge and Walthamstow look down their noses at such a thing?
(P.S. -- when I first came to Cambridge as a university student, my father used to say that the city centre was a fine place to shop for books and academic robes, but there was nowhere to buy a hot pie for your lunch.)
There's only one way to get an authentic, genuine, and artisan food.
Make it yourself, even if you have to buy your ingredients from the supermarket.
Sadly Argo, you are only partially correct. Yes, as you say. But in addition, you must not wash your hair for a week or two until it ‘begins to wash itself’. And you must have a dog, or best friend, or preferably both, called Barnaby. Only then is your food truly ‘Artisan’.
Ah yes, how could I forget the skill cape, the 99 skill level, and trashing people who use labor-saving devices as degenerates and disrespect to the craft. Fools like us need knives, while these master craftsmen are cutting their meat and veg by karate chopping it with their knife hands.
Localism for me but not for thee. I get to quibble over a bakers, you get ghettoes, gang rape and vape shops.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip. I can remember even a drab Wimbledon Village in the 70s had two butchers, two greengrocers, a baker, a fishmonger, two delis, a sweetshop/tobacconist (no conflict there), pubs, newsagents - not sure you needed much else. Can almost remember that each had its own smell.
Oh yes Martin. The smells. It’s the sawdust of the butchers for me I think. Also the mustiness of the greengrocer. And now the tobacconist…oh dear, you’ve set me off…
The nostalgic nose is quite powerful. Used to love the sweetshop with the smell of tobacco - you could buy the sweet pretend cigarettes with the red tips and pretend to smoke them.
Yes. I remember them. And then moving swiftly on to the real thing. Perfect to add a little pep to my trip to school in the morning…..
My wider reception to this is inspired by the film "Judge Roy Bean".
Out on the frontier Bean rescues some young women, slaved into prostitution by bad men (black hats). He kills the men and the girls are grateful. He sets up a town where he enforces the law as Judge, Jury and sentencing, usually by hanging. The town prospers and grows and the early settlers become the respectable establishment. The town's ladies disapprove of Bean's drunken ways and encourage his downfall. Who are they? Why, the erstwhile hookers he rescued so long ago. So if you hear me utter "Judge Roy Bean's whores" apply it to such as Walthamstow and bear it in mind when shopping in Waitrose.
Absolutely perfect Zorro.
Fabulous article which, as usual , I had to re read as I laughed so much. This is so welcome in these dark and dangerous times.
I would love it if you would write an article on the “Super Six”, those unpatriotic, self serving, deluded idiots who are fighting to win the ultimate prize of winning “Traitor of the Year” award in November.
Thanks so much Kinsey, that’s very kind of you to say. I was thinking of writing about them. But the I realised what non entities they are and I wondered if I had it in me. I think I will as we get a bit closer and they start saying more daft things in the press. I’m definitely backing Kemi at the moment, but with a bit less enthusiasm than I might have a couple of years ago…What about you?
I do not care who wins their ridiculous little “game”. They should be hanging their heads in shame and hiring an old Charabanc to chug their little party to the Morgue.They have not even provided any credible opposition to the 2 Tier Stasi, what a shambles. I will look forward to your article which I know will be fabulous.
Thanks Kinsey. Let’s manage expectations. All round!!
Good to have a lighthearted piece instead of the doom and gloom of modern life. My grandmother was born in Walthamstow - her family was newly middle class, having progressed from Hackney and Bethnal Green. Her father and grandfather were businessmen.
Thanks Ndovu! I think it’s probably a nice place to live. But things do change over time. My mum and I were talking and it turns out she lived in some tenements in Kings Cross not half a mile from where I live now. They are all pulled down now of course.