4TH DECEMBER 2017
This post is one day late, but we now have good internet access.
Now having tried one for lunch today I am bound to expand on my mention of the pork pies sold at Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe featured on 2nd, posted yesterday.
Walker’s are one of the best pork pies we know. It is therefore interesting that, in addition to their own Dickinson & Morris pies, the shop stocks those.
The proprietors’ own produce comes in two different wrappers. The red one appears standard.
Jackie bought a more expensive white wrapped pie.
We consider ourselves connoisseurs of this traditional English delicacy which can vary enormously in quality. There were a number of different varieties on offer in Newark when we lived there. We would rate them out of 10, taking into account both the filling which must be firm and not fatty, and the pastry which must be crusty and not soggy.
Until today we had not found a Perfect Ten. We have now.
Dickinson & Morris provide the following information on their website:
‘The business was founded by John Dickinson in 1851. In 1886 Joseph Morris joined the business as an apprentice and in 1901 the company changed its name to Dickinson & Morris.
Our bakery and retail outlet, Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, is a tourist destination and key landmark in both Melton Mowbray and the UK as a whole. In March 1992, after fire had devastated the period style building, Samworth Brothers bought the property and carried out extensive refurbishment and renovation in conjunction with English Heritage.
Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe reopened in October of that year. Next door to Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, The Sausage Shop now offers a selection of up to 20 different sausage varieties.’
James Peacock visited this afternoon, bringing back my restored iMac computer, and setting us up with EE mobile broadband. For me, this latter process was mystifying, fascinating, and conducive to reminiscence.
The mystification concerned all the clicks on the screen, too fast for me to follow. The fascination was about the mobile phone masts that James could plot on the maps he had accessed. There are three in New Milton within the range of the EE receiver. It was news to me that we could access the internet without broadband cables which are not a great deal of use in our location.
It was wandering around the house seeking a location for the best signal that evoked the reminiscence. James is too young to have remembered the hours of taking it in turns to stand holding an aerial in the early days of television. It was some years before the first sets could be operated without the use of a cumbersome external area. This was meant to stand on top of the old black and white apparatus. In reality it would only pick up a half-way useful signal in the most awkward corner of the room whilst being clutched in hands attached to outstretched arms.
This evening I dined on Jackie’s excellent chili con carne and egg fried rice, while she chose a pasta bake. With mine I drank Mendoza malbec 2016