Important news from Blighty. Rice has been grown for the first time in Britain in the Fens of Cambridgeshire. Apparently this is a result of an unusually hot summer. For a project that had once been dismissed as a joke it’s quite an achievement. Let’s hope the notoriously fickle English weather doesn’t spoil it all. It will probably start snowing tomorrow.
Whatever the case I don’t think Thailand need worry just yet about Britain becoming a major competitor in the rice trade.
It got me thinking about when my western taste-buds were introduced to rice. I think the first rice dish I ever consumed must have been at primary school where rice pudding was a regular offering as the dessert for our daily school dinner. It was regarded as a healthy meal for pupils. Not everybody liked it, possibly because we had it too often and I remember some children refusing to eat it. Mind you that was at a time when it was fashionable for kids to hate school dinners.
Rice puddings have been around for a long time in Britain. In 1924 AA Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame even wrote a poem entitled Rice Pudding. Here is a brief excerpt: “What is the matter with Mary Jane? She’s crying with all her might and main. And she won’t eat her dinner. rice pudding again.”
It sounds like Mary Jane wasn’t too keen on school dinners either.
Home cooking
My mother was a great cook but we never had rice meals at home. So the first time I ate rice as part of a main meal was as a teenager in a Chinese restaurant in my home town of Reading. I became a huge fan of sweet and sour dishes usually consumed after a few pints with mates at a nearby pub.
Little did I know then that in a few years I would be eating rice virtually every day in a country known as the “Rice Bowl of Asia”. In fact for the first few weeks in Thailand I survived on fried rice (Khao-Pat) at Pratunam market for the grand sum of three baht a dish.
Pudding time
The aforementioned rice pudding was not the most unpopular dish at school dinners. That dubious honour went to tapioca pudding or “frogspawn” as it was known at our school. The negative view was partly due to the bland and stodgy taste. But what really put off the kids was the uncanny resemblance to the jelly-like spawn found in ponds before transforming into tadpoles.
According to the Guardian, tapioca pudding was once named in a poll as the most unpopular school dessert in Britain. In addition to :frogspawn: it was also called “fisheyes” and “eyeball pudding.” Then there was semolina pudding of which I don’t have fond memories.
Picking up steam
Last week marked the 200th anniversary of the historic train journey in northeastern England which paved the way for modern railway travel. A replica of the steam engine Locomotion No 1 recreated the original journey on the Stockton-Darlington railway all those years ago.
Watching the old steam engine chugging along stirred memories of one of my favourite films, The Titfield Thunderbolt made back in 1953. I’ve enjoyed railway steam engines from an early age, no doubt influenced by that film, starring Stanley Holloway. It is a classic comedy featuring a group of villagers battling to save their branch line.
The real star of the show is a lovely ancient tank engine which, among other things, has to overcome a nasty steamroller used by the bad guys to block the line. The engine used in the film, Lion, was built in 1838 and was 114 years old at the time of filming. The film is great fun and still extremely watchable despite its age.
Over the sea to Skye
All this talk about railways sparks fond memories of one particular train journey in Scotland I experienced In the early 1960s. I was with my parents and we travelled from Inverness to the Isle of Skye, via the Kyle of Lochalsh where we took a ferry to Kyleakin. In those days there was no bridge. My mother particularly enjoyed it as The Skye Boat Song was one of her favourite tunes.
That trip always reminds me of bagpipes, an instrument we often joked about at school. On the way to Skye, the train stopped off at a remote spot in the Highlands where we enjoyed some wonderful freshly baked scones and cream. During that break I took a brief stroll and came across a kilted gentleman, standing totally alone on the moor in a sea of purple heather, playing a plaintive tune on the pipes. It sounded quite beautiful and I was never rude about bagpipes again.
Sweeping up
Regarding last week’s item on early toothpaste commercials on UK television it seems the one readers remember most is: “You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.” I think it was the simple but catchy tune that makes it linger in the memory cells. While we are at it here’s another from those early days that may trigger a few memories among more ancient readers. I recall the commercial for Hoover vacuum cleaners which had people singing to an old army marching tune “It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.”