I wasn't a fussy eater as a kid, and I generally loved school dinners. I had no problem with cleaning my plate... except on Fridays.
Fridays was usually fish and chips, which would have been a firm favourite, had they not been served with a huge dollop of that most detestable of food-stuffs: mushy peas. If ever there was a metaphor for the destructive tendencies of the human race and how we have to ruin everything we touch... who else would take the sweetest and tastiest vegetable on god's green earth and turn it into grey sludge? Why would anyone choose to eat mushy peas when you can have the real thing? I mean, even the adjective is disgusting. Let's look at some of its closest synonyms... pulpy, pappy, slushy, squelchy, gloopy... not to mention that mushy can also be defined as mawkish, cloying, sickly and icky. They look like puke on a plate, only that would be slightly more appetising.
And yet... every Friday, there I was, shuddering in the dinner queue, my voice cracking as I asked the serving ladies for a "very very very small" portion of mushy peas, please. But even when they looked kindly on me, I was still the last one in the school dining hall, pushing cold mushy peas around on my plate, unable to go out and join my friends in the playground until Mrs. Brown, the head School Dinner Nazi, had watched me eat them all. They wouldn't allow kids to be treated like that these days... but this was the late 70s and early 80s when sadism was still part of the National Curriculum.
When I looked for songs featuring mushy peas, I found them championed by the worst examples of musical depravity: The Macc Ladds, K*nt & The Gang*, U2 (are you completely unaware of the fact that I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For is about Bono going around every chip shop in town, trying to find the best place to buy mushy peas?). Not one song (worth listening to) leapt to their defence. Real peas, however, turn up in all kinds of wonderful tunes...
(*This is an actual band that I keep coming across when I do lyric searches. I normally ignore the hell out of them, but it seemed appropriate to give them a mention today. The asterisk is mine, not theirs.)
If you still believe there is any merit to mushy peas after reading this post, I will leave the final word to my expert witness from The Sugarhill Gang. Tell it like it is, Wonder Mike...
Have you ever went over a friend's house to eat
And the food just ain't no good?
I mean the macaroni's soggy, the peas are mushed
And the chicken tastes like wood
Minus points for anyone who quotes John Lennon in the comment box.
It was tomatoes for me. We only got the tinned ones that were all skin and gloop, and like you we had to eat them all. Your only hope was to try to hold out until the next lesson started. Still can't face them today.
ReplyDeleteMushy peas: as an adult for a time I bought the occasional tin of Mushy Peas Chip-Shop Style, they were great. (I think I have worked out that reference you make at the end). As for the bands you cite, are you saying you hate Kool and The Gang and refer to them in that way? That's very childish, amusing though.
ReplyDeleteNo, there really is a band with that name. Unfortunately. They're not in the same league as Kool...
DeleteAh, brilliant post Rol. And totally with you on mushy peas; thankfully being soft Southerners we weren't offered them but even the unmushy peas weren't very appealing - just hard, floury green pellets... School dinners at primary school were so often traumatic for me as I refused to eat meat, which seemed pretty much unheard of at the time, and in my head would be a crime punishable by unimaginable torture if our School Dinner Nazi ever found out. ( I frequently had to smuggle yukky grey slabs of the stuff off my plate and into the bins surreptitiously via my skirt pocket, such was my fear). Why were they so cruel?!
ReplyDeleteBeing a sadist was a job requirement of school dinner ladies in the 70s.
DeleteI'm partial to a portion of mushy peas with my fish and chips - just a nice balance of the crisp batter with the tasty gloopy peas. But, you'll never agree I can tell.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in Primary School we still got a bottle of milk to drink every morning. In winter it was ice cold but in summer it was very warm and not so nice at all. I remember our teacher standing over one girl every milk time forcing her to finish her bottle of and we all had to wait as it took her a long time, going down only an 1/8th of an inch (pre-decimal times) every minute. Wouldn't happen nowadays of course - not been milk since the days of Thatcher the Snatcher and of course so many children now have intolerances to dairy.
Thank you, Alyson. You just gave me next week's post!
DeleteI could stand most primary school canteen food, even mushy peas. I could barely, but just about, bear rice pudding.
ReplyDeleteMy downfall was semolina, though. The School Canteen Nazi forced me to take a portion, even though I said I’d happily skip pudding, then made me stay behind until I’d finished every last spoonful. I don’t think I made it out of the canteen before being violently sick.
Led to lifelong aversion to strawberry jam, which used to be generously dolloped on both puddings.
And I’ve always wondered if the French ever found out what school canteens had done to chicken fricassée. Surely a crime against humanity.
"Chicken fricassée"!?!
DeleteMore posh Southern School delicacies, I suspect...
I'm with you on Semolina though. Wallpaper paste is tastier.
DeleteThe “Southern School delicacy” was anything but delicate, Rol. More like vomit on a plate. “Art” imitating life as that’s what most kids wanted to do after eating it.
ReplyDeleteI’m with you on the semolina/wallpaper paste trade off though.