give peas a chance

I was looking at the glamorous but also slightly wacky work of Madame Yevonde for the Persephone Posts I wrote during the week when I came across this photograph, Shelling Peas (cover for Woman and Beauty, July 1938).

Well, I just howled. What a way to subvert domesticity whilst also making it look fabulous. (And before you ask just who smokes while shelling peas, let me tell you that my mother-in-law smoked while doing everything in the kitchen.) This is the kind of thing that Nigella was doing with How to be a Domestic Goddess, but sadly many people missed the irony.

But anyway, that’s an aside, as it’s actually all about the peas this week.

The photo made me think of that classic dinner party question: what’s the worst job you’ve ever had? Well, pour yourself some more wine and let me tell you about the time I worked in a pea factory in Lincolnshire one university summer holiday. We did twelve hour shifts with two thirty minute breaks on benches in a room full of metal lockers, four day shifts from 6am to 6pm followed by four night shifts from 6pm to 6am. For eleven hours I stood in a dank, cavernous industrial unit wearing wellies and a hairnet in front of a conveyor belt of freshly podded peas. The peas had just been harvested from nearby fields, then shelled and washed in a huge machine. There were three or four of us either side of the conveyor belt and our job was to inspect the damp peas and pick out any foreign objects - leaves, bits of pods or plant, twigs, insects, stones, dead mice. It was cold, wet, and noisy; we had to wear ear plugs so there was no music or chat, and every minute seemed like an hour. It smelled of peas, I smelled of peas, I had cold hands for twelve solid hours, and all for peanuts. I didn’t eat a single pea for years afterwards. Now can I have the last brownie?

I didn’t exactly have pea-related PTSD, but every time I smelled peas cooking or even ageing NZ Sauvignon Blanc (which can often have a whiff of old peas), I was taken back to the pea factory. Exposure therapy came with persuading three reluctant children to eat their greens and someone had to lead by example, although I still can’t face ordinary, larger garden peas. At the risk of sounding like a princess with her peas, I will only eat petits pois. Just recently, I’ve started making a brilliant River Cafe Easy pea and spaghetti recipe which is perhaps the best way ever to eat lots of peas without actually noticing that they are peas.

All this, however, doesn’t stop me enjoying pea culture.

Shelling Peas 1908 Carl Larsson

Shelling peas by hand in a lovely way to spend some time doing very little really but still being productive. It’s a gentle, easy, repetitive task, and it’s very satisfying running your finger down the pod to flick out the peas, with little popping sounds, maybe eating a few raw peas, chatting, having pea-podding competitions.

[‘Shelling Peas’ by Lucy Doyle who paints domestic subjects in fabulous colours]

Colanders can be taken outside onto a doorstep, a balcony, into the garden - with a glass of fresh Sauvignon Blanc, perhaps.

[‘The Lustre Bowl with Green Peas’ (1911), William Nicholson]

Or you can bring out the best bowl for posh peas.

Pleasant as it is to pod a bag of fresh peas from the allotment or market, I wouldn’t want to do it professionally. Charles Dickens does write a good market scene; there’s a great one in Martin Chuzzlewit: “Many and many a pleasant stroll they had in Covent Garden Market; snuffing up the perfume of the fruits and flowers, wondering at the magnificence of the pineapples and melons; catching glimpses down side avenues, of rows and rows of old women, seated on inverted baskets, shelling peas”.

This is pea-shelling on an epic scale. It looks as though they are at a football match, or the English equivalent of the French tricoteuses at the guillotine - with the execution just out of shot here. (No coincidence that Dickens also created the most bloodthirsty tricoteuse of all in Madame Defarge.)

Peas also offer some nice punning opportunities. I think this, on the Edwardian Chalfont viaduct now over the M25, is one of the all-time best pieces of graffiti, perhaps inspired by the John Lennon song. I’ve driven under it hundreds of times and it always made me smile, and then it was removed in 2018 which was saddening. Even I think peas should be given a chance.

[‘Thou Shellest’ (c1938) by Evelyn Dunbar, study for proposed poster for Shell]

Evelyn Dunbar mined shell/Shell humour with this study. There was also an ‘I shell’ version, so maybe she was planning on conjugating ‘to shell’; ‘she shells’ could have been a good extended visual pun.

Although they are no relation and very much not edible, I couldn’t write about peas without mentioning sweet peas, a favourite flower from childhood. I’ve only ever grown them successfully once, and it’s not easy to buy them unless you are lucky enough to find a jar of them and an honesty box by the side of the road. I was once very tempted to buy every bunch in a large bowl full of locally grown sweet peas (above) in the Chapel cafe/gallery/shop in Abergavenny. They don’t last long, but while they do, they are wonderful.

Happy Sunday! Peas and love, as Ringo Starr might say✌🏼

Added Saturday pm:

How about this for sixth sense? Geraldine, who came to my open studio today gave me a card featuring this wonderful Victorian breadboard with peas and pods carved round the rim. It’s from the collection in the Antique Breadboard Museum.