How's that for a tricksy heading, well I am not going environment after all. Though eating does play a part. But as words dominate the computer so we should record them.
Well in the hours of the night when I wake up I read whatever is on my tablet. Last night it was the Smithsonian news letter. It had a story about an island off Alaska called St. Matthews, uninhabited, bleak and treeless it was one of those stopping off points for sailors and I believe American soldiers camped there during the second world war to keep an eye on the world from this vantage point. Russian hunters killed 900 polar bears for their fur early on, and of 1500 reindeer who lived on the island, it went down to only one remaining lame female who outlived the terrible weather but eventually died. It was written with the dash of the explorer spirit and was a good read.
Yesterday Yorkshire Pudding revealed that he had been to Easter Island for a holiday, and the selfsame fate of course also befell this island, the inhabitants ate themselves out of food and chopped down the trees for wood, so that was eventually no wood for heating their food or for building their boats. Think about it.
Is it not a parable for us at the moment, as we use every last resource this planet has to offer in a vain attempt to gain everything we desire? The book this information came in was written by Jared Diamond - Collapse, I had read it years ago and the fate of Easter Island had caught up in my memory, especially the hens they kept in small stone chicken sheds!
Food: we went out for a meal yesterday to 'Honest Joes' the three of us and our 'handsome male guest'. It struck me how many different cuisines we can eat in this country, my daughter had Ethopian food the other day. But at the restaurant two had an Italian pasta dish, I had Greek Meza and the HMG had a kebab. Which came on what looked like a swanlike thin stand. Hanging there was the threaded meat and underneath was all the other food.
Strangely it made me think of fondues, the thick creamy cheese sauce, always without the Kirsche Liquer, for I never found it in the supermarkets. The small squares of baguette for dipping and the range of' sour things to cut the richness of the cheese. Nostalgia plays a great part in food, what about raclette, the melting of a special cheese over potatoes, both meals have to be accompanied by wine. But I haven't seen a Swiss restaurant in England, although I have cooked a pancake mixture of eggs and vegetables in Japanese style on the table with a hot plate and eaten real sushi by London's best Japanese chef, yes I wasn't impressed but smiled sweetly and ate my first bite of raw tuna.
I see Marks and Spencer are doing well in the share prices, food as always, clothes a notch up from drabness. We don't get 'posh' Waitrose around here but my daughter says the richer sides of Manchester, where the top knob footballers live, they are two a penny, Waitrose that is.
I am missing my spinning and my books.....
Edit; it is an interesting chapter from Collapse by Jared Diamond
I have to say I would rather wallpaper my rooms with pages from my books than part with some of the dearest. Is there a good library in the town where you can order up what you want to read, as Sue in Suffolk does? Perhaps when you are in your own place again, there may be room for a small upright spinning wheel?
ReplyDeleteWe did a course on Easter Island and I can remember it all only too well, right down to the Long Ears and the Short Ears (masters and almost slaves in the end) and people living in caves on the beach, for safety, and those precious chickens and not being able to fish because they had cut the last tree down so there was nothing to build rafts from. Easter Island here we come, I fear. The Mohawks had it right when they said: "When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money." We are fast heading that way.
I have bookmarked that article to read over breakfast. Thankyou.
There is a library Jennie but I do have problems with reading. The books I want are mostly reference as well. I never did Easter Island in my archaeology course, though you will see the link to Jared Diamond's chapter in Collapse up above, it has all the facts.
DeleteI am not surprised that M&S Food Halls are doing better these days. I live right next to a Waitrose but I don't want to subsidise the failing John Lewis by buying their ridiculously over-priced food. I try to give Lidl as much money as I have to spend on food - a German company. Waitrose are just using Covid to hike their prices up as far as they dare. They will decline eventually. Eat the rich? Too rich for me.
ReplyDeleteAlways good to know the local news of Bath Tom. We also shop at Lidl on the daily shop, plenty of vegetables and fruit, a well stocked meat section but the rest of the small things are hard to find. Morrisons for the fortnightly large shop. 'Eat the rich' comes from 18th century Rousseau and the poverty in those times...
ReplyDeleteI never that much detail about Easter Island - I shall have to read more about that; a metaphor for our times indeed.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I remember it is a good book. The interest in the Easter Island stemmed of course from Thor Heyerdahl and his rickety boat...
DeleteInterestingly I see Waitrose have started delivering on my estate now - along with Tesco, Morrisons, Lidl, Aldi and others - there must be at least fifty delivery vans every day.
ReplyDeleteYour estate must be upmarket than Pat if Waitrose delivers there. Deliveries of groceries have been a godsend through the event of Covid, but I pity the poor drivers as they turn up late evening, though of course the delivery charge is much cheaper.
DeleteThe world is changing and we have to start the sacrifices to make it slow down. COVID is not the huge issue here, but I see the tides are higher each year.
ReplyDeleteThe problems are massive of course for those who suffer and for those who are little better off Tabor. Green speak started the talk 30 odd years ago but no one wants to face reality.
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