Corned Beef

Corned beef 25 years ago, I found in the attic of a small hotel briefly used as headquarter by British troops after the war, a tin of bully beef. I opened the tin, the meat looked lovely and fat cut a slice tasted as made yesterday. Later in the evening, I made a stew of potatoes onions and carrots, added the corned beef, for refugees, a Polish family of five; yes, the Poles too had once been refugees, not one would think so closing their border for other asylum seekers. As it was their first hot meal since they bedraggled arrived, they ate well; the next day, over the cornflakes I was glad to see they were well. About corned beef, a friend of mine, Alex Skillen, had been a cook in the army, now he worked at a plant assembling cars in Ellesmere Port, he liked bully beef we used to go to the British Lion, play darts and drink beer, he loved my little books and told people about it; he was a fan. Once, he told me he had made the observation that workers went to strike more under labour than the Tories, I resisted saying there had been no labour party since Clement Atlee’s government.