This came up aboard the mothership today, presumably something kicked off on social media, but someone has alleged back in olden times (c1980), people ate additive-free, healthy foods, and funky microwaved chemical pie that pickles your physiology and brines your brain is a thoroughly modern phenomenon.
As a child of that era, I know this to be a lie, all the food I ate in the 80s was orange and claimed no relation in nature. Not was nature willing to acknowledge it. The Potato Waffle song is the anthem of my childhood and to this day I can be found to mutter 'waffly versatile' at random moments as the song continues to echo around my brain, forever trapped. Maybe when they cremate me that will be the last sound to pop and crackle from my coffin along with the smell of burning potato product left too long under the grill. My sole, dream reason for wanting to be an adult was that I would then be able to have an entire packet of crispy pancakes to myself rather than share them with my Evil Sister™ (all sisters are evil, fact). Admittedly not as bad as the Frey Bentos pie, where my dad would get half, and my sister and I got a quarter each, a cruel helping of childhood that will feature highly in my memoir. The first thing I did when I got to university was to eat an entire Frey Bentos pie (steak and kidney) followed by an entire pack of crispy pancakes (minced beef). A habit I kept up until I weighed more than a small hippo and redrafted my life choices to feature something more than eating entire family-sized packets of things. Being an adult does bring its own disappointments. Being an adult hippo on the other hand, what's not to like? All-day baths and the ability to eat watermelons whole.
Crazy orange stuff – they could do stuff with potatoes and breadcrumbs that was practically alchemy, you wouldn't even know that it was potato (ok, rehydrated potato starch, dried potato, oil, dextrose, methyl cellulose, xanthan gum, and a range of now banned e-numbers that can only be used as neurotoxic pesticides in the developing world). A good meal, oh my, what can compare with a frozen French Bread Pizza, a side of potato waffles, and baked beans? I am making myself hungry thinking about it. Maybe a slice of Vienetta for pudding or, if it's birthday, Arctic Roll. I am sure I am forgetting things. I remember getting told off for making the entire house smell by boiling up some Beanfeast in some proto-attempt at vegetarianism.
Also, can my school have been the only school that replaced milk at break times with small pyramidal cartons of orange drink, which as per the times, was literally an orange drink? No actual oranges were harmed. The e-numbers would trigger sequential riots as we pinballed around the school. Plus it was a tetrapak so we all ended up with permabright orange stains on our clothes, like we were terminally injured aliens who had foolishly adopted the camouflage of school children in their doomed plan to invade the earth (For Mash Get Smash, my back up anthem).
Younger subdeck droids know no knowledge of this, to them a crispy pancake is a novelty product, not a life-sustaining key nutritional component. But also my wife, who was conjured out of a curiously middle-class background that included no orange, no freezer food, and worst of all, no ITV. Her father wouldn't let her watch television with adverts, a prohibition taken to the extreme of ensuring the TV wasn't tuned to the relevant channel (it can be no surprise he once stood as a Tory MP). Think of it, a childhood empty of Tiswas, Saturday mornings with Noel Edmunds gurning over a healthy breakfast that didn't feature Cocoa Pops. It is no wonder she is so often Wrong.
