It started with a tweet…

sad that #nottingham does embrace its history mushy peas & mint sauce when visiting victoria centre was a tradition pic.twitter.com/T5Mmx3UrTQ
— Craggy (@radfordred) January 3, 2015

Before Christmas I sampled a cup of mushy peas and mint sauce from a stall at the Christmas market and although it was pretty low quality (bottled mint sauce and cheap tinned peas) I was glad to see a bit of effort being made. This is Nottingham’s delicacy and more should be done to promote it. The above tweet (and I know he meant to say ‘does not’ but the sentiment is there) relates to the mushy pea stall in Victoria Centre that closed down a long time ago, as there has been another one in the food area since which also has closed down. You may be reading this and want to tell me that the reason they closed down is because nobody wants them, then I ask you to explain the success of the (the) mushy pea stall at Goose Fair. That particular stall, the only good one at the fair, is always packed out and makes a fortune because Goose Fair is the one event that unites Nottingham for a short time every year. Forget Christmas, Nottingham’s season of goodwill happens during the first weekend in October when social class is forgotten and everyone enjoys the fair as equals, the hypothetical magistrate and the criminal together as friends at the mushy pea stall.

It is possibly one of Nottingham’s biggest mysteries (apart from the controversial ‘what happened to John Inman’s tree’ question that we are still demanding answers to), why do we only seem to want to eat our local delight for five days in October? I didn’t think to ask the people running the particular food stall in the Market Square how well the mushy peas had sold, it was only one thing on sale among burgers and such and not exclusively a stall selling hot peas, but I’m sure that line did well. Having seen the tweet it put me in the mood for a cup and as I had to pop into town on a number of errands I was looking forward to indulging as only those of us lucky enough to have been born in Nottingham know how. Today however, I wasn’t planning on visiting the fly-by-night Christmas stall. A jacket potato van has a permanent pitch on the road towards Broadmarsh Shopping Centre, and they have started selling cups of mushy peas. They also offer them as a jacket potato filling but even people from Nottingham think that this is a step too far. I patiently waited for my turn in the queue and was rewarded for my wait with the news that they had ran out of mushy peas, although I wonder if this was true or they didn’t really sell them at all and were just trying to curry favour with Nottingham’s people.

Look at the above photographs, more to the point, look at how many people walk past this van. I’ll admit that it wasn’t especially busy in town this afternoon with it being the difficult period after Christmas, but usually this route is extremely busy. On a Saturday afternoon I imagine that several thousand people walk past, all of these people Nottingham residents. My advice would be to ditch the jacket potatoes, on Saturdays at least, and dedicate their trade simply to the mushy peas and mint sauce combo. It goes without saying (although I am going to say it anyway) that the mint sauce should be home made and on the counter in a bowl for customers to serve themselves with a ladle. It’s only a small detail but something that every person in Nottingham feels very strongly about.

Never mind, only nine months until Goose Fair.

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