Category: family

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Unsung Dads

Having previously written about the daily struggles of Mums it’s seems only fair to address deserving dads; unsung everyday heroes who have not been rendered impotent, violent or otherwise enraged by the gains of feminism.

Travelling usually indicates luck itself and while travelling last year, I felt so very lucky. But good luck is often followed by bad. Excessive security checks and my own stupidity ensured I missed my flight from Gatwick, a word I hope never to hear again. All I remember is that endless queue and then running from one wrong gate to the next. Finally arriving in Sicily I was lucky. But sunny Sicilia and its divine food can wait for another time.

I had to return via Gatewick and get myself to Heathrow and then home sweet home. It was a Friday and the bus driver, faced with terrible traffic snarls had decided to take an alternate route. This would have alarmed me if not for the very big wait for the flight home.

So I was able to sit back and enjoy the view. Yes, there was a view because he left the motorway. It was school holidays in the UK, the sun was actually shining and I was on a slow bus to Heathrow.

The driver had his young son sitting right behind him and I was behind them. As he drove he pointed out sites of interest to his son, things like “your Granny worked in the Great House there”, or “Great-Granddad worked in the factory there before the War”. We even passed Hampton Court Palace where another ancestor had been a gardener.

I’m not sure who enjoyed this most, his son or I? It was such a wonderful, random unfolding of England’s social history, an informed commentary, told with such understated pride. This man will probably never write his family story, certainly never be asked, “ Who do you think you are”; yet he knew where he came from and so will his son.

Home again, in the dreaded supermarket, when my shopping reverie is shattered by a middle-aged guy asking me where he can find curry powder. My eyes narrow seeking more information and he tells me he wants to make curried egg sandwiches for his kids. They’re sick of cheese and tomato. So we need something mild, a powder not a paste and apply with caution, don’t forget the dash of mayo.

He’s asked the right person, again I wonder why I’m so often asked for advice in supermarkets. I didn’t ask the Dad whether he ever gave them lunch money, or indeed whether this was his week with the kids or whether he was their sole carer or how he was able to do the school pickup. I got the impression he was sole carer and doing it tough. It’s only a sandwich, but minor acts of love have lifetime consequences.

 

Dr Felicity Newman is a member of the Centre for Everyday life at Murdoch University

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Everything New..

This week in the Food Studies class I teach, the topic turned to food miles. Having newly learnt that much of our food comes from very far away, students have written guiltily and at length, of the scourge of the carbon footprint as another new manifestation of the problems of life in the 21st century, as though food has never travelled before.

When I tell them globalisation began with Colombus they look startled, as young people who have perhaps never learnt of him, or indeed any other historical figure, might.

Eminent anthropologist, Sidney Mintz argues in his monograph Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, that it all began with the sugar trade. You only have to consider the great sugar producing nations to see the truth of this. Not only did sugar travel across the world, so did the plants themselves and the labourers, and with horrifying consequences.

The Caribbean was largely repopulated by slaves from Africa while indigenous populations were eradicated.   And what of us? Australia’s history of “blackbirding ” of Pacific Islanders to cut sugar cane in Queensland is no less shameful.

This history is of course rarely considered as we tuck into ginger cake, lamingtons or banana bread. These traditional afternoon tea delights are redolent of our British origins. It’s just that we forget how closely tied those origins are to our colonial past.

My grandmother and my mother grew up in the cold, working class, north of England and their dietary preferences reflected those origins. Friday night dinners shared with Nana would inevitably end with “pudding”. This pudding might emerge from any number of strange, but available, ingredients, custard and jam being amongst them. But always desiccated coconut, which I have since grown to loath, my admiration for the origins of that archetypal Aussie sweet, the mighty lamington, not withstanding.

However desiccated coconut, bananas and ginger (powdered, preserved in syrup or candied) have long been staple treats of the British diet. Of course they speak to us of Empire – of the days when Britannia ruled the wave and her British (and Australian) subjects could enjoy the fruits of empire: tea and sugar being foremost amongst them.

We might think those retro sticky date puddings (there’s another one – no date palms in the Old Dart) are very last decade but as sure as winter follows autumn these sweet delights will grace menus this winter, yet again. What of the health messages, the diabetes epidemic, the obesity epidemic? They didn’t emerge from a culture which makes its own puds on special occasions. They are more likely to result from an assault on the freezer compartment of your supermarket, while a homemade pudding offers the enjoyment of shared activity, sense of accomplishment and real flavour.

Less of Sara Lee and more of Margaret Fulton I say. What was that Noel Coward said, something about everything old being new again?

 

Dr Felicity Newman is a member of the Centre for Everyday life at Murdoch University