Monday, December 15, 2014

Lying in bed fantasising

On the rare occasions - they are rare in spite of the fact that I always seem to be grumbling - that I have to take to my bed I can tell when I'm beginning to feel better because I start to fantasise. 

About fried breakfasts. In particular fried egg and proper fried bread.

When I was a little girl I would go to church on a Sunday morning with my mum. We attended the 8 o'clock service and would be home in time for Alistair Cook's Letter from America followed by the Archers omnibus on the home service. And my gran would do us all a fried breakfast.

I don't remember what else we had but my favourite thing was the bread, warm, crisp and oozing with bacon fat. Mmm, I'm salivating as I remember. 

But then as I grew up, got married, and had my own children, every day the media found new evidence to persuade us that we'd live longer if we changed our diet to exclude, well, most tasty things but especially animal fat. So fried bread became a thing of the past.

Strangely enough, my gran, grandfather, and both great-grans lived into their 80/90s in spite of their diets. In fact one great-gran reputedly responded to a neighbour commenting on the size of her grocery bill by saying, 'I'd rather pay the grocer than the doctor.'

A little of what you fancy and not too much of anything. Except maybe Maltesers.

3 comments:

nick said...

'I'd rather pay the grocer than the doctor.' I like it. As I've said before, I ate mountains of salt, sugar and fat when I was a kid, and it doesn't seem to have done me any harm.

Mauigirl said...

Love that saying. My mom and grandmother lived to ripe old ages even though they smoked!

Liz Hinds said...

I think we probably ran around more too though, Nick.

Like my grandparents, Mimi, long-living smokers!