THERE must be a worthwhile lead for makers of Cumberland sausage to follow in the success of Melton Mowbray in having the town’s famous pies added to Europe’s list of protected foods.

This means that only producers making pork pies to the traditional recipe, and in the vicinity of the Leicestershire town, will have the right to use the famous name.

No doubt this news will revive the call for protected geographic status for other regional foods of repute, including Cumberland sausage, for its name is sometimes pinched by producers of inferior bangers.

“Cumberland sausage — you enjoy,” said a waiter in a big city restaurant as he served, with an extravagant flourish, a dish of skinny, pale apologies of the real thing.

The traditional Cumbrian tastiness is deserving of protection from pollution with inferior ingredients by fraudulent copycats outside the county. Yet, despite the desirability of protective status, how can the regulations be policed?

Will the European Commission appoint a team of experts, with rarefied taste buds, to travel the Continent, sniffing out and sampling suspect sausages?

Or will judgement of the dubious quality of some Cumberland sausages be a tricky task for Penrith magistrates, who will take knives and forks into court to taste platefuls of evidence?

Thankfully, readers of the Herald have easy access to adequate supplies of the genuine sausage, for there is nothing more tempting and tasty than a coil of “Cumberland”, with a link of black pudding nestling in the middle.

“MURDER” IN LAKELAND

Many are the indignant complaints about car parking in the streets of Penrith — but are the problems encountered by motorists any worse than those in other Cumbrian towns?

It seems not, according to the new edition of The Good Guide to the Lakes, which declares: “In the summer season all the Lakeland towns are murder for parking and even popular villages are quickly overrun.”

The sometimes hectic streets of Penrith, with their watchful traffic wardens, do not get a mention, but the guide’s compilers, Hunter Davies and Tom Holman, describe Keswick as “terrible for parking” and Kendal as “another horrid place to park”.

Picturesque Grasmere may well have the keenest traffic officers, for the book alleges: “A few summers ago one policeman even booked his own wife for parking on a yellow line.”

Can Penrith’s whingeing protesters beat that?

RARE NEW BOOK

When newspapermen receive newly-published books by post, they are generally accompanied by polite letters requesting reviews in the paper. So it came as a shock to open a leather-bound, 380-page volume and read the enclosed message:

“Don’t get alarmed. This book is NOT to be reviewed, nor is there any obligation for you even to read it. Use it, if it so pleases you, as a footstool or to stand on to reach other books on the top shelf.”

Strange and unique — but true. Most authors seek as much publicity as possible, but not Don McClen who has written and published Neither by Chance Nor Fate, an account of his own colourful and eventful life.

“It’s not for the general public,” he says, adding: “Family (present and future) and friends (past and present) will, I hope, find some incentive to turn the pages.”

In his labour of love, Don McClen gives a detailed story of his service in the RAF and, later, in Saudi Arabia, but there is also some local interest, as he spent the first four years of the 1939-45 war as an evacuee, living on a farm in the remote Bretherdale valley in what was then Westmorland.

“We had no electricity, no gas, no radio, no bath and newspapers only once a week,” he writes.

What sort of a man writes thousands and thousands of words for a tiny readership? Here is a quote from the book of his philosophy on life: “Don’t ask what will happen tomorrow. Whatever day Fortune gives you, enter it as profit. And don’t look down on love and dancing while you’re still a lad.”

It seems quite a privilege to be on Don’s very limited mailing list!

GETTING A REAL LETTER

The best letters to receive are the handwritten variety, such as a recent communiqué from former Penrith cricket captain Edward Waite, full of the camaraderie of sport, names of old buddies and some of their deeds.

For example, when long-service bowler Cliff Hetherington passed a landmark in his career in a match at Millom, there was a champagne celebration on the way home, organised by Mike Parker.

Another Penrith bowler of a past era, Bill Mossop, achieved a unique “hat-trick” when playing for the third team against Gamblesby. All his “victims” were members of the Little family, who dominated the village club at that time.

Another quirky story from the E. Waite memory bank concerns one-time captain Peter Sarjeant, who devised protective bags to wear over his cricket boots to keep his feet dry when fielding on part of the Tynefield ground which tended to flood.

And Eddie Waite also recalls a personal highlight — a chance meeting in a hotel in Madras, India, with Langwathby-born cricketer Paul Nixon, who was on tour with the England A team. Mr. Waite was working in India at the time, during the 1990s, but took time off the next day to see the young wicketkeeper in action.

Mass produced, repetitious rubbish masquerades as mail these days and it is a joy to receive something put on paper by an individual about other real people, past and present.