Same but different

 

My local

I have been around for rather a long time. I got to thinking that while I was on a country walk in the unusual heat of September. Being in the countryside is something I have enjoyed all my life and the British countryside is essentially the same as it was when I was a child. Britain is beautiful in all its seasons.

In fact, after a little research about the Doomsday Book written in the 1100s, the countryside has changed little. In 1974 the county boundaries were very similar. the current names of places were mostly already established by Doomsday days, (Milton Keynes existed back then) and; apparently the farming land use in the  early 1900s hadn't changed much either.

One man operation

However, watching a solitary man in a massive farm machine harvest a large field of ripened wheat, I realised how much has also changed since my childhood. Most people here have lost their connection to the land, and after reading about UPF (ultra processed food) - who can fail to have noticed the news about it to be honest, we have also lost our connection to what we eat.

When I was a child, the evening meal was meat and two veg. Sunday roast for me was over cooked with slushy veg and well-done meat. My mother embraced the frozen food revolution of the 1970s and that is when I had fish fingers and frozen pizza. My happy food memories from my childhood were my Nana's cooking. She was my supercook. My grandfather encouraged me to steal dried fruit for him from the kitchen as he was bed-ridden. Such are my memories of food.  Frankly, food is much more interesting now.

Since the issues of UPF first hit front line news, I reflected on my diet. Way back last May I consciously gave up eating anything that had chemicals, emulsifiers and other things I don't recognise. It has been worth it. My allergic reactions are far less frequent. I don't get as hungry - perhaps that is because it is summer too. Also, because I have now got into the habit of buying a limited range of stuff, it doesn't take any longer to buy my groceries. The down side is when I eat out. Most sauces are no nos.

Visits to the hairdressers over the years have remained stubbornly the same. I have just had my hair cut in a hairdressers some distance from my normal one. The hairdresser, as with most hairdressers, was bent on interrogation. She asked me the usual trivial questions and then asked them again. "So where do you live?", "What do you do?", "Has your hair always been curly?" Questions like these don't lead to much variation in the answers however many times they are asked. I just dream of having my hair cut in almost silence contemplation. In Singapore the hairdressers said to me, "Your hair very expensive to cut!" - They meant "difficult". I have three crowns so the Chinese also say I am very naughty. Even they wanted to talk their way through cutting my locks.

The Real Ale and Cider festival in my local was heaving. We have come full circle and real ales are mainstream these days. The queue for the REAL ones was far too long so I settled for an imaginery one which still made me feel quite drunk. This surprised me as I knew it wasn't real. 

More unvelievable than not real... I played a mini tournament and a club championship tennis match in 30+c over this weekend. It wasn't the same sort of heat that I played in in Singapore. I have been playing tennis since I was seven years old but this heat in the UK is not nice. It was probably my experience in Singapore kept me standing and I ended up in the final of the mini tournament. I certainly didn't feel this exhausted after tennis when I was younger. Just the finals of the club championships next weekend to survive.

My Rodney!