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Potatoes!
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Potatoes!

Tables of tubers and steel elbows at an annual (polite) bunfight

POLLY RODGER BROWN

Friday, 16 February 2018, 10:40

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"Good morning everyone and welcome," yells a ruddy-faced man in a suitably muddy anorak. This is our twenty-second year, so no special landmark. How is it out there? Bloody freezing, comes back the cheery response.

On an icy day last weekend, with the east wind blowing, we found ourselves in a queue with several hundred others for an event I had been eagerly awaiting - the annual East Anglia Potato Day.

In spite of the fact that I know potatoes were brought to Spain from South America by the conquistadors, and even though a plate of patatas fritas accompanies every choice on the menu del día and, let's face it, the crisps section of any Spanish supermarket is highly impressive in terms of size and variety, I have always thought of potatoes as very British. Far from glamorous or exciting, but earthy instead, they are nevertheless an important staple food in northern climes. In the depths of winter potatoes power us through.

For keen vegetable growers like me, January in England is as long and useless a month as it is for everyone else. But February? February, with its Snowdrop Sunday events, swathes of daffodils and crocuses poking green shoots through the grassy verges and the rapidly lighter and longer days marks the real beginning of the year. And the first crop to get going is the early or new potato.

So, here we are in mid Suffolk, among a wildly mixed gang of allotment holders and gardeners - bearded hipsters in checked shirts, smart old ladies wearing posh wellies and mad hats, local old boys (as they're called in these parts) clutching lists of the seed potato varieties they want to buy. There are 80 different kinds carefully laid out in crates in the hall and, as we had been warned, once through the doors it's a (rather polite) bunfight with sharp elbows and steely determination needed to get anywhere near the tables of tubers. It reminded me of the yearly battle to achieve a plate of free - but hard won - paella at the summer village fiestas in Andalucía.

Dull and lumpy looking they may be but potatoes have brilliant names, many reminiscent of all things British - Arran Victory, Home Guard, Pentland Squire, Vales Emerald, Ulster Chieftain, Valor. How on earth does one choose a seed potato? We bought purple ones, red ones, wrinkly worm shaped ones, first earlies, second earlies, maincrops. I would have liked to consult the official 'Advisor on Varieties' but he was deep in conversation with a man keen on becoming an amateur Sarpo breeder (something complicated but vital to do with tackling potato blight and preserving heritage varieties). What a whole new wonderful world we uncovered that Saturday.

Best of all and not surprisingly was the quality of eavesdropping. Do you think there might be a black market in Charlottes? I overheard a young man asking someone. They've refilled the crate three times and now they're sold out.

And my husband, laughing hysterically, relayed a conversation he'd heard, from one old boy to another. Look at all this argy-bargy going on in here. It int about Black whatsits day or summut like tha'. It's over taters...!

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