Re: Frank.
and the result was surprisingly palatable
Tha dussn't know tha's born, lad.
When I was about eight or nine, in the early seventies, me and a mate used to spend our time at the end of our road, about a mile out of town. This was where the river and roads met the train line, so we'd piss about climbing on the bridge and watching the trains go by (which weren't many, except in holiday season for the east coast resorts). We got to know the signalman who worked one side of the river and the gatekeeper who worked the two crossings on the other side.
Some summer evenings one or both of them would give us money to cycle back into town and fetch them fish and chips. In return we got half a bag of chips and a mug of tea to wash it down. It may just have been an urban legend amongst signalmen, but it was said that the signal hut which contained an iron stove and a huge blackened kettle had never been free of tea since the LNER was incorporated a hundred or more years earlier. Every shift, someone would just scoop out the previous set of tea bags, throw in a handful of their own, top it up with water and put some more coal in the stove.
Proper tea, that was.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
