Mrs Griggs and Mrs Elsden

When my dad Donald was a boy he would sometimes take sandwiches with him on days out with friends. Cambridge where he lived, our home town, wasn’t the sprawling city it now is with housing and trading estates all around the outskirts; Cambridge then was more of a country place – and as town folks, not gown – i.e. not University people, the Elsdens would ramble and cycle out into the countryside.

If Donald took sausage sandwiches, obviously they had to be Powters sausages; others of his friends may have taken sausage sandwiches, and certainly a young fellow called Griggs did. He may have been Jack Griggs, because there was a lad with that name born in the same year as Donald.

The sausages in Donald and Jack’s sandwiches may have both been Powters… I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. The point is, Donald’s mum Maudie, cut the sausages length ways to lay on the bread; Mrs Griggs cut the sausages in rings. As soon as Jack tried to eat his sandwich, rings of sausage would tumble out, whereas Donald’s long slices remained secure between his pieces of bread.

Whenever we make sausage sandwiches, we always announce that are making them Mrs Elsden, not Mrs Griggs.