Peter and I were tutored by the supervisor, Mr. Candy, in the mysterious and ancient art of pork pie jellying. This was nearly 50yrs ago, and there weren’t nearly so many fridges about as nowadays, and virtually no freezers, so one good and easy way of preserving meat over an extended holiday was pork pies. Sealed in the pastry by its own jellified juices, no air can get to the meat, so it keeps longer. It was an early form of vacuum packing. You remember the jelly your mom used to encourage you to eat, ‘cos it was the goodness from the meat, she said. Well, you were conned!
Under Mr Candy’s wise and expert guidance, Peter and I learned to mix gelatine powder with hot water. Then we each picked up our little, ancient, traditional, wooden (so sacred, they were never washed) specialist instrument, poking holes in piecrusts for the use of. Then, addressing the tray of 2doz. 1lb Pork pies before us, we poked two holes, diametrically opposite, in the top crust of the first pie. Then, and this is where the master jellier shows his skill, one gently pours jelly into one hole, until it just fills the hole, at the other side .Too little and the meat will not be protected, too much, and it will overflow, gluing the pie to the tray on cooling, so that when you go to pick it up, you risk tearing the arse out of it.
 |
| Jellying |
As each tray of was completed, they were stacked in high rise trolleys, each taking at least a dozen trays. The full trolley was then wheeled off to the lift, which took it to the attic of the building, where the pies were unloaded and stacked in one vast rampart, an endless battery, rank on rank of pies, the great pie escarpment. Remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when that truck takes the crate into that vast storage building? I reckon they filmed that bit in our pie hanger, our pie loft. The pie penthouse. Sparrows used to get in through the ventilators, and every so often, a couple of women were dispatched up there to wash the bird shit off the crusts.
 |
| The Great Pie Escarpment. |
The lift had a little idiosyncrasy in that it sometimes stopped 2 to 4” lower than the loading floor. I suspect that Otis used to offer this as an optional extra, because I have encountered it in lifts down all the years. Well that seasonally festive night in Archer Road bakery, I’m glad it was Peter Michael John Skevington who encountered it, and not me. He encountered it with a full trolley-load of pies, full of hot, liquid jelly.It was like one of those disaster movies-
The Towering Pie Avelanche!
The whole bloody lot went over on its face, the trays all shooting out like guided missiles, each one mounting two dozen hot, jellied pork war-heads. As they hit their targets, the floor and back wall, they exploded in a murderous shower of gobbets of pork shrapnel, hot jelly, and pastry clinker.
Mr. Candy was magnificent; he didn’t turn a hair. He was Field Marshall, Fire Chief, and Head Gyppo, all in one. He just had us retrieve the metal work of the rocket launcher, that is the trolley and the trays. Then we had to give it 5mins for the jelly to set. Then he had us peel the whole thing up, off the floor, like a giant 5ft square wine gum. You think that was smart? Read on, MacDuff. Mr. Candy showed why he was hailed as the Grand Panjandrum Baker Wallah, and we were just hired labour. He had us retrieve the meat for re-cycling; the Co-op lost only the pastry and jelly.  |
| The Towering Pie Avalanche! |
The other thing I’ve never been able to touch, since then, is Eccles cakes- the little, flat, pastry dumplings, with a sweet, sticky filling. In the back of the bakery, near the loading bay, was a packing bench, where cream cakes, ‘fancies’, apple- and black currant charlottes, vanilla slices and such, were packed into cardboard boxes. These were deemed superior goods, yer actual Patissery. There were maybe half a dozen women working round this table, plus a supervisor; there’s always a supervisor. At one end of the bench, stood an old wooden barrel, maybe 3ft high, just lower than the table top. So if there were any damaged goods, which weren’t excessive, but fairly regular, they were just swept off the end of the bench, into the barrel.
At the end of the day, the supervisor lady would pour a generous slug of syrup into the barrel, the precise quantity being determined by how much the barrel had gained during the day. Then she would give the contents a cursory poke around with a wooden paddle, which lived in the barrel, so it needn’t be washed.
When the barrel was nearing capacity, Mr. Candy would be informed, then fitting in with the general programme, he would have the barrel carted into the bakery, and give instructions to prepare to make Eccles Cakes, because the contents of the barrel constituted the filling!
I remember one bizarre evening, which could only be called ‘Cabaret Time’. Mr. Candy was absent, so things were slack, except for one individual who was doing his speciality turn of doing ‘Café’ bridge rolls, i.e. slightly larger than ordinary bridge rolls. This necessitated him standing before a machine, which spat out a row of four blobs of dough. He must quickly grab a pair of blobs in each hand, roll each pair into a single ball, on the bench, turn, place them on a huge baking sheet, give them a quick dab with a mop brush, loaded with lard (like varnishing them- makes them bake shiny and brown) then whip back in time to catch the next four blobs of dough, before they roll onto the floor, because the machine doesn’t know about all the extra work.
So the rest of us are idly watching this artiste at work, when it transpires, in conversation, that the dough roller knows the whole of the Ballad of Eskimo Nell, the mucky version, by heart. The call goes up for a performance, which is eventually granted. So you have a dozen fellers sitting around a model bakery; the civilised world is watching the 9 o’clock News, while the star of our show is whirling about like a Tasmanian Devil, juggling balls of dough, and simultaneously reciting n obscene, epic saga of an Eskimo maid and two desperadoes named Pistol Pete, and Dead-Eye Dick.
When we finished at Christmas, for a bonus, we were each given a 2lb pork pie. Jane was pleased.
Peter and I spent a couple of more convivial Christmases together. His father was caretaker at the Wards’ family brewery, in Eccleshall Road, and for our last two school Christmases, Peter and I, together with our Totty of the day, would spend an evening in Peter’s lounge, listening to his collection of Lonnie Donnegan records, drinking, and eating the occasional piece of Peter’s Mum’s legendary Christmas cake. It was a living testimony to Wards’ ancillary trade.
The third Christmas, the first after we left school, my girlfriend and I were invited to Peter’s. He had been at teacher training college, in Grantham, for a term. Mary and I arrived, but no sign of Peter’s girl, Joan, and no explanation. Mary soon disappeared into the kitchen, ostensibly to help Peter’s Mum with food, but didn’t come back.
Peter and I just sat, not much conversation, plenty of music, lots of booze. At some point, as I was working my way, hand over hand, along the linen line, to the closet, across the yard, I thought ‘We are getting swiftly and systematically pissed, here. There must be a reason for it, but I’m buggered if I know what it is’.
The evening drew towards a close. We called for a taxi, and it came. We said our goodbyes, and I was still no wiser. On the way home, in the taxi, Mary told me the tale she had heard, in the kitchen.
While Peter was at college, Joan had written to him, saying she was pregnant, and would he send her some money. Peter wrote back to his Mum, asking her to send him money from his account, offering no explanation. Peter then sent the money back to Joan. This process was repeated a couple of times, leaving Peter’s well dry. When he came home, he found it was all a lie. Not only that, but Joan had told all their friends that she was having him for a mug.
By the time Mary had given me the whole story, we were sitting by the glow of Jane’s dying, living fire, and I was quietly throwing up, into the lap of Mary’s beautiful blue brocade dress, her latest bargain from the Nearly New Shop, I Howard Street. My last words, before crawling off to my cot, were-
“If ever I get like this, again, will you promise to shoot me?”