Tommytoes

As soon as I see these, a song comes into my head; “Oh it’s little tommytoes for the gentry and bloaters for the likes of us ….”  by the Albion Band. It’s been over 40 years since I last heard it.  How does this happen?  And now I can’t get rid of it.

It comes from Larkrise to Candleford  - a musical version of the novel of the same name by Flora Thomson.  Published in 1939, it tells the semi-autobiographical story of a young girl growing up in an Oxfordshire village in the 1880s. 

Tomatoes were relatively expensive back then and bloaters - a sort of smoked herring - were, apparently, cheaper. 

So - there you have it. Tommytoes.