Over the New Year we were in Ipswich for an afternoon and had a sandwich at Pickwicks Coffee and Tea House.
What you see above is two half shared sandwiches, one a tuna melt, one a cheese and chorizo. On the day, at that hour, they hit the spot.
You know I haven’t read so very much Dickens, (as a boy I was alienated by worthy BBC tv adpatations) but somehow we all know that The Pickwick Papers is a jolly, rollicking and full of food.
The word sandwich or sandwiches appears 8 times in finished text. There’s no mention of tuna or chorizo, though there is a reference to German sausage. The best cluster of sandwich mentions is this one, as Mr Pickwick boards a coach.
‘Heads, heads—take care of your heads!’ cried the loquacious stranger, as they came out under the low archway, which in those days formed the entrance to the coach-yard. ‘Terrible place—dangerous work—other day—five children—mother—tall lady, eating sandwiches—forgot the arch—crash—knock—children look round—mother’s head off—sandwich in her hand—no mouth to put it in—head of a family off—shocking, shocking! Looking at Whitehall, sir?—fine place—little window—somebody else’s head off there, eh, sir?—he didn’t keep a sharp look-out enough either—eh, Sir, eh?’
‘I am ruminating,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘on the strange mutability of human affairs.’
Well, it’s something we all do once in a while, sometimes over a sandwich.
