Summer Holidays 2010 3: Food, Glorious Food

Tea and scones, photograph by Jeremy Keith from Britghton and Hove

When I first went to England nearly 45 years ago, food was a bit of a problem. My dad had had stomach problems for years and needed a very specific diet, so because the only thing we knew about English food was that it was horrible compared to any other type of food in the world (as told to us by the same people that know it always rains in England), on that first memorable holiday my mum took enough food from Holland for my dad to survive on for a week or two.

There was of course the problem of where we were going to stay. We had no experience with travelling abroad and because of my dad’s illness we wanted to keep the journey itself as short as possible so for that first holiday we decided to stay as close to Dover as possible and we rented a big old rambling place in the middle of Deal, at that time a quiet seaside town where hardly anybody ever spent their holidays.

We’d never stayed in a house that big before, so even that was an adventure, especially the going to the toilet in the middle of the night, because the bedrooms were upstairs and the toilet was far, far away, down an immense flight of stairs. The bathroom consisted basically of a long corridor with the toilet itself at the very end of it and a window right behind. I was 15, my sister a year younger and we brought a friend of hers, who was a few years older and had just started work as a French teacher at the school we both attended. It was very easy for the three of us to get really worked up over nothing. Of course we told each other all kinds of scary stories in which axe murderers behind toilet windows played a prominent part, so the only way any of us dared to go down in the middle of the night was if we could all go down together. Needless to say we had a great time.

It was a good thing, however, that my mum had had the foresight to take so much food, because whatever there was to be had in the village shops was nothing my dad was allowed to have. Vegetables were limited to cucumbers, cauliflowers, onions, tomatoes and potatoes and of course there were always tinned baked beans. Because my mum didn’t feel like doing much cooking we feasted on cucumber, potatoes and beef one day and baked beans, potatoes and beef the next, while my dad got the diet stuff she’d brought from home. Not really such a bad diet for a few weeks, but after a few days of baked beans flatulence hit the household and that was rather an inconvenience. Fortunately it was a warm summer and we could keep the windows open all day.

When we got older and were allowed in pubs, we found out that pub food was a better way of staying alive especially when my dad wasn’t around, and the added advantage was that you never had to do the dishes.

Nowadays you can get the same food all over Europe. The big supermarkets all sell more or less the same things, sometimes under a different brand name, but if you want to you can prepare the same food during your holidays as you would at home if you wanted or needed to.

However, that’s not what I want when I’m in England. I always like to have the British things, like lamb in mint sauce, fish and chips and scones and clotted cream for tea.

For tea and scones you can of course visit one of Ye Olde Teashoppes (usually given a name like that by some big chain) and if you’re lucky you might get a decent cup of tea and a halfway fresh scone, but more often than not the tea is made by dangling a teabag in hot water and the scone is made the day before and if you were to drop it inadvertently on someone’s head it would instantly kill him.

The other alternative is to visit the Caen Locks in Devizes, a flight of 29 locks in the Kennet and Avon Canal, where there is a small refreshment shop that sells the most amazing scones and real tea.

Of course, the British have many more wonderful dishes and the days when people were right about the British food being atrocious are long gone. Maybe British food is not all that refined, but I certainly enjoy it enormously when it’s well prepared.

Caen Locks, Devizes

More about the Caen Locks can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caen_Hill_Locks.

More about British food can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_cuisine and http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/food/index.htm .

If you like to try out some recipes you can find most of the best British cooking in: Traditional British Cooking, Consultant Editor: Hilaire Walden. Published by Hermes House. I was able to get it for only £3.99.