My mother was very good at stretching the little bit of money she had for bringing up a family of five. Every so often she would send me down to the local butcher to ask for a whole pig’s head, with orders not to allow the butcher to charge more than a few shillings! She was well known in the village and the shopkeepers looked after whenever she was broke. The butcher would loosely wrap the pig’s head in some meat paper and then into a carrier bag. Being the child that had to explore things, I had fun with the pig.
On the walk home, I would take the head out of the paper and carrier bag and stick it under my arms facing the direction I was walking. I thought this was amusing and loved the expressions on the pedestrians that walked past me. There was always this strange expression on their faces, fear, concern, worry! I would always nod the pig’s head for effect. My mum did find out about my antics when one of her friends dobbed me in to her. She was annoyed with her, but she often was, so that’s no big deal!
I presume mum had a trusted recipe that she knew off by heart. It would always involve putting the whole head in a large aluminium pot with some water and boiling the hell out of it for several hours until it fell apart. I remember how the house stank during the cooking. The smell was always worse if I went outside and returned back in a short while later. It was a smell that I can’t describe and I hated it. The worse part of this was that I knew what mum was making.
Some hours after the boiling, mum would strip the best bits from the lump of mess, feed it through her worktop mangle, and then press it into her trusted big pudding bowl – the same one that she made christmas pudding in! If Tom Kerridge had seen it, he would have watched in horror! Though I should say he wasn’t even born yet. After seasoning was added, the pudding was put in the fridge to firm off before being ready to serve some time later. By this stage any resemblance of this being a pig were gone. Through mum’s hand it had become a brawn loaf.
None of us kids liked it, but that doesn’t count apparently, because mum and dad did, so we should too. My siblings outright refused to eat any when offered, but I always felt sorry after all the work she’d put in and out of sympathy I didn’t have the heart to refuse. For many years my mum thought I liked brawn. Believe me, I didn’t. I hated it and found many ways of vanishing it from my plate without anyone spotting. Pockets, tissues, and when the dog was around, he hung around me at the table, knowing he was going to get a sneaky treat.
One morning, I was getting ready for school when I spotted mum in the kitchen preparing my packed lunch. My heart dropped when I seen her cutting slices of brawn for my sandwiches. Not a good day for school lunch and I wasn’t going to eat that! At the time, I was about 13 years of age and I used to cycle the 3 miles to the secondary modern school in Gloucester. Part of the route to school took me up Upton Lane where, half way along it, I turned off and cycled through the Coney Hill Mental Hospital grounds. It was where my dad worked as a boiler attendant. So it was a treat to pass the boiler house, ringing my bell and hoping dad would wave at me through the mess room window.
On this morning, I was riding up Upton Lane when I put my plan into action. Without stopping the bike, I reached into my satchel on my back, pulled out the Mother’s Pride bag which my sandwiches were stored in, swung it around my head, like a cowboy lasso, and lobbed it with full force towards the field off to the side. Mission completed successfully! I had a sense of relief that I didn’t have to put up with that smell in my satchel any more. God knows what I had for dinner later. Relieved of the brawn sandwiches, I carried on cycling towards school, ringing the bell at dad’s boiler house on the way.
I returned home later that day and on entering the kitchen instantly sensed something was up. I was stood at the kitchen sink drinking some water from my plastic tumber when my dad came in from the shed. Then mum came in the kitchen as well. I knew something was definitely up.
“Are you hungry?”, my dad enquired.
“Yes a little bit“, I replied hesitantly.
“Did you eat your sandwiches dinner time?”, mum asked.
“Um, yes mum, they were lovely“.
“Really? Are you sure laddy?” dad said in a threatening voice.
“Yes“, I insisted. This ping pong Spanish inquisition continued for a few minutes more, me lying through my back teeth, describing how nice the brawn sandwiches were. I had no idea why they were picking on me. And then mum moved towards the fridge and opened the door. She lifted a Mother’s Pride bag out, filled with bits of bread, brawn and crusts.
“So you ate your sandwiches, did you? Are you certain of that?”
“Yes I did. Why? What’s that?”
Dad took control of the situation speaking loudly.
“When I left work at 2 oclock and was coming down Upton Lane, I spotted this bag, hanging off a barbed wire fence near the roadside. This wouldn’t be your sandwiches would it?”
“No,” I insisted, feeling like a fox stuck in the headlights.
“So, how many other mum’s make brawn sandwiches and pack them in a Mother’s Pride bag?” retorted my dad, as if driving the last nail in the coffin of a liar.
“These are yours. You dumped them on the way to school. I know you did. Not good enough for you? Your mother went to a lot of effort to make them, and you just threw them away.“
I knew I’d been caught, hook, line and sinker.
“Well son, you’re having what’s left in this bag for tea, or you’re going hungry.”
I starved that night, only managing to sneak into the kitchen later and steal a dry nobby from the bread bin.
The only good thing that came out of that incident was that I never got brawn sandwiches again, and to this day I still hate brawn. Sorry mum! How observant was my dad though!
