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.
