Do you remember that film with Ewan McGregor where he played that adorable little heroin addict and delivered the speech that went on about choosing stuff? I can't remember it verbatim because it was lengthy but I know it ended up on a poster that adorned many a student's wall in the 90s. I do recall it included washing machines and jobs and life. Well that's what I've been thinking about lately. Not Ewan McGregor. Actually I have but that's not relevant here. No, I've been pondering on choice. There's an awful lot of it these days, isn't there? But can you have too much of it? That's the question.
It wasn't like this in my formative years. Oh no. Let's start with vegetables. It's as good a place as any. As a child I'd be sent to toddle off to the local shops, equipped with the special basket reserved for the job, to visit the greengrocer. This was a shop that sold nothing other than fruit and veg. Can you imagine that? Just vegetables and fruit. No, hang on a minute, that's a lie. I've just remembered, on odd occasions there'd be a couple of dead rabbits hung up outside for the discerning shoppers delectation. Mrs. Lacey, an obliging woman and not squeamish, would even skin them for you. Why these bunny corpses fetched up amongst the fruit and veg I have no clue, but back to my theme. Clutched in my hand I would have my mother's shopping list. It would be short. Why? Because there wasn't much in the shop, that's why. Mrs Lacey presided over wooden hoppers filled with potatoes (sometimes there was a dizzying choice of two types!) onions, carrots and turnips. There might also be a few cabbages and cauliflowers, or beans of some sort, but only in season, and sprouts round Christmas time.
The fruit choice was even narrower, confined to apples, nice curly bananas (before those bastards in the EU decided they had to be straight) some pears and maybe a few, small uninspiring oranges. Plums, strawberries and cherries would materialise for just a few thrilling days per year, driving us all into a frenzy of fruit based excitement.
Ah me, how innocent we were back then. We knew nothing of the kumquat and the starfruit. Okra and swiss chard were yet to render us breathless in wonder and if you'd shown my mother an aubergine she'd have screamed and thrown her pinny over her head.
So home I would go, with my basket weighed down not only with the food but the equal weight of soil that was still attached to everything. No pre-washed back then, let alone peeled, sliced and ready to cook. Such a concept would have been viewed as madness and, truth be told, I still rather despise it now. The first time I caught sight of a bag of pre-sliced carrots in my eldest daughter's fridge I died a little inside. Had I failed in my efforts to pass on the ethos of a little drudgery being good for the soul? I began to doubt my fitness to be a mother.
And salad was such a beautifully simple thing in those innocent times. Many people grew their own salad veg and, come Sunday teatime, we'd pop down the garden to pluck up a lettuce, a few radishes (brushing off the slugs with a casual hand) and maybe a spring onion or two, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and carrying a trug, fashioned by the calloused hands of a local artisan...no, sorry, got carried away there for a minute. Actually, no hat and a cracked bowl to put the stuff in.
Anyway, add a few tomatoes from the greenhouse and you were home and dry. We knew nought of rocket, lamb's tongue lettuce and avocados. The more sophisticated household might boast a bottle of Salad Cream on the table, but not us, my mother didn't hold with it. It smacked of ostentation and new fangled ways. Our salads went boldly undressed and proud of it.
A neighbour of ours did the unthinkable and ventured beyond our trustworthy British shores to visit a relative in Italy. She defied all my mother's predictions of doom and death and returned safe and well but managed to enforce mum's mistrust of the heathen foreigner with tales of people pouring oil onto their salad. A nation that put grease on an innocent lettuce was clearly not to be trusted. It's a good job nobody said 'radicchio' or she'd have swooned clean away.
And cooking methods were different back then. If it was a vegetable you boiled it. Just boiled it. For hours. And then some more hours. Then when it was rendered completely devoid of all colour, texture and taste it was fit to eat, and not before. Our kitchen had a constant Niagara of condensation pouring down it's windows. With tremendous daring my mother eventually branched out into the exotic world of broccoli. For years I thought this vegetable consisted of just pale, soggy, tasteless stems as the florets had always been cooked to the point of total disintegration.
Years later, at my own dining table, I put a plate of food in front of mother. It included broccoli, complete with little green heads, having been briefly steamed in an inch of water, and some nicely sauteed mushrooms, all firm and golden. It was all declared 'uncooked' and therefore 'indigestible'. In my childhood home indigestible food was ranked alongside an unaired vest as a life threatening risk. She not only refused to eat her own portion but urged my children to reject it as well, on the grounds that, 'you'll not get a wink of sleep tonight with that laying on your stomach.' To my delight they ignored her and scoffed the lot. It might have been then that she decided to cut us all out of her will, but I can't be sure.
I'm all for food that tastes as it should, whilst retaining some nourishment value to boot. But now we have endless celebrity chefs urging us to ever greater heights of cooking experimentation, making us feel inadequate if we don't have one of those little blow torches for browning things or haven't a clue how to make our own pasta. It's the choice thing again. There's too much of it. And I know it gives a lot of men pleasure to watch Nigella sucking her fingers and saying 'spatchcock', but it sometimes makes me hanker for those simpler days, when we wouldn't have known where to find a noodle steamer, let alone what to do with it. Ms Lawson's orgasmic response to squid salad with mint and mizuna...whatever the hell that is...just has me thinking, 'Fuck it, I'm having a cheese and pickle and sandwich.'
So, from the local village grocer, who had a bacon slicer and a marble slab with a wire attached where he'd cut a wedge of cheese to exactly the number of ounces (anyone remember ounces?) you'd asked for, and he knew how to fold the tops of bags so nothing came undone in your basket, and they'd give you a broken biscuit while you waited, to the bloody supermarket with it's miles of aisles stuffed to the rafters, and pre-packaging and everything so full of preservatives that you can keep it for years before it'll give you Salmonella.
And yes, we have choice. Loads and loads of choice. But do we really need it? A simple life can be a joyous thing, and a lot less stressed. I see them in Waitrose, all those lovely young men in their skinny jeans and Paul Smith jumpers, brows furrowed, mobile in hand as they deliver the devastating news, usually on the lines of, 'Jacinta, you're not going to believe this Babes, but they're completely out of the organic yak's milk, hand-turned, extra aged Camembert, moistened with orphan's tears that we wanted for dinner tonight. D'you think Nigel and Semolina will notice if we substitute Brie?'
In my day we had two sorts of cheese. Some that was white and some that was sort of orange. It was enough.
Of course, I've been sucked in, just like everybody else and find myself tutting with irritation when I can't find the exact make of Earl Grey Teabags that I favour. But at least I have the dignity to feel guilty as I recall that I was raised on loose leaf, from a pot, and it came out the colour of mahogany. The introduction of the teabag was greeted with horror and derision, in equal portions, in our house.
'It'll not catch on, you mark my words,' said my mother, defiantly.
'We fought off Hitler and we can deal with this. We just have to keep our nerve.'
But progress marches on and, in the fullness of time, the loathed bag appeared in her kitchen cupboard too. But she did wear mourning from that day forth.
And it isn't just food. It's everything. I grew up with a pair of shoes for 'everyday' wear, and one for 'best'. They were usually black or beige, so as to 'go with everything'. Now we all have serried ranks of the things, in all the colours of the rainbow as you can't possibly leave the house with a foot covering that might be in some way unsuited to your outfit. It's all wrong!
We really shouldn't care so much about these things. We should spend our money on nourishing our souls. Maybe we should go and see a good film. But, 'Ah', I hear you cry. 'Which one?' And you have a point. Long, long ago a film, a single film, would come to town, to the local cinema, which had one screen. It would be shown for a number of weeks, allowing all of us who were so inclined to go and see it. Then that film would go away and it would be replaced by another. I was bit girlie so, if it was a musical or a comedy or something romantic with a good looking bloke in it, then I'd probably go and see it. If it was something a tad more roughty-toughty then, like as not, I wouldn't bother. Unless I had a boyfriend who was keen to see it and then I'd pretend enthusiasm too, but let's not get into my shallow side here.
Now the multi-screen phenomena has arrived, with a dazzling array of films, of hugely varying quality, that are shown for a few, brief days before they disappear to be replaced by the next load of speedily churned out offerings starring pretty people with little discernible charm or talent. You'll notice I'm warming to my persona of embittered old hag here. Blink and you've missed the only film you were remotely interested in.
Going to the cinema used to be an event. It was exciting and the cinema was always packed. Indeed, so enthusiastic was the audience for our local flea-pit that we'd run out of seats and the lady that managed it would go and get her own dining chairs, from her house over the road, and line them up at the back. Now, more often than not, at least half the seats are empty. Why? Too much choice! It stands to reason.
And I could go on. It's everywhere. Absolutely bloody EVERYWHERE! In my day you got what you were given and were grateful. You didn't get a choice. Household interiors were painted in Magnolia. Now paint has names, really stupid names like 'Crushed Pigeon with a Smidgen of Mackerel' or 'Hippo's Breath with Ringworm'. The other day, looking at a colour card, I found 'Fawn's Intestine', it was definitely 'Magnolia'.
And men's haircuts. Once upon a time a man would pop along to the barber, and be given a short back and sides with a parting, because that's what the barber did. A quick smear of Brylcreem and the customer went home happy. Now men have as many cuts to choose from as women. The fact that most of these styles make them look like total wankers is, apparently, neither here nor there.
So don't give me any rubbish about choice being good for us. It patently isn't. It's confusing. It's hard work. It makes our brains hurt. A widely travelled friend once told me that, in her opinion, the people who were the happiest were those who had the least, and I think I probably subscribe to this view. By and large. You'll maybe have noticed the get-out clause in that last sentence. Hmmm?
OK, so I like being able to choose to drink a decent red wine, rather than a bottle of Concorde purchased with the loose change we scavenged from down the sides of cushions and the linings of jackets, back when we were penniless young parents. I quite like those aforementioned teabags. And, given the choice (yes, that word again) I probably prefer my life now to how it was, back then. But that wont stop me wanting me slap Jacinta's irritating, metrosexual other half in Waitrose. And yes I KNOW! I know I could choose to save money in ASDA. Don't judge me. Alright?
If you've enjoyed this I'd really appreciate it if you'd share it with anyone else you think might like it. Or press the 'Share' button at the top for Facebook.
Or you can follow me on Twitter@wharfwench
Many, many thanks.
