Tag Archives: Middleport Pottery

The Inner Bolshevik Breaks Free

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Middleport Pottery – Entrance

Middleport Pottery on-line. I got there via the Packing House Cafe. Pictures will be of the cafe, if I can find them in my badly catalogued selection of photos.

I looked it up because I’m writing a haibun.

But I then looked up the Trent-Mersey Canal (which runs alongside), Wedgwood, several other canals, afternoon tea, and, eventually Emma Bridgewater. By that time I was so confused I don’t know how I got to her. It could have been via pottery, afternoon tea or the Bridgewater Canal. I really don’t know. I suppose it’s possible that I . . .

I just remembered. I managed to get into Amazon, who had air-drying clay kits and was wondering if Julia would like one. That led to brightly coloured bowls on Amazon and that led to Emma Bridgewater.

Nice cup of tea in the Packing Room – Middleport Pottery

I spotted a nice mug. Then I saw the price. Who pays £30 for a thing to hold tea which breaks when it’s dropped?

That’s when the Inner Bolshevik came to the fore. A vision of rich people letting £30 mugs fall to shatter on their imported limestone floor tiles as they purred “Let them eat cake.”

The Tiny Trot that lives in the inner recesses of my brain perked up too. He does so enjoy a daydream of leaning rich people up against a cloister wall at Harrow and letting fly with a hail of bullets. They are always vintage military rifle in these daydreams. That sort of rifle speaks of a desire for social  justice. To use a Kalashnikov would make me seem like a violent sociopath.

It’s strange, isn’t it? Show me a parliament stuffed with privileged people Including members of the Labour Party, and I am left unmoved. Show me a report of rich people behaving badly and I shrug it off, expecting such things to happen. But show me a mug at £30 and something snaps.

Dane – traditional wooden narrowboat

To add to the inner turmoil, Julia doesn’t want an air-drying clay kit. The trouble is that she has a lot of brooches, a new ironing board and a wonderful husband, what more could a woman want?

I did suggest a lathe. I even went so far as to offer a dust extraction system, but she didn’t seem keen. She is dreadfully difficult to buy for.

Mural in cafe

Photos from October 2017. I feel old.

The Scone Chronicles – Number 4

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Before saying anything more, I am going to confess that this isn’t about scones. We went to Stoke-on-Trent, so we had Staffordshire oat cakes at the Middleport Pottery.

That’s a lot of links for one short paragraph.

It started badly when, after parking, we found that they’d changed the way in since our last visit.  A hearty woman redirected us, which was helpful but not what you want to hear when you are twenty yards from where you want to be but are being sent an extra 200 yards. One small step for a man with good knees – not so good when you have a bad knee and a stick.

It didn’t improve when I found that they don’t do my favourite oatcake now – no black pudding and bacon for me. I settled for sausage and cheese. Not a great combination, but the best one, I thought, for brunch. With hindsight I should probably have gone for cheese, tomato and mushrooms, but, with hindsight, I should really have gone somewhere else.

Oatcakes – Stoke on TrentOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Oatcake – Stoke on Trent
Menu at Middleport

The cafe is better lit and cleaner than it used to be, so I expect they have someone new in charge. The oatcakes were a surprise. There were two of them, with salad.  That, to my mind, is how you serve trendy stuff like paninis. It’s not what I want from oatcakes, which is an old-fashioned sort of food.

To make things worse, the tomato in the salad was old and dried out, like it had been cut several days ago and stored.

The sausages were pretty average too – not actually bad, but definitely not good.

It wasn’t cheap, and, to be honest, I expect fresh salad. Mediocre sausages are, sadly, a fact of life, but there is no excuse for wilting salad.

Tea at

The tea was good, as was the pottery, which is made about 100 yards away.