Cannibalism

24th October 2021

This episode features a mention of suicide, as well as discussion of death and human remains

(opening music)

Liz: Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love making things, which are sometimes historical, but sometimes not, and we like to start by talking about what we’re making. So, what are you up to?

Liz: I committed a crime

Hazel: That sounds bad

Liz: Well, I’ve made baked doughnuts before, and I have a bundt tin, so I

Hazel: Oh no

Liz: Made a giant doughnut

Hazel: A doughnut bundt

Liz: Proper doughnut dough, with jam inside

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But in a bundt tin. And then I iced it and put sprinkles on it and made a giant doughnut

Hazel: That’s just a cake

Liz: It’s not, it’s different ingredients

Hazel: Cake with a hole in it

Liz: It’s not, ‘cause it’s not a cake dough, it’s like an enriched bread

Hazel: Well sure, but if you put it in a cake tin and bake it, it’s a cake in my book

Liz: Hard disagree

Hazel: We can’t really come to any

Liz: It’s a big doughnut

Hazel: Useful conclusion on this

Liz: I would accept brioche, because that’s also enriched bread dough

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But it’s a giant doughnut

Hazel: I will grant you it sounds delicious, but

Liz: I shared a picture in the server, and people agree, it’s a giant doughnut

Hazel: Oh, well, people are wrong, and I will die on this hill

Liz: You realise those people are our patrons

Hazel: Yeah, they’re all wrong, and they should feel bad

Liz: Ok, but look at this picture and tell me that isn’t a giant doughnut. I stand by it. What have you been up to?

Hazel: Not that much honestly, because I’ve been away from home on placement for my (inaudible) course, but I did take some knitting with me, of course, and I went to the Weald and Downland Museum on Sunday

Liz: Cool

Hazel: The Weald and Downland Living Museum, which is my favourite museum, it has got many historical houses that were saved from destruction and were taken down and rebuilt in the exact same order, but in this massive park and it’s really cool

Liz: That’s cool. There’s a place in the Midlands like that, Avencroft

Hazel: Ok, awesome. Yeah, I think there’s a few around, not just in the UK either, but it’s fantastic, and they had a wool weekend

Liz: Ok

Hazel: That just happened to be the weekend I went there. So they had people spinning and weaving in different ways from different eras, and it was fantastic, and there was a great wheel. In fact, there were several great wheels. I will post pictures on the twitter. If you guys haven’t seen a great wheel before, it’s awesome, it’s the first spinning wheel invented. Well, when I say great wheel, what I mean is spinning wheel that…this is on a tangent now, but

Liz: Yeah, this is for another episode, I think

Hazel: Mediaeval British people were absolutely not the first people to invent the spinning wheel, but it made its way there in that time, and that’s what I’m referring to with great wheel, but it’s large anyway. Anyway, and they had a vertical warp-weighted loom, and it’s really cool, and I’ll put pictures. Yeah

Liz: We need a loom episode at some point soon

Hazel: We do need a loom episode, that would be amazing. I volunteer as tribute

Liz: Anyway

Hazel: So that’s more something that I experienced the making of, rather than have made, but I don’t really have anything relevant apart from that

Liz: So, for today’s episode, we’re approaching Halloween, this is our last episode before Halloween, and I thought “what’s the scariest food?” The answer is human flesh, so I’ve been learning about cannibalism

Hazel: Ok! I will admit that is not what popped into my head when I thought about scary foods ‘cause, you know, it’s not something I generally consider in the food category

Liz: You know what, that’s valid

Hazel: So, I mean, it counts though, I would say, as a Halloween episode

Liz: I hope so, ‘cause I did a lot of research

Hazel: Buckle up everyone, let’s go!

Liz: Ok, so, unsurprisingly, we have archaeological evidence for cannibalism actually pre-human. We have possible evidence of Neanderthals butchering humans, anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens

Hazel: Ok

Liz: And other Neanderthals, we think for food, ‘cause the marks are from the same tools that you would use to butcher animals, and it’s the same kinds of marks. It’s possible that they were removing the flesh for other reasons, but it’s probably to eat

Hazel: Right. Wow

Liz: So this has been going on forever

Hazel: Yeah, that’s pretty conclusive evidence

Liz: I should say as well, I’m not gonna cover things like The Donner Party and plane crashes and that, ‘cause I think survival cannibalism is maybe a bit outside of our remit, when it’s just kind of (dramatic voice) “I did what I had to do to survive!”

Hazel: Yeah, I guess this is more in history, rather that an outlying event

Liz: Mm. Although, that said, it does pop up in mythology a lot, especially ancient Greek and Chinese

Hazel: Ok

Liz: There’s a lot of stories of people being, and especially of gods, being tested by being fed their children

Hazel: Ok…I guess, actually, now that you mention it, I can think of a few cannibalism episodes in mythology, like Kronos?

Liz: Yeah, Kronos is the big one, I think, where he just eats all of his babies, because he’s been told that one of them is going to overthrow him, but then because they’re gods they survive being eaten

Hazel: I mean they’re definitely going to overthrow you if you eat them

Liz: I mean, Greece liked a good self-fulfilling prophecy, I think

Hazel: Yeah, that is true, it indeed does

Liz: There are also accounts of Chinese emperors eating people, but it’s unclear how much of that is people actually doing that and how much of it is slander

Hazel: Ok

Liz: ‘Cause obviously that’s a very good way to be like “hey, this guy’s evil”

Hazel: Yeah, it has been used as a way to get bad press for other people quite a lot, hasn’t it

Liz: Yeah, I mean a big one is…so the words Caribbean, as in the sea, and cannibal actually have the same etymology

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Which is from the Carib people

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Which was an indigenous group in the Caribbean, who Columbus basically went “well they eat people, therefore they’re sub-human and it’s ok to take them as slaves”, because Columbus was the worst

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: I would like to get a lot harsher about Columbus, but this is a clean podcast

Hazel: Yeah I’d agree with your estimation

Liz: Which, again, is a thing of it might have happened, probably not as much as he said, and if it did that’s not an excuse

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: ‘Cause there are people, most famously the Fore people in Papua New Guinea, who practice funerary cannibalism as an act of respect to the dead

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: And also keeping their spirit, their lifeforce, whatever you want to call it, within the community

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: I will come back to them

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But yeah, funerary cannibalism, things like using and eating flesh, particularly the heart, as a religious practice pops up in groups like the Aztec as a way of communing with the gods

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: I mean, you could argue that some branches of Christianity, there’s, I mean, there’s different levels of how symbolic it is, but there is eating Jesus

Hazel: I mean I would say that that counts as at least roleplaying cannibalism

Liz: Yeah. I mean there is the part where Jesus isn’t entirely human, but he’s referred to as “the son of man” a lot, which I think is at least half points

Hazel: Yeah, and it, I suppose it depends what spiritual view you take, but if  we’re going with “it becomes the literal body and blood of Christ, I reckon that counts

Liz: Transubstantiation is at least half a cannibalism, in my opinion

Hazel: That’s a great sentence

Liz: Yeah. And then you get it used as, for medicinal things quite a lot. There’s one of the big texts in traditional Chinese medicine, the Bencao Gangmu, from the 16th century, talks about using 35 different human parts, or products, in some cases, as medicine

Hazel: Oh wow. Didn’t know I had 35 different parts

Liz: Although, interestingly, it doesn’t give uses for 12 of those parts, because the author, Li Shizhen, considered them “foul” and thought that it was not ok to use them, even if they did work

Hazel: Oh right. Really interesting, I wonder why

Liz: Yeah, unfortunately I couldn’t find sources on this that weren’t in Mandarin

Hazel: Ok

Liz: So, I mean, if anyone knows why those particular 12 were not ok, please do let us know

Hazel: Yeah, that’d be really cool to know

Liz: But yeah, there’s some quite interesting stuff, including public hair for snake bites

Hazel: Oh

Liz: Apparently sucking on it stops the venom from getting into your organs

Hazel: Ok. Would that count as cannibalism, do we think? ‘Cause it’s not…is hair a part of your body once it’s removed?

Liz: Some of it I don’t think would be (laughing) full cannibalism?

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: I guess I’ve already talked about half-cannibalism. But it’s still consuming parts of the body

Hazel: I suppose, yeah, but I would assume in this case it would be removed from the body first

Liz: There is also, as a kind of last-ditch attempt, there is a record of some people feeding a dying parent a part of their own body, usually something small like the joint of a finger, in an attempt to heal them

Hazel: Oh, ok

Liz: And that one definitely counts

Hazel: Mm, absolutely

Liz: But I think the most interesting human medicine in the Bencao Gangmu is the mellified man, which is something that Herodotus talks about as well, which is this practice of a holy man, normally, towards the end of his life switching to just eating honey, and then when that inevitably you’re going to die doing that, then being buried in honey for 100 years, and people then used the honey as a medicine

Hazel: Wow. That is amazing. I feel like I’ve heard the word mellified before, I didn’t realise it went to that extent, I thought it was going to be something to do with the religious practice whereby some holy people would basically fast until self-mummification, essentially

Liz: Well, this is a form of self-mummification, but it’s specifically the preservative qualities of honey doing a lot of the work

Hazel: Yeah. Specifically with honey. Wow. What’s that supposed to do for you?

Liz: It’s kind of a cure-all

Hazel: Ok

Liz: So, Herodotus talks about Asyrrians doing this in the 4th Century BCE, Li Shizhen talks about people in Myanmar doing it, although there’s some debate about basically the possibility of Li Shizhen getting confused and combining this concept of human medicine with mellification, and that people in Myanmar didn’t actually eat the honey or the body

Hazel: Ok. Oh, so it was just a burial practice

Liz: Yeah. Supposedly Alexander the Great was preserved in honey

Hazel: Oh!

Liz: It’s unclear whether people were eating the bodies, but they were definitely using the honey

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: In some cases as a panacea

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But a lot more recently we still get people using body parts for medicine, the obvious one is mummia, which is ground up mummies

Hazel: Ok. Is that specifically ancient Egyptian mummies?

Liz: Theoretically

Hazel: Ok. ‘Cause I know there are several world cultures that have practised mummification

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: But I know there was a big thing about Egyptian mummies being stolen and ground up for medicine

Liz: Yeah, in the late mediaeval period onwards there was a lot of exotification of Egypt as a general sort of spiritual concept. I would argue right the way up until probably post-1920s. But yeah, apparently from the 15th century people were eating ancient Egyptian mummies

Hazel: That’s pretty early

Liz: To cure various ailments. But you might imagine that supply and demand was a slight problem

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: Some people who thought they were eating mummies were eating bodies stolen from paupers’ graves

Hazel: Oh no. That’s unpleasant

Liz: That is unpleasant

Hazel: (disgusted noises)

Liz: And kind of wild. ‘Cause this was still going on in the Victorian period, and it’s kind of wild that there’s an overlap of rich Europeans eating mummies, quote-unquote for their health, and those same people saying “ah, it’s fine to enslave these people because they eat humans”

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: Yeah there’s a lot going on there

Hazel: There’s a hypocrisy there. Oh gosh

Liz: And also doing things like dipping handkerchiefs in the blood of executed criminals, because apparently it can cure epilepsy

Hazel: Right. Just gonna put it out there that it doesn’t

Liz: It does not

Hazel: Just in case

Liz: Yeah, don’t eat people, don’t smear epileptic people with the blood of executed criminals, or any other blood, really

Hazel: Also

Liz: Don’t do that

Hazel: Yeah you probably shouldn’t try it

Liz: Seek medical help for epilepsy

Hazel: Yes

Liz: That’s the kind of hot take you only get at Bread and Thread

Hazel: Also, don’t drink blood unless you know where it’s been

Liz: Yeah. Some people, it’s kind of a trend at the moment, as well, to eat your placenta after giving birth

Hazel: Now I have heard of that one, yeah. Is it cannibalism?

Liz: Trendy wellness thing

Hazel: Yeah, yeah. Is it cannibalism if it’s consensual? I suppose it still is, because societies that practice cultural cannibalism that’s generally by consent, right, after the death of the person, so

Liz: Yeah, that is a question that came up in Germany in 2001

Hazel: Oh, is this…ok, shall we…I just have a little question about the placenta, so shall we, yeah

Liz: Yeah we’ll do the placenta first, and then we’ll go to Germany

Hazel: Yeah I do, I think I know what you’re gonna talk about, and it’s a story. So, yeah, is it actually good for you, eating the placenta?

Liz: We only have anecdotal evidence, there hasn’t been a proper medical study

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Although I can see where they’re coming from with the idea

Hazel: Yeah, ‘cause it’s meant to have a lot of nutrients, right?

Liz: All non-domesticated land mammals eat their placenta. I suspect domesticated ones would as well, if you gave them a chance

Hazel: Oh, that’s interesting

Liz: Some people think that it helps with things like bonding with the baby, with postnatal depression, encouraging lactation

Hazel: Right

Liz: Again, we don’t have any medical evidence, but it’s a very strong belief, and it is a growing thing

Hazel: Ok

Liz: There’s even companies who will dry the placenta for you and then give you pills of it that you can take

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Or some people will fry it, or put it in a smoothie

Hazel: Ok? Don’t know how I feel about smoothie. Hmm

Liz: Needless to say, the companies that do this charge a lot of money

Hazel: Yeah, that’s pretty easy to do yourself, I would have thought. Not turn it into pills, just give it a wash and whack it in the frying pan

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: I have seen…

Liz: I’m a little bit sad that I couldn’t find anyone talking about what it actually tastes like

Hazel: Yeah, it’d be…

Liz: I like offal. It’s just offal, right?

Hazel: That’s one of those where it would be good to have actual research on it and find out what it actually does

Liz: Oh yeah, for sure

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: I’m keeping an eye on that, because I’m intrigued

Hazel: I recently learned that chickens often eat their own eggs if they’re feeling like they need the nutrients back, they just eat the egg

Liz: That’s fair. I mean an egg’s basically a period, right?

Hazel: Yeah, that’s a similar thing, right? Ok. Let’s talk about Germany

Liz: Let’s talk about Germany! ‘Cause yeah, whether consensual cannibalism is illegal is really interesting. There’s no law against it in most countries

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: ‘Cause it’s generally considered it goes hand-in-hand with murder

Hazel: Uh-huh

Liz: Or in places like the UK and US it comes under desecration of a corpse

Hazel: That makes sense

Liz: Even if it is consensual, ‘cause there’s laws in place that are basically “if the average person would find it distasteful or disrespectful it counts as disrespecting the corpse”, which is a whole thing, I think, of like

Hazel: Who’s the average person?

Liz: Just because you don’t think it’s ok, doesn’t mean it’s not ok

Hazel: If you’re in a multicultural society then, you know, who is the average person?

Liz: I’m just saying, if I die of natural causes and my loved ones want to feel closer to me by eating some of my meat I’m fine with that

Hazel: Ok, well

Liz: But the law would not allow it. Sorry about that

Hazel: There’s a hypothetical situation for you all

Liz: So in 2001 a man named Armin Meiwes, in Germany, put out an advert asking for someone who would consent to being killed and eaten, and found a man named Bernd Brandes, who he then did kill and eat, and it was a big problem, the court case over it, because it was consensual. He didn’t violate any laws, was basically the argument of the defence, was “he wanted this, everything was all consensual, we have…there are records that this was consensual”, but eventually he was charged with, basically, assisting someone in suicide

Hazel: Yeah, I was gonna say, I feel like that comes under assisted suicide. We’re going to have to put some warnings on this episode, aren’t we?

Liz: Yeah, definitely

Hazel: Yeah. Yeah, I would think it would technically come under that category, and that is illegal, I believe in most countries

Liz: I think most places, yeah. But yeah, obviously, apart from criminal prosecution, there are risks to cannibalism

Hazel: Hmm

Liz: Which is where we come back to the Fore people

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: Who have a problem with a disease called kuru, which is a type of prion disease, which is things like mad cow disease and zombie deer disease are prion diseases

Hazel: Ok

Liz: So it was noted that it was more prevalent in women and children, because you get it from eating especially the brain of someone who already has it to some extent, this prion issue, and men were more likely to get what we would consider the meat, the good bits

Hazel: Ok

Liz: And women and children would get more the offal parts. Feels really weird to say offal in this context, but I’m going with it, because you know what I mean when I say it

Hazel: I do, and it is

Liz: But interestingly people studying kuru in the Fore found that there is a gene, that protects against prion disease, which is more prevalent in them than in the average human population

Hazel: Oh right

Liz: But a lot of people do have it, so there’s a theory that humans, not just neanderthals, were eating other humans in prehistory, and getting kuru, and so this gene became a useful adaptation and spread

Hazel: Right. Wow

Liz: So it kind of comes all the way back to the beginning, with looking at prehistoric stuff, it’s ancient DNA, because this disease was found in this one population

Hazel: Wow, that is amazing

Liz: That is my brief history of humans consuming humans. I hope it was adequately Halloween-y

Hazel: Oh, definitely spine-tingling. No, that was really cool, if a little strange to think about. I feel like if there’s any two people who can talk about the social history of cannibalism without finding it weird, it’s us

Liz: Yeah, it was really interesting to look into. Yeah I think it’s interesting the ideas that people have about it, and how, obviously cannibalism through necessity has always been a thing, but it sounds like cannibalism for other reasons has also always been a thing

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: And, I don’t know, there’s kind of a level of “how weird is it, actually?”

Hazel: I think it’s definitely you social and cultural perceptions of weird

Liz: Yeah, I guess it’s going back to that “would the average person find it weird?” Who is that?

Hazel: Well yeah, exactly, who’s the average person, because I read about one of the people who still practise funerary cannibalism, and I think, an anthropologist or something telling that in their country they bury the dead, and they were like “why would you do that? That’s really disrespectful, you’re putting them in the ground where they’ll decompose” So, you know, from that perspective, burial is really disrespectful and weird to think about. So yeah, it’s, I think it’s definitely a nurture thing.

Liz: So, what is our local larder this week?

Hazel: Somewhat unrelated, but

Liz: I would be surprised if it was related

Hazel: I have been staying by the seaside for a couple of weeks

Liz: Very nice

Hazel: And I thought I would talk a little bit about seaside rock

Liz: I do love a stick of rock

Hazel: Basically everyone loves a stick of rock, yeah. In fact, as I will explain, people around the world enjoy a stick of rock. So, if you’ve never had rock, rock the type of confectionary, before, I’ll pop a picture on the twitter, it is the sugariest thing, because it’s made out of pure sugar, it is basically just sugar. It is notoriously tooth-rotting. It is basically a stick of pulled sugar candy, very hard, but characteristically it has…it’s coloured on the outside, often red, and then white in the middle, but then it has letters, or sometimes even pictures, on the inside, and they run through the whole thing. Traditionally it’s the name of the seaside resort that’s inside the stick of rock, and then as you eat it, because the lettering goes all the way through, you can still see that letter or picture all the way down. So, it’s a really…you can get it at basically every British seaside resort, it’s very nostalgic

Liz: Not even just the resorts, pretty much anywhere on the coast there’s a good chance there’s gonna be somewhere selling it

Hazel: Oh yeah, seaside town. It’s a really nostalgic thing, I think. A lot of people have childhood memories of going to the beach and getting a stick of rock, and then sucking on that stick of rock for the entire day

Liz: Until it gets really sharp, and your parents tell you you’re going to ruin your dinner

Hazel: Yep. But you don’t care. And then you get home

Liz: Kind of like an uncurved candy cane

Hazel: And then a couple of months later you find the half-eaten really sticky stick of rock in the bottom of your bag that you didn’t finish. Yeah, that’s seaside rock, and it’s great, you can still get it in lots of places. I’ve not had one for ages, I need to do that

Liz: We got some this summer from New Brighton, and it did say New Brighton all the way through

Hazel: Yes! Classic. So, I actually learned that the lettering and the designs inside a stick of rock can only be done with hand, too delicate to be done by machine

Liz: That’s cool

Hazel: So certain parts of the process of making rock are done by machine, but that part has to be done by hand. So, it’s basically just sugar syrup, and it’s mixed together with water, and that’s it, it’s just boiled until it’s hard crack stage, and then they pour it out, add the colour and stuff, it if needs them, it’s all mixed in by hand, then it’s aerated. It’s pulled and folded, pulled again, I feel like there’s a few videos of that going around

Liz: There are some very good videos, I’ll put a link to one in the episode description

Hazel: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of similar sweets that are made in this way, but the thing about rock is that it’s got the iconic shape, and the lettering. It’s a \*stick\* of rock. And then they…that aerates the sugar candy, and that’s basically what turns it white, which is really interesting, and then they make up the rock, so they put in the lettering and everything, and the outside layer, and then it’s pulled into a really long strip. But apparently they make the letters, ‘cause it still has to be a little bit soft when you make it, so all of the blocky letters are made first, the square ones, because they’re not going to lose their shape, and then letters that have a round shape are made just before they put it all together, so that it doesn’t lose its shape, and then

Liz: That’s cool

Hazel: They put it together

Liz: You don’t really think about the logistics of it

Hazel: Yeah, exactly. Quite nice. So, it’s a pretty uncomplicated thing to make in terms of ingredients, and apparently it came out of a sweet called fair rock, which was being sold at fairs in the 19th century, but it didn’t have any of the extra decoration or anything

Liz: So was it just a stick of sugar?

Hazel: Yeah basically, just a stick of sugar candy, and then…well, the invention of lettered seaside rock. There’s a story where it’s credited to somebody called “Dynamite Dick”, which is quite a name

Liz: Amazing

Hazel: Yeah, it seems to be agreed that the first manufacturer of seaside rock, lettered rock, is a guy from Burnley who went on holiday to Blackpool, and in 1887 set up this factory and started producing lettered rock, and Blackpool was the first place where it was sold

Liz: So you’re saying it’s a cool Lancastrian invention

Hazel: I am, you should be proud. And that spread to all the coastal resorts as a seaside thing, but each place would have their own name, and traditionally it’s either…for example, just taking a random one, but I’m from Sussex, so I’m gonna go with Brighton, sorry Blackpool, “Brighton Rock” or “A Present from Brighton” or “Memories of Brighton” or something, ‘cause you know you’re not gonna finish that in one day. You can get small ones

Liz: You say you’re not gonna finish that in one day, I know people, who will not be named and shamed, who I have seen consume a stick of rock in a day

Hazel: Ok. I guess it depends if you suck the rock or you’re one of those absolute heathens who just bite it. ‘Cause you can just crunch your way through it, but

Liz: But then your teeth get all sticky

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: Which is a horrible feeling

Hazel: But apparently the way that they make it is it’s extruded into a really really long strip, and then it’s cut into sticks, which is like…I want to see the long rock

Liz: Give me the long rock

Hazel: You can get…there are giant versions, right?

Liz: I have seen videos of them making it where they grab the end of it and kind of swing it backward and forward and it stretches down, which looks really weird and I almost just kind of want to bite into it

Hazel: You can also get the, you know, where they cut it into little bits, almost like individual sweets, and then you can eat it that way. I think a lot of places have…at that point it’s just normal boiled sugar candy I suppose

Liz: But it’s still got the lettering through it, which is nice, it’s still rock

Hazel: Yeah, and that means that you can cut it into the, you know, every piece will still have the lettering through. So there you go. Yeah. And it’s not just a British thing, actually, this particular…I mean, that particular lettered style might be, but like I said, this type of sweet is also sold across the world, so there’s a few regional varieties. There’s a Dutch type that really closely resembles it, and is specifically a fairground sweet, and that can have different logos inside as well, but can also have different flavours, and there’s a Japanese version as well, called kintaro ame, and the example I’ve got here has little faces in it, kind of cute

Liz: That is cute

Hazel: But again, they’re similar in the process of how it’s made with the pictures inside, but I think that version is more, they make the long strip and then they cut it up into smaller sweet-sized bits. So yeah, that’s rock. It’s a pretty simple thing, and a pretty simple history, but I dunno, it’s just full of nostalgia for me

Liz: No, same. We went to Blackpool every year when I was a kid

Hazel: Aww, nice. I’ve never been to Blackpool

Liz: I’ve got to take you to Blackpool!

Hazel: You will have to take me on a lads’ weekend to Blackpool, and we will get rock

Liz: We will get rock. And fish and chips

Hazel: Yes. Rock and chips. Oh yeah, speaking of, it is famously a feature of Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock, which has also been made into a film a couple times, where, I think, one of the characters is describing what it’s like to be a certain way and it’s like “oh it’s like a stick of Brighton Rock, however far you bite it down it still says ‘Brighton’ on it”

Liz: I like that

Hazel: Yeah. In fact, the remake of Brighton Rock was actually filmed in Eastbourne, mostly, because Eastbourne Pier looks more like Brighton Pier in the 50s than Brighton Pier does now

Liz: Cool

Hazel: So there was a big sign saying “Welcome to Brighton” on the side, and it was very confusing

Liz: So, thank you for listening. If you want to help pay for our lads’ weekend to Blackpool, we have a patreon, patreon.com/breadandthread, where you can get access to patron exclusive recipes, a discord server where we talk about food and crafts and history, and at £10 a month or more we will make a bonus episode just for you, on anything that you want

Hazel: You can find us at breadandthreadpodcast @gmail.com if you want to tell us any facts that we’ve missed off the podcast, if you want to give us ideas for future episodes, if you want to give us fun things to do in Blackpool

Liz: Yeah, we actually got a really nice email from someone called Ewan on the Bread and Thread email, so shout out to Ewan, we will do the episode you requested soon

Hazel: Thank you Ewan. We also have a tumblr, which is breadandthread, and a youtube, which is bread and thread, and twitter, which is breadandthread, where you can find announcements of upcoming episodes, pictures and things that we say we’re gonna put on there

Liz: We do also have a new video on the youtube. A couple of episodes ago we made an episode about The Suffrage Cookbook, a book sold to raise funds for the suffragettes in Pennsylvania

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: I made one of the cakes from there, the “scripture cake”

Hazel: Amazing

Liz: If you want to learn about that, yeah, head to our youtube channel Bread and Thread

Hazel: Is there any more?

Liz: I think that’s everything

Hazel: I think that is everything. So have a fun couple of weeks everyone, we will see you next time

Liz: (spooky voice) And happy Halloween!

Hazel: (spooky voice) Happy Halloween!