Walking after Ida

To reassure my brother in Japan, I will say, “We are still here.” Apparently yesterday was a slow news day and Weather Channel addicts especially may have gotten the idea that “Hurricane” Ida was actually a major and dangerous storm. A client of my husband’s in Puerto Rico called to check on our welfare, and later my brother in Oregon also checked in. Last night the local Jim Cantore wannabes interrupted our regularly scheduled programming for hurricane coverage so often and at such length that we entirely lost the thread of the plot.

The Board of Education closed the schools for two days (no doubt deeply regretting that they’d let the kids take their “hurricane makeup days” as “Fall Break” a few weeks ago), the City closed offices and departments (including the library) and canceled garbage pickup (already scheduled to be skipped tomorrow, Veterans Day) and took down the hanging flower baskets (sensibly enough, and at least they didn’t bother to take up the bedded plants), the local emergency management agency opened a shelter.

I don’t know whether there was a run on grocery stores for batteries, bread, milk, and eggs or not, but when I went to the ABC Beverage store yesterday afternoon for a routine whiskey purchase, the clerks there confirmed they’d been doing a land-office business.

All this despite the fact that by late afternoon yesterday it appeared pretty clear that Ida was weakening and was not going to pose much of a threat to anyone except those in very low-lying areas (a voluntary evacuation was declared for waterfront property owners).

It was quite breezy yesterday morning (more so, I venture to say, than at any time after the storm actually made landfall), and it started sprinkling just as I was about to go out for a walk. It continued to rain and blow off and on all day and through the night, but the rain gauge this morning (after the storm had passed and the rain had stopped) showed just 3¼ inches. To put this in perspective, we had 2¼ inches during a 24-hour period twice in October.

When I got up this morning, I looked out the window, curious to see what the storm had produced in the way of “derbis” (a “family word” we picked up from a friend). The back yard was scattered with dead wood (thoroughly rotten and scabby) and a few of what my husband calls “giblets” (small live branches, with leaves, ripped off by the wind). So yes, there’ll be a little cleanup. But that’s often true after run-of-the-mill storms. This was definitely no biggie. If we’re lucky, though, perhaps it brought down the last of the pine straw and most of the rest of the abundant acorns.

My husband and I dithered about exercise—hit the street or go to “the gym“? I opted for the outdoors, while he took off for the indoor track. When I returned, he said, “You made the right choice.” (Sure enough, the Christian Life Center was still closed, and he ended up running outside after all.)

It was the right decision. The temperature was brisk (mid-60s), and a fresh breeze added wind chill, so I made record time, pushing hard to warm up. And my trip around the neighborhood confirmed that no one had suffered even moderate damage. Although garbage pickup had been canceled, a city garbage crew were roaming around looking for “derbis”—or perhaps just looking for any downed limbs that might be blocking streets. If so, they weren’t finding anything.

Bottom line: a non-event, and if we can just hang on for 20 more days, we can finish this hurricane season without a single hurricane. I don’t think anyone here will object to that!

Outside Again

Now that the weather here has finally turned mild (highs in the 70s, breezy), I’ve felt less inclined to go to “the gym” and more eager to get out in the fresh air. A nasty cold kept me in for a week or so, but I’ve since had several opportunities to reacquaint myself with the neighborhood. As usual, changes are more noticeable when some time has elapsed. The “little pink house” had been reduced to an empty lot the day after I reported it as a pile of rubble, and when I next saw it, on October 25, workmen were digging trenches for the footings of the new construction. The following day, a cement mixer was on site pouring concrete. The next time I got out (November 1), several courses of concrete block had been laid on top of the foundation, and the wall has continued to rise over the past week.

A few blocks away, I was astonished to see another vacant lot. The previous property owner had died some years ago, and the house had been empty ever since. The yard had been allowed to grow up into such a wilderness that it brought to mind visions of the prince hacking through briers to get to the Sleeping Beauty. Some months ago, the yard had been cleared, leaving only a few shrubs, and it was rumored that the property had been sold and the new owner intended to “remodel” or “renovate” the house. I was dubious. The property is a large corner lot overlooking the bay, and the house was small and run-down. The new owner had undoubtedly paid a pretty penny for the location alone. So I was not surprised that the house had been demolished, just startled to realize that it had happened while I wasn’t paying attention. Now the property is surrounded by erosion control fencing, but a yellow building permit sign is the only other sign of activity so far.

As an aside, one advantage of walking on a treadmill for several months is that I’ve gotten in the habit of walking faster, so walking outside should be better exercise for me than before. I’ve yet to match my time on the treadmill, at least in part because of traffic. Yesterday I stood in a crosswalk looking impatient while half a dozen cars passed; I felt justified in shaving that 20 seconds off my time. Today, on the other hand, a car actually stopped for me in the same crosswalk. Since there was a car speeding toward us in the opposite direction, I just shrugged helplessly. But the considerate motorist seemed bent on being courteous, and the other motorist, seeing that one car was already stopped for me, also stopped. Amazing! I was too intrigued by this drama to even notice how many seconds that diversion had cost me.

Is the postscript obsolete?

I was reading the Letters to the Editor in a magazine this morning (The Rotarian, if you must know), and one of them included a P.S. That got me to thinking, not for the first time, about the logic of postscripts in today’s world of electronic communication.

A postscript (P.S. = post scriptum) is something added as an afterthought after you’ve written and signed a letter. In a handwritten letter, it is easy to understand. Even in a typed letter, it is not unreasonable: an executive might dictate a letter, which his secretary laboriously typed (perhaps more than once to get it letter-perfect), and when he read it over before signing, he thought of something else he wanted to add. He might write it in by hand, or he might ask the secretary to run it back through her typewriter and tack it onto the end.

In dealing with word processors, however, where additional material can easily be added to the body of the letter and a new copy printed (and it would actually be a challenge to run an existing letter back through the printer to tack on a postscript), do postscripts make any sense?

Well, no, they don’t. Not in terms of logic and logistics, anyway. So why do we still see them?

Because material added as a postscript invariably catches the reader’s eye. Marketing materials (“junk mail” letters printed in the tens or hundreds of thousands) frequently make use of them. And while we may not be deceived by the use of Courier New to give the impression of typed material (is any office still using Courier for letters, anyway?), we can’t help being drawn to that P.S. It seems to say, “But wait! There’s more!” And even if we didn’t read the rest of the letter, there’s that one last chance that we’ll be drawn in by the clincher reserved for the last possible minute.

Another use is to add a handwritten personal note to a form letter sent to multiple recipients. But does that really dull the blow of realizing that you didn’t rate a personal letter?

It could therefore be argued that a postscript has no place in a sensible business letter. When you have received (or thought of) new or additional information, it may color or change what you have already written, and you owe it to your reader to incorporate that new information in what you have already presented, so as not to waste the reader’s time.

So save that “P.S. I love you” for your handwritten note, where it will certainly be appreciated.

Not Idling

As you can see, the subtitle of this blog is “Idle thoughts while walking.” In my first post, I established that I’d record any interesting or compelling thoughts I had while taking my daily constitutional. The blog has expanded to reportage of things I’ve seen, weather phenomena, and a number of other totally unrelated subjects, but I try not to stray too far from the initial concept.

When I am walking around the neighborhood, there are a good many things to be seen: houses being torn down, new houses being built (a particular favorite of mine), changing vegetation, and so on. My thoughts range freely and more or less uninterruptedly, and I frequently find myself mentally composing letters, blog posts, technical articles, book reviews, and the like.

During these torrid days of summer, however, I have relied more and more on “the gym” for my exercise, and my thoughts while on the elliptical machine tend to run along the lines of “Will this never end?” And while I am walking on the treadmill, I read. What I mostly read is Newsweek, and, when I am not concentrating on the article I’m ostensibly reading, I am checking the time, distance, and calories burned and wondering if I will be able to finish the current article before I reach the point at which I usually stop.

Not a lot of blog fodder there. When not exercising, though, I have recently been reading Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth. Although I’d always been aware that there was such a novel, I’d never felt any pressing desire to read it until my husband and I visited Kenilworth Castle (or what remains of it) this summer, and our curiosity was piqued. He inquired in the gift shop and learned that of course they sold copies, but the Penguin edition they offered seemed to him to have very small type, so he passed on that. Returning home, we found that the single copy in our library (one of only two in the entire county library system) is a Large Print edition!

This should have been ideal, and indeed it was easy on the eyes. But the book is not exactly beach reading, and I frequently had cause to wish we’d gotten the Penguin edition, which includes historical essays, notes, and a glossary. That last would have been the most useful feature. My husband ended up ordering The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on CD because he was looking up so many words (and not finding all of them). I found that The Free Dictionary was usually helpful; failing that, Google searches turned up most of the rest.

Scott uses an archaic vocabulary (including words that were archaic even in his own time) that can pose a challenge to the most educated reader, though in most cases the words are for atmosphere only, and their meaning is not critical to understanding or can be deduced from the context. In some cases, Scott seems to have actually made words up. For example, judging from online discussions, the word ferrateen is unknown; speculation is that Scott may have meant ferrandine (a fabric made of silk and wool), or that he had formed the word based on ferret (another fabric) by analogy with velveteen. In other cases he uses a variant spelling (chopin for chopine,
peacod for peascod, puckfoist for puckfist). He uses ingle in a context that suggests that it means “neighbor” or “chum,” but there seems to be no dictionary support for this use. Since one of the characters is a mercer and another masquerading as a peddler, there are many words for various kinds of fabrics; other words describe period clothing or armor. Many of the words are insults. I learned that bots is a disease of cattle, that watchet is pale blue, that a brulziement is a lively argument and a wittol a cuckold, that chough (a kind of bird) is used as an insulting term for a Welshman, and that a stithy is the same as a smithy.

While it cannot be denied that Scott knows how to spin a gripping yarn, I found myself increasingly aware of how much he had twisted and distorted history to his own purposes. The “Historical inaccuracies” section of the Wikipedia article on Kenilworth points out even more discrepancies than I had recognized. In the end, this tainted for me what would otherwise have been a quite satisfying story, told with verve and considerable humor.

Much more to my liking are Susan Wittig Albert’s “Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter,” which are carefully researched and well written and, with a minimum of historical license, present a picture of Beatrix Potter that is quite charming, together with gentle, extremely “cozy” mysteries, suitable for children or adults. I read The Tale of Hobby How while traveling this summer and was so taken with it that, immediately upon my return, I ran to my library for all the rest, and it didn’t take me long to decide that they would be a good topic for a presentation in the library’s Book Review & Lecture Series, of which I am program chairman. Since I was having trouble filling all the slots for the Fall series, I was pleased to be able to slot myself into one of them! Against this presentation, I’ve been reading biographies of Potter and even Albert’s previous novel featuring her, Death at Gallows Green (written with her husband, Bill) under the pen name of Robin Paige. It is proving to be very enjoyable research!

Another One Bites the Dust

One drawback to walking outside only once a week is that I lose track of what’s going on in my neighborhood. Today I was alarmed to see an excavator in the front yard of the little pink stucco cottage around the corner from me on Summit Street. As I approached, I could see that the house appeared to have been gutted, and there was a building permit staked in the yard.

When we moved to this neighborhood in 1980, our house (by virtue of having already been built onto) was the largest one on the block, with the possible exception of the two corner houses that face on Bayview Street, which runs along the bluff overlooking the bay. Since then our next-door neighbors on both sides have essentially doubled the size of their houses with additions, as have other neighbors down the street in both directions. Of the thirteen houses on the street, five are new construction, made possible by demolition of existing houses. Needless to say, each new house is larger than the former one.

The case of the little pink house will be no different, I’m sure. It sits on one side of a double lot, so its replacement will doubtless spread out to fill the allowable area and will almost certainly be two stories high. The existing single-story house has just two small bedrooms and one bath, a modest living/dining room, and a combined kitchen and breakfast room, plus a small screened front porch. A pull-down stair once provided access to an attic that appears to be standing height at the center. The house also boasts a daylight basement (rare in this area), but today there was water standing in it from yesterday’s rain, and it smelled dank and unusable.

Probably no one will really mourn the loss of this house. Much of its flooring has been removed, exposing rotting subfloor. Paneling in the bedrooms has likewise been removed to reveal faded and mildewed wallpaper. The breakfast room, with windows on three sides, must have been very pleasant, and what was left of the kitchen looked promising. It may well have been a cozy abode. Still, the owners’ attempts to sell or even rent it had not met with much success of late, and it had stood empty for many months.

It will be interesting to see what takes its place.

Another Milestone

My brother in Japan called last night (already today for him) to be the first to wish me happy birthday. He commented that now I would be able to go and get a free flu shot. This was a reference to the fact that I am now eligible for Medicare. My “Medicare-approved PPO plan” (Blue Advantage) has been inundating me with mail, including a reminder that among the preventive services I can get for free are not only pneumonia, Hepatitis B, and flu shots, but also bone mass measurement and colorectal screening. How’s that for depressing?

At this point I guess I’m ready to admit to being “middle-aged,” but I am not yet ready to be considered elderly. My grocery store has parking spaces (next to the handicapped spaces) reserved for Senior Citizens. I have yet to use one. Some years ago I saw a woman of my acquaintance, youthful, fit, and dark-haired (the last perhaps artificially) getting out of her car parked in one of these spaces. I remarked on her choice, and she said indignantly, “Well, I am 65 years old!”

I was actually rather surprised, since I hadn’t thought of her as “old,” and I hope that people would feel the same in my case, but I am not about to throw in the towel yet. Yes, I’m a bit arthritic, but walking is good for me; it certainly won’t hurt me to walk a few feet farther. When you see me parking in a Senior Citizen space, you will know I have one foot in the grave.

Walking Through Soup

Because the Methodist church “gym” where I have been exercising on weekdays is not open on Sundays, I had no choice but to walk outside, so I was viewing the weather with more interest than usual. Although the forecast for today was for rain, the sun had put in a tentative appearance at daybreak. Not long thereafter, however, the skies darkened and there followed a very small shower (so slight that areas of the street under trees were still dry).

When I was ready to hit the street, it was still looking like rain, and in fact a few scattered drops were still falling—nothing to deter a determined walker with a broad-brimmed sunhat, however. Not long after I turned the corner, though, it began to rain in earnest. Still not a deterrent: in fact, the moisture was a lot pleasanter falling than when it had been hovering around like a thick soup. It even promised to drop the temperature a little.

Then, about two-thirds of the way through my walk, the rain stopped. The clouds parted, the sun came fiercely out, and the streets began to steam, creating the Turkish bath effect we here on the Gulf Coast know so well. Fortunately, a mild breeze picked up, out of the south so it was blowing full in my face, and this helped a little (at least until I turned the corner onto my street).

Earlier this week we had a slight cooling trend, with lows in the mid-60s instead of the high 70s (though daytime highs were still hitting well over 90). Now we’re back to our typical August misery. But never let it be said that our weather lacks variety!

Public Conveniences

An inevitable part of traveling is visiting public restrooms, and when we travel abroad, most of us inevitably compare the public restrooms with what we are familiar with at home, which in my case is the United States. Public restrooms here vary greatly in the degree to which functions are automated. Among the automatic features that are possible are automatic toilets (activated by an “electric eye,” these often flush more often than needed if not adjusted properly), automatic faucets (controlled by a thermal sensor that can be rather frustrating for those with cold hands), automatic soap dispensers (rather rare but quite a luxury when they work properly), automatic towel dispensers (sometimes one wears oneself out waving in front of their sensors), and automatic hand dryers (again, it can be a challenge to keep one’s hands positioned in the “sweet spot” to keep these going).

Other, less savory, variations include the absence of toilet paper, towels, or soap; toilets that won’t flush; broken hand dryers (coupled with absence of paper towels); faucets that won’t stay on long enough for one to wash both hands at once and consequently have to be held down with one hand while futilely attempting to wash the other single-handed (whoever designed these instruments of torture evidently never heard the proverb “One hand washes the other”). And of course there is great variation in the general cleanliness of the restrooms, degree of luxury, etc.

Travelers abroad, however, face additional variations, including some challenges, such as pay toilets. The current price to “spend a penny” at Victoria Station in London is 20p (though you do get a Dyson Airblade to dry your hands), and in Paris I encountered an even more insidious entrapment: if you haven’t paid to get into a stall (because someone held the door for you), you are (apparently) locked in and can’t get out! Surely this must be a violation of the fire code!

Travelers to Japan invariably comment on the sanitary arrangements there, where toilets range from essentially a hole in the floor to Toto Washlets (some with remote controls) that bathe your bottom with warm water and dry it with heated air. The other feature of Japanese restrooms that is commonly remarked on is the notable lack of privacy in men’s rooms, where maids are apt to come in and go about their business oblivious of men doing theirs, or where the urinals are often open to public view (as in the Kyoto train station).

Our most recent trip, however, was to England, where we encountered not only the typical variation in automation but also certain other quaint features not usually seen Stateside.

One of these, of course, is the persistence of toilets with elevated wall-mounted tanks, activated by a pull-chain. Although we may have seen these in more than one location, the one pictured here was in a restroom at Stonehenge.

Another phenomenon frequently encountered is a restroom carved out of a tiny space. The one shown below, in the Bridge Coffee Shop in Bath, can perhaps best be appreciated by realizing that the photo was taken from the corridor outside the room since the space inside was too small for taking a picture.

It was probably not the smallest restroom we encountered. Shown below is the sink from another tiny one, in Café Loco in Oxford.

In contrast to the restrooms we encountered at tourist sites in Japan, many of which were so loathsome that one just resolved to “hold it,” most of those we used in England were quite nice. For example, the “public convenience” located near Magdalene Bridge in Cambridge was very attractive and sparklingly clean, as can be seen below (even if the utilitarian stainless steel toilets were reminiscent of those seen on planes and trains).

At another public convenience, this one in Reigate, Surrey, I experienced, for the second time (but the first time functioning), a fixture made by Wallgate that combines a lavatory (with soap) and a hand dryer in a single wall-mounted unit, shown below.

English pride and self-respect are clearly invested in these public restrooms. At 1 Royal Crescent in Bath, a restroom had been wedged into a tiny outdoor building, with the evident intention of making the best of a bad situation. It wasn’t deluxe but certainly served the purpose, so I was amused by the apologetic notice posted above the sink (below). Note also that hot water is supplied from a small “on-demand” boiler installed just for this purpose.

At an preschool we visited in Reigate, the “adult” restrooms were for some reason closed, so we used the ones designed for the children. Not surprisingly, the size and height of the toilets and sinks were adapted for their tiny users, but I was amused by the label on the soap dispenser.

Almost as entertaining as the restrooms themselves, however, were the signs that labeled them. On landing at Gatwick the first time we visited England (in March 2008), even before we reached Passport Control or Customs, we availed ourselves of restrooms, and I remarked that women in England seemed to be stuck in the 1960s, wearing crinolines under their puffy skirts. (Like the Venus de Milo, they are also without arms.)

We never saw this particular icon anywhere else, though we did notice considerable variation in the icons used. The typical U.S. icons, which are also prevalent in Britain, are shown below:

At the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, however, I commented that the women appeared to be wearing overcoats:

The public convenience in Cambridge showed a variety of different icons:

But perhaps the most charming were those on the children’s restrooms at the preschool we visited:

It would probably surprise no one that fascination with public restrooms is not uncommon, but I was amused to find that interest in restroom icons is also widespread. A Google Images search for “restroom icons” turns up many intriguing variations, including the jaunty ones at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, removable “wall art” for weddings, and a priceless version from Austin Neon that alludes to a “can’t hold it any longer” condition.

Walking Abroad

We recently returned from nearly three weeks in Europe, and for the past few days I’ve been holed up trying to wade through three weeks’ worth of newspapers and answer accumulated email and newsgroup posts. Although I dressed to go to “the gym” yesterday, my husband returned reporting that it was unusable because of broken AC and noxious, possibly even toxic, fumes, so when I hit the street for a walk this morning, it was the first real exercise I’d gotten since our return on Tuesday.

Although I didn’t attempt anything resembling my standard 2.1-mile fitness walk while we were abroad, that’s not to say I didn’t do any walking! Since our daughter doesn’t have a car or drive in England (her husband drives their car to work), anywhere we went in their town, we went on foot. We did walk into and around town several times, and once we accompanied her on a longish trek to a nearby (in motorist terms) school to have her baby weighed.

In addition, we:

• Thoroughly covered the ground at the Historic Dockyards in Portsmouth (much of it in the rain).
• Traipsed around Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath for several days.
• Saw every nook and cranny of Hampton Court Palace (much of it more than once, as we kept getting lost) and some of its gardens.
• Climbed all over Kenilworth Castle (many flights of steps).
• Explored Cambridge and Greenwich (one day each).
• Tramped around miscellaneous portions of London, becoming intimately familiar with the geography between St. Pancras and King’s Cross stations and the nearby hotel where we stayed before and after our day trip to Paris.
• Climbed down the Eiffel Tower (luckily we’d gone up in the elevator).
• Trekked through the Jardin des Tuileries from the Musée du Louvre to the Place de la Concorde and back, a distance of well over a mile (and that doesn’t even count the amount of walking we did trying to find our way out of the Louvre from our group’s meeting point in the Carrousel shopping mall). This would have been a pleasant stroll in milder weather, but as we were leaving Paris in late afternoon, we passed a bank time-temperature display showing 33° C. (91° F.), so it was a pretty sweaty walk, especially given the limited time we had available.

And of course we were mostly on our feet throughout the time we were visiting various museums (such as the Churchill Museum and Imperial War Museum in London and the Royal Naval Museum in Greenwich). The one actual walk that was planned, a tramp from the Cotswold village of Bourton-on-the-Water to the picturesque Slaughters (Upper and Lower), was rained out, and there was at least one “free day” when I didn’t budge from my daughter’s house, but we did make up for it in other ways. For example, the day we flew home, which might have been expected to be largely sedentary, met expectations between Gatwick and Atlanta, but when we arrived in Atlanta, we found that our flight to Mobile had been canceled, and the comedy of errors that ensued (rebooking, getting on standby lists) had us shuttling between two concourses several times before we settled down. By the time we finally got home, many hours later than planned, we felt like we’d had plenty of exercise!

A Beef and Ale Tour

We just returned from nearly three weeks in England, which, aside from the travel to and from, were almost unalloyed pleasure. Among the pleasurable experiences was the food.

If you are one of those who still subscribe to the myth that English food is bland and unattractive, I can only suggest that you give it a chance. We found it almost unexceptionally outstanding. Although the village where our daughter and son-in-law live is no larger than our town, the grocery options are much more varied, especially in the area of fresh produce. In comparison to most parts of the United States, the English are much more committed to local produce, organically grown, and fair-trade products. As on our first visit, we were amazed by the variety and quality of prepared sandwiches available from M&S Simply Food (the grocery subsidiary of Marks & Spencer). Using free-range chicken and eggs, organically grown produce, and other high-quality products, these sandwiches are tasty and attractive—quite unlike anything available at a comparable price in the States. Other prepared foods we sampled were equally outstanding, including some incredibly cheap (£1.50) frozen pizzas from Tesco.

We experienced a variety of restaurant and takeaway cuisine: the obligatory fish and chips a couple of times, Chinese twice, excellent restaurant pizzas twice. My son-in-law made us a great prawn curry. And at the venerable Falkland Arms pub in Great Tew, Oxfordshire, we lucked into a special event and enjoyed spit-turned (rotisserie barbecue) lamb baps (sandwiches on large, soft round rolls) with salad (quite a variety, including a delicious potato mayonnaise) for just £6. For our road trips, we made sandwiches at home, including the quintessentially English (Cheddar) cheese and (Branston) pickle.

I seemed to luck into salmon (both plain and smoked) quite a few times, but what became a theme (to the point that I made it a crusade) was beef and ale (or steak and ale) pie. I ended up sampling the versions of five different pubs, all different, all excellent, and all, as the photos below demonstrate, very attractively presented.

The first version was the Steak and Tanglefoot Pie at The Black Horse in Horley, Surrey (near Gatwick). This is “a local pub owned and run by a centuries-old independent family brewer,” Hall & Woodhouse in Dorset, “one of the few remaining regional family brewers,” which has “brewed Badger ales and offered a warm welcome since 1777.” Among their ales is Tanglefoot, which is used in the pie.

The next version came from The Waiting Room, the bar/restaurant of our hotel, the Premier Inn at 26–30 York Way, London (near King’s Cross and St. Pancras rail stations). If I recall correctly, it claimed to use Ruddles County ale (a product of Greene King Brewery). As can be seen from the photos, accompaniments varied, usually including some mixture of vegetables plus potatoes in some form. From the offered selection (chips, jacket potato, boiled potatoes, etc.), this time I chose “Dauphinoise” potatoes, which were described as being in a cheesy sauce. Sort of like au gratin potatoes, but much better! (Recipes I found online vary widely; some do not include cheese, but all include heavy cream and are very rich.)

Version number three was the British Beef and King’s Ale Pie served at the Tiltyard Café at Hampton Court Palace in East Molesey, Surrey. It marked the first and last appearance of mushy peas as a side dish.

From the audio guide at Hampton Court Palace we learned that meat pies are as much a cooking method (alongside roasting, baking, and boiling) as a way of serving meat. In medieval times, when food was eaten directly from the table, or perhaps from a wooden trencher or a slab of bread used as a plate, the pie crust served as a dish for meat cooked in a stew. The meat and vegetable mixture was prepared separately, in a large cauldron, and then ladled into the prepared crusts and baked. Diners would break the top crust and eat the contents of the pie, leaving the crust uneaten. Since it was just a flour-and-water mixture, it would not have been very tasty, anyway. In contrast, the pastry of all the pies we had was a delicious short crust, and we devoured every last crumb!

Next came the Beef and Ale Pie from the Queen & Castle (a Beefeater pub), Castle Green, Kenilworth, Warwickshire.

The final version, and perhaps the best, was the British Beef and Ale Pie offered by The Prince Regent (a Greene King pub, as most in Cambridge seemed to be) at 91 Regent Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. This was the first time we’d had a pie that was not individual and self-contained. My husband and I presumably got the two halves of a single pie, and it was quite possibly the best of the lot.

In most cases, it seemed appropriate to accompany these dishes with ale; in Cambridge, where the University is celebrating its octocentenary, we couldn’t resist the offer of Cambridge Octocentennial Ale.