It’s Time… Pt31

Written by Prim on 18/11/2022

But it’s gonna be… Blue

‘It’s just another piece of history re… It’s just another piece of history re… It’s ju…’
‘Shirley Battersea’

Postie Prim and his Black & White Dog go back

A chicken, ham and sage & onion stuffing walk into a, no, not a joke, walk into a cherry tomato and baby leaf and rocket salad multiseed coat and declare, ‘we are food of the Gods’ – There she blows, boy its ripe.

Please don’t try this at home without lashings of mayo (*light), English mustard, garlic powder on the cucumbers and healthy turns of salt and black pepper on everything beginning with ‘C’ and ‘T’… then hold onto your seat.

Camera pans to a rapturous NEPTUNE tripod aloft in triumph, and MOBY DICK who is now reclined in an easy chair knitting

A blind morsel of stuffing looks on perplexed: ‘What is this, lunch with that Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town again?’

NEPTUNE: No, it’s the new and improved version from Primco. Primco’s new digestive circulation sarnies, built to clear your mind and blow your soul.

Camera pans to a bowl of garlic soup with the blind stuffing swimming inside, ‘Sense you say, what makes sense, sense doesn’t even make sense anymore, I just break wind and go’

NEPTUNE: Mmmm, umami, I should coco – now available as soup

CHERRY in a director’s hat, smoking through a cigarette holder turns to everyone and slips on a discarded pita bread: That’s a wrap everyone – let’s all get pissed in Citrus Wagons pop-up-pub – Dick’s buying.

NEPTUNE: And wraps too; Primco’s new digestive circulation sarnies, soup and…

CHERRY: Shut it Nep’s and get a move on before Dick drinks the lot

Meanwhile back in time…

Lunch contained, let’s get to the post. I’ve noticed various iconic blue plaques dotted around Preston. One hung low on an innocuous building on the very road leading into Royal Mail depot – Robert. W. Service, 1874-1958, the fella; Poet of the Yukon and socialist was born in a house near this site. Wow you get recognized for writing about China!

Turns out it wasn’t China but he some British-Canadian poet who was a bank clerk and worked all over the States, ended up working for said bank in a place called Yukon, which in the turn out, turns out is the western most state of Canada. Who knew, not even the Cannucks I bet. While there he wrote about Gold rushes and murders, earned a few quid then retired to the French Riviera. He was probably born in the mail depot in Preston, which could explain how he got posted everywhere. ‘This one’s going to the Yukon.’ ‘What, China?’

With all the sales of Durban’s Bread, there’s hope for us yet Cherry. What’s that you say, French, pah, you’d rather live in Morecombe Bay. With all the sales of Durban’s Bread, it could be our only hope.

I wonder how Morecombe Bay shrimp stuffing with chicken and ham goes… NURSE, batten down the hatches.

I like all that blue plaque stuff. The next one I stumbled across belonged to a robust red-bricked building on an oldie-woldie street that ran up hill or down depending which entrance, or exit you arrived… left. Brick after dank brick glistened in the van’s headlights dull beam as I left it semi parked downstream. Its low idling rumble the only sound in the otherwise. 4:45pm darkness. I headed up stream looking for the drop. One side afforded new apartments rising colossal into the skinny streets sky. On the other, fat old wooden doors led to bygone mews. Their space vacuous compared to outside their doors. The horse’s entrances now gated and adorned with silver security buttons. Ye Olde Phantom Raspberry Blower of Preston’s Cotton works industry lurked in the shadows. You could sense him. Watching. Prowling. Ready to blow. I pressed on up the narrow street searching the numbers. From the blackness a man appears, thick eyebrows, strong features, a grey checked scarf tucked into a thick tweed jacket. He was Iranian perhaps, Middle Eastern maybe. With impeccable English he asks ‘what number are you looking for?’ I pick myself up off the floor then retrieve the box and read to verify, ‘No.35’ ‘I think it is down there, the next one with the big stable doors.’ And puff, he was gone. I too, back to the exact spot the van was parked, ‘Cotton picking country Cherry’ I twitch. Cherry, hands on the wheel ready to screech. Except the gentleman who lived here didn’t weave cotton. No, gold was his thread. Aye, The Gold Thread Works Ltd, home to Stephen Simpson, son of Isaac, who bobbed about in this brick monster in 1839. By day producing gold and silver wire embroidery for military, royalty, cruise ships and Freemasons and by night concocting wind assisted stuffing sandwiches!

Hanging in mid-air on an adjacent street a Blue Plaque reads; On this vacant space lay the aftermath of a particularly fruity pickled onion and stilton walnut hinge

Cherry’s revving the engine, flashing the lights. We skedaddle.

Preston host a few Blue Plaques, Benjamin Franklin to name but one, but that’s enough blue for this week.

Three days later and back on the postie road; three of us agency posties squeezed up front in a van bound for Burnley. I like meeting new folk, Joe was with us this time; a middle aged Indian fella with dyed auburn hair set to an 80’s wedge and Spandau Ballet flick. We got round to talking about being bitten by dogs. Joe was born and raised in Northern India, (I forget where) and said when he was young he got bitten by a dog… and a snake and a chicken and they all died. “I don’t why know why, I am just poison’

I like Joe.

Why is Yukon not in China!? And did Cherry eat anyone this week!? And who wants to work for Elon Musk!?

*light; the only light in the F&B world worth pinch of shit apparently – all the rest mean nothing – light on the eggs does… there, another fun fact cleared up.