No longer currant Fruit cake ‘is old people’s food’
RIGHT then … Soon be Christmas. They do say that between the pandemic and Lockdown 2.0 and the onset of winter that Christmas will be longer and more Christmassy this year.
To the extent that we’re able to do it, anyway. We don’t yet know how many of us will be legally allowed to sit down together to Christmas dinner, though frankly I can’t see any Chief Constable in the land being willing to risk the consequences of ordering officers to smash down doors and confiscate anyone’s turkey, can you?
Some people are supposedly already hanging up the decorations, while I myself have made a point of having stollen or mince pies for breakfast each morning.
Whilst suggesting to Mrs Latimer that she might, (pretty please with a cherry on) wish to make a Christmas cake for her hard-working consort, I made a shocking discovery.
Latimer Jr. blandly declared that fruit cake is old people’s food. Needing a second opinion, I consulted Miss Latimer, herself an accomplished cooker and future Bake Off contestant, and she confirmed this. Millennials do not like fruit cake. Even though it’s, like, y’know, totally vegan, yeah?
Fruit cake has been going on a long time. You can argue for its origins in the Middle Ages or even ancient Rome, but in its modern form it appears in the 1700s/1800s with the large-scale import of dried fruit, and the decreasing price of sugar, which made making candied fruit cheaper.
If you’re looking for a PhD thesis, tell us when it reached Bristol, and whether or not Bristolians in ye 1800s and 1900s ate more fruit cake than people in other places. This is because from Tudor times (and almost certainly sooner), Bristol was importing dried fruit from Europe. Currants, particularly, would have made the fortunes of some of the red-robed scoundrels who used to run this town.
Yet this rich heritage is as nothing to da kidz, it seems. Next thing you’ll be telling me that they don’t like Spam or that they consider steak and kidney pudding to be, like, totally gross.
Local history treats online
Bristol’s museums are currently closed due to Lockdown 2, and they’re going to stay closed until at least December 2, if not longer. But they do have a brilliant set of online events coming up. There are talks on the Bristol Blitz, the life and work of Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Edwards, William Butler and the Coal-Tar Distillery at Crew’s Hole, an oral history of Black Bristolian memories and a very enticing thing titled “The Wicked Girls of Red Lodge”.
For details of these and lots more, including the online gift shop packed with Christmas present ideas for the Bristolian in your life, see www.bristolmuseums.org.uk
Whitchurch memories
Whitchurch Local History Society has just re-printed the first two of the three volumes of Village Memories its members have compiled from the recollections of older (and not-so-older) residents. These splendid little volumes paint a rich and colourful picture of village life in former times, with humorous and poignant tales as well as recollections of childhood and everyday life.
The third volume came out last year, and now all three are available once more. So if you know anyone from the village, a copy of one or all might be just the thing for Christmas. Certainly if you know any expats exiled from Whitchurch, whether in Winnipeg or Walsall, you ought to consider getting them one.
Details are at whitchurchvillagecouncil.co.uk (click on ‘History Society’ under Local Information) or just mail the secretary Geoff Gardiner at geoff@thegardiners.org. uk. Books cost £5 per volume, plus £2 P&P for one book and £2.50 for two.
Worst President ever? Not so fast …
So then, big events across the pond, eh?
The conventional wisdom is that for decades to come, historians will judge Donald Trump the very worst American President (thus far!) How many reasons do you need? He’s divisive, vulgar, dishonest, he’s enabled white supremacists and his business interests, and those of his family, raise all manner of questions about his probity. There’s also Russian influence, climate change denial, separating children from parents at the border, ripping up treaties, yadayadayada.
But however vile we might think he is, 70 million Americans voted for him, and they’re not all guntotin’ redneck morons who fall for the most insane conspiracy theories. (Although many are.) What they are is Americans with different
priorities to the rest of us.
For Europe and many other parts of the World, the United States has been seen since 1945 as a guarantor of peace and security. But to many Americans, the wider world is a place full of maniacs and pointless wars and they are tired of expending American money and lives to be the world’s policeman.
Donald Trump is one of the few post-WWII US Presidents who’s not got his country involved in any wars. He’s actively tried to disengage from them. His view that other NATO countries are not pulling their weight and leaving the heavy spending to the US is – apart from Britain – correct.
He’s also pushed back against China’s aggressive expansionism, its rigged economic advantages, including the systematic theft of intellectual property. China’s repression of democracy in Hong Kong and its grotesque surveillance state are bad enough, but its treatment of the Muslim Uighur peoples in Xinjiang is in a league of its own, and something on which the leaders of Muslim countries are noticeably silent.
Donald Trump is a repellent monster who’s tearing his country apart, and doesn’t give a damn about human rights anywhere. But much of the foreign policy he has put in motion, however chaotic, will be followed by his successor. Europe is certainly facing up to the idea that Uncle Sam isn’t always going to be around to protect it, and post-Brexit Britain is likely to find itself in a very lonely place.
Assuming Trump finally quits the White House without plunging his country into civil war, history in the long run may not be as unkind to him as we might think. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Cheers then!