Chapter 13.00: The UK Letters

Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting. Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.

narrative – the history of bacon

The UK Letters

My Danish experience came to an end when I boarded a steamer en route to London. Andreas, his mom and dad, and Uncle Jeppe all joined us at the harbour in Copenhagen for an emotional farewell. In the year I have been in Demark I made giant leaps toward understanding the art of curing the best bacon on earth.

It was my first experience living in a completely different culture for such a long time. Well, it’s of course not a completely different culture, but it’s different enough from the Cape culture for me to notice a few interesting things. The concepts of our culture exist only in our mind, and these were expanded when I realized that our entire experience of reality is a product of our brains. Denmark exposed me to two sets of systems. The one set is that which we design in our minds. Oake’s mild curing process and Phil Amour’s disassembly lines are brilliant modern examples of this where work is a metaphysical concept where processes are designed to maximize an outcome. In this way, we can say that one process is better than the other if we judge it based on the energy input and the sum of the output. We can judge the feedback loops by the effectiveness whereby the system adapts to changes.

On the other hand, there is the construction of macromolecules like proteins which was achieved through forces of nature. There is the nitrogen cycle that governs the way that plant nutrients are extracted from the air, into the soil, through plants into animals, contributing to what we call nutrition. Judged in this way, we can say that chemical reactions, bacteria, and our digestive system transform chemical compounds into simple new compounds (or more complex compounds in the case of oxidation reactions), forms that are useful for further processes. Like the concept of work that we toy with within our minds, a basic premise of all-natural processes is that very complex structures and systems exist, predicated upon many very small and simple processes. The most complex system of nature is the total of many simple systems in such a way that the complete process becomes bigger than the sum of all the small reactions.

A new concept started forming in my mind. Very tentatively so I will have to give this a lot more thought before I can say too much about it, but it seems as if we become more productive as we more closely mimic nature. As if the concept of work in nature, which exists not in our minds, but as a fundamental principle of life itself, is the blueprint for the most productive system, and the closer we mimic how work is organized in nature, the more productive we become. What is interesting to me is that mentally, we build concepts that exist in nature already. So, to improve a system, breaking it down into the smallest possible parts is step one. To understand bacon curing, understand all the small reactions that make it possible.

Now we are off to England where an entirely different adventure awaited us. If Denmark were the lesson of nitrogen and protein, England would be the revelation of salt, sugar, and refrigeration. Minette and I arrived in London in January 1892. (1) A friend of Andreas, Kevin Picton, met me at the harbour. Excitement about being in London flooded my mind. Romantic images from my mental world as a child, growing up in Cape Town now takes on real-life shape right in front of my eyes.

Kevin is Welsh. What more can I say? He graciously and generously opened his house to Minette and me. His con was working in Australia at the time and he invited us to stay in his bedroom. Kevin and his wife, Julie are hearty and warm people and took us in like family. They introduced us to the pub culture of the small English villages, something completely new to us.

It was in the local pub in Peterborough where we had some of our greatest conversations and on our third and fourth beer, I was no longer certain that we were conversing about the same subject on account of his strong Welsh accent. Who cared?! It was, in any event, great evenings! We were having the time of our lives!

Kevin is a unique, intelligent, perceptive man and as tough as nails! He is clear about his goals and he pursues them with a single-mindedness that I have seldom come across in my many travels. His dad, Kevin and son all three played rugby for the same team, at the same time! This sums up the kind of family they are. I very soon learned that Kevin conducted his business, which was in making knives, precisely to slice bacon, as he played his rugby and trained his body – with single-minded dedication and courage! In my life, I have met some of the toughest men on earth in the bush in Africa, on the goldfields in Johannesburg, and the diamond fields in Kimberly; but I will venture to say that among them, there is no man as tough as Kevin! I only recently met him through the introduction of Andreas, and I already see that I will learn from him and that the proverb is true with Kevin and me as iron sharpens iron, so two friends sharpen each other.

The local pub we frequented in Peterborough is the Bull. I can honestly say that Minette and I spent some of our most enjoyable evenings there with Kevin and Julie.

Above: The Pub in Peterborough where Kevin and I spend many enjoyable hours, talking bacon! Later, Oscar accompanied me to England and again, the Bull was our home away from home!

Over the weeks we spent with Kevin and Julie, we fell in love with Britain’s pub culture. Like the church back home, the English pub is central to life. It is where you go after work to unwind and play pool with other locals. The rugby and cricket teams meet there before a match and afterwards, this is where triumphs are celebrated, and defeats are forgotten. It is the thread that keeps communities close and neighbours familiar with the comings and goings of all.

I told Kevin about our experiences in Denmark and my hope to make it to Calne and the curing works of Harris. It just so happened that at this time, Julie met the agent of Lord Lansdowne, a certain Mr. Fife, on account of the work she does for their local government. Mr. Fife inquired of a good pub to have a drink after work and she suggested that he visit the Bull. It was quite serendipitous that on that precise evening, Kevin, Minette, and I were at the pub for a few beers before we intended to head home for supper.

Kevin, propelled by his Welsh nature, told Mr. Fife about my quest to discover how to produce the best bacon on earth, and knowing that he is from Calne, wondered if he would introduce us to the folks at Harris. What I did not know at the time was that Calne where the Harris operation was located, was situated on the grounds of the estate of Lord Landsdown, the person represented by Mr. Fife.

Despite Mr Fife’s formal mannerisms and speech, he was a warm English gentleman and correctly surmised that we would probably need a place to stay for our visit to the Harris bacon plants. He cordially invited us to stay over at the manor house of Lord Landsdown, Bowood estate and insisted that Lord Lansdowne would not want it any other way.

It was during this conversation that he told me how Joseph Priestly, on 1 August 1774, acting as a tutor for the children, did his experiments and discovered oxygen. This delighted both Minette and me to no end to suddenly be in such close proximity to where fundamental strides in Chemistry were being taken, one of our favourite subjects. Mr Fife explained how Lord Lansdowne welcomed anybody to his house who had any interest in the sciences. The Marquis was to remain in India for a few more months, but he said that his master would not forgive him if, upon his return, he learned that we met and that he did not invite us to stay at his official residence so close to Calne. With that, it was set – we would reside at Bowood!

I have been preoccupied with bacon for so long that an altogether different matter started to occupy my mind. It was during my visit to Peterborough when Julie took me aside one day and spoke to me about Minette. I am not the most perceptive person on earth, and it never occurred to me that there may be more to Minette joining me in Europe than a friend supporting another friend. My first wife, also named Julie, and I had a brilliant relationship, but we had completely different interests. I think I am a nomad and a wanderer; an explorer and an adventurer, and my Julie (as opposed to Kevin’s Julie) is someone who is looking for white picket fences. She wants to grow old with a man, a small house, a quint garden and a cat! I, on the other hand, want to die as a man who lived a full life and explored everything! From there the love for mountaineering and bacon!

I told her how I started to see Minette in a new light when we camped out at Penny’s cave the night before I left for Denmark. Kevin’s Julie was quite intrigued about what I meant. “You know,” I stuttered, “I saw that she was beautiful. It is as if she belongs here on the mountain and not in a city. There is a connection that I cannot explain. As if something is drawing her to me.” Julie laughed! “And you think that when she came all the way to Denmark, she only came over to have a holiday?!” She shook her head. She then turned to Kevin and said, “I did not think I would meet another man as ignorant as you when it comes to matters of the heart!”

Kevin’s Julie made me think differently about Minette, our friendship, and her visit. I felt very silly for not seeing this. I knew Minette had to return home soon but I already started planning to establish myself at Bowood and join her on the voyage to Cape Town for a short visit.

Our time in England started on Peterborough but soon Minette and I were on our way to Calne and the Bowood estate. Over the next few months, my education in Bacon curing and living life took on an entirely new dynamic! What follows is a series of letters I wrote from Calne, Peterborough, and Liverpool between 1892 and 1893. The revelations through these letters are explosive and offer a unique and intimate view of the development of the pork industry and curing bacon in particular. Bit by bit we start to unravel the multiple small and fascinating parts of what makes up the sum total of the art of bacon curing.

Back home in South Africa, Willem and James, Oscar’s brothers joined our bacon-curing venture. Will and James moved to Cape Town first to oversee the purchase of a small plot of land (2) in Woodstock where our bacon curing plant would be erected.

Will met with David Graaff and arranged for the purchase of the land directly behind Combrinck & Co.’s New Market Street site, bought to erect refrigeration works in case they are forced to move from their site at the Shambles. James is our financial manager. He worked for the Bank of the Netherlands in Johannesburg when Oscar convinced him to join our small band of fools.

While I was learning the art of curing the best bacon on earth, together they would nit the commercial fabric of the company. Soon Minette and I found ourselves on a train from Peterborough where Kevin and his beautiful wife, Julie live with their two kids, on our way back to London to board the Great Western Railway to Calne. It is the next major stop in my quest to discover how to cure the best bacon on earth. It is the single most exciting story on earth!

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Notes:

1. We arrived in London on Saturday, 22 October 2011. We spend a day in London with Ivan Procter from Marel before we took a train to Peterborough, where we met Kevin Picton.

2. The first Woodys site was at 7 Assegaai Road, Kraaifontein.