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MajorRawne

The Great British Pork Scratchings Rip-off

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I bought the world's most expensive bag of pork scratchings today. I initially asked for two bags, but when the pub barman told me their price, my budget could stretch to only one.

"You ought to have these framed when we get home, kid," my dad said. "Two pounds twenty-five! The robbing bastards."

I explained the barman's convoluted story about the owner of the pork scratchings company being somehow connected to Camilla Parker-Bowles, hence the extraordinary price. We laughed.

And then we was the pork scratchings.

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I love pork scratchings!

Honestly, I'd anticipate paying a couple of quid for a bag in most pubs, if not more. Pubs aren't a place to go for cheap snacks in my experience and you definitely don't want to shell out for something like that in a city centre, as it'd probably be worth a pint in most other places.

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Meh, if I want pork scratchings I just go to the nearest pig farm armed with a Stanley knife and just start whittling the pigs. The advantages of rural life dontchano.

The above may not be entirely serious. (Rural life ain't that great. :P )

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Enjay said:

Meh, if I want pork scratchings I just go to the nearest pig farm armed with a Stanley knife and just start whittling the pigs. The advantages of rural life dontchano.

The above may not be entirely serious. (Rural life ain't that great. :P )

I cannot quit laughing.

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You may better know them as pork rinds. They are unhealthy as sin but goddamned delicious. They sell pre-made bags like chips over here, though I haven't checked for a place to find really really good ones.

I should probably ask the butcher my mother knows. He makes some damn fine wild boar pate.

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MajorRawne said:

I bought the world's most expensive bag of pork scratchings today.

How much did you get for that £2.25? I bought a bag for £1.80 last year, and within the bag I discovered a grand total of three scratchings. They weren't even those freakishly huge ones either, these were all about the size of a backspace key.

It put me in a bad mood for the rest of the fucking week and I doubt I'll ever get over being the victim of this absolute travesty of a pub snack.

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Grazza said:

I thought you were going to reveal that they were actually made from horse skin.

Just as likely to be Lesser Rorquals, courtesy of Japan's "scientific whaling" program. They're encountering buyer resistance at home and have a growing stockpile of whale meat (some 5,000 tons) sitting in cold storage.

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Took me a second to realize what everyone meant by pork scratchings. Don't you guys also call chips crisps? Anyway...

Kirby said:

They are unhealthy as sin but goddamned delicious.


Much better for you than potato chips. They have nine times the protein of chips and less fat; on top of that, nearly half it's fat is unsaturated.

I don't know your pork rind prices over in the UK are, but I can find them around here cheap. Of course a pub or any place of convenience for a particular type of item is going to charge more, I still have one question MajorRawne; why did you buy them?

Also, look out for microwavable pork rinds over the bagged stuff, they taste much better.

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Sounds dirty and unhealthy. I like it, though they look like something I would find in the pet food/dog treats section of a supermarket.

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Maes said:

they look like something I would find in the pet food/dog treats section of a supermarket.

Misleading. If you're into the taste of pork, they're the pork product equivalent of a fine wine or whiskey. Except cheaper.

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DoomUK said:

If you're into the taste of pork, they're the pork product equivalent of a fine wine or whiskey.


That would be italian Prosciutto, then. That's as refined as the taste of pork can ever get.




Pork scratchings and pork rind, OTOH, remind me more of these:





That doesn't mean thay can't be tasty, though ;-)

And, DAMN, this thread made me hungry for pork in ANY form even though I have already ate (chicken)!

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Maes, you're looking at pork scratchings from the perspective of someone who has never actually tasted them. They're like fething Scooby snacks. When you eat one, you quite literally float up to the ceiling on an invisible cloud of bliss, then slowly sway backwards and forwards as you descend back to earth like a leaf in autumn. If the film Trainspotting had scenes where the characters ate pork scratchings instead of injecting heroin, I'd have been able to relate - except you don't get withdrawal symptoms from not eating pork scratchings.

I only bought the scratchings because I'd already asked for some. I was too polite to turn both packs down, although I did reduce my order from two to one. It's the curse of being English, we're always doing strange shit like this.

Pork scratchings are approximately 600 calories per 100g. I think they usually come between 60-100g and their price tends to hover around £1-£1.50 in supermarkets. Sometimes they taste burnt or too greasy, but when they are done right they are excellent. Some blasphemous crap is going on though - they're now selling spicy chilli and jalapeno flavours, which kind of defeats the purpose of a pork scratching.

Quick translation guide for Americans to get the slang, just in case any of this comes up, and because I like this stuff:

(UK = USA)
Quid = pound (currency)
Crisp = potato chip
Chip = whatever you call slices of potato that you eat with fish and other meals
Biscuit = seems to be generalised as "cookie"
Autumn = fall
Infant school = kindergarten, ages 4-6
Junior school = not sure you have a name for this, don't you use grades eg 2nd grade?, ages 6-10
Comprehensive school = high school (there are attempts to Americanise this in the UK, some places have changed their names to High Schools), ages 10-16
Pupil = young student (i.e. below college age - this has been Americanised to student)
Tramp = bum, hobo
Bum = butt
Pants = underwear
Trousers = pants
Prat = moron; incompetent; not as strong an insult as "moron"
Bent = morally dubious; taking bribes; also, insulting slang for homosexual
Bum chum = Male friend who always hangs around with you
Chuff = idiot (Yorkshire slang); also vagina
Tuppence = old unit of currency; childish slang for vagina
Faj = vagina
Poo = poop
Poop = fart
Guff = fart
Trump = fart
Twat = moron
Leg it = run away
Peg it = die; in some areas, means to run away
Cock (as in "cock of the block", "cock of the school") = the toughest male in the area/school; also "cock" can be used as a term of endearment e.g. "All right, cock?"
All right/awight = Hello/are you ok?
Paddy = Irish person
John = English person
Taffy = Welsh person
Sweets or Spice = seems to be generalised as "candy"
Darling, love, spadge, sausage = used (generally without sexist intent) when speaking to the opposite sex, even if you don't know them; not always considered polite, especially by some women, but as frequently used by women as by men
Mate = friend; used to imply non-threatening or reasonable attitude; not commonly used by men to describe women; rejecting someone's use of the word "mate" - for example by taking it as an implied insult - is highly offensive and seen as aggressive/challenging (remember this when speaking to people online)
See yer = the most common way of saying goodbye
Cheers = thank you

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MajorRawne said:

Darling, love, spadge, sausage = used (generally without sexist intent) when speaking to the opposite sex

The great north/south divide! Use those latter terms down here and people will look at you like you've just coughed into their bag of pork scratchings.

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Indeed. Some of these were news to me (and I once edited a book on British slang, but with an emphasis on London/the South).

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Sounds like those pork scratchings are made to lighten up your day in work and keep that hunger away.

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I'm not sure which ones are just Yorkshire or Northern dialect. They seem fairly common, but I am not well travelled. Maybe I should change it to a "Yorkshire English to American" dictionary.

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MajorRawne said:

If the film Trainspotting had scenes where the characters ate pork scratchings instead of injecting heroin, I'd have been able to relate - except you don't get withdrawal symptoms from not eating pork scratchings.


Sounds like YOU would, though O_o

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Well Major, as a Londoner (currently living in Liverpool), here's my take on what you've said:

The rest of the world calls our chips "fries" (as in, French Fries or, briefly, Freedom Fries in America)
I'd call "Infant School" Reception, "Junior School" Primary School and "Comprehensive School" Secondary School - particularly as I went to a Grammar School, which isn't the same thing as a Comprehensive, but is still a Secondary School :p
The "bum chum" thing just means you're gay as far as I'm aware, but you'd only say it if you still in school
"Faj" is a new one
"Peg it" is definitely just another term for running away
Your thing about people being a "Cock" is definitely unique to you - the rest of us only use it as an insult or another term for penis
Not sure about the "spice" part of sweets, TBH - spices for most of us are... Well, spices
BaronOfStuff is very right about spadge or sausage. I've been on the receive end of some other really weird terms of acquaintance-level endearment in my time in the North too
"Mate" for most people I know is basically a form of address, rather than any implied friendship. Although to say to somebody that they are your mate would be saying they're your friend

Confusing, all this! Good thing cockney rhyming slang is about as brown bread as Latin these days, so we don't need to go to the Barney of explaining that... :P

@Maes: It's a tasty, unhealthy snack that tends to be better the fattier and crispier it is. When it's still got hair sticking out of it, it can be a touch off-putting, but when you're shelling out a couple of quid for what is basically bite-sized fried pigskin, you get what you're given. Bit like when you buy from a kebab shop in Britain - the food is the most adventurous thing you'll do that night, whatever you order :P

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MajorRawne said:

(UK = USA)
Infant school = kindergarten, ages 4-6
Junior school = not sure you have a name for this, don't you use grades eg 2nd grade?, ages 6-10
Comprehensive school = high school (there are attempts to Americanise this in the UK, some places have changed their names to High Schools), ages 10-16


In Scotland, the school system is different to most of the UK and the names for the stages of the schools are also different. There are variations, of course (as there are in England etc.) but the following are typical terms...

(England = Scotland)
Infant School = Nursery (sometimes with "School" added)
Junior School = Primary School (Seven years - primary 1 to 7 (starting age 4 or 5))
Comprehensive School* = Secondary School (Secondary 1 to 6 (1 to 4 compulsory, 5 and 6 optional age 16+))

*To be fair, "comprehensive", in both Scotland and the rest of the UK is actually a type of school rather than a stage of school. What's more, many schools with the name "High School" have been around for really quite a long time and not because they have been Americanised. "[town name] High School" is not unusual around here (I have worked in a number, all of which were comprehensive schools) but "[town name] Academy" is more common. Both "High Schools" and "Academys" can be comprehensive or private. In Scotland, a private school is one that in England might be referred to as a public school (ie it is a private organisation, not state run, that requires fees and has a restrictive entrance policy of some sort). The term "public school" isn't really used commonly here but, when it is used, as often as not it can mean state school or private school, depending on the background of the speaker as much as anything else.

The terms, comprehensive, high shool and academy are confused and no longer distinct but they do have separate historical reasons for existing.

The school I work at has an unusual name. It does not bear the name of the town (nor an area of a city or similar) but the name of the Duchess who founded it 175 years ago. What's more, it does not have the words "high school" or "academy" in the name. It is called "The [duchess' name] Schools". It is "schools" rather than "school" for mainly historic reasons. Despite all that history, it is a fairly typical state-run comprehensive school in rural Scotland where we can whittle our own pork scratchings. ;)

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Pork scratchings equals bliss! They are fairly expensive in the gocery stores over here in Norway, at least more expensive than regular chips per gram. In pubs, everything is fucking expensive. A 30 gram bag of pork scratchings is easily 4 quids in a pub.

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I forgot about primary school. In any case, I'd have thought it meant infant school. "Infant school" and "junior school" are probably slang terms around here.

In Yorkshire (since it's now obvious I cannot speak for the rest of England), nursery comes before infant school. I never went to nursery and only a few of my friends did. I think it started to become "fashionable" to do this while I was in infant or junior school and now it seems rare for kids not to go.

Faj is not a commonly used term, I added it as a joke, but it's used in Bottom Live when talking about the Queen ("Maj the Faj").

"Cock" may not be used to mean "tough" these days, but it was definitely in use in Northern areas of England for a few decades at least. Fred Dibnah worked on a steam engine called "Cock O The North", for example, and that had to be late 1800s-early 1900s vintage. I was in comprehensive school from 1990-1995 and people used to talk worriedly about a fat fething prick who was "cock of the school". There was no secret sniggering about the other meaning of "cock", and nobody ever confused the two.

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Also, "to fill someone in" means to inform them of something in the US, but it means to beat them up in England.

My grandmother once wrote to an English friend to fill her mother in.



Fortunately it wasn't taken seriously.

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Yes that's true, it is not commonly used in Yorkshire today though.

Wee = pee
Wee wee = urinate
Jugs = tits
Busters = nipples (on a man)
Nob/knob = very rude words for penis
Nobhead/knobhead = very insulting form of "dickhead"
On the blob = a woman having a period
Scrubber = a person of poor hygiene; sometimes also refers to someone who lives in a rough area
Bell end = the head of a circumcised penis; also means someone whose behaviour is idiotic
Nappy = diaper
Poof ("puff") = homosexual man; also refers to a man who displays cowardly or weak tendencies (not politically correct)
Berk = idiot
Plonker = fool; also another word for penis
Wally = mild term for fool
Fancy = attracted to eg "Maes fancies Major Rawne"
Dump station = toilet
Bog = toilet (possibly short for "bogatry")
Funny = untrustworthy or suspicious
Bodge = to put something together in a hurry or using inappropriate materials (eg "Yes Prime Minister, I'm afraid it's another bodge job")

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Interesting, never knew that!

Berk = cunt
Todger = penis
Wank = jerk off
Wanker = jerkoff
Frig = masturbate (female)
Plop = turd
Shag = have sex
Bonk = have sex
Shaft = have sex
Bugger = to interfere with sexually; also an exclamation of annoyance ("Oh, bugger!"); also refers to an annoying person ("You daft bugger")
Git = someone who screws other people over and acts in their own interest
Sod = idiot ("You stupid sod")
Daft = lacking common sense
Thick = harsher word for daft
Plank = another way of calling someone thick (seems to be used against men rather than women)

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