Rain stopped play so I came home early.
I’m not one to voice an opinion on politics or current
affairs in the news, but this business with the food that I eat has caused me
concern. Due to my age I suppose, I can remember the abattoir in town, the
cattle walked in one end and came out the other on hooks ready for the local
butchers in town, my uncle was one of them.
The fish came into the harbour in
boxes still wriggling and was sold on the dock for the many fish shops in the
town to lay out on their marble slabs, it had been caught either in the channel
or the north sea, we knew where it had come from.
The vegetables were grown in the
field opposite where I lived, or on the allotment that Dad had and us kids were
tasked to do the watering and weeding while he was at work.
The cornfields stretched for
miles out in the countryside supplying the windmills that ground the corn into
flour that went to the many bakers to make the bread and so on and so on. We
knew where our food was coming from, we knew it was fresh; we knew it wasn’t
contaminated by foreign hands. The funny thing is very little was wrapped in
boxes with pretty pictures on to entice Mum to buy it, there was no need, she
knew what was wanted for the meal and where to get it from. The only things I
can remember in boxes were the cereals:
Cornflakes, Shredded wheat, Wheatabix and the like. The milk was
delivered every day and if you didn’t drink it all, on the following day it was
hung up over the sink and mum made cheese out of it. (Don’t ask, I don’t know
how it was done, all I know it was very tasty.)
Just after the war everyone kept
chickens, so there were always fresh eggs in a bowl on the kitchen table. Fruit
was grown in orchards where we went scrumping on many an occasion, strawberries
had their own patch at the bottom of the garden under the cherry tree’s and
woe-be-tide any grubby little hands found to have the tell tale red marks on
from the juices of either of them.
I know the younger generations
get fed up with us oldies ranting on about the good old days, but I for one
will admit, that the progress that has been made over my lifetime is for the
better in most things, except the food! It’s tasteless; the flavour has been
frozen out of so much in the food chain. I was always being told off for eating
too many potatoes, I loved them to bits as the kids say nowadays. I can’t bear
to eat them now, they are sweet, sugary, because they have been washed and
frozen, causing a chemical reaction that converts something in them to turn to
sugar. As one of the youngsters said the other day when I had a Marmite butty:
Yuck!
Anyway, there is nothing wrong
with horse meat I am told, and if a chef wants to put it on the menu, so be it,
but for the Supermarkets to sell it labelled as beef, doing our farmers out of
the sale of their cattle, and no matter what their excuse is, it seems to me a
bit like the banks perhaps, because they make 76% more profit.
That is when I would fully
support the much aligned legal system we have in this country, to sue the big
cats that run them, bringing them home from the Cost Del …….whatever and put
them where they would put us customers if we were caught fraudulently behaving
or stealing in their big stores.
Behind bars for a spell!
But as
you and I know, that will never happen, like always a rule for the little guys,
and a rule for the big guys. But please don’t make excuses for the big guys,
they would never even let you try to explain before you found yourself in
custody for some considerable time.
I heard somewhere didn’t I?
Ignorance is no excuse for guilt
in law.
Wanna bet on it!
Thank for stopping by.
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