A self published, self funded travelogue epic in search of the perfect pie, written with humour, observation and downright desperation.
Over 500 copies have been sold to date of Life of Pies which means that there’s less than 500 left to get your mitts on.
This is my ultra positive way of saying I’ve still got a shed full of the buggers left and I had to pay the printers on the credit card….
So here’s the details…..
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June 2012 saw your correspondent eat a very posh pie with a double digit price in an Oxfordshire village and then nipping to the even posher deli around the corner for a growler to polish off proceedings.
With a few days to spend in Dorset, I ventured all the way as far as Yeovil to buy a pie from a baker’s revelling in the deligthful name of The Dutch Oven.
April 2012
You’ve never known bad luck until you’ve been stood behind a man with a peregrine falcon perched on his shoulder and he buys the last pie in the shop. Never mind, in Conwy there’s always somewhere else nearby as the Welsh are partial to indulge in an oggy. I said OGGY!!
March 2012 was the month where I started to spread my wings. What better way to celebrate the arrival of Spring than a day out in Shropshire on a dual mission.
Without sounding like Cilla off Corrie when she’s on Britain’s Best Bakery narration duties, Shropshire is the home of the fidget pie and also the town of Much Wenlock where locals and visitors alike queue around the corner for the pies of John Ryan (and his sons).
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February 2012 saw me still tippy-toeing around the North West in my often extended lunch hour and so it was that I found myself being given the evil eye by a track suited youth outside Macclesfield court house. Not surprising really as I was doing a voice recording and holding my phone like one of those tits out of the apprentice. He probably wanted to stab me.
And it is doing (sort of)….
I spent today sifting through nearly 1,500 photos of pies and pastries I have consumed in an attempt to whittle it down to a publishable printed selection.
In a desperate attempt to drum up interest in the book prior to pre-launch, I’ll be banging a few of these photos online in rough chronological order to whet your appetite over the next few weeks.
Horsey horsey So finally, after eating twice the number of pies I had originally planned I bring my mission to a close.
It started on a Friday in January with a trip to Hampsons in Knutsford and me waving a knife about in my car passenger seat to chop up a meat and potato and ended with me sat in a Pie & Ale House in Manchester eating a Horse Pie almost two years […]
Unlike Mariah Carey, all I want for Christmas is to go to Newcastle. It is my last port of call before shutting down the book. I have it all planned out with military precision exactly where I need to go and what I will have at what time. Alas, I’ve been unable to find a day to do it in so I consoled myself last night with a beer or two in the German Christmas […]
“Life of Pies: out Autumn 2013” he said. Yeah well about that.
I’ve faced a two pronged attack you see. On the negative side, I was working too hard to go and roam around the country to get pies and then I kind of lost my job so I wasn’t working at all. The travelling and eating pies bit was no longer a problem but affording them was. Now I’ve got a job again (and it’s […]
It doesn’t sound right that does it? The humble meat and potato is the signature dish of the town of Wigan and is also prevalent in many Lancastrian towns stretching north as far as Morecambe and Barrow.
I’ve had over 100 different ones of these in the past two years and almost all have been typified by their earthy charm’s in terms of filling and of course, the all-important price. A working man (or woman’s) nosebag […]
I’ve had to lay off the pies for a week or two for one reason or another before pushing on to the conclusion of Life of Pies in the early Autumn so I’ve been using my temporarily pastry free brain to get my records up to date.
Being a boring maths geek as well as a pie obsessive I couldn’t help knock together a chart or two showing my progress to date, in this case one […]
WAYNE ROONEY RETURNS HOME INJURED FROM FAR EAST TOUR scream the newspaper headlines. Poor lad. He probably fancies a pie right now. and I think I’ve found his local pie shop, that’s Wienholts in Alderley Edge, the place where Coleen and the other WAG’s get their steak bakes to go with their fake bakes.
I’m not saying it’s posh around here but I’ve heard off a mate that they call a sausage roll a HAM ROLL, so I am expecting […]
March was a good month for eating pies, according to my records I had 19 of them. Good work eh? Well, yes and no.
I’ve probably alluded to this in the past but the way I operate when I go pie hunting is that I take a camera along with me to get a photo of the goods and I […]
“Do you sell pies luv?”
A simple enough question I thought. It might get you a funny look if you walk into a bakers in Wigan and ask that question, seeing as you are likely to be confronted with racks of the buggers.
The pie lady – and I’m not being […]
After launching the Life of Pies twitter account just a week ago, it is indeed heartening to see that we have 105 followers already leaving us in no doubt that we are indeed a nation of pie aficionados.
Now I’d love to send each and every one of you a virtual pie but that would take a structured, disciplined plan delivered with military style efficiency but as I’ve […]
Ok let me tell you where I’m at – he says sounding like a weedy Dragons’ den interrogator. For years I wrote about the only thing I know: football. For the past eighteen months or so I have formalised a plan I have had in my head for a number of years: to write a book about pies.
If I’ve been looking a […]