The Way We Eat

The Way We Eat ©

By Michael Casey

The way we eat defines us, the refined amongst us spend more time talking than eating. Or is that really true, what is the lunch break for after all? What is going out to dinner for, what is any form of eating for, is it just for eating, what lies beneath? A lot of questions, I suggest you grab something from the fridge or the fruit bowl before you settle down to listen to me.

Ok let’s start at the beginning, you get fed by your mother at the nipple, milk, mother’s milk is all you get. The obvious thing to say is that a man tries to stay in that position for the rest of his life, at his girlfriend’s nipple pretending he’s a baby. But let’s move on before your girlfriend gives you a black eye, or un bleu if she is French.

You then have Farley’s rusks which taste great, and then slowly you advance from soft and sloppy food till you have solids. If you haven’t had any kids yet it really will be an eyeopener. Babies wear a bib for good reason, splashes everywhere and no sign of a blonde-haired mermaid nor Tom Hanks, just mess everywhere and if you are lucky only on the highchair. If your carpet is safe then you are a lucky lucky man.

Kids pick their noses and rub it on the wall, as well as rubbing jam sandwiches on your wallpaper too. It’s when they stop this and can sit up straight in a child’s chair that their style of eating begins to show. One of my daughter sits like me, like a workman, legs apart and head down into the food, eating over her plate, or am I just making this up to embarrass her? My other daughter eats like a lady, with crossed legs and long stretched out arms, like a flamingo, as if she was using chopsticks even though she is not.

Obviously in our house chopsticks are used, we are a Birmingham Shanghai family after all, and there is a special way of using chopsticks. When the bowl is held close to the mouth and food is scooped straight into the mouth, in an almost vacuum like process. It is big deal for Westerners to use chopsticks, my small daughter mastered them in 2007 when she was not yet 4. She also spoke in front of all our Shanghai family at a family gathering for 40 in a Shanghai restaurant, Annie Fan Pi is what she said, which means Annie Farted. Such is sibling love.

Farting at a meal is a sign of contentment, though the more you pay the less the restaurant wants you to fart. It is a form of fart snobbery. Down the pub with Barry and Steve and the team, and our team really knew how to drink, well down the Queens tavern it was acceptable to fart. But if you go into the Hippodrome to watch the Ballet, which is excellent by the way, if you dine there before the show I don’t think they would really like it. You might put the dancers off their steps. I was watching Despicable Me 2 last night which is fab by the way, and they had a fart gun, but I’ve side-tracked myself again.

So there is socially acceptable food eating and farting for that matter and unacceptable food eating and farting. I am a bit of a dribbler, so I wrap a paper towel around me when I go out to eat, though that’s been a long while now. You have to protect you woolly jumpers after all.

Or you’ll be like Niel and have to take your jumper off and put it on back to front, with the stains on your back. Though when he’s really sloppy after a few drinks Niel has to turn his jumper inside out as well, and sometimes inside out and back to front. So making 4 sides from one jumper. He once had too much curry but I didn’t ask what he turned inside out then…..

It is nice to go out to have really good food at a nice restaurant and dress up too, at CPNEC they had a fabulous restaurant attached to the hotel, it’s called Pendigo Restaurant now I believe, you’ll have to ring them up to see if it’s still in the Fine Dining bracket. All I know is that back in 2002 to 2005 the food was great, I don’t work there any more now.

Kebabs are the people’s food, the drunken lads’ people’s food, but they can be absolute heaven, if you find a great kebab shop then you will always go back there. Like a homing pigeon you find yourself swaying full of alcohol as you order a kebab with everything. As you stagger down the Main Street so wolf down your kebab and the juice trickles down your arm as far as your elbow. You stop a few times to burb and fart.

Once in your house you let your cat lick the wrapping paper while your switch on the tv, it’s always wise to sober up a bit before going to bed. You find a leaflet in your back pocket about the works Xmas do and you are disgusted to find out that its Fine Dining, you’ll have to hire a fancy suit, but you realise there is a really great boozer nearby and you 2^nd favourite kebab shop is around the corner too.

In the morning you wake up covered in sick, luckily it’s not yours, the cat was sick all over you, the kebab lickings were too much for her stomach. You had fallen asleep in your chair and the cat slept on you till she puked. It’s is strange how we all eat differently and the richer we are the fancier the food is and the fancier the clothes are. But at the end of the day, just be happy there is bread on the table and food in the fridge. Remember Niel the last time I saw him he was eating scraps from the dustbin in Saint Philips churchyard.