Sunday pies

THERE is something comforting and very English about a good old pie.

I’m very fond of them – especially on a Sunday, when, after the housework, we succumb to an easy-cook, shop-bought, frozen pie.

I just pop it into the oven – a rather nice chicken pie today, although we’re just as partial to a well-made steak and kidney, or even something fishy.

I insist, though, that our choices are well-made, not just those cheap, weak and watery things you can sometimes get at “bargain” prices.

If I could, I’d make my own pies and freeze them, ready for Sunday use, but unfortunately I don’t do pastry – I don’t have the hands for it.

My Good Lady has – cold hands – and she does excellent pastry, and sometime I do prevail on her to rustle us up some tasty Cornish pasties, or a succulent chicken and vegetable pastry.

For some reason, for me, the art of pastry-making doesn’t really appeal, so I shall continue to stock the freezer up with good-quality shop-bought treats to enjoy on our quick-cook Sundays.

Revisiting Lawrence

I’M JUST reading some of D. H. Lawrence’s shorter fiction, a fat volume of which has sat on our bookshelves for nearly twenty years.

I’m familiar, of course, with some of Lawrence’s novels – indeed, I had to study Sons and Lovers for my A-Levels.

I’m also acquainted with a handful of his short stories, with Fanny and Annie being, in my view, in the top ten of the finest stories ever written in the English language and one that I personally found deeply influential on my own writing.

This is not to say that I’m an unadulterated fan of Lawrence’s work – at times he irritates me as much as he fills me with admiration.

But I suppose, on the whole, the latter emotion is uppermost in me as I read his dissection of German militarism in The Prussian Officer, or the conflict between love and class consciousness in Daughters of the Vicar.

But what has prompted this interest in a long-dead writer and poet? I’m certainly not planning to sit any more exams in English lit, while my literary aspirations have dried up in recent years.

No, maybe it’s because we visited Vence last year, the town in the south of France where Lawrence died.

Or maybe it’s simply because this big book of stories has sat there so long unread and if I’m ever going to revisit Lawrence's work, it’s time I did it.

Either way, it should keep me out of trouble for a while.