Honourable's, music teachers and cow-pats
Thinking back, a lot of episodes in my life have involved cows. When I say cows I refer without exception to the female version of the bovine animal and defiantly not, quote 'an unpleasant or disliked woman' unquote. I am, after all, far too much of a gentleman to tell of episodes of that kind.
Despite, unusually, having two goes at the eleven plus I failed to follow in my sisters footsteps to the local grammar school. This, an embarrassment compounded ten or so years later when a young political wannabe did just that. I console myself with the belief that had I been adorned with the middle name of Jefferson and, maybe another try or two at that troublesome exam, I now could be the Foreign Secretary. A job with a fair bit of travel and a very agreeable expenses regime.
I could even be 'The Right Honourable BrianR'...
The truth is my secondary education was inflicted by the local secondary modern. Compared to the junior school, behind which it hid, it was quite modern. That school had a history going back 300 or so years. The original charity school was founded as a direct result of the last will and testament of a guy called George Ellis. The school and adjoining house were rebuilt in 1791 by order of, among others Earl Fitzwilliam, or to be more precise The Right Honourable Earl Fitzwilliam.
Other than the age of its primary feeder school my secondary had little to distinguish it from the hundreds of other secondary modern schools of the time. That is apart from the fact it had a school farm. Indeed it had a separate academic agricultural stream. Unfortunately having been identified by the local education authority as not bright enough to be given a grammar school place, thus scuppering an chance of becoming honourable the school assumed I was too bright for farming, thus scuppering any chance of a farmyard full of 4x4's paid for by letting weeds grow around the margins of my fields.
So despite being a pupil of a school with its own working farm my earliest bovine encounters were during the walk to and from the afore said centre of village education...
The route to and from school for me and my mates, Cookie and Pudding (I never realised that I had school friends with food related names, before) involved walking up and down the grandly named Manor Road. Actually this was only a lane but it did, to be fair, have the local manor house at one end. Halfway down the lane or up, depending whether you were coming or going was where the real fun took place. On one side were half a dozen, quite well to do, semi-detached houses. Not quite as well to do as the Manor House but certainly a step up from our council supplied dwellings. On the other side was the entrance to Downing's Farm and one of his fields. This field was where, presumably for logistical reasons he kept his milking cows. Inexplicably, all though it never crossed my mind at the time, the cows had to be brought out of the field onto the lane for 100 yards or so and then back into the farm yard for milking.
Cows, much like seagulls seem to go whenever the need takes them. It was these 'pats' that supplied three blazer'd and satchel'd school kids meandering backwards and forwards to school with much, much, pleasure and fun.
Just a quick note for any reader not of a certain age. A satchel was a purposely designed shoulder bag for transporting books and writing implements to and from school and between lessons. For some it was a matter of pride to have your satchel so rammed with books you couldn't fasten the flap. For the likes of me, Cookie and Pudding the opposite was true. We may not have been the most academic but I for one have never suffered a bad back. A book by the way was a collection of static web pages printed on to paper and bound together with something called an index at the back. This index was the early form of search engine and consisted of an alphabetic list of keywords with corresponding page numbers. Don't laugh!
The cow dung aficionados amongst you will know when a cow, how can we put it delicately, passes poo, it is a somewhat sloppy business. On a warm summers day it is not long till this sloppy faecal matter starts to dry and forms a crust and thus forms the classic cow-pat. Now if you use your cow-pats as fuel you obviously need them to dry out completely but for me and my mates a nice crust and a soft core was the ideal pat.
I can't tell you of the sheer pleasure Cookie, Pudding and me used to get from throwing small stones and pebbles in to freshly crusted over cow-pats. It was just the beauty of the precision with which a well aimed pebble pierced the crust and buried itself in the soft centre. Unfortunately a retired music teacher who lived in one of the houses opposite the farm didn't share our enjoyment of cow-pat stoning. He preferred to shovel them up and put them on his roses and didn't appreciate the addition of our 'cow-pat ammo'. I must say that for an oldie, carrying a bucket and shovel he couldn't half move.
I mention that the bucket and shovel guy was a music teacher, albeit a retired one because of the issues I had with music teachers. My mother used to send me for private piano lessons. Not only did I feel this was an uncool thing to do, the teacher wasn't very pleasant. She didn't seem to understand that it was physically impossible for my little fingers to span the number of keys she wanted them to, not to mention that my little legs dangled at least 6 inches above the peddles. I wasn't very good, to quote Eric Morecambe, I played all the right notes just not necessarily in the right order.
Back to the cow poo. The reason cow poo is so sloppy is probably down to the fact they are blessed, if that is the right word, with four stomachs or according to Wikipedia one stomach with four compartments, but there is no need to be pedantic here. It was the lining of one of these stomachs or chambers that I picked up from the supermarket in a moment of stupidity. This unpleasant feeling pack of tripe sat in my fridge for days while I did a little research into this unusual product. Bad move, the more I read the less I fancied it.
Eventually, with the best before date approaching (you have no idea how ironic that is) I followed the old mantra 'waste not wont not', I decided to face my growing squeamishness. I remember eating tripe with malt vinegar or cooked in milk with onions in my youth but neither of which I was eager to revisit. A quick trip round the internet and I'm surprised how many nations embrace this slippery offal. I eventually go for Trippa alla Romana, after all you can't go wrong with Italian can you. Can you?
Tripe simmered for a hour or more in water with vinegar and, strangely, vanilla extract till tender. Drained and sautéed over a high heat for a couple of minutes with garlic and onion before adding a tomato sauce and simmering for a further half an hour. Served up in a bowl and sprinkled with Parmesan and chopped fresh mint, it certainly looked the business, it even tasted the business, or it would have had it not been for the texture! I can put aside the revolting appearance of a plate of food and appreciate it's taste. I can put aside the revolting smell of a plate of food and appreciate it's taste. I can not put aside the revolting texture of cow's stomach lining in my mouth. Ever! I seem to recollect a quote along the lines of 'the only two things you shouldn't try before you die are incest and...'. Unfortunately I can't remember what the second thing was but if it was tripe I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Here a few tripe facts and tips taken from the Tripe Marketing Board's website, yes there really is such a thing.
In the 1920s, there were something like half a million tripe shops in Lancashire and an estimated 2,000 tripe shops and restaurants in Wigan alone! - I know a girl from Wigan and she can eat for Britain but I'm not sure she would be a tripe eater.
Plagued by infestations of cockroaches, rats or other household pests? Simply leave a bowl of tripe out overnight and in the morning, hey presto, problem solved. The pests are either dead or guaranteed never to return - pests and burglars presumably.
Prisoners of the Spanish Inquisition were forced to either eat tripe or be burnt at the stake. Many chose the latter - I can relate to that.
Tripe juice is an excellent cure for a hangover - probably cure drinking altogether let alone hangovers.
A diet of tripe can increase your libido by up to 400% - I'll stick with my sexual apathy thanks.
To cure hair loss, simply wrap a sheet of tripe around your head and secure with a swimming cap - much like above I'll remain follicly challenged thanks.
The first tripe takeaway, Tripe Hut, opened in Manchester in 1979. It closed the following year - it stayed open that long!
According to the website, the Tripe Marketing Board was set up in 1992. It was originally known as The Tripe Industry Development Council and, briefly, the British Tripe Council. Before that it was known as The Association For The Legal Disposal Of Unwanted Cow Products.
That just about says it all!
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