Fenman

I used to live in Clerkenwell, next to Smithfield Market, whose grand pubs opened at 6 every morning to serve the meat porters ending their night shift. Those pubs served good breakfasts. I wonder why that exemption to opening hours was only available in that one tiny part of London? Paul

On holiday in a tiny place in Andalucia with a pescatarian friend who misread the menu, ordering what was described as a local delicacy and which she thought was skate wing. In fact it was skate wing, just served with, on top, a large slab of mystery meat -- possibly donkey -- happily dripping its juices over the skate. I draw the line after liver and kidneys, with brains, intestines and hearts on the other side of it. Much of that is, of course, just a weird perception. Most of us wouldn't eat beatles, yet happily consume the "seafood" equivalent of shrimps and prawns. Paul

Offal was a hugely important part of my childhood diet, though it’s mostly disappeared now — along with suet pastry. Liver, obviously, with bacon and onion and a heavy gravy. Steak & kidney pudding was also a staple (kidney always seemed to be present as a (presumably much cheaper) partner to steak, whereas now we seem to partner with mushroom, ale or red wine!). Fried chicken livers would often appear alongside bacon and egg — little bursts of intense flavour. I miss suet in cooking — both savoury and sweet (baked jam suet pudding with custard was a real filler in winter. The jam was always extraordinarily hot). Baked savoury suet pudding, the top a delicious golden-brown crust, was a delightful alternative to dumplings in a stew. And stews seem to have gone out of favour, too, which is a pity. Paul

Me too. A few years back I had to spend a month on a work trip in China: much as I thought I loved Chinese food, by the end of the month I was sick of it. I’m almost ashamed to admit I then sought out what must have been one of the few Italian restaurants in Shanghai. Thinking back to 50s and 60s food, Saturday lunch was always sausages boiled in a pan with a couple of large onions; mashed potato; and a tin of marrowfat peas “for colour”. The sausages would often be served with a “white sauce” or, occasionally, a white sauce with mushroom bits. I remember being fascinated by the way boiling made the sausage skins burst and roll up. Everything was a sort of pallid grey. It was one of my favourite meals. While my favourite dessert was tinned peaches. My Aunt Rene served them, decanted into a big glass bowl, every Sunday afternoon for tea. It all reminds me of Fawlty Towers, where Sybil is asked by one of the old ladies what’s for dessert? — Fruit salad — Is it fresh? — Oh yes, chef’s just opened a new tin. Paul

Thanks very much — but I fear you vastly over-estimate my IT capabilities which are, frankly, barely above the level of a donkey. Paul

Well that’s me told, then. Paul

The single most important (and urgent) element in every one of my breakfasts is coffee. Espresso, made the old-fashioned way in an ancient mokka pot, with warm (not frothy) milk. Multiple cups. With a glass of water. Round 2 usually involves toast or crumpets. Round 2 completely changes when I’m in a hotel, when the full English or closest equivalent is a daily requirement. The exception is when kedgeree is on the menu. God, I love kedgeree. I’m a bit saddened no-one else so far has mentioned it. Though that might explain why it seems to be becoming rarer (though British Airways recently introduced it as an option on some longhaul flights, I’m delighted to report). Can I just add that baked beans are completely evil, and should never, ever be served, let alone at breakfast? Incidentally, WW2 RAF crews were served bacon and eggs for breakfast on mission days. There’s a lovely purity about a breakfast of good bacon and eggs. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that BR was so determined to ensure consistent high quality in the bacon it used that it ended up owning its own pig farms. I do hope that’s true. Paul

Whenever I do that I lose all the saved passwords for all sites. And I’m an old fart who can’t remember them — hence I then have to go through a right rigmarole to get them back. I also tried to access Hattons this morning, and failed. I’m a very long-term customer, but if they can’t manage their site so it doesn’t inconvenience me, I’m afraid they’ve lost my business until it’s fixed. Paul

I’m not sure I understand your point. How can you chat about the 50s and 60s without recognising the utterly different context? Here, for example, is a completely brilliant/ excruciating example of the casual sexism that was endemic. It’s so bizarre that it looks almost funny to us. Until you remember that this sort of stuff happened almost everywhere. Paul

I think that's generally true: looking back, the social legislation which was hugely controversial at the time -- Sex Discrimination Act, Race Relations Act, etc -- is now largely accepted by the vast majority of people as being appropriate and necessary (I grew up in a world in which it was commonplace to see those repellent signs stating "No dogs, No Blacks, No Irish"). I briefly worked for a man who was previously head of strategy at the Number 10 Policy Unit, and he was droning on about that point, arguing how morally superior politicians were for their far-sightedness in leading regressive public opinion. So I asked why they had consistently been behind public opinion -- for decades, according to every respectable opinion poll -- when it came to equality for homosexuality? After all, just as you can't be a bit pregnant, you can't have a bit of equality -- you either have it or you don't. He couldn't really answer. It seems that all of us have our blind spots. Blimey. That's some powerful soap. Paul

Reminds me of a lovely episode of Frasier where the psychoanalyst is exasperatedly explaining to his (Mercedes-driving) younger brother why he, Frasier, is not interested in buying a new Jaguar: "because they spend so long gluing lovely bits of wood veneer to every surface that they neglect to install a functioning electrical system". Sums it up pretty well. Paul

I thought the exclamation mark would be enough of a clue. I'll try to remember to do a smiley next time. I was going to comment that the "passive-aggressive" comment had nothing to do with the OP but, since you used an exclamation mark after that, I'm now not sure if you were being funny. Er... ! Paul

Fascinating. I do hope you’re not bothering those so called “expert” doctors when you get ill. Much more sensible to sort it out yourself. What do they know...?! And yes, I also Skype/ Zoom in front of a bookcase. Because my study, which is where I work when I’m at home, is where I also keep most of my books. I have noticed a significant number of my colleagues Skype/ Zoom in front of a window. Their faces disappear and they look like a silhouette. I assume this is deliberately passive-aggressive. Paul

Yes, I don't think that's relevant; compare Greater Dublin to Greater London; most of the rest of the RoI population lives in a thin strip along the east coast. But you've just proved the point: even as culturally close a country as the RoI, with whom we even share a land border, is "different". Paul

There's going to be lots of opportunities for comparisons. I suspect enormous cultural diferences will always make comparisons between western Europe and east Asia tricky. But I will be fascinated to see how the strikingly lower infection and death rates in the Republic of Ireland have been achieved. The cultural similarities to the UK are very strong. Yet, somehow, they seem to be doing very much better than us. Paul

Adam Smith is generally credited as the founder of economics, though often described himself as a moral philosopher. French and Irish writers also have a claim. Paul

Not sure that’s true — eg, government debt as % of GDP: Japan — 237 Italy — 133 United States — 106 France — 99 Spain — 96 Canada — 88 UK — 86 Looks like there’s lots of headroom there. Paul

Fine Fare was the first new-fangled supermarket in my home town. It felt utterly different from everything else, huge and light. The building stands today and is still in use as a shop (babyware and toys): it now feels like many other bog-standard high street shops in size, compared to the absolutely vast superstores on the outskirts of the town. Paul

You obviously don’t shop at Waitrose, where crumpets are shelved in the section marked “Morning goods”. Although alongside toilet paper and cleaning products, crumpets have been in very short supply recently. Paul

I had malt & cod liver oil - a big treacly spoon every day. It was sickly sweet (presumably to cover the fishy taste) and to me it was a treat. Paul

It feels as if there was more of a culture of self-improvement in the 50s and 60s. I learnt to read at home with Janet & John books, before moving on to the almost limitless range of Ladybird Books. There was then the difficult transition to blue-spined Pelican books, an entire world of learning (only some of which I understood). TV (for me at least) was all about mind-expanding documentary strands -- Horizon, The World About Us, Man Alive, Survival Anglia -- and series which sought to profoundly alter the way you could see the world (Jonathan Miller's The Body in Question was for me a pinnacle of that sort of thing, though I think that was in the 70s). Television in which the same facts were not repeated every 10 minutes, in case you'd got side-tracked by all that texting and had lost your place. TV which assumed you were paying attention, and which didn't insult your intelligence. Then again, there was all that stuff with Hughie Green plus the mind-numbing singalongs and the appalling black and white minstrels (even at the time I despised them). I also miss Mars bars in folded paper wrappers; they were never the same after they went to heat-sealed plastic, even if the latter were probably more hygienic. Oh: and Pears soap smelled very different back then, when it was packed in a plain cardboard box. It was reformulated a few years ago and packed in plastic, and it now smells of noxious chemicals. On the other hand, dentists used recyclable needles which, by the time you got to have an injection, were so blunt and thick that it was like having a drainpipe shoved into your gums. Paul

In 1938 Freud finally escaped from the Nazis and was given sanctuary in London. Almost all his personal letters after that express astonishment at how cold English houses were, and bewilderment that such a technologically advanced country had never seemed to work out how to heat them. My memories are of growing up in a repressive, socially conservative world. I attended one of what I later learned was just a handful of surviving single-sex primary schools (Norfolk County Council wasn’t going to take any chances with co-ed 7 year olds getting frisky). A divorcee moved into a house across the road from mine, and my mother and aunts were genuinely terrified that she’d try to steal their husbands — she was considered to be little better than a free prostitute. Looking back, much of it was horrifically small-minded: “what would the neighbours think?” was a pervasive state of mind. School was a brutal experience, with corporal punishment and bullying the norm. My school only cared about sport, so if you were geeky/ nerdy/ academic it was a pretty soul-destroying place (with a spectacularly unpleasant unheated swimming pool). I remember “early closing” as a particularly tiresome occurrence in my childhood; both Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when all the shops were closed (and Sundays too, of course). Tuesday was the main market day, including a huge “cattle market” (actually all forms of livestock), right in the heart of the town. Extra trains and busses ran every Tuesday, bringing-in people from miles around. Craftsmen were an integral part of life; the local blacksmith, for instance, who’d knock you up a set of wrought-iron gates to set into that hedge. Horses still in everyday use, housed in urban stables. I remember visiting a local boatbuilder, two ancient men crafting large, clinker-built fishing boats, softening and shaping the planks in a steam cabinet, G-clamping each new plank onto the one below, then at the end caulking and tar, the latter boiling away in a vast vat. I do miss roasted suet pudding, though I can’t imagine it did much good for our arteries. And silver service restaurant cars on trains — all pale green crockery, and silverware stamped “GER” (that was well into the BR era — I’m not *that* old). Paul

I’m curious what you think epidemiology is? Or how you think public health works? Paul

Things might start to improve if the experts are left in charge. Paul

But... “mild symptoms”? Isn't there something about leading by example? Wouldn't you think NHS staff might be a slightly more urgent priority For testing than, er, Boris, with his “mild symptoms”? Paul