Eating Rite
Note from author: “If you are family member and come across this post, please remember that it is a nostalgic piece, not written to offend - we are a product of our times and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
Why am I pre-emptively placating a family member who may, or more likely, may not, read a description of our eating habits from 30 years ago? Mainly, I guess, because every time I have touched on the subject of eating habits, it seems to provoke a hostile, defensive reaction. Why? I suspect it’s because we know that the working-class stereotype of the family with dinner on the knees, watching television has some basis in fact and we feel a tad guilty about it. The Royle Family didn’t help matters either.
So, come with me on a journey through space and time: I am going to describe mealtimes in my family (as usual, in stereotypical terms), but it applies equally to most people I knew at the time. Remember the context: it’s the late 70s and early 80s in a northern, working class family. Let’s get the vocabulary right as well. Three meals a day: breakfast, dinner and tea (and porridge or Ovaltine for supper if you behaved yourself). None of this breakfast, lunch and dinner nonsense. There’s no such thing as a starter and a dessert is called a pudding. And brunch - what the hell is that!
It’s 1979, Monday, 5:35PM and the TV is on (“that’s what it’s for”), Blue Peter and John Craven’s Newsround have just finished and Rhubarb and Custard will be starting soon. Dad’s just got home from work; upstairs for a wash and back down he comes, flops into his chair and dinner is served immediately. All the family gathers round, plates on knees and cup of tea on the floor, between the feet. It’s by no means comfortable - the food is difficult to control as you push it around the plate with upper legs clamped together, lower legs akimbo, feet pointing inwards, heels off the ground and elbows clasped tightly to your sides. The result of this is that the stomach is naturally constricted - maybe that’s why we didn’t get overweight - you can’t get as much food in when you are eating bent over double…the ensemble looks like a group of cowering, plate-holding, mesmerised TV-worshippers. 6 o’clock, the pots are already washed and it’s all over for another day.
If you can’t picture it, perform the following experiment: take your laptop off the desk, move to the sofa, sit down on the edge of the sofa, put the laptop on your knees, take a look at your posture and re-read the previous paragraph and you will get it - what goes around comes around. I’m sure there’s some kind of irony in there.
It’s the same routine, Monday to Thursday, but Friday nights were best - my special treat is to be sent down to the chippie at 5:30PM to join the queue that snakes round the shop, out of the door and around the corner, “Fish and Chips, 4 times please, with a bag of scraps” (scraps are the bits of batter that are left over from the fish - they come for free for some reason). Heaven! But we weren’t one of those common families - we use plates, no eating directly from the newspaper for us. But who’d have thought that fish and chip shops would lead the way with paper recycling?
Years later, the town went all upmarket when the “Potato Parlour” opened- a baked potato shop. It didn’t last long - bad timing and market research I think - they opened at around the time when microwave ovens arrived; everybody felt they had to have one, but nobody knew what to do with them apart from making baked potatoes and reheating cups of tea that you had left lying on the floor while you ate your tea (at least, the cups of tea that you hadn’t kicked over as you stood up to take your plate back to the kitchen).
So mealtimes were purely functional with only one exception - Christmas Day. You could tell this was a special occasion: it was the only meal of the year that we ate at the table, and, instead of tea, we had a glass of Marsh’s Sass to drink with our meal. But sitting at the table just didn’t feel right. OK, you were comfortable and didn’t get cramp after 5 minutes, but it was unnatural to be looking at somebody rather than at the TV, so heads would crane round to watch the Wizard of Oz while waiting to get through the Christmas pudding and back in front of the TV in time for the Queen’s speech. Phew, Boxing Day, and normality is restored.
Well, there’s a little trip back in time to peek through our living room window. You want to go and have a little peek through the window today? Well, the plates are on the table now, you’ll have to look a little bit later in the evening or you won’t see anything, the kids are no longer there, dad isn’t tired out from painting walls all day and is more likely to be seen with a glass of wine in his hand rather than super-heated tea. The chippie has closed down, but the TV is still there, albeit with a flatter screen and is more likely to be showing Jamie Oliver cooking Rhubarb and Custard.
As a family, eating dinner in front of the TV is wrong in many ways, but hey, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. My wife is out tonight - she’s French and doesn’t understand. I can’t let life in France erode my children’s cultural heritage: “Put the TV on kids, sit down and I’ll bring you a plate of frites…”.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Nice evocative piece of writing…. If I might pass comment:
a) I live across from a chippie still, and they still sell in old newspapers and cook in beef dripping.
b) Say what you want about all sitting round eating tea off your knee watching the box…. it was a time when the whole family was together (albeit briefly) and they are very rare these days.
c) We drank Ben Shaws pop in Huddersfield!!
d) Kids these days don’t seem to enjoy hot drinks like I/we used to….
FoX
March 10th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I know that fish and chips are still sold in old newspapers, but beef dripping…are you sure? Sounds like an urban myth to me.
I’ve heard of Ben Shaws - it must have had a wider appeal than Marshs. We used to have a shop on every corner back then and you would get 1p back for every bottle you returned. With the chippie and its recycled newspapers, don’t tell me that recycling wasn’t going strong in the 70s and 80s…
March 11th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
The beef dripping usage is true. It was stopped decades ago in Scotland but is still in use in England. I’m happy to eat deep-fried Mars bars but if they’re fried in beef dripping that’s a step too far even for me!
We always had to eat at the table when I was a kid. While my father has mellowed now, back then he was a brash army officer who demanded impeccable table manners and the idea of watching TV while eating would draw a very stern look. Looking back he was right, it brought us together as a family and we’d talk about all sorts instead of watching the zombie-box (of course we wouldn’t talk with our mouths full of food - that would get you thrown out of the officer’s mess)!