The Archers' Simon Williams: Tapioca, brawn and cold joint - how we ate BA (before avocados)
We were not a family of foodies – mealtimes were just a chance to refuel and have a row. If something was good, you ate fast to get seconds. Baby boomers had to be pretty robust about food in the early 1950s. The menu chez Williams went as follows: Sunday, a joint.
Monday, cold joint. Tuesday, minced joint. Wednesday, cottage pie. Thursday, macaroni cheese. Friday, fish. Saturday, kedgeree. I arranged my social life to escape the fish by fixing a play date with a friend who had ham on Fridays.
Flavour wasn’t the point of eating – herbs were for cissies; mustard a last resort. Cholesterol hadn’t been invented and children everywhere were ordered to ‘sit there and eat your fat’. Luckily Granny or the dog would gobble up leftovers while nobody was looking.
Mutton couldn’t even dress itself up as lamb; it lay there swimming in grease as if to say, ‘I know, luv, I’m a bit over t’hill – just be glad you’ve not got me trotters for your tea.’ The great treat was chicken that actually tasted of chicken.
Who’d have dreamt that salads would catch on – a whole meal with no boiled potatoes? Avocados weren’t even a twinkle in Sainsbury’s eye. In our duffle coats we went hunting for mushrooms, blackberries and chestnuts. Sugar was rationed so sweets were rare. Obesity came later with convenience foods and all their tasty poison.
Luckily Granny or the dog would gobble up leftovers while nobody was looking
There was a make-do-and-mend approach to the larder; nameless foodstuffs were camouflaged with gravy or white sauce, some were given noms de guerre such as toad in the hole or bubble and squeak. And sweetbreads – what a misnomer that was! They might as well have called them The Beverley Sisters.
Please tell me kidneys aren’t making a comeback.
There was worse to come at boarding school. Porridge was the colour and texture of an old cricket sweater, but the worst was brawn, a poor relative of Spam intended for people who’d lost their taste buds or the will to live; it was served with cold cauliflower and went straight into our pockets to be disposed of later. We learnt the hard way – brawn floats (sung to the tune of Love Hurts by Roy Orbison). Picture if you will, a row of 10 lavatories with a grey slice of brawn floating doggedly in each – Monty Python meets Busby Berkeley.
The Archers' Simon Williams
For pudding there’d be tapioca (aka ‘frogspawn’), jamless roly-poly or spotless dick. Let’s be honest, home-made custard was never as good the packet stuff, and jelly has always been the lumbering gatecrasher at the party.
Did you hear about the man who boiled a hyena because he wanted to make himself a laughing stock?
Simon Williams is in The Archers and will appear in Posting Letters to the Moon with Lucy Fleming at The Mill at Sonning Theatre, Reading on 11 April
