As a child I adored my maternal grandmother’s bread and butter pickle. No picnic was complete without bread and butter pickle and cheddar sandwiches, the Monday cold cut meal that followed Sunday’s roast hogget using the remains always featured a jar. While I don’t have her recipe this one seems pretty close. While my grandmother…
Category: Life
Life: Te Suburbia
Machine Gun Vignettes I His agapanthus were the best in the village. His shining pride and joy. Retired 10 years his days were spent tending the garden. Precision was his game. A ruler was used at sowing. His petunias sparkled. On his berm a row of bright plastic signs prohibited any excretion of excrement or…
Travel: In Search of Mutton Pie
Oamaru, July 2025 I rise after a night drinking with Michael O’Brien in his cottage. Last time I did so I bore the brunt of a mortal liver the next day, every footstep was a lash of self-flagellation. Today though I am buoyed by the fact that I showed relative self-control the night before. My…
Travel: Crisp And Clean
“Crisp and clean. No caffeine.” RZA , Coffee and Cigarettes Our jetlag wrenched us from sleep at 2am. In an act of cruelty that frankly jeopardizes Canada’s inclusion in the commonwealth there was no coffee or tea making facilities in the hotel room. I took to twitter to voice my anguish and was told that…
The Session 147: Morse
Two of my passions go hand in hand. I am an evangelical proponent of both traditional British beer and murder mystery fiction. While they intersect a lot, the writing of Colin Dexter is perhaps where the Venn diagram is at its most pure. Dexter’s Chief Inspecter Morse is an amalgam of Dexters own passions and…
Life: This too shall pass- the beer that changed my life.
“این هم بگذرد in npam begzard And this too shall pass.” Persian proverb. In early 2025 the partners of North End Brewing Co are diverting paths and founding brewer Kieran Haslett-Moore is leaving the company amid a restructure. A new brewer is being sought. Twelve years ago, the first commercial batch of the beer now…
Travel: Full Scottish – Edinburgh
“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,Painch, tripe, or thairm:Weel are ye wordy o’ a graceAs lang’s my arm.” Robert Burns I woke early and tried to book tickets to Edinburgh Castle on my phone. The webstore kept crashing, so I gave up and switched to…
Travel: The $100 Poo – Yorkshire to Scotland
“The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before.” G K Chesterton We rose early as we were heading to Edinburgh that day. We packed and after a good-natured chat with the jolly guesthouse host, we took an uber to the station . We breakfasted at a Pret…
Travel: The North Riding – Yorkshire Day 3
“Every day lasts a year.” James Herriot (Alf Wight) When I was growing up the TV show All Creatures Great and Small played a leading role in our family entertainment. We originally watched it on a huge wood encased black and white tv which weighed as much as a fridge and whose picture slowly retreated…
Travel: Pennines – Yorkshire Day 1
“God, the wind. It peeled the stonesfrom the skull of St Thomas’ church,left its mouth slacked to a yawn or a scream,sounding vowels through the nave, throughthe clock-eye, the altar stones, the flat-backedflat-packed dead in their wedding gowns.” Wendy Pratt – Heptonstall Graveyard Lisa had bought in a bunch of English delicacies for me to…
Raise the Dawn 