Victoria Centre has been on the decline for a while now having allowed cheap and nasty shops in while they undertake some renovation work, (hopefully they’ll be kicking them out and allowing the decent shops back in when it’s finished, assuming it ever gets finished). It must annoy Urban Outfitters who spent a fortune cultivating that stripped back industrial look only for the rest of the centre to emulate it so well, and nobody in Nottingham believes that PR bullshit about the Emmett Clock coming back. Another thing that they didn’t manage to get right was the much trumpeted food hall, which has shown itself to have been something of a none-event with just a fraction of what it once was leaving behind a couple of butchers and fishmongers. The market itself, with its stalls selling fabric, second hand books, out of date sweets, and various here-today-gone-tomorrow stalls has always been neither arsehole nor breakfast time (to use my late Granddad Eddie’s expression that I’m determined to bring back  in his honour) and today I discovered the ultimate nail in the coffin. Not just the nail in the coffin of Victoria Centre’s piss-poor attempt at a food market, but a nail in the coffin of Nottingham as we know it.

Like all good shopping centres, Vic Centre has a WH Smith’s. Nobody ever buys anything from this establishment, the only purpose of WH Smith’s is for men to go in and read while their wives/girlfriends do the boring bits of shopping, (food, cushions, clothes) and this is a system that has always worked. I have childhood memories that involve my dad and I reading magazines while my mum went off in search of somewhere to buy food or school jumpers, so WH Smith’s role as a male sanctuary from shopping is an established tradition. Vic Centre have gone one better and created a holding pen for women that enables men to wander around of their own accord, they have called it The Yankee Candle Shop. As soon as I knew that this place existed I got all excited at the prospect of leaving Mandi there to inspect every single candle in the place before buying one, because I wanted to go to the mushy pea stall and have a bowl of Nottingham’s famous delicacy.

It is quite some time since I used Vic Centre as anything more than a walk-through so I admit that I am partly to blame for what I am about to report, but among the barren wastelands of what used to be the food hall, the mushy pea stall was gone. Nottingham has a population of an estimated one and a half million people so where are they all getting their mushy peas from because I need to know. If you take away the student population who don’t know any better and pitch up in Nottingham wondering why we eat ‘bonfire night food’ all year round and foreigners who have their own dishes and haven’t been introduced to mushy peas and mint sauce, that must surely leave enough people to sustain a mushy pea stall in the market place. This is a tradition that will die out if we’re not careful, people of Nottingham are known for their apathy but this is fucking serious and something needs to be done to get mushy peas (with mint sauce of course) back on the menu. If you’ll stay with me until the end of this blog, I think I have the answer.

Later on this afternoon Mandi and I had arranged to meet my dad for a drink and for some reason he had chosen a newish place in Hockley, Daskino. Before I go any further I must point out that I do want to return here for the food as the kitchen is run by a mate of mine who recently gave up a career in law to open a restaurant and from the reports he made a good move. However, the pub itself is like stepping into an episode of Nathan Barley. I don’t know what the collective term for a group of hipster clichés in one place is, a cunt of hipsters perhaps? Everywhere you looked, someone looked like a prick. The best one was a man who turned up dressed like this.

He even had a tin of paint with him. Was that because he wanted to do some painting? Or was it an ironic bag containing his wallet and keys? You never know with these people. I’m all for going to the cool and sexy places but this is ridiculous. Every single one of the people in here looked like the sort to knit their own cupcakes.

 I was served a pint of Guinness in a handle mug, the nearest thing to a pint of bitter my dad could have was a (grits teeth) craft beer, and Mandi had a bottle of fruity cider. I never thought I would live long enough to be in an era when it was considered normal for a barman to ask if I wanted a slice of orange in the pint of bitter, and if I’d served anything that cloudy in my day I would take the barrel off and clean the lines. Three drinks came to fourteen pounds, now I’m not shy of spending big money on quality but we only bought three drinks not caviar sandwiches to go with them. Once you’ve spent your wages on silly jeans and a hat how do you have anything left for these prices? Maybe that’s why they all seemed to be wearing trousers that were a bit too short for them, (“look at him, looks like he’s going for a fucking paddle” – my dad). We decided to go to a proper pub instead, and it is only writing this blog sometime later that I have hit on a million dollar idea, or a million pound idea at least, which is where we find ourselves back at mushy peas.

If the Nottingham delicacy of a bowl of mushy peas with mint sauce is on the decline (although it will be a key feature of the upcoming Goose Fair, providing they stick to the bowl), then something is needed to bring it back. If someone can turn the silly hat and skin tight trousers brigade on to mushy peas then we have a winner. A pretentious hipster hangout starts selling mushy peas by the bowl, and tells the customers that they are being ironic and post modern and trying to pay tribute to the working class industrial heritage that Nottingham has by connecting with their proletariat ancestry and eating the food of a low cultural event like a travelling fairground, those twats will lap it up.

They will of course keep burning their mouths though, because they will want to tell everybody that they ate them before they were cool.

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