Mrs Finnegan’s Brighton Almanac – Sussex without Spuds can you imagine!

It is that time of the year when we are all waiting for the new potatoes to be ready. I visit our regular greengrocer every day to check on the situation as I don’t want him selling our share off to some other household and it was he that told me of the arrival of potatoes in Sussex. It happened just 60 years ago.

The greengrocer got the story from yeoman William Warnett of Horstead Keynes who says that before the year 1765, when he was seven years old, potatoes had never been heard of in this neigh­bourhood.

In that year Lord Sheffield brought some from Ireland. No one knew how to plant them, but that they got a man who worked on the road and who came from some distant County, to do it, which he continued to do regularly for many years. It was very long before they began to plant them in the fields.

I cannot imagine planning meals for a household which did not include potatoes at some point. So, what did they eat in Sussex, before the 1760s? The answer is pease pudding and when I heard that I thought how grateful Sussex folk must be to have to have something decent to put in its place.

Not so!
There was deep seated prejudice against them. During elections which took place at Lewes about this time, the cry went up from the crowd: ‘ No Popery, no potatoes !’

Sussex folk have come around (at least to the potatoes.)

Saint of the Week

St Serf, a Scottish saint Feast Day July 1st

At first glance not very promising …and yes he was a dignified church man, very worthy, but not nearly as dull as you might suppose. Many legends have grown up about him which are apparently “a farrago of wild impossibilities”. (That is such a beautiful phrase I must tell Peregrine to include it in the eulogy at my funeral.)

He lived back in the mists of time after the Romans left and before anything interesting happened. Serf didn’t start out Scottish. He was the son of a king of Canaan (where they had all that trouble with water and wine at the wedding breakfast) and his grandfather on his mother’s side was a King of Arabia.

Serf left home and went to Rome and although still very young his reputation for holiness and sanctity was so great he was immediately made Pope, a job he did for seven years and left. I didn’t know you could do that.

He went around Europe doing good then traveled to Scotland to convert the Picts and did a pretty good job of that for seven years, founding monasteries and killing dragons. There’s a pattern emerging, but it was broken when he came across a heavily pregnant princess adrift in a coracle, abandoned by her family.

Serf took care of the mother, became foster father to the child and they all become saints which is as happy an ending as I’ve ever read.

I would make him the patron saint of Poor Law Guardians and Workhouses. He would set a good example.

(Screw your eyes up and look at the painting of St Serf again, right hand side under the velvet cloak. Do you think he has three arms? That wasn’t mentioned in any of the legends, although surely an asset when fighting dragons.)

More Puns – Which is What Happens When You Encourage a Gentleman

So delighted was my husband with the response to the puns included in the last edition of the Brighton Almanac that he has spent every supper time since deciding what choice morsels should be included this time.

It made for scintillating conversation over grilled chops and puddle pudding, especially as my side was limited to a solitary – but often repeated – instruction : only one this time, Peregrine, only one.
I can’t help feeling that his interpretation has EXPANDED my original meaning.

He gave me a list of scholars in a village school and asked for my advice as to their management:

Miss Chief the ringleader.
Miss Rule, that does every thing she is forbid.
Miss Fortune, that lost her grandmother’s needle.
Miss Chance, that broke her leg by romping.
Miss Lay’d, who left her porringer of flour and milk where the cat got at it.

(There are more, but I whittled it down to the five best. You can thank me later.)

And then it happened.
I succumbed. What is a wife to do under such pressure except draw up her own list of teachers? They include:

Master Stroke in charge of discipline.
Master Piece to inspire them.
Master Key to lock the front door and keep everyone safe

At this point I dried up like a date in a sand storm. I have discovered too late that punning is one of the dark arts. You think you can resist and then you find you can’t, but I won’t do it again, that I can promise you.
(But I have just thought of a scholar Peregrine overlooked. Why, it is sad Little Miss Trust sitting in a corner with her back to the wall…I must go and tell my husband.)
Can you think of any more? No, forget I asked.
But can you though…?

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