 |
|
|
|
Food is of course a dominant concern when travelling, in fact next to the omnipresent concern of the seasoned traveller for that ache in the butt caused by sitting in cars and planes and then more sitting in trains and taxis, all of which are engaged in a life or death struggle for supremacy as the ultimate in discomfort, it is the dominant concern.
Until I’d been back here for a bit I’d forgotten the vagaries of the English variety (not to mention the Scottish) of food and now sitting here in a pub above Camden Locks near (-ish) Regents Park in London I thought it was about time to try to come to terms with it, I mean them, no I do mean it... Anyway... English food has of course traditionally been the butt of many a joke.
And while I’d have to admit that there is some truth in the reputation (there is no way, for example, that ever I’d try to defend bread fried in bacon fat—for breakfast too), the bad things have usually been true about food in the public domain---there has in fact always been good food to be had in Britain but you had to get it in private and you had to be bloody lucky too. But now things have changed: now that we have so many foreigners and so much common marketing around there is a lot more decent food to be had in public.
Now there is less of the cardiac arrest (or hypertension) on a bun sort of food and we now leave all the fattier stuff to the US. In fact the worst public food trends at the moment in Britain are your fault---a MacDonalds or Burger King on every corner and more Starbuckses than you could swing a cat at and a Columbian cat at that. BUT (and I hope you noticed that I said that ALL in CAPITAL LETTERS)
But we still have our Great British love affair with sugar. According to the Guiness book of Records Britain leads the world in consumption of sweets. This drags me tangentially sort of screaming and kicking-ish to the subject of IRN BRU (once spelled "Iron Brew", it is now spelled phonetically, ever since the regulators pointed out to the company that it wasn’t made of iron nor yet brewed. So now it's 'I' 'R' 'N' 'space' 'B' 'R' 'U'). Anyway IRN BRU is an orange coloured (as distinct from an orange tasting) drink of unbelievable sugary-ness. To me it seems like the syrup that you might put into carbonated water to make another drink, but IRN BRU has a following in Scotland that seems close to religious: I’m not joking about that, when I went on-line to check my facts (you know I never want to mislead you unwittingly) I found a site for the Church of Irn Bru! It claims to be a “page of worship of the ultimate soft drink, Irn Bru.” …and is… “dedicated to what we believe to be the greatest of all soft drinks” Though even they note its “unique flavour”.
And of course the story that a major use of IRN BRU is on Sunday mornings for hangovers is surely just another evil stereotype, a gratuitous dig at the Scots.
And that thought leads me leave you with one slightly troubling fact. When we were driving about England we often ate at Little Chefs which were ubiquitous about the highways of Britain. At Little Chefs we could get decent meals inexpensively, They were, say, a bit like Friendly’s but there was one big difference, these roadside diners all sold beer and wine, but presumably only to the designated passengers.
Cheerio for now from
Richard Howland-Bolton, somewhere in Britain
|
 |
 |
<-- Go Back |
|
|
| Home | Essays | Notes | Gallery | Miscellany | Contact |
All contents including writing, cartooning, music, and photography unless otherwise specified are
copyright © 1965-2023 howlandbolton.com and Richard Howland-Bolton. All Rights Reserved.
All logos and trademarks on this site are property of their respective owners. | Web work* by 
*as distinct from Wetwork
  |
|
|
