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two friends, forty takes, one adventure across continents
February 26th by may
Dear Adri,
I’m not sure what it is with us and races, but I couldn’t resist this one. While the pull of Indian autorickshaws got you all the way to Chennai, mine brought me halfway across town to Truman Brewery in East London.
Pancake Day is huge here. Everyone talks about it, pubs and cafés all have pancake specials, and even MPs ran a parliamentary pancake race at Westminster. Pancake Day once was important enough to once be a half-holiday in this country, way back when.
Now there’s another related story about how pancake races began. Apparently (saith Google) it all started in a little town in Buckinghamshire called Olney. Legend has it that when the church bell rang on Shrove Tuesday in 1445, one local housewive was so busy making pancakes that she’d forgotten about the service. So she ran out of her house, frying pan still in hand, headscarf and apron flapping behind her.
The women of Olney recreated this race every Shrove Tuesday from then, aprons and all. I guess the rest of the country just picked up on it after. Winners would traditionally win a kiss from a verger in the local church, bless their souls. At the Pancake Race I went to, the winners took home champagne and – would you know it – a beautifully engraved frying pan.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering if the British are the only ones still celebrating Pancake Day: they’re not. Many other countries around the world mark the day with festivities – some in bigger ways than others. Most Europeans know it Carnival (or Carnivàle, or any of its Romantic variations).
Others know it ‘Fat Tuesday’ (Terça-feira Gorda in Portugese, Martedi Grasso in Italian) – and perhaps as its most well-known incarnation, Mardi Gras ;)
London
Music
Sarah Vaughan – Peter Gunn (Max Sedgley remix)
Posted in england, great pancake race, london, pancake day, tradition, video.