International Day of Pease

by Carol Keene

According to sources in Pease Porridge, a small village in West Sussex, England, we're coming up on another International Day of Pease. Pease Porridge became the town's official name when in the 1740's, it became the favorite watering hole and eatery for convicts in route from London to a prison on the southern coast. Pease Porridge is made from cooked dried peas that grow in and around that village. It was a cheap and hearty meal to prepare for the traveling prisoners that could be served hot or cold, fresh or old—up to nine days old, commensurate with the children's clapping game and popular Mother Goose nursery rhyme.

This year in Pease Porridge, the Day of Pease will include: pease shooting, a pease cook-off, and music by the Village's own, Peaseable Kingdom. The ubiquitous tortures of yore have officially been eliminated from the festival. Unruly residents will no longer be required to kneel on dried pease as punishment for acts originating in the beer tent.

New this year's line up are exciting changes in the gaming rules and not surprisingly, in the ingredients list for the cook-off, according to Flarrity McHugh, this year's organizer. Pease shooting will now require a tube from which to launch fresh green pease. One's own nose is no longer considered an appropriate instrument. Soda straws, category A-7, for this year's tenderometer-graded specimens, will be provided. Neither metal nor composite instruments of nondescript or questionable components will be acceptable, including wires, generators or batteries.

On the heels of last year's first prize entry debacle, Sorley O'Flay has been banned from the festivities. In fact, she was recently seen in Pease Porridge eating a bowl of Porridge while shackled to a string of prisoners, heading down to the southern coast. Sorley was suspected, and convicted of cubing the marinated feet of her dear, departed husband, and including him in her stew. Sorley's entry was tasty, but disqualified from the baked pease category when a whole toe, nail and all, floated to the top of a bowl. This year's entries, it was decided, will be entirely vegetarian.

And finally, The Nine-Days-Old Micro-Brewery is up and running again, after two unrelated infusion-mashing incidents. Besides Sorley's husband Danny drowning in tank number one, a second incident; the mistaken addition of kaolin clay left over from Finn's Pottery Shoppe was added instead of yeast to the boiled wort. The look-alike granules that clogged the apparatus instead of dissolving and fermenting shut down the operation for longer, even, than the unfortunate marinating of Danny O'Flay. Nine-Days-Old will be the sole concession of beer this year and will debut its International Day of Pease Ale. Free pedicures will be offered at the foot of the beer tent in memory of Danny O'Flay.