Of Promenades & Belly Pork

 

We decided we were going to search out either a proper fishmonger or butcher to supply us with the makings of tonight's meal, as there is nowhere left in Bethesda - nary a butcher or a baker, when we used to have three of each in the 80s; nor in Bangor itself, which had a splendid array of local produce suppliers when we arrived here forty-five years ago: even a pork butcher and a grocers that sold game, which hung on the rail outside the shop front on hooks. Along with the numerous thriving pubs in both the small city and Bethesda itself, we wanted for not much, except the exotica that we had grown up with as working class Brummies, surrounded as we were with the produce of the Caribbean, Canton and the Indian subcontinent; the takeaways, the restaurants: the suppliers of goodies that had, in 1980, not quite reached North Wales.

Anyhow, we decided on a short trip to Llanfairfechan [the strand pictured, with Llandudno and Penmaenmawr in the distance] and its excellent butcher's shop, John Williams & Son, where we picked up a small piece of pork belly just the right size for two for one meal, two sausage rolls for a lunchtime snack and half-a-dozen eggs. The pork, along with roasting potatoes, are in the oven as I write: the pork with some excellent Herefordshire cider, and the potatoes, as is now my custom, par-boiled and cooked in olive oil. There's some token greenery in the form of tender stem broccoli to boil up when the rest is nearing completion. All in all a quiet day, and tomorrow we're off to Shropshire and Lower Down for a couple of weeks. Apparently the weather down there has been fearsomely hot, but we'll see what we'll see: keep you posted...