PROGRESS IS SLOW

That first smoke after your apartment mate has left for the day, when you have shut her bedroom door firmly, so that Ms. Bruin (the senior teddy bear) does not smell like tobacco, shafts of sunlight are streaming into the room with the computers, and you're on your second cup of coffee, is sheer bliss. I think I can understand why the vatican once banned priests from pipe-smoking. They should suffer, so that when they inculcate guilt and a sense of doom in their flock they sound sincere.

Pipes, as is well known, benefit the digestion. So many habits of the British gentleman are geared toward improving digestive processes. Marmalade on buttered toast, shooting peasants, cold showers, public school bestiality and cricket .....


The British have a long history of being at war with their guts. The full English breakfast is probably their most famous assault on eupepsia, as is the old-fashioned fry-up. Which is basically a second breakfast, hobbit-style, in late afternoon if the sausage butty wasn't enough. Both are washed down with strong tea. Also a known bowel tonic.

The less said about British cuisine, the better.

Tea was introduced to the British by the Dutch, who started drinking it well over a generation before. Nikolas Dirx, one of the directors of the Dutch East India company, pseudonymously advertised that "nothing is comparable to this plant", and those who drink it are "exempt from all maladies and reach an extreme old age". It allegedly cured headaches, colds, ophthalmia, catarrh, asthma, sluggishness of the stomach, and intestinal troubles. As well as improving sexual function. All of which are probably true, but it mainly boosted the sale of sugar to the Brits, in which at that time the Dutch had a near-monopoly in Europe.

You will notice the mention of "sluggishness of the stomach" and "intestinal troubles".
A diplomatic way of saying constipation and acid indigestion combined.
Something which still marks adherence to the British diet.


We shall not speak of my last trip to England. Matters did not improve until I crossed the channel to Holland, where vegetables are both known and a loved part of the diet. First meal in the Netherlands at a Chinese restaurant, when I asked the waiter what that vegetable was, and he answered that he did not know but it was something that the natives grew. One can, naturally, get far better Cantonese food there than in England, where the only two commonly available vegetables are mushy peas and baked beans out of a can. In addition to leaden fries, which are greasy and a testament to bovine kidney fat and its byproducts.

I should also mention Branston Pickle. Not sure where that falls in the vast desert of British Cuisine. It is no longer made by Crosse & Blackwell, whose field of enterprise remains an ongoing introduction of spices to the English, which first began making significant inroads over three and a half centuries after they started trading with the Orient. Remarkable.

There is also Branston Baked Beans. Good lord. It sounds like perverse heresy.

The company that makes Branstons ALSO makes pickled onions.
I have NO idea what those are used for.
Mementos?



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