Skip to content

I commend Coopersale Pt. 1

Length: 6 mins

Bear with me; there’s going to be a series of old Bulow family history pieces for the next few posts, with pretty scanty references to food, although some pigs do make an appearance every now and then.

I was born in August 1957, in Shepherd’s Bush at 354 Goldhawk Road, W6, only a few doors down from the Shepherd’s Bush Club that The Who went on to play at. It took me a further 13 years to actually see them live, in December 1970, gigging at The Roundhouse (they’d earlier that same year played The Isle of Wight Festival and on my bloody birthday no less, but I couldn’t convince my parents that I should be allowed to go or and most importantly, pay for the train fares etc).

They always were the guvner band for me, from the same manor, home town boys, you know? Shame how it all turned out…

We’d later left the Bright Lights and The Big City environs and moved eastwards into Essex, around about when I was 4 or 5 I think and then later, further south, to a couple of places in mid-Kent, then another dog-leg back into Essex, until finally winding up on the Kent coast near Deal. And it was in Essex that we started living on a series of farms.

[UPDATE: Funnily enough, if you’d have asked me a few weeks back to drop pins into the map showing where we’d lived, it would have looked different to what in the past 24/48 hours I’ve realised had to be the correct timeline. I’ve made a few changes to this post, added a few notes and memories for each of them, those that I can remember from around that age; clicking on the name will drop you into a Streetview image of how the places look now with my description as a contrast.]

My Dad had graduated from The Royal College of Music as a pianist and started as a music teacher but with 5 kids arriving in rapid succession, that wasn’t going to cut the mustard in paying them there bills “that no honest man could pay”, so he’d re-trained as an accountant; his father had been one as well (as a job, it never appealed to me). But he’s always said that the countryside was where he felt most alive and happiest, so had decided to throw up the accounting gig and headed for the joys of the fields. I’m not sure my mum was as convinced…

Coopersale Common

Right here on this combined playing field/common/cricket pitch was where I found out that a kids training bike couldn’t, just couldn’t, make a sharp 90° turn without the rider, me, falling off. I tried a number of times, with Dad patiently righting me each time, until the lesson finally sank into this thick head and I accepted this manifest reality of physics.

I can’t work out though which or even where the farm was located, but I’m assuming he was farming by then.

I’m glad to see that the oak trees in the small wood at the back are still there, producing conkers galore, which went on to baked in the oven or soaked in vinegar, in an attempt to make them the hardest in the gang. With no pre-school or nursery options all our time and play was spent in or around the house, so lunchtimes and the oven were an easy destination to find. It was only when looking at the map recently that I realised that not far to the east now runs the M11, probably not even planned back then. A quieter environment then…

Coopersale Common house

…usually, although here was also where vividly I remember Mum screaming — at the very top of her voice —  unusually for her (so we must all have been real little shits that day), “just you all wait until your father gets home”. To make things a thousand times worse, whilst frustratingly slamming the back door, the glass panel that took up most of it, dropped out and shattered at her feet, with bits of glass skittering across the floor, under furniture and, probably, even lodging in our hair. We looked at her face. We saw our death there. We were silent.

Not even I thought it was a good time to laugh. I was too terrified of what Dad would do. Memory however tells me “not much”. Neither of them hit their kids. Neither of them were shouters. Well, not often anyway. But I’m pretty sure in retrospect that Bar had downed more than couple of medicinal sherries by the end of the day, before telling him just what we’d done and his silent “more in sorrow than anger” treatment was hugely effective. At least for a day or so I guess

I also remember there was a rather ramshackle cottage house (thatched? draped with roses? Not sure, I’d like to think that memory is right, but…) on the opposite side of the road — which looks to be long gone now, replaced by a small cul-de-sac estate — where, one exciting day, the ancient owner’s old petrol lawn mower apparently spontaneously combusted, bursting into towering flames that licked even at the eaves of our house; I think that fire, one to rival London and 1666, could have germinated anyone’s fascination with pyromania…

I do however remember much better the next houses, the surrounding areas and the farms in Kent. Which is what the next piece on here, will cover.

And so to end this one, I just want to apologise to the Shepherd & Dog pub in Stambridge, Essex. About 50 years ago — I’d have been 9 or 10 by then — my parents used to go to this pub, no more than ½ mile along the road from Stambridge and maybe only once or twice a month (money was tight), always at lunchtime & usually on a Sunday as Dad wasn’t expected to work that day, to meet up with village friends (& as sure as bears shit in the forests, certainly to get a temporary respite from me & my 4 siblings).

We’d be left to sit outside in the beer ‘garden’, with just a couple of packets of crisps or peanuts sent our way, to stave off hunger pangs, told to amuse ourselves, whilst they went inside, into this dark, exotic place, which, through the curtained back door, we could see was full of laughing people & glasses clinking and smoke and fun and noise.

See those two cars on the right, at the back of the pub? That’s where we were ‘parked’. Dumped…

Shepherd & Dog pub Stambridge
Always hated that pub. The fucking Shepherd & fucking Dog. I didn’t manage to start sneaking into pubs as a very underage drinker until I was 12 or 13 but my inability to go into this particular one has always rankled. I’m here to admit however that I’ve finally moved on. I’ve forgiven them. Even if their food pricing looks more than a little, shall I say, courageous for this neck of the woods...

And, finally, one recipe for this piece, comes via that estimable Essex boy, Paul Cunningham, of Denmark’s Henne Kirkeby Kro, his take on sausage, mash & onion gravy. A plate close to both our hearts.

Sausage, mash & onion gravy

And here it is. Oh, didn’t I tell you it’s in Danish? Come on, you can work it out! And even if you can’t, why would you even need a recipe for this classic?

Ingredients:

(Pølser, mos og løgsovs)
6 løg
12 gode pølser (evt. flere) – se PS
4 kviste timian
2 laurbærblade
1 dl balsamicoeddike
2 dl hønsefond
smør og olivenolie til stegning
havsalt og friskkværnet sort peber

Prep:

Start med at pille løgene og snitte dem på langs. Steg pølserne i smør og olivenolie på en pande. Læg dem over på en tallerken og stil dem til side. Steg løgene på den samme pande med skyllet timian og laurbær. Når de er godt stegt, hældes balsamico ved. Lad det karamellisere. Hæld fond ved og lad det koge ind. Kom pølserne tilbage på panden og lad dem braisere lidt i løgsovsen, til de er lunet godt igennem. Smag til med salt og peber.

Server med helt almindelig kartoffelmos og sennep eller med rosenkålsmosen fra grøntkapitlet.

PS – FOR AT DENNE OPSKRIFT SKAL LYKKES, SKAL DU HAVE FAT I EN RIGTIG GOD, GROV PØLSE, FX SALSICCIA, CUMBERLAND SAUSAGES ELLER DEN BEDSTE FRA DIN EGEN SLAGTER. HVIS DU BRUGER ITALIENSKE PØLSER, SÅ BRUG BALSAMICO. HVIS DU BRUGER SPANSKE PØLSER, SÅ ANVEND SHERRYEDDIKE. BRUGER DU DANSKE ELLER ENGELSKE PØLSER, ER ÆBLEEDDIKE BEDST.

2 thoughts on “I commend Coopersale Pt. 1”

  1. Canewdon and the pub so appreciated your custom that they named a road after you: “Gays Lane” https://www.theanchorcanewdon.co.uk/location

    Funnily enough, if you’d have asked me a few weeks back to drop pins into the map showing where we’d lived, it would have looked different to what in the past 24/48 hours I’ve realised had to be the correct timeline. I’ve made a few changes to this post and finally worked out the order of the villages based on how old I was. We don’t get to Rochford now until Part 3 🙂 Lots of love xx

  2. Hi Chris

    Canewdon, The Anchour, Happy days 🙂 one of my watering holes. I was born in Rochdord hospital which is in the vicinity and 24 years later so was my eldest son.

    I worked on Potton Island a government research establishment more like the crazy holiday camp you worked at. Lol

    I was never a fan of the Who or the Beatles! It was the Stones for me. I think it was in 1963 I saw them play at the Odeon in Southend, cost me a fiver.

    Can’t wait for the next episode.

    Love Gay

Comments are closed.

Optimized by Optimole Skip to content