Handbag pie

Another quote leapt out at me whilst perusing Sophie's fabulous new Pies book, "I can often be found with a pie at the bottom of my handbag, just in case..." Now she has a pie in her handbag in case she comes across a hungry looking friend but I once had a pie in my handbag because it seemed a good idea at the time and had consumed a couple of post-work cold drinks!

Many, many moons ago I was drinking (coincidentally rather a lot of PIMM'S) with a much too long absent T and random work colleagues. After quite a few tall glasses, T and I had a burning desire for some food. Though not just any food, no we wanted nothing but proper hot chips. The bar that had been supplying us all those PIMM'S couldn't assist us so we hatched a cunning plan. We had no idea where we could procure our much desired chips but we knew a man who did. We thought if we flagged down a black cab and asked him to take is to "chips, good chips!" the taxi driver would know where to go because they always know a place! And it worked, I don't know where we ended up but we got our chips and whilst visiting the proper chippy I spotted a pie. I can recall pie and chips and not so much fish and chips from the chippies of my Northern childhood and clearly a little spark of evocative homely comfort was ignited and I decided to get a pie to go with my chips. T said I should save it for later as it might be useful and I duly secured it in my handbag. Who knows what sort of disaster she thought might befall me that would warrant whipping out my emergency pie to save the day but I never asked.

Our plan (a. again, the one that never happens) had been to return to the bar with our lovely hot and salty chips but somewhere on the return cab journey we abandoned that idea and decided to call it a night. Not much later I was sat on a rather crowded tube and opened my handbag and to my utter and heartily expressed delight discovered the temporarily forgotten pie all toasty warm and just ready to eat. For some reason me eating a pie that I'd just found in my handbag caused the other tube passengers to think I was odd (clearly it must have been a slow night!) and they gave me a wide berth. It was fine by me; I had a seat, some space and a hot steak and kidney pie. It's amazing what you can find in your handbag!