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The Grouch - Nov 05
DID YOU READ the newspaper report the other day that 1 in 3 school kids in primary school don’t know what chips are made of. Unbelievable isn’t it?
But then again there are fundamental things many modern children don’t know, that their grandparents certainly did. Take milk for instance. How many kids know how milk comes to the table or what for instance, bread is made from or where salt comes from. Yes, we get all that from the supermarket all neatly packaged. But how did it get there?
And when it comes to food I fear many are missing out on so many old delights: mashed neeps served with a knob of butter or a plate of real broth made with a ham bone and leeks and barley and split peas and simmered gently for a couple of days.
Dulse
More obscure would be Rhodymenia palmate known to past generations simply as Dulse. Never heard of it? Well, if you lived around the coast of Scotland instead of in Highland Perthshire, your Granny would remember it very well. It’s an edible seasonal seaweed gathered off the rocks at low tide. For tuppence you could buy a few handfulls or so, wrapped in newspaper from the fishmonger and on a Saturday night Granny would dig out an old iron poker and heat it in the coal fire until it was red hot.
She would spread out the dark brown and green seaweed on a breadboard and sear it by rolling the poker back and forth until it sizzled and popped and steamed. The smell was wonderful and we kids would fight over the last morsel while the poker went back into the fire to re-heat.
I often wonder why dulse has disappeared from the shops. I cannot believe that potato crisps or popcorn or anything out of a fancy and expensive packet, can begin to compare with that steaming delight. Now, there is a thought! Maybe some old entrepreneur could re-introduce the native delicacy to the tables of the nation.
Time & Motion
One fine day I was standing looking down into a deep hole being dug by a big, shiny new digger. Watching other men work is something men of a certain age tend to do when out walking. Then came the interesting bit! The jaws bit deep into the hole again and lo and behold, up came a fountain of water. The hole filled quickly with the water, the man scratched his head and climbed down from his gleaming new machine and stood beside me while he searched for his mobile phone. I didn’t like to tell him that I always knew there was a water main down there.
Our water was off for ten hours that day and I think the man must have hit other bits of the main because we kept losing our supply over several weeks and when we were re-connected the water was all bubbly and muddy and horrid. Ironically, the man was trying to dig holes for a new sewer pipe. You’ve got to laugh haven’t you?
Watching the progress of the road works, brought to mind the days when Time and Motion studies came into the work places of the nation. It was a new science in the 1950’s and it irritated some who were loathe to change the work practices of a lifetime. But, it did save time and as they say, time is money. So, as I watched the huge digger gouge its way slowly along the road I got to thinking there must be a better way of doing that particular job. There was that huge machine costing goodness knows how many tens of thousands of pounds and it was standing idle for most of the time. Why, I wondered.
And then it dawned on me! As the broken road stone and earth was removed, it was loaded into one battered wee dumper truck which then drove slowly a couple of hundred metres along the road to dump it on some waste ground. The wee dumper chugged back and forth while the huge state of the art digger stood idle. Now why I thought, don’t they bring in a couple of other wee dumpers so that the big digger could be used to best effect all the time. Time and Motion I thought. But I didn’t like to suggest it to the digger man!
by Alex Speak
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