We used to eat Fray Bentos pies a lot. But, and this is an awful tale of childhood deprivation so reach from your tiny violins now (my memoirs are headed direct to the WH Smith misery porn shelf), we shared a pie between the four of us (which meant my dad got half, we got the rest, fortunately my mother never really ate food, she mostly survives on tea and cigarettes). That wasn't nearly enough pie. Anyway, I used to love the crispy top that you could pull off to expose the soggy, yet strangely tasty and contrasting, hammock of pastry underneath. My adult pie experience (oh, if I had a porn-theme park†, and trust me, I'm planning it) was just a bit disappointing and it turned out that I really didn't want an entire pie and that damp undercarriage of pastry was just that. Part of the nostalgia was that very whiff of portion deprivation. I expected a lot more from an entire pie. I think that's something every adult has to face. The disappointment of pies*.
Corned beef. I don't actually know what it is, but that was amazing. I mean, you needed a key and opening ceremony to get at it. You'd shake the can until it popped out, entire and solid, with a hefty, meaty counter-rattling thunk onto the plate. In another tale of adult culinary debauchment I tried to eat an whole one too (on bread, I'm not a bloody libertine). There is, it seems, a threshold for corned beef.
In my next episode, meat paste.
*apart from the people of Wigan, of course. But then if you're from Wigan, your threshold is a lot lower.
†Throblands? DildoWorld?