On matriarchy, snobbery and food supply problems!

I seem to have become the matriarch of the family. They all descended on us to celebrate my birthday. One of the disadvantages of being the matriarch in the 21st century is that you end up preparing your own birthday feast, including even making your own birthday cake. The day will come, I presume, when they will take over the cooking as well. A good time was had by all and I have to confess that I really enjoy preparing a feast for the family.

As I was toiling away in the kitchen I listened to various things on the radio. At one point somebody was talking about “walking art”. This seemed to involve a group of people, in this case a bunch of women, walking around a city centre and stopping to look at various things of interest. As they walked around Westminster their plan was to stop at each statue of a woman they came across. A grand total of none! Since the recording was made a statue of a woman has appeared (who is it?) but at the time there was not a single one and so they made their own living statue.

As I listened, though, I had to suppress my inner intellectual snob. The presenter had lots of interesting things to say but I had to force myself to listen as she kept talking about the “ci’y” and the “poli’ical si’uation”. A friend of ours used to say that if he was reading a book and found a typing error he would put the book aside, indeed sometimes throw it away. I feel the same about the glottal stop in place of the letter “t” and “th” being replaced by “f” and “v”. I want to start a campaign for the reinstatement of the letter “T”. Demonstrations with placards saying “Free the T”!

And then the Food Programme came on, discussing the supply of foodstuffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Opinions differed. There were government ministers declaring that we would have no problems, that there would be an ample range of foodstuff from around the world available at reasonable prices. Then there were farmers pointing out the dead period when few British-grown vegetables are available and how we rely on supplies from the south of Spain and Italy. And of course there were farmers concerned for their livelihood. A government chap declared that farmers might go out of business but they would just have to look for other employment. That’s all right then!

They also interviewed some “preppers” people who are stockpiling food ready for a period of post-Brexit shortage. Since they were collecting canned goods and boasted of having lots of tins of corned beef, I was not greatly reassured. I was not aware that people still ate corned beef and I certainly do not want to rely on that as a tfood staple if we crash out of Europe.

Our almost 16-year-old granddaughter, over the evening meal, was expressing her indignation about not having a say in what her future will hold. Even the ditsy girls who are really only interested in hair and make-up and clothes, she assured us, are cross at what the old folk have decided the country will become! Even the ditsy girls!!!

And finally, here’s a dietary thing. After Dry January, the thing to look out for now is Fizz Free February. (Personally I would say Fizz-Free, but punctuation is a different problem.) They don’t mean “fizz”, as in Prosecco, Champagne and the like, but fizzy drinks like Coca-Cola, Tango and so on. A can of Coca-Cola classic contains 35g of sugar.

But maybe we won’t be able to import too many fizzy soft drinks after the end of March!