6. The Pepsi Flag

Among the plethora of ethnic insults that traffic in food - "Pepsi" deserves special mention. It's the only slur I know that is based on a beverage. The lexicography team for the Canadian Oxford Dictionary suggest the epithet derives from the belief that Quebec-anglos held that their French speaking counterparts swilled Pepsi because they were too poor to afford coke, which at the time was marginally more expensive*

They call us God-Damned Limeys, except when in a benevolent mood when they just say Limey.

Perhaps most of you don't know this, nor did I particularly, but I was brought in line with the facts of life when hailing a cab outside a shopping precinct near St Hilaire, about 30 miles from Montreal. Cabbie was a right little ray of sunshine, who looked as if his mother had conceived him simultaneously with an attack of dyspepsia. He stopped chewing on a large wad of gum long enough to grunt "Oui" when I gave the address Rue Mont Clair in my best French accent then swung the cab round with a squeal of tyres and a cloud of dust on the dirt road exit to get on the auto route.

I asking laughing boy if trade was good, he drove along moodily chewing the cud and looking as though he wondered where the next instalment on the cab was coming from, then, parking the wad in one unshaven cheek, replied "OK", and was about to start chomping again, when he said "You a Limey?" as more a statement of fact than a question. I was caught off balance as it hadn't occurred to me that I was, but I said that I suppose was whereupon he replies that he'd guessed as much, as I had a lousy French accent.

He then resumed his chewing. I guessed he wasn't brooding about any instalments but reflecting on the good old days of the tumbrel and the guillotine. Anyway, I waved the British flag for all of us Limeys by paying him the fare in quarters, which I'd been saving for the toll roads, and gave him a dime as a tip.

We had a very entertaining night at Old Munich, and enormous German beer hall in Montreal. The only table vacant was partially occupied by a Pepsi couple but as there were eight more seats, we sat down. Monsieur and Madame were middle aged, pot bellied (very) with backsides to match and both of them wore white trouser-suits. Madame wore a large blonde wig, had a chest any camel would be proud to have on it's back  and skin tight pants - looked like a ghostly egg-timer on stilts. Monsieur sported a large black droopy moustache which looked like a pair of diversion signs to his boots.



Old Munich Beer Hall - then(-ish)  (picture: www.vanishingmontreal.com)
 

Old Munich Beer Hall - no more (picture: www.vanishingmontreal.com)
 

They completely ignored us and primly sipped cognac, while my sons and I belted in to the excellent German wallop and the ladies of our family regaled themselves with the expensive and exotic drinks that our beloveds always order when asked if they would like a beer.

As the evening wore on, ribald Limey jokes began to flow round the table as the booze and lively music began to take effect. Mad. and Mon. grimly sipped on, no doubt thinking "God-damned Limeys", in French of course.

Suddenly the German band burst into a rousing Oompah tune and M. and M. looked at each other, Monsieur raised his arm, they stood up and began to dance around the table, stamping their feet on the floor, throwing their arms in the air and 'hotching' in rhythm with the music. Space was very confined so they had to keep near to the table, circling us like a pair of snowy vultures swooping at intervals to harass their prey, belting in to us with large posterior and belly in turn.

At the end of the tune they sat down sedately at the table, toasted each other with the remains of their drinks, said "Bon nuit" and went.

I felt they had waved the Pepsi flag far more efficiently than I had waved the Limey one.

* I wanted to transcribe all of these articles as Grandad wrote them, but the passage of time means  some of the language needs updating. This is one I had to rework slightly, and acknowledge Howard Richler's 2010 article "How a Soft Drink Became Quebec's Homegrown  Insult" (www.maisonneuve.org) that I  used in the opening paragraph. In others posts I may change a word or two here or there, but I'll note any material edits. 

5. A Figment Of The Imagination

aka Barefoot Ghost.

Like yourselves, if asked whether I believe in ghosts my immediate reaction is to laugh like a drain and say, "don't be daft, ain't no such thing, just a figment of the imagination".

You can bet your boots there's always some know-all git present who says, "ah, all very well for you to sneer but there's more things in Heaven and Earth than we humans understand". As if this profound statement was his own original thought which nobody had ever said before.

Of course there's things we don't understand. Nobody knows everything. It's an impossibility. If it weren't there'd be no point in having a Brain of Britain contest cos you couldn't ask anybody anything. We'd all know the answers.

What these guys mean is that because you don't know everything you're wrong to scoff at ghosts and things that go bump in the dark. Maybe they're right but by the same token it don't make it a definite fact that there are such things as ghosts and you and me are as right in our beliefs that there ain't, as they are in their inference that there are.

A lot depends on the environment. It's dead easy to believe in ghosts if you happen to be walking through a graveyard at midnight during a thunderstorm, but you try believing in them down Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning in bright sunshine. If you find that you can then you'll believe anything and better you'd better stick to graveyards as you'll be easy meat for the lads who flog their gear down the Lane.

Like I said before, the bogeyman is purely a figment of the imagination.

I once met a bloke who got this figment arse about face. He told me that he was a ghost. It happened like this :

Many years ago, when I was living in Paddington, I was involved in amateur boxing, being endowed with bags of energy and ample muscle and only a modicum of brain power, and used to do training runs around the quiet streets of Maida Vale during the late evenings after work. One evening, about ten o'clock, I was trotting along the road by the side of the canal which runs from Maida Vale to Little Venice, doing my snorting and puffing as I slung over left jabs and right crosses, when a guy riding a bike caught me up and, slowing down to keep pace with me, hollered out "Which way to Harrow Road, mate?"

"Left over the bridge and straight down" I said "It joins Harrow Road at the bottom. Which way are you going, Edgware Road or past Royal Oak?"

"Up to Kensal Green" said he.

"Turn right when you get to Harrow Road" said I "What road do you want? I know all the roads around here."

It was dark at ten o'clock and a bit difficult to find a road if you didn't know the area, which I assumed he didn't.

"That's alright, mate. Just going to the cemetery and I can't miss that" he said.

"True" I said "It's a big place, but you ain't visiting this time of night, are you?"

He said "I'm just returning the caretakers bike I borrowed this evening."

"Oh, I see" said I "It's no business of mine but how come you went for a bike ride without any shoes on?"  It was the first thing I'd noticed when he rode up to me. He was riding this bike in bare feet.

"Right" said he "It ain't no business of yours but I'll tell you anyway. I couldn't find them when I came out this evening and I've only got one pair. Must have put 'em on a shelf somewhere, I suppose. Anyway bare feet don't matter all that much and I didn't want to miss the chance of a bike ride as the keeper left his bike by the shed this evening."

"Well I don't fancy your luck walking home in bare feet" I said "Wait a minute though, how'd you get out of the cemetery if the keeper had gone home and come to that, how the hell are you going to get back in again?" The cemetery gates were about 10 feet tall.

"Well, I ain't got far to walk" he said, biking off in to the darkness. "And secondly, dead easy. I'm a ghost!"

He shot off down the hill laughing his stupid head off. I thought at the time that it was always the way, try to help out and you get the mickey taken out of you.

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A short while ago we took two of our grandsons to Kensal Green cemetery. Mainly for the reason of visiting my parents graves there but also because this cemetery is very extensive and the mausoleums and statues are very imposing and worth an afternoon of anybody's time.

Our family are confirmed graveyard joggers and the cemetery stroll is a favourite hobby of ours. We like to read the inscriptions that folk have put on their stones. Most are very touching but some are very humorous as you will remember I once wrote about*.

However, the enormous mausoleums that rich people have built to house their families are of particular interest, and we always do our best to find a broken pane of glass through which we can peer and possibly see the coffins. I suppose it's the macabre side of everybody's character coming out.

 

This time we were lucky. Vandals had paid their widespread visitations even to the resting place of the dead and had smashed a pane of glass in the solid iron door of one of the family vaults. When I say we were lucky, don't think I condone these activities. I don't, but facts are facts, the glass was broken and my not looking through would not have mended it again.

We couldn't see as much as all was darkness so I went back to the car to get a torch. Shining it through the broken window we saw into the interior of the resting place of the family whose vault it was.

Shelves were built around the vault, each shelf holding a coffin, all were covered with dust of the ages and the musty smell of the enclosed dead pervaded the air.

On the left side of the room a stairway led down to another chamber again lined with shelves carrying coffins. On the top coffin just by the top of the stairway stood, far away from the possible reach of anyone putting their hand through the window if the iron door - A PAIR OF SHOES.

I do not propose to conjecture how they got there. There was no possible way that someone could have opened the door and put them there. The door was thick iron and rusted solid around the hinges and lock, and had obviously not been opened since the last burial nor was there any other entrance. Dust was thick everywhere and had not been disturbed for many years.

Suddenly my mind switched back nearly fifty years and I saw a bloke biking off into the dark, laughing his head off and shouting "I'm a bloody ghost!".

Well, it's a load of rubbish ain't it? I definitely don't believe in ghosts, and as for a bare footed ghost riding a bike by the canal at Little Venice, I mean stupid, ennit?

No, figments of the imagination they are, but I'll admit to crossing my fingers whenever I say it.

*  People are Funny 23 - The Oomy Goolie Bird

4. Taken For Granted

An old saying goes "You can't see the wood for the trees". Meaning that we're so adjusted to certain things and conditions that we just don't see them. They're always there, performing some basic function or other and we ain't aware of them and the mind blanks off.

They're taken for granted and only when they're not there or not doing their prescribed duty are we aware of their existence.

Like parents, postmen, policemen, buses, eyebrows or hair up your nostrils.

For instance, the end of your nose can always be seen if you squint down but you never notice it. Why should you? It's always there doing it's job of breathing up air and smelling things. Why should you bother to look down to see if it's still there? You know it otherwise you'd be walking round with your mouth open or never have to wash any hankies, would you?

But you get a boil on it or have a bunch of fives give you a belt on it. Then you know you've got one and it's always on view because, in the first place it hurts and secondly it blocks your view when you're watching the box.

Same with your eyes. Only when you get a bit of dirt in one do you realise that the gift of sight you've hardly ever thought about is very precious and should never be accepted without giving thanks to God.

I had a mate who was a very ordinary chap. Sort of bloke you'd be hard put to describe if anyone asked you to. Nondescript is the word. Apart from the usual equipment like two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth, two arms and two legs, he had nothing that made him any different from anyone else. But in swimming trunks at the pool or the seaside he got folk giving him puzzled looks like they knew he was different but just couldn't put a finger on what it was. They knew somehow he couldn't be taken for granted.

It was simple really. He didn't have a belly button and where everybody had an umbilical dimple, he had a blank space, which gave the impression that his belly was winking at you.

I'm not claiming that I was matey with a bloke who was of virgin birth, he got an infection in his belly button and the surgeon got busy with his knife and cut it out, then did a bit of neat invisible mending on it. That's all.

This is all leading up to one of those things that the average bloke normally takes for granted. Grub. And why ? Cos he don't have to cook it.

All he see's when going home or into the café is a plate of nosh which it is his duty to wrap himself around because his stomach is hollering out for something to be shovelled in to it. When he's done that he stretches his legs, belches, and congratulates the little woman for her slaving over a hot stove with "Not bad, that, love. What's for pudding?" Or moans like hell because the chips weren't crisp enough or the cabbage was too soggy.

What never crosses his mind is how the transformation of all this grub from the raw to being edible was affected.

Why should he? His job is to do the hunting, hers to do the cooking. As did the caveman and the squaw. It's just taken for granted.

I'll admit to being the same myself. Until recently, when the woods suddenly manifested themselves in spite of all the trees, and my wife required full time nursing after a serious operation.

Then I realized that my knowledge of the culinary arts could be put in a thimble and still leave plenty of room for my thumb.

Not that I was entirely ignorant about cooking. I prided myself that I could whip up a fairly tasty fry-up with the best of them. After all, what had the Galloping Gourmet* got that I hadn't, apart from a few more frying pans. He fried everything, didn't he?



Credit: www.cookapalooza.org

However a constant diet of fried egg, bacon and chips, sausage and chips, tinned tomatoes on toast and tomato soup wasn't exactly conforming to the balanced diet sheet issued by the hospital.  Also did nothing to make the gastronomic juices bubble in anticipation. So it was a case of extending my knowledge of different ways to cook eggs apart from frying or boiling them.

And I had a bash at scrambled eggs for breakfast. Very tasty that. I beat up one egg and put it in a small saucepan and turned on the gas then popped in a couple of slices of bread in the toaster. Obviously one egg is not sufficient for scrambling as within seconds all that was left was a tiny pin head of what looked like plaster of paris stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.
 

So I upped the number to three and tried again. This time the ensuing result was more successful. With judicious spreading, what hadn't stuck to the bottom of the pan just about covered a small slice of Hovis brown loaf. At this rate it was going to take ten eggs to cover three slices which wouldn't exactly blow you out with over-eating but would soon create havoc with the housekeeping economy. So I decided until I got more knowledge on the subject I'd give scrambled eggs the elbow and have a bash at omelette.

I remember my wife telling me that three eggs is a minimum for a decent omelette, so three hen fruit well beaten up went in to the frypan of hot fat and rose very satisfactorily like a large fluffy pancake.

Great, I thought, and stuck it in the oven to keep warm while I got the coffee made.

Making my way upstairs with the breakfast tray I entered the bedroom with a flourish and said to my wife, "Voila, Madam, a piquant breakfast for vous zis morning. NOT (large emphasis on the not) fried!!" And laid the tray as gently as if it were a new born babe, on her lap and stood back to receive the acclamation of amazed bewilderment of my new found prowess.

She lifted the cover on the plate, peered beneath  and said "What is it?"

"That", I said, with due modesty "Is a triple egg omelette."

"Oh, is it?" said she "What happened to it?" and took the cover off.

Where once laid a large fluffy omelette now was revealed what looked like the skin of a large balloon which had been pricked with a pin.

"I must have done something wrong" I said, "Fancy a fried egg on toast?"

My wife said  "Thanks, I'll have some cornflakes."

The years of taking my grub for granted certainly needed remedying so it was back to the drawing board and a crash course on Mrs Beeton's cookbook.

However, since then, I have improved a mite and can now turn a fair dinner without the aid of bags of lard and a fry pan.

In fact, just recently  I excelled myself and dished up, what I felt was a good meal worthy of Fanny Cradock* on one of her better days.

Chicken breasts and appropriate vegs, marinated in red wine and cooked casserole style. This turned out a great success when we ate it for our lunch. The chicken was a tender as a babies bum, literally fell off the bone and the vegs were seeped in the sauce to perfection.

I felt that my days of shovelling food down my gullet without any thought of how it got to be acceptable to the inner man were over, and I was now aware of the facts of life.

And so I was, but this new found knowledge was mine alone and didn't extend to my son who naturally, as every other man who eats what is shoved in front of him without thought, and if he likes it, was still unaware of the wood for the trees.

When he came in for dinner I proudly put my culinary magic in front of him and said "What about that, eh?"  and he said "I don't like bloody stew. Ain't you got any eggs and bacon?"

Well, you can't win them all, can you?





 

* Note:  For the Galloping Gourmet and Fanny Cradock see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Kerr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Cradock