Food Does The Talking
In families where poetic declarations of love are in short supply, Where simple shoves on shoulders celebrate milestone events, And grunts and nodding heads stand in for ecstatic celebrations, Food does the talking.
“You’ve done well there love!”, a spiced fruitcake waits in a battered tin, Currants and orange peel soaked with brandy and pride. A fathers’ way to say, you’ve achieved more than I could have ever dreamt and I can’t believe you’re mine.
Function rooms at the back of pubs set out with wallpaper tables, Their weak joints sagging from enough food to fuel a party that will last all night.
The buffet is the backing singer to the shy groom’s 4 lined speech. The mountain of vol-au-vents and leagues of scotch eggs screams from the tops of its lungs all the words he wishes he could say.
Snap tins filled lovingly with sustenance to fuel days down dark shafts,
Left without ceremony on the kitchen side. No words needed.
Just one tiny bite of the crusty bread says, Be careful, be safe; come home to me.
When Christmas morning can’t be filled with endless toys, presents frantically circled in argos catalogue remain firmly in the pages, Food does the talking
Mountains of turkey lovingly prepared by the family matriarch. “No one goes hungry on my watch”, she thinks, turning over potatoes in spitting lard.
“You’ve done alright there Mum” mutters a grown up son, Translating loosely to god knows where I’d be, without all the things you’ve done.
Exploring the local fish market skating along its slippery floors, hand in hand.
Buying cockles and prawns drowned in pink sauce and always from the same stall.
The passing on of a sacred ritual from his childhood long gone, sharing things he did with his mum and her mum before.
Eating becomes an act of remembrance.
In families where poetic declarations of love are in short supply, Where simple shoves on shoulders celebrate milestone events, And grunts and nodding heads stand in for ecstatic celebrations, Food does the talking.
Alice Tomkinson
Maraschino
12 months of Christmas
Slept in my grandmother’s fridge door
Blushing winter cheeks year-round
Bathe bold as scarlet nails
Incorruptible fruits, formed For forbidden adult drinks
Tender, juicy cherries
Soaked in a maraschino fade
Soaked in love and safety
Hidden between the cushions
My saddled, childish growing pains
Drifted into tiny preserves
Stolen, sometimes given
Bursting arabesques
That break down walls
With the warmth
Of domestic hope
Faye Marshall
Faye runs a fun and friendly open mic poetry night, Cloth and Coal in Morley at Bar Resident, follow for updates:
@ClothandCoal @Lightandwhistle & @resident_morley
‘Man v Pigeon’
As Morley Bottoms’ OTTO Bar recently launched their ‘Chilli Challenge’, ever wondered what crazy food challenges Morley folk were enjoying in 1901?! An ‘epidemic of pigeon-eating contests’ swept the North of England in March 1901, dominating newspapers across the country for just one month.
On 21 February, Farnley man, “Long Tom” Helstrip began his wager to eat ‘14 Pigeons in 14 Days’, consuming one bird daily with ‘the usual portions of cabbage and potatoes in twenty-five minutes’ in front of an audience of ‘eighty people’.
On his final bird, he ‘obliged a firm of local photographers’ by eating ‘a fifteenth pigeon’.
Sadly I’ve not being able to track this photo down... Helstrip’s reward was ‘£10 and a new suit of clothes’, but there was also a ‘good deal of side betting’ involved in the contest too and speculation suggested Tom gained £50 from the wager in total (approx. £8000 today!).
It’s no surprise that countless other would-be pigeon eaters followed suit with their own wagers; as a southern reporter mused ‘any bodied man out of work would find pigeon eating remunerative, if he could get the people of the north roused’.
As ‘the spirit of emulation [became] rampant’, so did the desire to do ‘one better’ - including one man who ‘actually [ate] the bones... leaving only the two feet of the bird’, another sought ‘to eat 15 pigeons and a parrot (green) in 15 days’, and most disturbingly, ‘a Methley man...with his hands secured behind his back will catch, worry, and eat a rat in an enclosed space’.
The contests were short lived – I guess there’s only a certain number of times you can go to the pub to watch someone eat yet another pigeon. Reports as early as 9 March observed that ‘these contests are for the benefit of the publican and not of the public’ and ‘ought to be discouraged by the police’.
As well as reporting on the increasing number of challengers – often daily updates per pigeon eaten – a number of articles popped up speculating about the difficulties of the contest (or lack of). The general origin of the challenge was ‘that the peculiarly rich character of the pigeon’s flesh makes it more than ordinary hard to digest –a difficulty increasing with every day that passes’.
Morley also got involved with the ‘crack-brained’ craze, in a ‘gardener named Glover’ who won his wager ‘by eating fifteen roasted pigeons in fifteen consecutive days’. It seems others just were using the phenomenon as an excuse for a drink: ‘A Morley man has backed himself to drink a glass of beer in every licensed house in Morley in eight hours. There are 30...and it is a long way all around’. Sounds easier than eating 15 pigeons...
In 1907, a new challenge swept Dewsbury of ‘several great pea-eating competitions’. Contestants would ‘eat one [marrowfat] pea on the first day, and to go on doubling the number for fourteen days’, leaving them with ‘8192 peas in a single day’ to finish – or ‘ten pints’ of peas! The ‘World Champion’ pea eater, John William Catton, then claimed he’d ‘eat any man in England at anything that can be considered food’ alluding to challenges of eating rabbits, tripe, and treacle...
Bryony Brown
Image:Ben Denning
Jess Barlow- ‘Eggs Brekkie with a side of love’
Jess has prints for sale at Oscars, follow @art_jess.barlow
Nil by mouth
Nil by mouth when you’re scared
When you comfort eat for all your emotions
Nil by mouth and unprepared
For the slice of the knife
Nil by mouth and tummy grumbling
Awaiting the sleep of propofol my mind starts wandering
Who knows where I’ll go
The drugs leave no memory
Then you’re here
A beacon of light
An angel of the night
Bringing tea and toast to rapturous applause
The Sweetest of bread
The saltiest butter
Dripping from the sides
How can they serve this?
Tea so bland even Carlsberg wouldn’t buy it
But it’s the best god damn snack you will ever have
The trauma over
The recovery starts
With that tea and toast
The recovery starts
Kathleen Smith
@thegallery_morley
My Grandmother loved Blackpool and would make glossy eyed recounts of where to go and what to do. This was strange to me because she seemed to experience something different from the rest of us. As a child, what I mostly remember is the grubbiness of the place; chip boxes, peeling paint, half eaten hotdogs on the floor, speckled with fag ends. It was obvious that her feelings towards Blackpool were different from mine.
Between my Grandmother’s childhood and my own, Blackpool, like so many other coastal towns, had suffered severe decline. Impossibly limping on, they had cannibalised the format that had made them great. Gone were the ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hats. The saucy seaside postcard had become less gentle innuendo and more in your face pornography.
My Grandmother appeared not to notice these things. As we browsed the gift shops she didn’t mention the rock shaped penises or the inflatable breasts. She did however, giggle at the nostalgic postcards. My Grandmother preferred ‘saucy’ humour. A ‘Saucy’ joke categorised just after ‘cheeky’ but before ‘smut’. It is the humour that used to make a lady say ‘oooh’, turn to her companion and bite her bottom lip. Knowing what was being implied but no further explanation needed.
I remember the exact moment I became aware of my Grandmothers reality of Blackpool. I was queuing at an ice cream kiosk with my young son. Behind the counter was a display with an enlarged sepia photograph of the promenade from the 1930’s. The street was teeming with people. Everyone looked so smart, men in ties and jackets, women in hats and floral dresses. Clothed more for a wedding than a day at the seaside. A group of four young girls were walking arm in arm and laughing with beaming faces. I knew at once that this was the world that my Grandmother could still see in her reality.
Blackpool seems to have regenerated itself in recent years, the last time I visited, some parts where quite up market and even sophisticated but it certainly wasn’t my Grandmother’s Blackpool and it certainly was not the Blackpool in this sepia photograph, that was long gone.
The real shock for me was that my Grandmother’s mental image of the seaside was one that I could also imagine. Though I had not experienced it myself. The Donkeys and the doughnuts, lines of triangular Union Jacks fluttering along the promenade, an old man with a handkerchief hat and his trousers rolled up. Eating fish and chips from newspaper. Splashing vinegar into little tubs of cockles. Searching for the flattest stones to skim in the sea. Watching ‘Mr Punch’ batter his wife with a club and finding it bizarrely hilarious. We stood in front of mirrors that made us look fat and I feel almost certain I kissed someone in the ‘Tunnel of Love’ but I can’t for the life of me think who she was!
The noisy excitement of dropping copper coins in the machines and those long days on the beach, the sun shining, surrounded by loved ones. We built sandcastles and topped them with patriotic flags, filled our dug out holes with buckets of brown sea water and collected shells. In the far away, over the heads of all the multitudes of happy people a brass band played ‘Tiddely-Om-Pom-Pom’.
I do not think that ever happened to me though. It is a ‘myth’. I am not sure it was even really like that for my Grandmother. A sort of illusion of how we perceive our seaside holidays. That’s not to say that it still is not a very important part of our national consciousness.
‘Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside! I do like to be beside the sea!
Oh I do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom, Prom! Where the brass bands play, “Tiddely-om-pom-pom!”’
I created the Artwork ‘Tiddler Tom’ firstly as a portrait of my son Thomas (Tom). It was envisioned at the seaside, in the moments after I bought him an ice cream. The sun was almost shining, gulls were screaming and the nostalgia for the British seaside was haunting me.
Its composition is that of the traditional postcard and painted on the destroyed fragments of antique ephemera from my Grandmothers time. I bought my son this particular ice cream on purpose. I bought it because its not one of those flashy multicoloured lollies or the posh chocolate ones in wrappers. It is just an ice cream with a flake and some ‘monkey blood’ sauce. No branding, no adverts, no dietary warnings. This was the ice cream I ‘remember’ being handed as a child. It is the Ice Cream my Grandmother had and her mother and hers, and beyond.
As my son gorged on his ‘traditional cone’, I wondered what on earth had happened to that street scene in the old photograph, where it had gone and why? It appeared to be more innocent, more ‘saucy’, less ‘rude’. I wanted to pass some nostalgia onto to him, which is why I bought him the ice cream and why I painted the picture. In the hope that if something has been lost, we still remember it. So next time you are in Blackpool, buy your kid an unbranded ice cream and remember your Grandma.
Hiraeth: A Welsh word that has no direct English translation. Like homesickness tinged with grief and sadness especially in the context of culture. It is a mixture of longing and yearning for the past or a place you have never visited.
Words and images- Arthur Seabrigg @arthurseabrigg
Unconditional Chips
I love you.
It was rare we heard those words, if we did they were muttered through eye rolls and hugs with a cheeky smile.
I don’t know if you found it hard to say, or if you just felt you didn’t need to say it. It should be obvious.
Roast dinner with Yorkshires, plenty of gravy and mint sauce at my Nana’s. Balanced on my knee while watching the EastEnders omnibus.
You wandered to the kitchen.
A solid, round potato, deftly peeled, sliced, and patted. The starchy goodness slipping into oil hotter than the sun. Carefully watched. Unattended, never.
Each golden chip carefully scooped out to rest on kitchen roll, quickly turning transparent under the weight of excess fat.
The bowl filled with crispy chippy goodness, and hands that have seen this ritual thousands of times before, grip the pyrex and swiftly present the feast to 4 eager faces.
Me. My brother. My cousins.
We all delighted in those chips. Magic chips, we called them. We would feign sickness to stay away from school in the hopes that these golden morsels would be provided to ‘fix’ whatever ailed us.
White bread toast with real butter and a mug of tea, LGI Labour ward. A thing of wonder even over a decade on.
Pistachio ice cream from Martonela in Malaga the first time we travelled overseas as a family post covid. I won’t take using my passport for granted ever again.
That raclette from the Cheese Festival about 5 years ago that still leads me to wonder if all food stuffs couldn’t be improved with a topping of molten cheese.
A quarter piece of a Greggs stottie, (the bit with the hole) with just about any filling. Except pease pudding which has absolutely no place on this list.
“More bread! I’ll do more bread!” you would cry, as we tucked into what was already an entire loaf piled high with butter on each slice.
Line up your chips, pick the perfect sizes so they fit, exactly across half a slice. Then ketchup. Then fold. Bite. Perfection.
Leanne Cork
And I see now grandma, that it was never just chips. Just like it was never just a chocolate spread sandwich (cut into triangles). It was never just “2 big, 3 little” Yorkshire puddings. It was never just a chocolate sponge for every birthday.
It was pure, unconditional love. You didn’t need to say it.
Kate Johnson, May 2023
The five best things I have ever eaten.
70’s Tea- Sharon Wilson. Lino Print @sharon_wilson_printmaker
I was born right at the beginning of the 1970’s, and brought up on simple food... chop, egg n beans. It was very sentimental to me, and sometimes I’ll say to my family that we’re going retro for tea, and make something like sausage, egg and chips. The first time I ate spaghetti bolognaise or pizza I was nearly 20, and felt oh so continental!
I wanted to make a retro feeling image, and believe me, there was a LOT of orange in the food I used to eat as a lass.
Sharon Wilson.
Let Me Eat Cake!
I eat cake when I’m happy, I eat cake when I’m sad. I eat cake when I’m being good, I eat cake when I’m being bad.
I eat cake when I’m on my own, I eat cake with friends who share. And when I pop my trouser buttons…. I buy a bigger pair!
Anon, Morley
Images Toni Briens
Ben Denning- Lady Preparing Food, Prints available from: http://www.theletterpress.co.uk
What’s for tea?
The countless hours spent puzzling over how to feed you all. Making four different meals because no one would eat the same thing.
Pacing the aisles in the supermarket, coppering up at the checkout.
Nodding and smiling when grandparents tell you that ‘in their day’ you got what you were given. Peeling, boiling and mashing up veggies, in the vain hope that it won’t turn out orange again, or on the floor. Patiently, learning how to hide the vitamins in pasta, finally giving up after long days and serving something beige.
The nights are long but the years are short. That’s how I feel about the years I’ve wasted worrying over what I’ve fed you.
When we’re all together at last, sitting around our table, (radio on, because I love you but I cannot listen to you chewing) I remember that soon, one by one there will be one less place to set, one less fad to indulge, one day, just Dad and I will sit here, quietly wondering, what to eat for tea.
Lou Bentley @appenthaknows
“We had a roast dinner every single Sunday, even if it was red hot outside. I can remember helping mum in the kitchen, peeling the veg and just learning what to do. I don’t cook big meals like that for myself now. There’s just me, and a neighbour I take food round for”
-Do you like pizza?
“Err no way, I used to like it but not anymore. I don’t like the cheese and tomato mixed together like that”
- I believe they make cheese free pizzas now, <pulls face> “Err that would just be weird, just like dough and chicken”
“Did anyone in your house bake?”
“No, not really...Oh yes! Yes my granny did! She made these massive scones, they were really nice”
“Can you remember the smell in the kitchen?”
“Oh god yes! Just really nice and it made your mouth water thinking about getting to eat one”
“What did you eat for tea growing up?”
“Well mostly chips sticks in my mind, I feel like my mam was always peeling potatoes, like every night it feels like. Any left over got put in a big bowl of water ready for the next tea. Oh and marrowfat peas out of tins, I really can’t imagine giving them to my kids, I think they’d have a fit”
“My most favourite thing to eat is a thing I made up myself, it’s like a cracker, with Nutella on and then a marshmallow”<proud face>
“I can remember growing tomatoes with my grandad and eating them with salt straight off the plant, I think of that often while I’m watering mine”
Taken from discussions at Newlands Foodbank & Chatty Cafe Morley
I was 39 before I learned to love the tomato. This wonky, bumpy fruit that smelled like heaven, sliced and seasoned, arranged on a saucer with pride. It didn’t seem at all related to the perfectly sperhical, chilled bullets, I’d been buying from the supermarket. I swear I could taste the sunshine in every bite.
Morley Feast, 1968. David Atkinson Archive. This charming photograph and many more can be viewed at Leodis.net
“Asparagus, the WORST vegetable in the world”
“Aubergines. MUSHY”
Frankly, this is terrifying
Growing your own food is a skill that anyone can learn. With the smallest space and a bit of patience, growing salads and veggies is cheap and you know exactly what goes into the end result. Don’t have any outdoor space? Get in touch with Edible Morley for community gardening ideas.
Illustrations: Jenny Bridgeman
Incredible Edible Morley – if you eat, you’re in
Have you spotted rhubarb growing in the Beryl Burton gardens? Chives at Morley Bottoms? Thyme outside the library? Maybe you’ve noticed strawberries in an empty space on Shire Road. They were planted by a small but dedicated group of volunteers: Incredible Edible Morley.
Part of the international Incredible Edible network (which was originally started in Todmorden, West Yorkshire), since 2021 Incredible Edible Morley has been setting up spaces where food can be grown and picked by the community. Best of all, because we apply for funding to buy plants, seeds, compost and equipment, all the resulting crops are free for anyone to pick. We’re all aware that food prices have risen dramatically recently and while Incredible Edible Morley can’t replace the weekly shop it can give people a taste of how easy and satisfying it can be to grow your own fruit, veg and herbs.
We have beds and planters in 7 locations and the list keeps growing. Ready to pick right now are mint, chives, thyme, sage, rosemary and more. Coming soon will be strawberries, raspberries, leeks, turnips and potatoes. We also run seed swap events every year. It’s not all about picking and using food, it’s also about learning to grow, sharing recipes and maybe making some new friends while you’re there.
More volunteers are always welcome, no experience of growing food is necessary, we’re all amateurs and we learn from each other. During spring and summer we meet for a couple of hours on the last Sunday of each month to tidy and replenish all our planters and beds. Come to grow, get involved in organising or just follow our progress on social media. Give us a shout if you want to know more at ediblemorley@gmail.com or have a look for Morley on the Incredible Edible Leeds website: https://edibleleeds.org.uk/bed-locations/
Tw: @ediblemorley FB: EdibleMorley Insta: @edible_morley
What is LEEDS 2023?
For one whole year, we’re Letting Culture Loose.
In partnership with world-class creatives, homegrown talent, local communities and international arts organisations, together we’re creating a celebration that’s about Leeds, for Leeds, by Leeds.
LEEDS 2023 is an explosive, bold and imaginative Year of Culture packed with creativity. We’re showing off Leeds to the world, putting the city front and centre in the nation’s mind as an exciting and vibrant cultural hotspot. From dance to design, poetry to pop and sculpture to sport, Leeds has something for everyone.
Visit
All original artwork and words complied from submissions, conversations and research. Morley, you are ace. Special thanks to Ben Denning & CJ ReayBlacklodge Press, who do not hail from Morley currently, but perhaps one day... Cheers for the disgusting vegetable drawings Annie & Emily Smith. Big mention for Studio 12 @Leeds Central Library for creative support and the staff at Leodis.net for tirelessly replying to many, many emails.
Lastly, to everyone who has contributed- Your time, talent and effort is very much appreciated. Go on have a biscuit with that cuppa. If you have enjoyed this zine please consider making a PAYF donation to Newlands Foodbank directly or via the food drop off point at Morrisons.
Back Cover-Workers Tea Break, Park Mills circa 1950’s. Morley Community Achives Front Cover,-Morley, Interior of house,1900’s David Atkinson Archive
@Blacklodgepress
for a programme of events
leeds2023.co.uk
When we eat, we shop, we pick, we plan, we prepare, we curate. it can be hurried or it can be relished. We set the table, decide who sits where and we pause everything else to eat. The times we spend together we catch up on our day, find out the good gossip, we bicker, fall in love, we wish we’d made more. Food is more than existing, it’s about living
“What you having for Tea later?”
Morleyzine
Kelly’s Greengrocers-David Atkinson Archive
Images this page: David Atkinson Archive
