It’s actually a butcher-cum-grocer so the mix is even more eclectic than the hoardings suggest! As a vegetarian I suppose I ought to love my local grocer but all the sights and smells of a butcher tend to put me off venturing inside, sadly. They did have the wit (and correct grammar) to call it “Meat & Two Veg” which is funny but also always reveals something about the mindset of the reader/potential customer…

Did you indulge in the local honey, Bail-out?

It’s an eclectic mix of products being advertised.

Top stuff yer Maj. Don’t often get to see signage like that these days. Or that moustaches/hat/apron/bow-tie/grin combination – that’s proper customer service, holding the sign all day.

It seems to disappear when we embed it, so we’ve added a link above and here.

https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/THERE-BACK.jpg

Vinegar by the pint.

I did indeed yer Maj – tried again by replying to a previous email conversation between us (re: cricket equipment in unusual places), so I rate the chances of success slightly higher this time.

Btw Ged, I wondered whether you we’re teasing us, or if instead your phones’ autocorrect had developed an unusually subtle humour, perhap’s. (Unexpected truth in jest: it was originally spelt “perhappes” or “perhappous” so an apostrophe of abbreviation in that position may not be illogical, cap’n.)

Can’t see anything Bail-out, even in junk mail. Did you send it to king@thisdomainname? Just tested it from another email address and stuff does seem to be getting through okay.

I have endeavoured to provide the necessaries, yer Maj. I actually enjoy a steam pud myself, particularly with home-made jam. Scrumptious. I wonder if the too-clever-by-half accents were due to confusion with gourmet’s rhyming partner “crème brûlée”, which is basically a way to show off both your ability to enter complicated characters on a keyboard and your fancy culinary abilities. Interestingly, although both of French origin, they are otherwise etymologically unrelated, and the French originally got “gourmet” from English (in its sense of servant in charge of wine it derives from the Middle English “grome”, meaning boy or servant, which was also the origin of our word “groom”) before handing it back to us in the sense of a connoisseur of food and drink, or the quality produce such a tasteful chap would enjoy.

Steam pie would indeed be a strange and probably unsatisfying comestible. But Bail-out’s grammatically challenged grocers we’re selling steam puddings, which is very much a thing.

Give me a steamed steak & kidney pudding ahead of a steak and kidney pie any day. Steak & ale is another matter; pie please.

We like how the ú hints at overly clever-cleverness before the ‘there’ completely strips that away.

A steam pie doesn’t sound very filling.

If you send the photo we can probably embed it within your comment.