It’s All Gravy

A couple of years back, I was walking with a friend through the Christmas market on the southern end of Hungerford Bridge in London. It’s an interesting, brutalist spot for a market, trapped between the muddy river, a massive bridge and the imposing late 1960s concrete arts bunker known as the Southbank Centre.

(I only found out recently that the Southbank centre was actually the vanguard of what was supposed to be a ground-breaking architectural redesign of London in the 1950s and 60s. The plan called for large parts of central London to be razed, including Soho and Whitehall, to be redeveloped with huge concrete office and residential blocks. Covent Garden was also slated to be flattened but the local residents organised and defeated the plan. Thank fuck it never happened.)

Mmmm. Tasty Baps.

Anyways, back to the story. It was a miserable, cold, rainy day, totally suited to walking past the frigid grey slabs of concrete at that end of the bridge. One of the wooden Christmas prison huts was peddling roast pork baps; white bread rolls full of thick slices of hot roast pork slathered with gravy and apple sauce. Hungry from walking, the smell of roasting meat lured us in.

There were 2 young Japanese women behind us in the queue, both wearing large hooded parka coats -the type with a think trim of fake fur around the edges of the hood.

Pork Bap Man behind the counter handed me my sandwich with a cheery London “There ya go, guv” spoken with a heavy Polish accent. As I turned to go, biting into my roll, the two Japanese women stepped up to the counter in front of me to order their food. To my horror, the slice of pork shot out of the now empty-looking bap, surfing on a wave of gravy and apple sauce, and landed in the hood of the Japanese girl closest to me.

I was a bit dischuffed, as they say in London. I’d been mugged off by a bread product. My annoyance at losing the best part of my sandwich was matched only by the thought of having to stump up twenty quid to have the poor woman’s coat dry cleaned. It took me 5 seconds to realise that she hadn’t noticed the foreign object land in her coat.

The pork sat warm and snug in her hood looking at me, inviting me to do something. I could see the vendor watching, trying not to laugh, waiting to see how the mess would play out for me.  

Winking and gesturing at him to keep quiet, I reached into the expensive-but-definitely-dirtier hood and retrieved the meat while he kept the woman busy with questions about her order. I couldn’t do anything about the gravy and sauce which by now had formed a nice savoury glaze on the fabric.

I was bloody hungry, and I’m not ashamed to say the meat went back in the sandwich. I’ve had small kids and as any parent knows, when food falls on the floor it’s fair game if you pick it up fast enough.

The girls got their food and walked off, enjoying the Christmas market tat, distracted by the spinny foil things and baubles on sale, blissfully unaware of the savoury mess that awaited one of them next time it rained.

Happy days.

Don’t Forget

Life as a blogger isn’t all delicious pork and gravy baps. We writers often sup for weeks on end from the bowl of cold-comfort gruel, waiting for the rare day – the once in a month of Sundays moment- when somebody reaches out to us across the miles and signs up as a subscriber. You can make me a happy, carnivorous writer by inserting your email address into the non-vegetarian, meat-loving subscription box that’s placed tantalizingly close to the top of the page. I will be sure to email you more meat-related stories whenever I post them, which to be honest isn’t very often. Most of the time I write about mining and music. Hopefully, one day you’ll email me and tell me you love my food choices, but I won’t hold my breath.