Wednesday 17 December 2008

Save the Parmigiano

In the midst of all this madness, it's good to know that the Italian government - and Italian shoplifters - have got their priorities right. And didn't Samuel Pepys himself, on the outbreak of the Great Fire of London, take care to bury his parmesan cheese in his garden? Wise man...

7 comments:

  1. I didn't know that about Pepys. Do you happen to know if he dug it up again? The price of parmesan, a haul like that could be worth a small fortune.

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  2. Well he wasn't a man to waste a cheese - but who knows? I feel a Time Team special coming on - The Hunt for Pepys's Cheese - 'and we've got just 48 hours to find it!'...

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  3. I've had too bad a day to be laughing like this. You do know that this would actually make an excellent show? It's my earlier point made all over again. It's men like you and me that be running the world. Life would be far more interesting.

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  4. Time Team are bloody useless. They'd probably fail to find Stonehenge if they were driven to it in a minibus.

    I used to see that long-haired Brummie wandering around Bristol University, trying to look famous and eccentric.

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  5. Hmmn, I'd be a little wary of a piece of 350-year-old Parmesan after it's had Phil Harding's trowel all over it. Might be tainted with more than a hint of iron and preserving oil. A better bet might be those cute and intelligent fellows they use in southern Africa to sniff out landmines - giant pouch rats. Perfectly easy to fit them with GPS trackers so "geophysics" could follow their progress on some laptops after a crack squad of pouchies is unleashed in Shoreditch. And think of the savings, too. After all, they work for peanuts.

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  6. And wise enough, I'm sure, to go back later and dig it up, along with the wine that lay with it. What an old fox he was.
    I see from the wonderful multi-map birdseye that alongside Seething Lane, just north of the Tower, runs Seething Gardens, a lone patch of green in a sea of steel and glass. Could this be the spot where SP set up his little deli?

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  7. Nige, what is the answer? Did he get his bit of cheese back?? What sort of cheese did they have in those days?

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