Canteen Days

“Canteen” | a place in a factory, office, etc. where food and meals are sold, often at a lower than usual price.[Cambridge English Dictionary]

“Craic” | (Irish English) enjoyable time spent with other people, especially when the conversation is entertaining and funny [Cambridge English Dictionary]

 

I hear some people are finding it hard to stay at home and shun human contact during this Covid-19 crisis. Understandable, especially if their regular lifestyle involves daily socialising. But I am experiencing an unexpected bonus. Ever since I stopped going to work I have found it increasingly difficult to find the time to keep up with this blog; suddenly I have no excuse but to knuckle down and resume normal service. Thanks pandemic, for the first time in ages I have time on my hands.

I am fascinated with communal eating, and it’s ironically apt at the moment, when eating out is banned until further notice, by edict of BoJo. In particular, canteens are a thread which runs through much of my life, from school dinners to university refectories, via worker’s canteens, in the UK and overseas.

Even without the virus crisis I just miss the canteen experience these days, as a social diversion, a welcome pause in the working day. Looking back, there have been periods when no canteen was available on a daily basis, such as when I went freelance after leaving the BBC in 1983. At such times, the lack of a canteen was a minor disappointment, something missing in the working day.

Of course, it’s not just about the food, but the craic as well. Actually, like Commisario Montalbano I am rubbish at eating and talking simultaneously, so it’s eat-first-chat-second for me if I have a choice, but for sure there’s not much to be said for eating alone. .                

Where were you when Mrs T resigned?

The media are making a predictable meal this week out of the 25th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation and Bernard Ingham’s revelations about the shenanigans that led up to it. The current hoo-ha immediately reminded of where I was on November 22nd 1990 at 9.30am, when the news broke.

I was sitting in a well-known café in pre-gentrification Leeds city centre, staring out at drizzle-soaked passers-by, when the news was announced on the radio (it might have been on the telly,) just audible over the desultory chatter in the room. Not everyone there heard it immediately, but within seconds everyone got up and cheered and waved. That’s what the people of Leeds thought of Margaret Thatcher after eleven plus years of Tory government.

Oddly I cannot for the life of me remember where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated, but I do remember when the King George VI died, February 6th 1952. I was out shopping with my mum in Neasden (NW10) and we saw the news on a newspaper stand poster. Nobody cheered that day, I bet.

Bernard Ingham’s account in the Yorkshire Post