As a little aside to avoid confusing anyone reading this outside Nottingham, we eat mushy peas and mint sauce at Goose Fair. To the rest of the country, a bowl of mushy peas and mint sauce is confined to Bonfire Night, to be eaten alongside hot dogs and jacket potatoes, but tradition gives us another excuse to eat this delicacy.
Saturday, according to my long list of traditions and rituals, is family day at Goose Fair, by which I mean Mandi, my dad, my nana, and had she not been having a sleepover with friends, my daughter Emily. I went with my dad ahead of the others because I was hoping to collect information on mushy pea-gate, by interviewing the stallholders on the pea stall about their controversial decision to ditch the bowl. Armed with a USB voice recorder, and the bit from today's paper, I went in search of answers. I'm like Roger Cook.
As far as the people of Nottingham are concerned, there is only one place to get your mushy peas at Goose Fair, and it is this stall...
They are the ones that cook fresh peas over an open coke fire, and until this year used to make their own mint sauce which the customer ladled on from a bowl on the counter. Terry Burdett is the head guy at this stall, and it was him that I approached with details of the anger he has caused.
As you can see from the look on his face, he was thrilled when I showed him the article from the paper, and tried to bat away the criticism. Sadly, the quality of the recordings were too poor to put online, as there is too much background noise going on. Also, I couldn't get too close with the recorder as I had forgotten to tell them I was recording them. The rest of the staff stuck their oars in to, and I suspect that there isn't much Nottingham in any of them, otherwise they would care about tradition. First of all, the bottles were of a shop bought mint sauce. The label on the bottle was exactly the same as the squirty bottles on all the inferior stalls. The women on the stall tried to tell me that they were still making their own mint sauce, but were decanting it into bottles that coincidentally had mint sauce labels on. They said that they had a big bowl of fresh mint sauce round the back, and I asked if I could see it. I wasn't allowed to go round and see it because of safety.
Hygiene was the main reason for their decision to do away with traditional values, stating that people were inconsiderate enough to throw cigarette ends into the bowl. I find it hard to believe that in the seven hundred plus years that Goose Fair has been running, this has suddenly become a problem. The really weird part of this, was that they said that they had the bowl and would be putting it on the counter later. Of course they wouldn't commit to a time that I could come back and check, and my dad pointed out that if there's a problem with people putting fag ends in, then putting the bowl out when it gets busier doesn't make sense. I went back to check at several points during the day, and the bowl and ladle had not made an appearance. There is nothing I hate more than a bullshitter.
The stalls that sell tinned mushy peas, although probably using bottled mint sauce, did at least have the bowl and ladle method. Not one person we asked said that there was a problem with people putting rubbish in.
The nice couple above are the closest rival. At first he was a bit annoyed that the Facebook group referred to the other stall as the only proper pea stall, as they do make their own peas. But they don't use fire, so they are still second rung. However, they were only to glad to talk to us, and said that there had never been a problem regarding the bowls on the counter. We ate our peas from this stall. I would have been happy to go to both over the course of today, but only when the bowl returns.
If you live in Nottingham, then please join this Facebook group. I will try to keep it going through the year, and hopefully they will come to their senses and restore tradition next year.
