Food,
Glorious Food
By
Dominic Horton
Last
week I attended a meeting for the arts group that I am involved in,
Cradley Heath Creative, to discuss how we could best contribute to
this year's The Women Chainmakers' Festival in Cradley Heath. We
decided that a good theme for our project would be food so we
discussed various ideas on the subject. At the Festival we hope to
get people talking about food, so we can record their stories about
what food means to them and what their thoughts and memories are of
particular foodstuffs. Food is obviously a subject that is universal
to all so it is a good choice of topic for our contribution to the
festival.
 |
| A 1970's Calculator |
Like
most people, my food habits have changed over time and generally my
meals are very healthy but my Achilles' heel is that I like a nibble
of something savoury when I get home from the Flagon & Gorses and
this has always been my post-pub habit. When I was a mere youth of 18
years my dear Mom used to have a procedure of shopping on a Friday
night but the food that was stored in the left hand kitchen cupboard
was not be be touched until it was transferred to the right hand
cupboard the following day (it is funny how every family has odd
little practices like this which seem to make sense them but to no
one else.) One Friday night after I had returned from refreshing
myself in the Stag & Three Horses shoes I was foraging in the
kitchen trying to find a desirable morsel or two but to no avail. I
knew that the food from the Friday shop was in the left hand
cupboard, so I opened the Pandora's box and delved in.
I
found an 18 packet multi-bag of Walker's crisps and knew that I had
no choice but to eat a packet of the forbidden fruit. I cautiously
opened the corner of the multi-pack to sneak a bag out, thinking that
I would get away with it. The trouble is that one packet of crisps is
a wholly inadequate supper for a growing youth in a state of
beer-fuelled famishment. So I had another packet of crisps. And
another. And another. Once I had consumed eight or so packets of the
quaffable Walker's crisps I knew that it would be obvious to my
Mother that the multi-pack had been compromised and some of its
contents pilfered. So I decided that there was only one thing for it
and in an effort to get rid of the remaining evidence I proceeded to
eat the remaining ten packets of crisps so that none remained. I then
hid the empty packets and multi-pack packaging in the outside rubbish
bin, so no trace of the crisps were left.
Next
day my Mother asked me if I had seen a multi-pack of crisps anywhere,
“I'm sure I bought some at the supermarket” she said but I
answered in the negative, leaving Mom to think that she had left the
crisps on the counter at the supermarket or in the shopping trolley.
If you are reading this Mom I can only offer my belated and sincere
apologies and if it is any comfort to you the day after eating the
crisps my guilt was accompanied by a feeling of bloatedness
and nausea on account of my excessive consumption.
 |
| An advertisment for Vesta boil in the bag curry |
The
introduction of the microwave was a big step forward in post-pub
suppers as they heat food up quickly and they mitigate the risk of
burning the house down by falling asleep and leaving the hob or the
oven on all night. Prior to microwaves boil in the bag Vesta curries
were the bright new innovation but they were fraught with danger for
the tipsy as they not only involved boiling water but scissors were
needed too to cut the bag open. I am surprised that the Royal Society
for the Prevention of Accidents didn't seek to ban boil in the bag
curries as they were fraught with danger. If you did manage to cook
the curry without having a mishap you were generally only greeted
with mostly curry sauce and very little meat. In fact if you came
across a piece of meat in the dish it was most likely the end of your
finger that you had cut off trying to slice the end of the bag open.
Boil
in the bag curries were not the only food crime from my childhood and
youth, there were many in the 1970's but there could be fewer worse
than Smash instant mash potato. Parents would rather fill there kids
full of additives and salt that have to undergo the inconvenience of
peeling a few spuds and boiling them for 10 minutes. Such were the
times. Pot Noodles were also introduced, the ultimate convenience
food at the time: boil the kettle, pour the water onto the contents
of the plastic pot, stir, add the sauce and Bob's your uncle. Pot
Noodle (and microwave meals) always instruct you to let the food
stand for one minute before eating it. I assume that the intention of
the instruction is: “Please let the food stand for one minute
before eating it to give yourself time to decide if you really want
to eat this crap.”
When
you are little you begin to learn about the world but just when you
start to grasp something you invariably find out that it is not as
simple as you first thought. As a seven year old boy I knew that a
loaf was always the size and shape of a small breeze block. Wrong.
Our teacher at Primary School, Mrs Wilson, shattered my heartfelt
belief when one day she brought a French stick into class, the likes
of which us Shell Corner kids had never seen before. She cut the
stick up and we each had a slice with butter. It was simply amazing.
It had flavour. It seemed creamier and sweeter than 'normal' bread.
 |
| The Smash aliens, by request of Toby In-Tents. |
Shortly
afterwards Mrs Wilson furthered our understanding of the world by
bringing into class an incredible contraption called a calculator. It
was the size of a house brick and she plugged it into the socket on
the wall. We formed an orderly queue and we were allowed to do one
sum each on the calculator. I tapped in 6 x 6 and in the flick of an
eye the miraculous machine produced the answer of 36 on it's green
numbered display. Technology moved on so quickly that within a couple
of years I had a calculator on my digital wrist watch, which was
ideal for cheating at maths at school, until the teachers got wind of
it and banned such whizzy watches.
Exotic
food items started to creep in when I was a teenager, such as pasta
and pizza. The pizzas were about the size of a tea plate and you
grilled them for a couple of minutes or so and they had a cardboard
style bread base and a bland, salty tomato sauce covered by a sparse
layer of cheese. They were fantastic. As none of us kids had
ever travelled outside of Britain we thought that Italians
must eat these manky pizzas and Spaghetti Bolognase (consisting
of a ready made sauce and cheap mince beef and an onion if you were
lucky) all of the time and we were jealous of them as a result.
Two
of the most vivid food memories from childhood concern my two
Grandfathers. Grandad Tom was a butcher so he always had decent meat
and on a Saturday morning he would have pork chops and eggs for
breakfast garnished with salt. Grandad Tom would cut a piece of chop
for me and dip it in the rich, golden egg yolk and it was a delicious
treat. Grandad Charlie had a large garden where he grew his own
vegetables and I used to help him tend to it. After we had finished
our endeavours we used to sit on the bench at the end of the garden
and our weariness was assuaged by a cup of tea, made with tea leaves
and sterilised milk, and digestive biscuits to dip in. I was still
learning the art of how long to dip a digestive biscuit into tea –
leave it too long and the biscuit disintegrates into the
tea and leave it too little and not enough tea is soaked up. We all
learn in life as we go along but even after all of these years
metaphorically speaking my digestive is still falling to the bottom
of my mug. One day with a bit of luck I might get the hang of it;
dipping digestive biscuits into tea that is, not how to live my life.
©
Dominic Horton, March 2015.
Lowlife
is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall
Email:
lordhofr@gmail.com
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