1. In 1921 I visited the home [Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire] of my future husband … I was very intrigued by festoons of what looked like very dusty balls of dead brown leaves threaded on strings and festooned along the beams … [I] discovered later that one of my father-in-law’s favourite dishes was steak and kidney pie and these objects were always added and cooked in the gravy. The resultant pudding was excellent as I can testify. My father-in-law called these things murrels … he used to collect them on his way home from night shift [Maulden, Bedfordshire, April 1993].

Image: Tooting Common, London Borough of Wandsworth; April 2017.