How times change…

Warren Buffet: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

That’s what life seems to be about now, being greedy and making easy money. I remember people selling flowers from hand carts like the one in the picture. They would be in town centres and outside of cemeteries. It wouldn’t be allowed now or you would need a silly licence.

I remember a guy with a coal fired portable oven who sold baked potatoes. He bought up the small potatoes because you can get those cheaper and cooked them in his oven and sold them in a small three cornered bag. They were hot and nourishing and kept out the cold on a cold night; they were also cheap. Go to the same city centre street now and you have to go in a fast food joint for something to eat. You get free wi-fi for your smart phone but the food is crap and expensive. Some things don’t improve.

We used to eat weird things when I was a kid, like tripe, chitterlings and brains. I think most offal goes into those fast food burgers now. Would you like fries with your minced up tripe, chitterlings and monosodium glutamate? They eat horse meat in France, dogs in Thailand and I saw people getting rats out of an open sewer in one country; they stir fried their legs!

I remember using the fire to cook. We had a ‘range’ with ovens at the side of the open fire. We could cook baked potatoes in those ovens and we put a thing over the fire with a saucepan on sometimes. Fire bricks in the one oven were used to heat beds at night! The original ‘hot pot’ was a pot by the fire with meat and veggies in that would slowly cook all day and when the workers came in, they would have a bowl of stew from the pot.

There was conscription when I was a kid and people served a couple of years in the armed services. Many older people want it brought back but I don’t think it would cure the ills of society. Some people have fond memories of their childhoods and remember all those hot summers. I remember the snow and the fog and the God awful coughs. I remember the polio epidemic and queuing for vaccination. I remember kids deformed because of thalidomide. There were no computers, no smart phones and we listened to the ‘wireless’.

Things are better now, I get all kinds of information from the internet and can chat to people thousands of miles away. I talked to a student in China earlier and it’s not even lunchtime yet. I’m having  a pork medallion, potatoes and veggies for lunch; people always want to know what I eat! I was going to have cold chicken but I accidently burnt it to a crisp! I’m thinking about buying a duck’s leg, I saw them on a website and I think they have them in Lidl. Now that would be gourmet food. I’ll have to do some more gourmet food blogs; my Icelandic prawn salad blog was appreciated. I might get another tub of prawns again this weekend, I have some iceberg lettuce to use up. I can’t eat bread or I would be doing a club sandwich with chicken on one deck and bacon, lettuce and tomato on the other deck. I miss toasted bread. I’m almost tempted to get some gluten free bread, but it all tastes pretty horrible. I do have gluten free biscuits, I could have had some with my morning tea; I didn’t think. It’s snacks that make people overweight though. I don’t eat them usually, a few biscuits with morning tea and maybe a bag of prawn cocktail crisps when I watch a film in bed. I have put on weight though, I’m up to about 150 lbs.

I’ll cook lunch, there are more blogs on the Home Page.

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