Time for self-piesolation!
Some food for thought on how Brits stuck at home because of coronavirus can find comfort in a tasty British classic — the humble pie
Like pretty much everyone else, my life these past weeks has been all but consumed by coronavirus. It’s all I’ve been thinking and reading about. And unsurprisingly, it’s all I’ve been worrying about. There’s no escaping it, coronavirus has literally gone viral. The speed and scale that the disease has grown from a problem in China or confined to few thousand passengers stuck on a cruise ship in Tokyo to what is now a global pandemic. As I write this, the only unaffected continent is Antarctica.
Until just recently, Donald Trump has downplayed the seriousness of the disease, calling it a hoax, comparing it to the common flu and claiming it would miraculously go away in April. Asked if he took the blame for the delay in responding, Trump said he didn’t take responsibility at all, even awarding himself a perfect ten for the way he and his administration have handled the crisis.
Almost exactly 87 years ago, another President, Franklin D Roosevelt in his inauguration address of 1933, famously said “the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself.” And right now fear is all-pervading. Fear of the unknown, fear of the future, even frightened for our lives and those of our loved ones.
With these being the most uncertain of times, over the last few days I’ve struggled to find a word that adequately describes the level of anxiety people have for this pandemic panic and the traumatic effect it’s having on everyday life. Cataclysmic is about the best I can come up with. And even that doesn’t fully evoke the sheer size of the issue.
As workplaces and schools shut down and the government advises against all but necessary travel, an increasing number of people are now confined largely to our homes. It means many of us are in for a rapid adaptation to a dramatically new way of life.
Amidst all this doom and gloom, I — like so many others — sought a little light relief, a distraction from the constant, compulsive FOMO one finds oneself in in times like this: anxious if you haven’t checked Twitter for five minutes, hadn’t seen the latest alarming Mail Online headlines, not watched what Trump or Boris had to say in their now-daily coronavirus briefings.
That fear of missing out covered everything from what new limits Sainsbury’s had put on the so-called ‘survival products’ or whether or not Belgium had followed Italy, Spain and France in introducing a nationwide lockdown.
It was — and is — too much to deal with. Put simply, it’s overwhelming.
So what’s my distraction and how did it come to be? Well, it all started last Thursday when the freshly installed Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, became one of the first prominent people in sport to test positive for coronavirus. As an Arsenal supporter that was big news for me and it kicked off a string of actions that — somewhat curiously — led to my distraction.
Arteta’s announcement came a few days after Arsenal’s away game at Manchester City had the distinction of becoming the first Premier League match to be postponed because of coronavirus. It was reported a handful of Arsenal players and club personnel had been exposed to Evangelos Marinakis the owner of Greek side Olympiacos who had knocked Arsenal out of the Europa League at the Emirates on February 27th. On March 10th, Marinakis confirmed that he had tested positive for coronavirus.
Thursday evening’s news about Arteta came just an hour after the Premier League announced that all Saturday’s games — including Arsenal’s away match against Brighton — would be taking place. The next day, they and the Football Association were forced to rethink and ended up postponing all games for the foreseeable future. Which brings me back to the subject of pies, something that – here in England – has a long association with the beautiful game.
With the match off at such short notice, and thousands of fans not travelling to the Amex, it was too late to stop all the preparations. Among these was the food that would be served to journalists and consumed by supporters. And as you’d expect at a football match, there were going to be a lot of pies — 10,000 to be precise.
The supplier of the pies was a small company based up the coast in Worthing called Piglets Pantry. Now whilst — as far as I know — they don’t retail their pies, I have had the opportunity of sampling their wares. I’ve attended two Brighton pre-season friendlies, where the pies were served in the press room. And I must say, they were very tasty.
I later learned that Piglets have around 35 customers, including other prestigious sporting events such as English Rugby and Wimbledon. Faced with a warehouse full of pies, its owner Joanna Hunter appealed to Seagull fans to help clear the stock by ordering them by email.
“No business can prepare for such a catastrophic event. We lost most of our order book overnight.”
Now she says the business will need to adapt to sell its pies as stadia across the country are closed as the ever-growing coronavirus crisis decimates the events industry.
A day or two later, another story caught my eye. Another Sussex-based pie-maker was in the news. This time it was Bognor-based Turner’s Pies. They have a different business model to Piglets, operating four retail outlets and supplying their pies to other retailers notably Harrods. Equally prestigious, for the past two years they’ve held the title of Britain’s Best Pie-Maker at the British Pie Awards for their rump steak and Stilton pie.
[Turner’s saw off competition from 900 pies made by 160 professional bakers, butchers, and chefs from around the country, as they took part in the awards in Melton Mowbray.]
Like almost every business, Turner’s responded to the crisis by changing the way it operated. It made its Pies by Post service free for pensioners concerned about food shopping due to the spread of coronavirus.
Managing director Phil Turner said: “We belong at the heart of our community and we know some of our older customers have concerns about being out and about, so to try to save them making unnecessary trips out we are taking this step.”
So two pie stories in quick succession and both about businesses based local to me in Sussex. That got me thinking.
Almost immediately an idea came to me. With everyone being told to stay at home, self-isolation were two words on many people’s lips. Something else that I figured should also be on them was a pie, hence the notion of ‘piesolation’ This portmanteau seemed to me to perfectly sum up the British response to the crisis. Once it was ‘Make do and mend’, now it’s enjoy a tasty pie, whilst you’re on your own.
[Make do and mend was a pamphlet issued by the British Ministry of Information during WWII. It was intended to provide housewives with useful tips on how to be frugal in times of harsh rationing. Whilst the aim was to encourage women to do whatever they could to extend the life of their clothes, this attitude went on to apply to everything. Although they didn’t use the term, reduce, reuse, recycle became the ethos of the times.]
Could ‘piesolation’ become a similar maxim? Could showing the world you’re having a pie symbolise the Brits resolve for getting through adverse situations created by coronavirus? Could the humble pie join toilet rolls, dried pasta and tinned soup in flying off the shelves? Could demand for pies skyrocket? Or will it all just be pie in the sky?
I posted two tweets on the topic:
Food for thought on the pie front:
Clearly, now is the time to tuck in to a satisfying pie, it’s proper British comfort food.
Sussex is home to some of the very best pie-makers, so those stuck at home should begin self-piesolation.
I also included the names of the three Sussex pie-makers and the hashtag #piesolation. It seems to have gone down well. All three liked what they saw, with Turner’s even saying they’d be using the hashtag.
We’ll have to see whether it takes off. If it does, just as we’re having to cope with the scarcity of so many other foodstuffs, we may soon be hearing a lot more of that classic football chant “Who ate all the pies?”
About the author: Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens.
