大象传媒

When my mother and father married in 1942, they bought a small house in Melville Street. You had to register with a local grocer, butcher, and so on, in order to buy your regular grocery requirements. At the bottom of Artizan Road, where it joined Wellingborough Road, there was C.H. Birch, a grocer. My mother registered there, and also with 鈥淛immy鈥� Leach, whose butcher鈥檚 shop was between the bottom of Artizan Road and the bottom of Market Street. There was a florist鈥檚 (Cobby鈥檚) and a post office next door or nearly next door. Mr Leach sold his business to Mr Cobb in the early 1950s. Cobb and Cobby were nothing to do with each other but the juxtaposition amused a young lad such as myself. If you can remember Mr Cobb鈥檚 shop, that鈥檚 where Mr Leach鈥檚 was.
Mr Leach鈥檚 pork sausages had a very peculiar flavour. My mother quite liked them, but my father did not. He was not a fastidious eater and liked sausages, but refused to touch Jimmy Leach鈥檚. As he was away in Uttoxeter for much of the war, my mother did buy them for herself. Since she plastered everything with mustard, she probably couldn't taste them anyway.
Shortly after I was born, we moved to a slightly larger house, number 24 Burns Street. Despite the greater distance, my mother continued to shop at Birch鈥檚 and at Mr Leach鈥檚 (and at Cobby鈥檚 and the post office), and I used to accompany her there quite a lot before I started at infants鈥� school. I remember Mr Leach, or I think I do. During the war my mother had never asked him about his pork sausages. He was, I suppose, a figure of authority to her, both by age and calling, and you did not challenge authority: to ask him about the flavour of his pork sausages might have provoked unpleasantness. Eventually, however, she found out that he made his pork sausages with almost as much mutton as pork. That explained the flavour. Apparently, his customers came to like them, and he continued to make them the same way even after the need for such chicanery had ceased. He explained (I can almost hear him; I can certainly imagine his voice saying it), 鈥淏it o鈥� mutton makes a sausage. Pork an鈥檛 [hasn't] no flavour on its own, love.鈥�
Heaven knows how modern Trading Standards officers would have dealt with Jimmy Leach, but he certainly had plenty of satisfied customers for his 鈥減ork鈥� sausages in the war years and after. Probably my father was the only one who rejoiced when Mr Cobb bought the business and started making pork sausages with pork. In later years when there came to be such a lot of choice on the market, if ever my father came across a pork sausage he didn't much like, he would infallibly comment that it was as bad as, or nearly as bad as, or worse than, Jimmy Leach鈥檚 sausages, and the tale would be rehearsed anew.

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