Poor white jilted by the well-bread
IFYOU are in the business of the printed word then it is always sad when any publication shuts down.the British edition of the Reader’s Digest – first published in the UK in 1938 – turned up its toes last week.
It had had financial problems for years, falling sales, clobbered by the internet, in and out of administration, pension fund deficits etc.
It was out of date. After all we barely sit in doctors’ waiting rooms any longer – a place where old copies of the Reader’s Digest traditionally ended up – because you can’t get a GP appointment.
But I have fond, well fond-ish, memories of the Reader’s Digest.
Just out of university in the mid-1970s I landed a job there as a lowly editorial assistant. In those days the magazine was in its pomp, occupying lavish offices in Mayfair’s Berkeley Square.
I shared a palatial office overlooking the square with three other ladies.
At eleven o’clock the morning coffee trolley would rattle in to view, served reverently in bone china cups.
At around three-thirty the tea trolley would make an appearance. There may have been biscuits too.we knocked off at five o’clock sharp.
My job was to edit the jokes and funny stories readers sent in and which were a mainstay of the magazine.
Most of the funny stories began with “imagine my surprise when…”
The attention to detail was scrupulous. Everyone’s work was sent off in triplicate to the HQ at Pleasantville, Newyork, for further checking and editing.the typed manuscripts went by post in those pre-email days. Everything at Reader’s Digest was like that – leisurely, quiet, cautious, polite, old-fashioned.
To be honest it wasn’t a particularly interesting job as I wanted the razmatazz of a newsroom. But I feel nostalgic for a working-place culture that has disappeared – replaced by hot-desking, screens andwfh.
THERE’S A pub near me – in deepest Hampshire – where if you ask for coffee, the landlady crisply informs you that “this is a pub not Starbucks”. If you offer her a credit card she reminds you that she only takes cash. Of course the customers love this rough treatment and the place is always packed.
Her one concession to any fancy modern notions of customer choice is asking “white or brown bread?” when you order a sandwich.
Though obviously everyone says “brown” because we’re all frightfully middle class.
Bread truly is a class issue in Britain. Brown or white.wholemeal or Mother’s Pride. It defines us.
Refined white bread was once the food of the rich and therefore more desirable. Now it has become the food of the poor, while lumpy, peasant bread is the stodge carb of the wealthy.
The middle classes go to farmers’ markets to buy huge, spherical hipsterish breads involving walnuts, stilton, treacle, spelt, and other teeth-breaking ancient grains last used during Roman times.
It has the texture of a Berber carpet or is so full of holes that you wonder why you are paying £4.50 for a loaf that is mostly fresh air.
The middle classes insist their children eat wholemeal. It is a form of virtue signalling. Look, says yummy mummy, I am an excellent parent who gives my children bread that is Good For Them.
Soft, flabby white bread is considered to be the preference of the lower orders who don’t care about eating what is Good For Them and won’t do what they’re told by nutritionists.
And by the looks of it even the Government has thrown in the towel when it comes to educating the proles about healthy eating.
A state-funded research project was announced last week which has the sole aim of creating bread with the nutritional value of wholemeal but the appearance and taste of budget brand sliced white.
How very British. Trick the masses into healthy eating by making it look like pap.
If we weren’t so class conscious we would admit that there is nothing better than a crisp bacon sarnie with sliced white and ketchup, that breadand-butter pudding has to be made with stale white, and a good jam sandwich must involve the sort of snow-white loaf that turns into a gloriously moist ball of mush in your mouth.
White or brown? Both please.