It’s hard to stomach, but the days of envying the prized big belly are gone
IF you’re half way through the big fry-up, eat it up now in case I put you off your breakfast. The way things are going, the fry will be a legacy dish only ever eaten on TV programmes by celebrity chefs showing how it was we ate in days of yore.
Ireland is growing thinner. Elasticated one-sizefits-all pull-up pants have been cut up in to rags for cleaning up beetroot stains and spilled superfood smoothies.
As was reported here exclusively, the old topers who drank a gallon a night, seven nights a week, have given up their oul excesses, due to death.
We could be witnessing the demise of the traditional Irish belly.
There was a time when owning a big belly was as much a status symbol as owning an SUV today. But you couldn’t just walk in to the showrooms and buy the belly off the floor.
The belly meant the proud possessor was a man of means. The belly told the world at large the owner could afford to eat and drink to excess. The belly was like a different person, living within and outside the body of the beholder. The belly was patted and stroked as if it were a pet or even a baby in the womb.
Men with two or more terraced bellies were envied and emulated. History, which will soon become a thing of the past, explains all.
We have one of the highest rates of home ownership in the world because so many of our ancestors were evicted from their farms. Was history the reason we went mad in the boom and continue to do so? The reason for the big bellies goes back to the famines. There was a national over-compensation against the starvation of the many famines.
That’s my theory and then it seems those who could store fat were the survivors of the great hungers. So it could be many of us are pre-disposed to inherited big bellies.
As I was saying, the old boys used to pat their big bellies and say proudly “it cost a lot of money to put that there”. Another old remark was made by way of admiration, and it was “there were eight strong men under his coffin”.
Men who could drink 20 pints were greatly admired until relatively recently, not so much for raising the equity – that too – but more for the sheer persistence and magnificence of their achievements.
“A couple of quiet gallons” was 16 pints. This was a bit like a half marathon. The couple of quiet gallons was no more than a warm-up.
Indeed, the children were given what was known as “a pony of porter” when I was a kid.
I was always skinny and pale. My dad used to console me by saying, “You couldn’t fatten a thoroughbred, Bill.”
But I knew unless I fattened up and grew out and up a bit I would never get to play for Kerry.
My mother was the best cook ever, but I was always only a picker. Lately I found one of the notes she stuck up here and there around the house and it read “little pickers mean big knickers”.
Mam was gas and she always listening to old wives who advised the younger women on all kinds of health matters such as contraception.
“Keep your two legs in the one stocking” was the preventative cure for unwanted pregnancy back in the days when women died from having too many babies for the export and missionary trade.
SO it was then that I was given a pony of porter every day for iron. I would sit up at the bar with the old boys and their constant companions, the big bellies, discussing the state of the world.
At the start I didn’t like the pony very much but, as often happens, the taste grew on me. I’m still drinking porter and my little pony has grown in to a big huge creamy pint.
There is nothing wrong with drinking a few pints. The extremists ban all fun. You can go overboard with the quest for perfection. We have had Sober October, and now there’s Dry January. The 40 days of Lent is next.
It has to be acknowledged there were people who were overweight due to medical reasons, just as is the case today. Back in the old days, there was very little done for these sufferers.
I’m not sure, though, if the stories of the bursting men are true. Most of you have either used the expression, or have heard someone say, “I’m fit to burst”. This would be after a big feed. We were told some men ate so much they burst all over the place.
I’m pretty sure the stories of the bursting men affected me. Maybe that was the reason why I was a picker. I didn’t want to go bursting all over the house, ruining the wallpaper with blood and exploding my guts all over the good carpet put down for the cousin the priest who was coming home from America.
It’s best not to go overboard either on building bellies or taking them down. Like the slack wire walker, stay balanced and you will never fall off.
Eat well, step up the exercise, but love yourself, and all the miracle of being in all forms.