The Night Mail

[simontaylor484]

Going back to how people dressed for the weekend how many of the working mans suits would have come out of the pawnbrokers on a Friday to go back the Monday morning 

[jamie92208]

6 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

I may be branded a cheapskate but to pay the prices asked by some restaurants such as the Italian one reviewed by Jay Rayner seems to me to be sheer madness. To fork out three hundred quid plus on a meal for two would, for me, require it to be the best dining experience of a lifetime and even then I would hesitate to go there. As for bacon butties, there was (not sure if it still is) a caff on the A17 near Cranwell that did what was possibly the best bacon  buttie you could ever wish for and one that would frequently draw Jill and me in when we lived in Lincolnshire.

 

Dave

 

 

I wonder what they would have made of the hot pork sandwiches in a scuffler (bread cake) from a little shop next to the canal at Knottingley.  With some crackling, some apple sauce and followed by a large Eccles cake I was in food heaven and for some peculuar reason often used to take my lunch at Kottingley on a day shift.

 

Jamie

Edited July 17, 2022 by jamie92208

[Happy Hippo]

8 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I wonder what they would have madecof the hotbpork sandwiches in a suffler (bread cake) from a little shop next to the canal at Knottingley.  With some cracklibg, some apple sauce and followed by a large Eccles cake I was in food heaven and for some peculuar reason often used to take my lunch at Kottingley on a day shift.

 

Jamie

Cannibal!

[simontaylor484]

I had a hot roast beef sandwich from a shop in town on Friday the Mrs had roast pork they were lovely. They were on scufflers 

 

There used to be a bakers on the square at Ferrybridge that did sarnies on scufflers that were the size of dinner plates.

The chippy there was good too but you had to time it right on a Friday to beat the orders from the power station, Rhp bearings and Total lubricants

[Dave Hunt]

5 hours ago, br2975 said:

.

Yeeuch - horrible stuff - I cannot for the life of me see the attraction in Scotch , Irish, even the Welsh .......

 

I quite agree whereas the English, especially with Itoje and Genge in the pack.........

 

Ah, sorry, I thought you were writing about rugby.

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

I guess that a scuffler (or suffler depending on which post is read) is what we in Liverpool would call a barmcake. When I was at grammar school, we would often sneak off at dinner time (apart from sixth formers we weren't supposed to leave the premises between 0900 and 1600) to a bakery in town where there was a chippy next door. We'd buy barmcakes in the former then eat the middle out of them while waiting in the queue at the chippy where we'd get four pence worth of chips, stuff them in the barmcakes and go on our happy, munching way.

 

Dave

[Lochgorm]

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Actually, my dear bear, an authentic spaghetti alla carbonara will be very creamy – as it is an amalgamation of the eggs used in the dish together with a touch of the pasta cooking water. However (and there’s always a however), timing is everything in order to get the creaminess.

 

As for Viz; I always buy a copy (along with Private Eye) whenever I am in the UK. One of my favourite strips is “The Modern Parents” How true, how true….

 

In regards to Private Eye, I reckon that Ian Hislop – the editor – is long overdue for one of those honours that the Queen (on behalf of Parliament). hands out every year. However, I don’t think it will happen, simply because Mr Hislop has trodden (and hard) on too many sensitive establishment feet.

 

If a scandal of one kind or another makes its way onto the front pages of the British national press, chances are you will have first read it in Private Eye (sometimes years before the big newspapers have twigged that anything is amiss).

 

Private Eye has also been a source of many catch phrases and characters that have entered the vocabulary of a readership of a certain age and socio economic demographic. “Tired and emotional“, “Ugandan discussions“, “shurely shome mishtake”, “Inspector Knacker”, “Dave Spart” or “tight-lipped, ashen-faced supremo Ron Knee (Neasden FC)”

 

Private Eye is now over 60 years old. Not bad going for something  that pretty much started as a home-made - very British - Samizdat

Just don’t look at the front cover of the latest edition which depicts Ian Hislop’s contempt for Boris Johnson in a truly gruesome stomach turning manner.

 

Charlie

[iL Dottore]

2 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

….We'd buy barmcakes in the former then eat the middle out of them while waiting in the queue at the chippy where we'd get four pence worth of chips, stuff them in the barmcakes and go on our happy, munching way.

 

I certainly would argue that the Earl of Sandwich is one of mankind’s greatest culinary heroes. But as the point of a sandwich is to be able to eat something (like slices of roast beef) that are impractical to eat with your fingers, surely having a chip sandwich is a contradiction in terms: chips being perfectly good finger food.

 

De gustibus non est disputandum, true. But I can certainly think of many preferable things to stick into a bun than chips. How much was a battered sausage or a piece of fried fish? Had funds permitted, I would certainly have chosen a sausage or a piece of fish over chips (having said that, a large bun stuffed with sausages, crisp streaky bacon, black pudding and a smidgen of brown sauce is definitely an almost perfect “breakfast on the go“)

 

The British certainly have, both now and historically a peculiar diet. On one hand the rarest and most expensive of spices and ingredients are/have been prized and used; but on the other hand cheap, carbohydrate laden, nutritionally poor, food has been/is peddled to fill bellies with empty calories.
 

I recently read The Hungry Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World by Lizzie Collingham. Read this interesting book, and you’ll not view a humble cup of sweet tea, white bread or corned beef in quite the same way again.

Edited July 17, 2022 by iL Dottore

[Gwiwer]

Not quite as warm here as predicted largely because we received some thin cloud cover. 
 

Today has been one for taking things easily and for washing the sweaty kit from yesterday. 
 

26.2 miles walked in very warm sun with good cause. 
 

Some of these are official photos with permission to share. 

Windsor Racecourse. 26.2 miles to go! 
 

Someone famous lives here

 

Around 10 miles in and still smiling

 

Windsor Bridge

 

Marlow and 19 miles completed. Still happy

 

The finishing lane at Remenham Farm, Henley.  Good reason to look relieved! 
 

Just rewards. A glass of prosecco and a finisher’s medal. 

[J. S. Bach]

13 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

 ...snip... I must confess to being a bit of a purist: if someone is going to cook me – say – spaghetti alla carbonara, then it has to be classically prepared otherwise, no matter how well-made or tasty it may be it’s not spaghetti alla carbonara.

Carbonized spaghetti?

[J. S. Bach]

5 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

I see you do not read American news then.

Fox or MSN?

[polybear]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

But as the point of a sandwich is to be able to eat something (like slices of roast beef) that are impractical to eat with your fingers, surely having a chip sandwich is a contradiction in terms: chips being perfectly good finger food.

 

The way the warmth of the chips melts the butter (I do hope the barm cakes were buttered Sqn. Ldr?) really sets off the flavour nicely.

As for finger food, has iD never indulged in a crisp sarnie before, ideally with a squirt of tommy sauce?  Go on....live dangerously.....

 

1 hour ago, J. S. Bach said:

 

Do we have some new emoji's?

 

[Dave Hunt]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

 

I certainly would argue that the Earl of Sandwich is one of mankind’s greatest culinary heroes. But as the point of a sandwich is to be able to eat something (like slices of roast beef) that are impractical to eat with your fingers, surely having a chip sandwich is a contradiction in terms: chips being perfectly good finger food.

 

De gustibus non est disputandum, true. But I can certainly think of many preferable things to stick into a bun than chips. How much was a battered sausage or a piece of fried fish? Had funds permitted, I would certainly have chosen a sausage or a piece of fish over chips.......

 

Flavio, you obviously weren't a schoolboy in Liverpool in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Barmcake = 2d (old pence - 12 to a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound so 240 pence to a pound), chips = 4d, fish = 9d. Result? For 6d we got lunch rather than paying 11d for barmcake and fish or a whopping 1s 1d for fish and chips, hence saving scarce funds. Entry to the Cavern club at lunchtime was one shilling (12d) so with what we saved we could once or sometimes twice a week sneak out and spend an hour there. Sausages? In a chippy? In those days a chippy sold fish, chips and fishcakes.

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

8 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

The way the warmth of the chips melts the butter (I do hope the barm cakes were buttered Sqn. Ldr?) really sets off the flavour nicely.

 

 

Butter on a chip butty? Effete southern nancy food and, anyway, where would we get small pats of butter? No such thing in those days as individually packaged pats of butter (thank God).

 

Dave

[polybear]

1 minute ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Butter on a chip butty? Effete southern nancy food and, anyway, where would we get small pats of butter? No such thing in those days as individually packaged pats of butter (thank God).

 

Dave

 

Down 'ere the chippies flog chip rolls (small = round, or large = long) ready-buttered.  I guess us southern lot are way ahead in the culture stakes.

[Dave Hunt]

10 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Down 'ere the chippies flog chip rolls (small = round, or large = long) ready-buttered.  I guess us southern lot are way ahead in the culture stakes.

 

It's quite possible that oop north there are nowadays establishments where such things are sold as well. But not 60 odd years ago and maybe they weren't available darn sarf then either. Remember what the man said, "The past is another place, they did things differently there."

 

The one thing that hasn't changed, of course, is the superiority of the north in all but dodgy politicians.

 

Dave 

[pH]

4 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

We'd buy barmcakes in the former then eat the middle out of them while waiting in the queue at the chippy where we'd get four pence worth of chips, stuff them in the barmcakes and go on our happy, munching way.

Our local variation - buy a Vienna loaf and divide it between two people, eat out the middle, then fill the empty loaf with potato crisps.

[Happy Hippo]

It's much easier to just eat.......cake.

 

I'm  off finger food at present. I also can't for the life of me think why I've been put off sausages and mince.

[Dave Hunt]

Remiss of me in all of these posts not to congratulate Rick on a notable achievement for a good cause. Well done mate.

 

Dave

[Winslow Boy]

42 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

It's much easier to just eat.......cake.

 

I'm  off finger food at present. I also can't for the life of me think why I've been put off sausages and mince.

 

Good heavens Big H pull your finger out won't your. You just needed to put finger on it that's all. Don't you give me the finger I'm just trying to get you to finger it out.

 

There was that subtle or was that subtle.

[SM42]

Mad rush st SM42 Towers is in full swing. 

 

12 hour day shift followed by getting the house as ready a possible for the imminent arrival of the in laws on Tuesday. 

 

I risked cutting the lawn yesterday. Only one stone made it way across the garden  richoceting of various item scattered thereabouts. 

 

This evening lots of stuff moved around.  Can actually move in thd lounge now.

 

Long list to do tomorrow  but limited time ad going onto night shift

 

As the song goes: The heat is on. In more ways than one. 

 

It's beer o'clock and I'm making the most of it while I can

 

Andy, slowly melting

[jjb1970]

Singapore doesn't really do sandwiches, you see a rather sorry and small selection in supermarkets and petrol stations but it's really not a thing here. However, all is not lost as most of the Vietnamese stalls do excellent banh mi, banh mi is the Vietnamese version of baguette sandwiches and they're terrific. They use corriander, chilli and the meat tends to be served hot. 

Bread here is a little different. In much of Asia rather than sandwiches shops sell bread buns with the filling baked in. Buns with stuffed with stuff like frankfurter sausage, bak Kwa, curry, red bean paste, custard etc. I suspect the bread is a dieticians nightmare as it is very soft and rather sweet, it's superb to eat though.

[J. S. Bach]

3 hours ago, polybear said:

Do we have some new emoji's?

That one came from:

 

https://smileyshack.wordpress.com/

 

 

[jjb1970]

Food is possible the biggest part of Singaporean culture, people here are obsessed with food and arguments over the best hawker stalls for a particular dish can get quite animated.

The region is rich in food heritage and food from the region is justly famous. Interestingly most Singaporean people will tell you that the food is better either side in Malaysia and Indonesia. Malay, Indonesian and Peranakan food really is worth trying for those not familiar with it. One of the funny things is to tell a Malaysian how great Indonesian food is and wait for the reaction (ditto if you tell an Indonesian how great Malaysian food is). Both countries are always fighting over ownership of some of the famous dishes. There have been diplomatic incidents when one of them will enshrine something as a national dish. Singapore tends to just sit it out and enjoy the show, and because of the local politics Malaysia and Indonesia aren't bothered about fighting over ownership of a lot of the Peranakan food (it's too Chinese).

[jjb1970]

You fellows will probably much warmer than out here in the sunny tropics this week, people tend to think Singapore is a hot country but it really isn't. The climate is remarkably stable here, it is warm and humid year round but thermometer temperatures really don't go that high, it is humidity which makes it uncomfortable here, not temperature. The below is a snip from the government website here: