D363 wrote:Paulatic wrote:I also thought a Wigan meat pie involved bovine meat. Although my employers for 30yrs had a slaughterhouse in Wigan I only ever went there once.
At first I thought that was another Eric Blair reference, along the lines of the Road to the Wigan Pie... He's weirdly topical at present.
Anyway it turns out pork pies didn't exist until April this year - and since then we've been thinking they've been around for donkey's ears, I mean years.
You are confused, no doubt! A donkey's ear is the device attached to a shooting board (some say a chuting board) allowing a woodworking plane to cut an exact 45 degree angle along a longer edge of wood. The mitre fence wouldn't work, you see, because of the longer length of a plank-side as opposed to the shorter length of the end which is to form half of a corner of summick. On the other hand, the ear may also cut a long end mitre. It can get confusing.
The donkeys don't object as the ears in question are made of wood, not donkey. I suppose Muffin the Mule might be worried though ....... I think he was wooden rather than plastic. (They only had bakelite, no proper plastic, when he was on the tele, didn't they)?
Btw, did you know that muffin' the mule is an offence in certain parts of Lancashire? It was legal for ages, as the beaks thought they'd nipped that sort of thing in the bud with their ban on having a sheep as a girlfriend, with a sub-clause mentioning the pigs. They didn't think of the mules as they are quite rare in Lancashire. But then some lad was caught at it, because of all the braying. Or so I heard.
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One reason why pies of various pekuliar content are favoured amongst the hoi-polloi is that they provide a perfek excuse to the wife when performing a booze-induced technicolour yawn on her hall carpet, as the 8-pint-containing miscreant staggers in from the pub. "Musta been that pie I et", goes the claim. I bet Mick's used that one more than once, eh! Sailors - cuh!
I will forgo an explanation of cabin boys and their traditions just now, though.
Cugel