Pie & Mash

Home safely from Spain on Friday evening and I rushed straight out to Guides. I forgot to take any pictures for my series "What we did at Guides tonight". Only only more week and we break up for the holidays.

We picked the right day to come home from Spain. The weather was not so good on Thursday but we still managed to catch an hour or so sunbathing by the pool. By Friday the weather had broken, it was chillier and a bit damp.

So, today was our annual Wright family get-together. My dad is one of eight children and each year just before Christmas we all try and get together. We meet up at my aunt's flat in the East End and at it's peak there are 25 plus of us all crammed into my aunt's small maisonette all talking, eating, drinking tea and catching up on family news/gossip. Each year there is a baby/toddler and quite often it's a different child each year. This it was the turn of my cousin's grandson Louis who was into everything!

The other tradition is that a group of us (instigated by my uncle Ted, the back of whom can be seen in this picture) go to the pie & mash shop in the East India Dock Road. Pie & mash is a traditional East End dish consisting of a pie with minced beef, a scoop of mash and liquor. Liquor is actually a sort of parsley gravy and it can be eaten with jellied eels as well!

(Funnily enough they don't have a pie & mash shop in Eastenders. Just shows you how unauthentic it is!)

On the way home I had a mooch around Canary Wharf shopping centre. I do like Canary Wharf, I think it's amazing. I also love the Docklands Light Railway (DLR).