Big Pete invents a Pie Line

Can you put chillies in them?  Big Pete asked me one day as we were battling over the Bangkok Post word square, checking each others word lists for duplication, slang, or regional dialect.  Physically, I suppose so... but it's an artisan Pork Pie that takes me a whole day to make.... AND pinny is a word!   We always argued over pinny and I was smarting that not only did it fail the Nokia spell check test, it wasn't in his dictionary either.  Gutted that pinny had not travelled far enough out of Yorkshire to be included in his thai bought dictionary, I went on to lose that round through arguing and becoming distracted.

I agreed to do it if he promised not to complain if they were horrible.  Chillies would go with pork well, but not I thought, with some of the secret ingredients on the list.  So, easy as pie, I just threw a handful of chillies in at the end of the mix and knocked him up 5.  A pie was born and it went down well, mainly because he was so proud of his invention that he chopped them up and gave out pieces for free every night.  Did his beer sales good as we all grabbed for beer, water...  anything to soothe the burning.

The Jug and Crocodile was our watering hole for the full 10 years that Pete had it.  We found each other as we shared a love of punk rock, Ska, 70's and 80's music.  Very loud and fast most of the sounds were.  He had a mate who had worked on Radio Caroline in the 1960's and we had the most enjoyable pop quizzes and discussions imaginable.  If Dave came in, we always stayed on longer as he really is great to chat with.  Think he had a bar called Black Dog round the back of CNN, but I never really went in there other than on pie errands.  It really was an education for all of us.

Dave, I always remember though for another reason.  He had the deepest voice imaginable, and when anybody referred to him we went through contortions of dropping the chin almost to the chest, taking a deep breath, pushing lips forward and saying DAVE in as deep a voice as we could manage.   This was his name and we always did this even though the 2-3 second pause required to produce such a deep note spoiled the flow of the sentence.  It never EVER failed to raise a smile or a laugh.

Over the years we spent many nights finding old tracks, different versions of old favorites and including some wild Finnish Rock music.  We also went classical that year and had Sebelius playing Finlandia and also At the Castle Gate which we all knew from The Sky at Night television program in england.  This promped another theme of his.

He already had flags on the bar from every country imaginable and when a customer came in, they had their home country flag stuck in the side of their bin (it's a thai thing) as Pete had taped empty biro casings to them to act as mini flag holders.  Everybody always felt very welcome and were then treated to Tommy Cooperesque magic tricks and jokes.   If the flag of your country was not there, it was made, bought borrowed, whatever, you got one.

After Finlandia going down so well with his Finnish friends, he acquired the National Anthems of the world.  So then your first beer was served while your home country National Anthem played, everybody stood to attention and it arrived with a flag being walked ceremoniously in front.  I seen people crying with joy and laughter in there every night and am sure I joined in a time or two with the aid of Chang beer.

Flags of the world,.  He used them all and really had a diverse customer base.

Anyway, back to the Pie range.  Next up were sausage rolls.  No imagination required again, just a hand full of chillies.  Prick Khee Noo, (mouse shit chillie) the hottest chillies here.  Easy to identify by their small "mouse shit" appearance and from the scorch marks in boxes containing them.  They burn hands, eyes anything they come in contact with and toilet visits should be treated with extreme caution after handling them.  I dread to think what happens when they are digested.  Again, very popular, many were given away, but only Pete ever bought them.

Pete was on fire that year and invented a whole new product range with the simple addition of hot chillies.  They went in the quiche, the rolls, the potato salad, pizza bases, steak pies even in the sausage meat surrounding of scotch eggs. Sauces were inevitably, chillie pastes, wasabi,  mustard, branston and a whole range of chutneys supplied by his visiting friends and relatives.     If this wasn't hot enough,  there were always bottles of vodka full of raw chillies and various other chillie laden shots.

We lost Pete last year and he left a gaping hole in our lives.  Not just a bar, it was a way of life and we drank as much tea and coffee there over the years as anything else.  We sms'd eash other for years in anagrams and his first task of the day was to buy the Bangkok Post and text the letters to us.

He usually won and was a real word smith, but if pinny had passed the Nokia text predictor challenge, I'd have had him that day!