A pork pie, but not as we know it...

When my mate Keith left school he got a job putting the glaze on pork pies for a now defunct bakery in Leeds. The job was only a stopgap - he was waiting to join the Royal Artillery, which was probably just as well, because the supply of pork pies would have presented a serious threat to health, had he not answered the call of Queen and country. Fast forward more years than I care to remember, and yesterday I was tempted by a growler in Morrison's. The only thing this dessicated article had in common with those of rose-tinted commestible memory was pork and pastry: gone was the glorious glaze and the glutinous jelly. All that remained was a dried hulk of pastry and unnaturally pink-dyed pork. Morrison's should hold their corporate head in shame. Keith's erstwhile employer might have gone the way of all flesh (hastened, it must be said, by a particularly nasty salmonella outbreak), but their product is not forgotten - certainly not after yesterday's sorry episode.