I could look up the maps on Google Earth but, really, it was over 40 years back, and though one of the roads I remembered was a truly ancient, pre-Christian track and is unlikely to have shifted its route too much, surrounding roads, old and new, seem to come and go with increasing rapidity, so much so that I sometimes can’t recognize them at first sight.
So, anyway, clumsily, to ‘dripping’, being the fallen fat and juices from an oven roast, collected in the roasting pan, strained, and allowed to cool in a small covered pot.
They were talking about it in my comments yesterday, and, on a long, dark day, I’ve been thinking about this old-fashioned and much-maligned delicacy, over and over.
The delicious, dark brown jelly that settles out in the pot, and which can be scraped off and used for one of the most tasty and curative spreads on a chunk of bread. The loose, open-grained ‘lard’ that remains, and which makes a completely unique, meaty fat for the fry pan.
Yes, I know. Sounds disgusting, to modern tastes, anyway. But when I were a young ‘un, half a century back and beyond, it was a sought-after delicacy, and the nicest thing you could say about a chippie was that they ‘still fry in dripping’.
Not something you hear too often these days. In fact, the last time I regularly bought my fish’n'chips in a dripping chippie was when I lived in Battersea, in London and, on Friday evening, would walk the long way along the old, old road, into Wandsworth, past the jail on the right and then into a tiny old shop on the left hand side where… they still fried in dripping.
It cost more than my local chippie. If my memory serves it was 2s 3d a portion rather than 1s 9d. And that sixpence was the cost of a return bus ride between Battersea and Wandsworth. Hence the walk.
And that’s about the extent of the memory. I suppose I could craft a creepy London story around it. But… I count myself fortunate to be able to recall such delicacy, and my pursuit of it. Story-making on the side would be a little too rich for my palate now.
Anyway, not the greatest of days in the little old house in the valley today.
We slept late, woke in a confused state because it was so mid-winter dark and the gutters, which have been freeze-dry for such a long time, were roaring and gushing outside. The house was warm and cosy, even though half the loft insulation remains to be done, but no matter how many lamps we lit it seemed to stay dark indoors. That throaty, granular dark I remember from my London days, so long ago, when the lamps seemed too feeble to reach into the corners.
And, when we got to Wickes, the dark had crept in even there. It was pouring with rain but even so, I was determined to have a sausage-inna-bun and, if possible, to take a picture of it.
The young man in the burger van was invisible at first, all huddled up in a bat-cloaked black gothick heap in a corner. I was surprised, really, that when he unfolded his legs, there were no bat wings to be seen. He was nice enough, though, polite and smiling and, I tell you, on a dark Welsh mid-winter morning, that’s a high-value currency. So much so that you can forgive the pimples.
It was too dark and too wet to take a photo, sadly, even if it hadn’t been for Graham’s caution not to get the camera wet.
Sainsbury’s was lighter, but the day had already been soured for us so we did a fast five-day provision and came back home, driving over dark, unhelpful roads.
It was good to turn down into our little road along the side of the valley. Still dark. Still wet. But it’s our wet, and our dark, and the kind of day when you ought really to stay home and enjoy the comfort of your own dark corners.
