You wouldn’t think something as ordinary as this Lard wrapper would have any deep meaning whatsoever but one look at that and I’m in our kitchen in the 1970s and mum is cooking Sunday dinner, putting big lumps of it in the roasting tin to cook the meat and potatoes in. The product itself is nostalgic enough, from back when people happily cooked things in pig fat (and apparently are starting to again) but it’s the Sainsbury’s wrapper that adds the extra Proustian layer to it.

The image comes from a book called Own Label which is all about the (at the time) radically modern packaging design of Sainsbury’s supermarkets own products from 1962-1977. Not, on the face of it, the most riveting subject for non-designers (or a lot of designers either for that matter) but if you are a certain age, seeing this stuff all collected together stirs not just admiration for the design but a whole flood of memories of going to the supermarket when you were a kid — and with their shelves stocked with this bold packaging Sainsbury’s left a more vivid impression than Tesco’s or The Co-Op.

Sainsbury’s were quite the forward-thinking company in the 60s, not only with these designs but they pioneered the whole concept of the own-brand product and their new, convenient “super” markets were where modern mums shopped. These days this graphic and minimalist style might seem more appropriate for pharmaceuticals than food but back then “modernism” hadn’t yet become a dirty word synonymous with ugly tower blocks and desolate shopping precincts and still meant optimistic progress toward a bright, shiny future when the world would be all efficient clean lines designed by clever men in suits. In this brave new world food would be convenient and modern too which even extended to feeding babies, like a lot of people my age I was bottle fed because artificial milk was seen as being better and more “advanced” than the natural kind.

Though they have a certain amount of retro cool I doubt if these would sell today, “progress” failed and the future went out of style sometime in the early 1970s, at least when it comes to things you eat. Not surprisingly people now prefer their food to look like it was grown by farmers and not men in white coats.

Speaking of mod-ernism…

Download: Shopping – The Jam (mp3)

Be careful next time you have a cup of tea and a biccie, according to a recent survey 50% of British people have been injured in a biscuit-related accident at one time or other. These range from burning their fingers trying to retrieve soggy bits of Digestive fallen into a mug of hot tea, dropping biscuit tins on their feet, to somehow poking themselves in the eye with a biscuit. The severity of that last one probably depends on what sort of biscuit it was, a Garibaldi has some sharp edges which could be nasty while a Jammie Dodger would probably only cause mild bruising at worst.

Surprisingly, the most lethal biscuit of them all is the innocent-looking Custard Cream which tops the danger chart with a “Biscuit Injury Threat Evaluation” score of 5.63. Personally I always thought there was something sinister about Happy Faces and I’ve never entirely trusted Fig Rolls which are really little cakes deviously pretending to be biscuits for some shifty reason.

Download: Accidents Will Happen (live) – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (mp3)

When I was a kid I’d ask my mum what was for tea and she’d sometimes jokingly reply “Air Pie and Windy Pudding, with a cup of Fresh Air.” Apparently this was something her mother used to say to her when she was young but I was wondering if anyone else knew this expression or if it was just peculiar to my family.

Download: Life Is A Minestrone – 10cc (mp3)

Only a vaguely related song but it has a “food” theme which will do. One of their best singles I think, despite the rampant clever-dickery of the lyrics.

“On this occasion,” said Jack, “that’s exactly where you’re wrong. You’re all here as my guests, and you can order anything you like. The tab for this is being picked up by the British Leyland Motor Corporation, so expense is no object. Go for it, chaps. Let your imaginations run wild.
Roy ordered fillet steak and chips, Colin ordered fillet steak and chips, Bill ordered fillet steak, chips and peas, and Jack, who went to the South of France for his holidays, ordered fillet steak with chips, peas and mushrooms on the side, a touch of sophistication that was not lost on the others.”
Jonathan Coe
The Rotters Club

This little scene really captures the dismal state of English dining in the 1970s and the nation’s unsophisticated tastebuds in the days before any of us had ever heard of Balsamic Vinegar or Chilean Sea Bass and everyone’s idea of upmarket grub was steak — always with chips. I don’t want to come across like one of the Four Yorkshiremen or anything but I don’t think I even ate a steak until I was in my late teens (I mean a proper one, not some frozen Findus thing made out of unknown cow parts) and I don’t remember my mother ever cooking one at home, I assume because it was too expensive. I don’t think it was something anybody had at home back then, it was a luxury treat you had in a restaurant when you were “pushing the boat out” or if someone else was paying, like above, though back then “steak” usually meant a puny overcooked fillet served up in a Berni Inn or Angus Steak House.

I ate more “real” meat at school (though I dread to think where that Liver came from) than I did at home where my diet was 99% packaged, processed and artificially-flavoured: spam fritters, fish paste sandwiches, instant mash, Pot Noodles, Findus Crispy Pancakes (God knows what they were made from) tinned meat pies, boil-in-the-bag Cod, and “international cuisine” meant Vesta Instant Chow Mein which came in a box. Pudding was usually something powdered and instant (and totally artificial) like Angel Delight. We rarely went out to eat either (unless you count the Wimpy Bar) except for when my Dad took my sister and me out for the day and we’d have lunch at this Italian place in Kensington (which, amazingly, is still there) where he’d eat this weird thing called a Lasagne — he was sophisticated my old man, he’d been to Paris! — while I’d always have double egg and chips, a meal that still gives me a Proustian rush back to my childhood.

With all the tinned, frozen, instant, and boiled-in-the-bag rubbish we were eating in it’s no wonder we all looked so ill and pasty back then, the shit food adding to the general sickly air that seems to hang over the 1970s. Watch a TV show like The Sweeney and everyone looks like they smell of chip fat and ashtrays and has skin like an uncooked pork sausage (all that beige polyester didn’t help the complexion either).

But at least we were thin. I was surprised to find out that we actually ate more calories in the 1970s than we do today but we still looked like rickety runts, while the vast smorgasbord of cheap food and dining options we have now is creating a nation of obese tubbies. I don’t think it was because everyone was working out either, back then a gym was a place you only went when you were at school. Perhaps just getting through the day in 1970s England kept us slim, we didn’t spend all day on our bums in front of a computer and drive everywhere. So maybe the next slimming fad should be “The 1970s Diet”: wake up in a freezing cold flat, walk five miles to work, stand on your feet in a factory all day, carry your shopping home from the supermarket, eat a pile of spam fritters, instant mash and processed peas for tea, have a big bowl of Angel Delight, smoke twenty Rothman’s, and the weight will just fall off.

Download: Barbecue – Orange Juice (mp3)
Download: Bangers and Mash – Peter Sellers & Sophia Loren (mp3)

This might get a bit confusing for non-Brits so pay attention. If you’re English and a bit common (like wot I am) you might refer to your evening meal as “tea” instead of dinner, and you might call your midday meal “dinner” instead of lunch (which is why the women who serve lunches in our schools are called Dinner Ladies). “Supper” used to mean a light meal eaten late at night and is only used now by the upper classes and middle class people with pretensions, unless they’re Scottish in which case they could be referring to a fish supper from the chip shop which they eat at dinnertime. All clear?

I don’t think I ever had toast and marmalade for tea, when I was a kid it was usually Fish Fingers or Spam Fritters with chips which we had to cook ourselves because mum was at work. We had it tough you know.

Download: Toast and Marmalade For Tea – Tin Tin (mp3)

If you think this sounds like early Bee Gees that’s because it was produced by Maurice Gibb in 1971. Read more about Tin Tin here.

It isn’t exactly breaking news but I just found out that Heinz, who now own the company which makes HP Sauce, has moved production of the world’s greatest condiment to Holland after over 100 years in Birmingham. That’s another British icon gone.

This just the sort of thing that makes ageing ex-pats like me get all Blimpish and fogey about the horrible modern world. It probably won’t taste any different (Heinz had better not mess with that) but my tongue won’t feel quite the same nostalgic and patriotic tang when I bite into a sausage sandwich garnished with it’s spicy brown goodness ever again.

Harumph.

(Image above from the wonderful Brown Sauce site.)