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We spent most of the summer after my father died in England. Most of the time we stayed with my grandparents in a village so teeny that you had to write "Orford, near Woodbridge" on the envelopes, in their nice clean bright bungalow that had once been the groom's cottage of some enormous estate, the main building of which had burned down long before. We also visited my ancient great-aunt and -uncle, who lived, appropriately, in Eastbourne (which really does feel uncannily like not the waiting room to the afterlife but in fact like some filmmaker's vision of the afterlife itself), and went to Ely, and then to London too.
Food featured prominently throughout. In Ely we stayed at a hotel I remember chiefly for its absurdly enormous helpings of roast beef. In my youth I was famed for my ability to pack away great quantities of this substance, given the chance, which of course did not come up so very often, roast beef being what it is. But at the age of seven or nine or eleven, I was definitely delighted to sit and munch my way steadily through a 10 oz slab of beef, fat and all. Eastbourne was memorable for my great-uncle Ted's cooking, which included the tiniest lamb chops I had ever seen. In Suffolk we spent a lot of time with cousins a few times removed Ron and Iris, who proclaimed me the Chairman of the Ad-Hoc Sausage Subcommittee. (Maybe the reason I am happy being a vegetarian now is that I consumed my entire lifetime ration of meat by the age of fifteen or so.) In London my mother and I were finally on our own, and I know we must have had many things of tastiness, but the main food I remember was Phileas Fogg snacks.
They were exotic and delicious and great, and I couldn't imagine why on earth we didn't have anything so good at home. The packet copy helped me right along -- it consisted of letters from Mr. Fogg describing each delectable item he had found in his travels, reminiscent of the old Banana Republic catalog, in its previous incarnation as a putative safari outfitter: The Punjab puri, for example, described "the great Colonel Feathersque, formerly attached to the 5th Bengal Lancers and, presumably, his missing right leg." There were many more treats along these global-imperialist lines, too -- mignons morceaux, Shanghai nuts, Java crackers, and so on. I'd long reminisced fondly over this line of snacks, and was sad to think they had disappeared. But it turns out that in addition to the appearance of the similar Walker's Sensations line, recently extolled in this space, the Phileas Fogg line is being relaunched, so keep an eye out, those of you on the other side of the sea.
What I want to know is why we don't get these things here. I want my Orientalist snack foods! While you're at it, send Jaffa Cakes too.
Posted by redfox at September 06, 2003 11:07 PM (etcetera) | Comments (1)
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Reminds me of the J. Peterman's catalouge:
http://www.jpeterman.com/default.htm
Clothing and lifestyle porn all in one.
Damn you and your tales of tasty snacks. Wait! I know someone in the UK right now! I shall make her send me treats.
Posted by kazoo at September 7, 2003 01:07 AM