Pie

I love pies. There's something about the combination of pastry and steaming minced cow lips (and more) that not only stimulates my taste buds but also gives me a much more profound sense of well being. Like virtually everything else that's edible that I actually like though, pies are undoubtedly bad for me. I reckon that if I deducted all the pies I'd ever eaten from all food that I've eaten I'd be a stone lighter and my cholesterol would be significantly lower.

I have just been to the supermarket to get food for the next four days. I went at a good time for my wallet because I wasn't hungry. The problem is that now, like a pregnant woman or a vampire, there's only one thing that will satiate me and I didn't buy any.

Yorkshire is a place where pies look like pies. In the Beano or Dandy when I was a kid a pie was round with a hole in the top. Actual pies didn't look anything like that. It was something of a revelation when I discovered that they look like that up here. Just seeing them lined up in a local pie shop evoked feelings of comfort and nostalgia.

My girl watched the boy eat a Cornish pasty at the West Ham game on Sunday and I could see her momentarily switch here drooling from Berbatov to the pie. She has since been learning how to make pasties herself. Well, she's been watching 'How to' videos online. It's amazing really: not ten years ago you'd have to either buy a book or phone an elderly relative and, pen in hand and phone clamped in the crook of the neck, write down a recipe that would turn out rubbish anyway.

Even though these things are essentially bad for us I still feel a sense of pride that the boy likes pies as much as I do. It's kind of like supporting Spurs really. I want him to be healthy and happy but if he was an Ar5ena1 supporting fruit freak I'd probably sell him on the internet and get another one. It reminds me of the Philip Larkin poem: 'This be the verse'. (No offense Mum!)