There's a carton of UHT milk in the back of my cupboard that was "gifted" to me by my Granny when I left home a year and a half ago. Probably that, or the tin of spam that came with it.
(Obviously I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm never going to use those two particular items)
I assume that you’ve never tried ‘Devonian Spam, blanched in river water and served with a UHT jus’?
I’d tell you the recipe but it was passed down to me by my grandmother (who died of food poisoning).
Ooooh I love that idea of UHT jus. I can SEE the carton having almost doubled in volume, ready to burst and flood your cupboard with a lava-like sour viciousness.
Time for a story.
My grandmother passed away in March after a long fight with cancer. She was 90, which is very decent. (It's just a horrible shame that, owing to the current crisis, we couldn't get to the funeral.)
She was a fantastic grannie. She lived in Morningside, overlooking the South Suburban as the locomotives passed the old Morningside station.
She also had some 'unhealthy' habits when it came to food.
You see, I was thinking about it the other day, and I couldn't help but wonder how grannie would've coped had she survived into the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously it wouldn't have been good – she has people round every day, so I can't help but feel it's a little bit of a blessing that she 'went' before she could get infected – but I also can't help but think that she might have relished it a little. In fact, had the geopolitical situation in January somehow devolved into all-out conflict, I have no doubts that my grannie might have been enthusiastic; not about the prospect of potential nuclear oblivion as a result of the complex power struggles of the Middle East, but about the rationing.
That fridge stalks my nightmares, mark my words. You'd open it and flies would come out. You'd feel like you needed to wash your hands,
and your nose. She didn't like to waste any food – and that included food she never used. There were hunks of grey pineapple and mouldy tins containing what used to be beans. You half-expected to see tentacles. In a cupboard, we once found some almonds with an expiration date of 1996 on the packet. That was two years ago. She was very stubborn about it; as you'd expect. Maybe she developed some kind of immunity – after all, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right?
Right?
Anyway, for all the tales of grannie's fridge, and the amount of times that it was completely cleared out only for a similar situation to return within months, the most famous story came from the cupboard.
The marmalade.
So we were staying with grannie, all four of us, in the summer of 2017. And one day it was breakfast time. And so we're eating our toast around the table, and my dad asks "Is there any marmalade?"
My grandmother points to a jar on the table.
"Grannie", I say with concern, "this has a use-by-date of January 2009".
Now, before you say anything, I'm aware that things like preserves can easily outlast their use-bys. In this case, however, the 'marmalade' had long since abandoned any notion of a unified consistency. Rock-hard, obsidian-black nuggets of what was once known as 'marmalade' reposed in syrupy water a bit like bitter Calpol.
"Well, it smells fine to me."
It didn't.
There is genuinely not a shred of hyperbole when I say that that marmalade smelt of alcohol. It had
fermented. Something in there had initiated a process of chemical breakdown, likely some bacteria. Perhaps she had synthesised a new drug or something.
I suppose it's a very Morningside way to get high, sniffing marmalade.
Anyway, we all smelt it, and we all registered the alcoholic smell. Grannie, on the other hand, said she didn't. We also checked the contents: no alcohol.
A few days later we happened to be in a supermarket. "Dad, dad!" I exclaimed (such is the naïvety of youth), "we should get grannie some new marmalade!" He acquiesced, and I selected some, as a treat.
When we got back, I happily gave it to her.
"This is very kind of you, thank you, and you can have some if you like; but I'm still going to use the other stuff, because I don't like to throw things away."
I miss her.