The Cambourne Clanger

The Cambourne Clanger – from the archives...

It was in the year of 1327 that Friar Ambrose Cambourne first created the Cambourne Clanger. It wasn’t that Friar Ambrose had any superlative skills in the dietary arts department, far from it, his primary abilities circled around emptying tankards of strong mead down his throat and thereafter sleeping hidden under haystacks.

But by contrast his wife, Marigold. S. Cambourne could cast a touch of magic over any wooden spoon or dollop of well aged goose fat. However it was just as well that Marigold.S could achieve miracles in the culinary delights genre, because to look at her one would be bounden to agree that she was no beauty, two jaundiced eyes which crossed asunder, a balding scalp with dandruff blizzard, plus a midriff that in modern parlance could be described as a well inflated JCB tyre inner tube.

 Indeed a parchment of the time attributed to Norbert V1, the Bishop of Cambridge (1325-1329) described a chance passing by her kitchen window whilst she sweated over her comestibles with hair and attire all asunder, it was thence after this apparition that Norbert was driven to scribe...

“Begad!...( a common phrase of the day)...Begad! Now there I spied a not so comely portrait, the like of which would never adorn the Squire Chumley’s mantle piece.”

Squire Chumley, for those not cognizant with his 1327 lineage, was a prominent Cambridge Don and so called ‘Purveyor of beauty’. In his formal tutorial study he displayed numerous magnificent brass rubbings of theological worth. Yet the mantelpiece to which the Bishop Norbert alluded was the Squires personal study where was hung under coloured candlelight, a vast collection of ‘Artistic French Lithographs, of which he stated were “A celebration of the female form’.               (Mistress Blenkinsop, his former cleaner, once caught sight of the same and attempted to raise a prosecution through the courts, but the judge dropped the case in return for a case of port).

But of course, when considering the allure and attractions of Mrs Cambourne, it is only fair to admit that Friar Ambrose himself was never a key player on the ‘Eye Candy Circuit’.  

Granted that in his youth he could cast a trim shadow between the cloisters whilst ogling through the small cell windows of Saint Ethel of Grimsby’s Convent at the young nuns within.

“Oh those were joyful days!” He was once heard to gasp...                                                        The mere glimpse of a freshly turned surgical stocking and discarded dirty habit, all viewed by the seductive candescence of burning tallow,  the mere thought of the scene itself would, henceforth, be enough to enflame the good Friar Ambrose’s ardor beyond the point of ecumenical control.                                                                                                                                    

At least that was initially the case, until Big Sister Bertha spied him going about his wiles. Yes, by Big Bertha! We mean she with the ‘Kiss Me Quick’ tattoo clearly visible above the trussocks... That’s the one... She also distinguishable by the suspiciously detailed early morning shadow and flatulent bowel.

So picture poor Friar Ambrose whilst still in the earliest flushes of his youth, yet so young, so virile, or so he would like to think... That was before the afore mentioned Sister Bertha accosted him with a swift jack boot directly between the partings of his unfortunately raised cassock.

The result?  Well as you would imagine, thereafter Friar Ambrose was removed from the third row of the priory choir to sing up front with the sopranos for a month.

Indeed that was the first event that made Friar Ambrose take stock of his future with regard to matters of an amorous nature.                                          

The second and indeed the final leveler to this spectrum of thought...                                          The one that totally put the lid on his previous wayward libido was surprisingly on his wedding night.

Uncomfortably espoused, as he grudgingly became to Marigold.S, by way of a settler for his gambling debts, he was about to unenthusiastically consummate their joyful entwinement in a vacant pig pen behind the Rat and Ferret public house, when he was struck by a vision that was not all together holy or enlightening.

Quite unlike a previous evening some nights before, when for the negotiated price of a few gins he had enjoyed a similar pose with Marbella, the Italian barmaid, which as it happened proved to be a mutually beneficial meeting in both the physical and financial sense in the order of the participants described.

But somehow this wedding nights ambiance failed to raise his passions to the same illustrious heights, the exact reasoning for such eluded him as both he and his new wife had duly consumed an ample belly full of porter and a half bucket of whelks between them, a usually sure fire preamble of commodities, added to which the surrounding aroma of pig fart and scuffling for as yet unfound faggots by the  Glouster Old Spot in the next pen usually did the trick?

What the newlywed Friar Ambrose hadn’t taken account for was the vision that was un-miss-ably rendered to him in the earlier part of the nocturnal proceedings, this being when his new, and even then, very ample bodied wife Marigold.S finally sprang herself free from the final loop of her grotesquely straining, nay close to busting,  whalebone corselet.

Not even the dazzlingly silver beam of moonlight that caught her in all glorious profile could raise his ardor thereafter, his new lifetime partner who stood expectant and oozing with passion in her muddy boots and wigless scrum cap found him standing with his mouth agape and at a total loss for words, to say the least...

That, perhaps by no coincidence, was the very night when the far younger Friar Ambrose Cambourne made a vow to never return home before the earliest of hours of a morning, and in so doing would ensure to never be in a condition that even vaguely held a resemblance to sobriety.   

It was in keeping with this long kept vow that the church clock chimed a quarter past the hour of three bells on the new day of Friday the 18th of June in 1327, when the Cambourne Clanger first made its beloved entrance into the world.

Friar Ambrose with unlaced boots in hand tip toed quietly through the back door into his little kitchen. The scene was one of silence, lit only by the dull glow of the fading embers in the hearth, our good Friar, true to his oath, struggled hard to even maintain  the perpendicular, his overcoat on inside out and one eye drifting north, whilst the other edged south.

Moments later the family cat, Tibbles, screeched painfully as the Friars holy sock covered foot trounced on her unfortunately located tail, the resultant calamity causing one party to race noisily out of the unclosed door, whilst the second toppled bodily with wildly clawing arms to find and cling to the kitchen table searching for a security of tenure.

Well past the ‘three sheets to the wind’ status, Friar Ambrose lay prone with his face tightly clasped against the rough wooden surface, it was then, once the world ceased to spin, that he spied with horror the two naked fore-arms on a tray that lay before him, paste-y white and chilled, but with the hands cut clean off.

Now Friar Ambrose would never describe himself as a coward, (although several others would), and yet he stifled the scream that bubbled up inside. Cool reserve, he would have liked to think, but in truth some inner sense made clear that waking his  large and powerful wife upstairs might encourage her to descend from the bedroom with the dreaded rolling pin in hand.

As luck would have it, Friar Ambrose’s iron reserve was soon rewarded, as a second glance at the stated objects of horror, followed by an investigative poke with a brave but reluctant finger exposed the perceived objects of revulsion to actually be two neatly moulded tubular pasties, a further finger to the fillings and then to his lips revealed one to be of savoury content the other sweet.

If reason were his, which at the particular time in question it wasn’t, he would have recognized these uncooked objects to be the regular Saturday order for Squire Chumley, them being produced and laid out ready for early morning baking and thereafter delivery to the Manor house.

“Food!” Though was the only light bulb of thought that lit up in Friar Ambrose’s garbled head...  “Food!”... Whether it be baked to perfection or raw as a naked Gerbil it mattered not to his rumbling tum.

As yet not totally sure if he was seeing double he grabbed out with both hands in eagerness to capture them both, or ‘it’ whichever may result, then drawing the twin comestibles to his eager jaws he bit on them one after another.

“Delicious!” Succulent mutton in a rich gravy sauce... “Scruptious!”... caramelized  apples with raspberries turned in a cinnamon sugar compote.... “Hhmmm!”

As the uncooked pies approached his dripping jaws for a fourth time the Friar  realized how very much diminished the previously elongated delicacies had suddenly become.      

“Is that you down there you drunken wastrel?” Friar Ambrose froze to the spot as his wife’s delicate tones roared from the top of the stairs...

“Oh Bugger!” he was urged to utter. “Meoww!” the returned cat by his feet added after being attracted by the smell of the mutton.

The sound of hob nailed slippers clunking down the bare wooden stairs together with the dreaded rolling pin tapping aggressively against the balustrade sent a chill of horror through the Friars bones...

“If you’ve touched the Squires pies...Then you are dead meat Mister!”

“Gulp!” Friar Ambrose could only stare at the much reduced lengths of the two half eaten pastries in his hands.

The dreaded heavy feet clunked ever closer in the hallway, only a few more paces and a closed kitchen door were left to protected his undeniable guilt.

“Meoww!” The cat added innocently.

But Friar Ambrose had not been a sneaky weasel all his life without learning a thing or two on the self preservation front. With a good gob of spit and greasy fingers our ingenious hero moulded the two remaining halves together to appear as one...                       and not a moment too soon.

His vision of loveliness adorned in curlers and a Teletubbies ‘Onesy’ burst through the door with a face of thunder, the dreaded rolling pin raised to the fore in readiness to strike.

But Friar Ambrose, suddenly stricken sober by necessity and fear, moved swiftly to convincingly launch a boot in the direction of the totally bemused cat. Needless to say her departure was equally swift and followed closely by a tirade of high volume curses and oath’s from the Friar that amounted to Tibbles henceforth becoming fair game for the next cooking day’s primary ingredient.

“Damnable Cat, my dear!” He quoted manfully, “It’s a good job I returned home when I did from working late on my Sunday Sermon or that greedy little bugger would have eaten the lot!”

The very next day Marigold.S.Cambourne delivered the singular now fresh baked pasty to the manor house and made sincere apologies for the order being diminished by the order of one. Little did she realize this particular pie was actually a combination of meat and sweet joined end to end.

Later that day Friar Ambrose suddenly slipped out of the back door to hide in the coal shed when he spotted the Squires ‘Man’ striding down the front path.

“Mrs Cambourne?” Friar Ambrose winced as he heard the man’s tone.

Some minutes later Mrs Cambourne arrived to open the coal shed door and peering into the gloom demanded...

“Ambrose! You dogs breakfast of a lay-about...Are you hiding in there again?”

Realizing that his quivering bottom must have been spied in the new crack of light  as he hid his head under a sack on the pile of Nutty Slack, try as he might he could find no alternative than to answer.

“Arh, yes my dear! Thought I might have dropped my quill in here, can’t write my sermon without a quill.” As he eased sheepishly out into the daylight with arms raised ready for defense against the dreaded rolling pin.

But to his surprise his wife, the delectable Marigold.S.Cambourne was smiling?...  Yes, it’s worth recording again...Smiling?

“Are you alright my dear?” he questioned with a worried look on his face.

“I don’t know how it happened?” She began to explain in an almost friendly tone. “But somehow the meat and the sweet got rolled into one in Squire Chumley’s order and he thought it was a revelation!”

“Oh dear...” The Friar returned in disappointed yet supportive voice.

“No you dim fossil, I mean he loved it! He’s wants the same again next week and six more to give to his friends... What’s more he sent me a whole shilling extra for a tip.”

“Oh wonderful! In which case I should...” But Friar Ambrose froze in what was about to be his claim for a share of the bounty for his part in the intervention, but second thoughts took the better of him, he could always raid her purse later.

It was that very same night when our Friar recanted the tale as he raised his glass of mead by the fire at the Rat and Ferret, ‘Percy the Poacher’ his drinking buddy was all ears and happy to draw the story out as the next round was his. But Friar Ambrose in coming to a successful conclusion drained his mug and slapped it forward with a grin.

All that Percy could find to say before reluctantly rising to approach the bar was...

“Eee – By Gum Ambrose.. thee dropped a reet  ‘Cambourne Clanger’ there din yer mate!”

And so this confection of delight made from meat and sweet got its name.