GRUB

Chapter 51

Grub

very early 80s — early 90s

This story is set in the early 80s, but the situation described below was an ongoing event for more that ten years, and carried into the early 90s.

After myself and my friend Wobble made our way back from Bridgend town after we had been drinking in the numerous pubs that the old town had to offer, we would be Starving Marvin, so hungry that we were nearly always drawn towards a takeaway like the old Bisto kids from the gravy advert, but we would hold off buying something in the town, and always plan to have one or more pints in the Two Brewers pub on the Brackla housing estate to finish the night off, the pub was only around half a mile from where wobble lived, the plan was always to have a quick pint or two in the pub, then catch one of the two takeaways in the small shopping precinct that lay next to the pub, there was an Indian takeaway which we never went in for some reason, and a Chinese takeaway called Godfrey’s which i believe in 2021 is still there, but this plan of grabbing a take out meal never really worked out, we nearly always left it to late, and had to walk to wobble house with our stomachs rumbling.

Even when we did leave the pub in time to catch a takeaway open, there was always a queue, takeaways back in the day were only of two types, Chinese/Indian takeaways or the old fashion Fish and Chip shop, Kebab shops had not made an appearance just yet, the Kebab shops only began popping up from the early to mid 80s in Bridgend.

At the takeaway this late in the evening there would be people queuing up outside on to the pavement, it would have been like this all over Bridgend, Jean hong's Chinese takeaway in Derwen road was always very popular, it was impossible to get food there unless you wanted to wait a long time, in the very long queue, it was the same with all the Chippys, like the Ranch in Nolton street, and the Windsor in Queen street, and not forgetting Gino`s fish and chip shop on the corner of Cowbridge road, they were all very busy places at the end of the night, and it was always possible that there would be nothing left to eat if you were last in the queue.

We would normally walk from Bridgend town to the large Brackla housing estate which was a couple of miles on the outskirts of Bridgend, by the time we arrived at wobbles house, we would be starving hungry, and anything in wobbles food cupboards was a potential meal, we would search the cupboard with a great enthusiasm and urgency.

Wobble never really knew what was stored away in the back of his food cupboards, so with our decision-making ability somewhat diminished by the consumption of a great deal of alcohol, everything looked edible, and was on the menu for the night, all it needed was some creative imagination to put something together to make a meal.

( Photo 1 ) . The Bisto kids advert, this is what we looked like every time we walked passed a Takeaway.

After you have had a few alcoholic beverages, or other things like man made chemicals in you system, it is not wise to cook, this actually meant in our case not so much as leaving the hob on at full heat with a pan full of sausages or causing a chip fire, that was never an issue with us, we had enough common sense even if we had too much to drink to turn off the cooker, the problem we had was that we would eat anything, including food that was so old it no longer had a label that could be read with any success or the expiration date was well past it’s time, if the food was way out of date, it would be inspected, if it was near enough the right colour that it started out as, and if it smelt ok it went in the frying pan.

We were never ill from eating out of date food, our immune system must have adapted to all the crap we had eaten over the years

Wobble always seemed to have a large packet of white long grain rice in his cupboard, which we made good use off, it seemed to be the main ingredient to every meal we made,

Even though we used this rice on regular occasions, when we were preparing it, it never looked enough to feed both of us, so we would use a ridicules amount of rice, we could never get the right amount of measurement to feed one or two people, this is where the alcohol was doing its best in stopping us making the correct decisions, all we had to do was fill two coffee cups up and that would have been enough for two people, but having an alcohol fueled thought process, this never accrued to us to do this simple task of filling two mugs up, by the time we had finished cooking the rice in a large saucepan on the hob, we would end up with enough rice to feed half the street.

Rice on its own is a very bland meal, so to make the food more interesting and to spice it up a little, and possibly give it some kind of flavour we would add large amounts of the green food colorant called Cochineal, if this was not available, gravy browning, Bisto gravy granuals or just your average tomato or brown sauce was added to the rice.

I can remember on one occasion for some bizarre reason, we had two large saucepans on the hob full to the brim with steaming hot green rice.

Even coloured rice is not a meal on its own, so we would cut up mouldy old cheese that had its own bio system growing on its sides, we simply cut the block of cheese into small chunks and added them to the rice, without the green mould, which we tasted first to see if they were edible and strangely they tasted mouldy, a bit like blue cheese, we would do the same with tinned ham or spam, a tin of chopped tomatoes was always welcome, you have to remember that being out drinking all day did not help with us making these culinary choices, we would laugh our way all through the cooking process, we enjoyed every minute of it, we were always laughing at the meals we were creating, it was part of the fun.

The food choices did not stop there, we would mix spaghetti with the rice, on one occasion wobble was given a tin of game soup, that someone had in a Christmas hamper that they did not fancy eating, so we added that tin to the rice and spaghetti with the addition of a tin of tomato soup and Bisto gravy granuals.

Let's face it when your drunk and hungry everything tastes delicious, this must be the reason why people only buy Kebabs after drinking alcohol, and kebabs are not eaten as a normal mid-day meal, well maybe they do elsewhere in the world, but not in Wales.

( Photo 2 ) . One of the many makeshift meals we put together, presented by Chef Wobble, possible ingredients are green rice with spam slices, presentation is everything.

We would normally avoid any type of fish, but on this singular occasion there was literary nothing left in the cupboards, after a little searching at the back of the cupboards, we found hidden behind a small stack of tea plates, there was one solitary tin of sardines, we both looked at the tin with very disappointed expressions on our faces, there was no option open to us, there was no rice left, not even a single tin of any food whatsoever, we were not very keen on eating this kind of food on a normal day.

We put the small tin down on the kitchen counter, and just stared at it, the writing on the tin declared in bold writing that the fish’s were in a tomato sauce, after a little while I said “ fuck it, lets see what it smells like “.

The tin was a typical size and shape that these type of fish’s were sold in, it was a flattish lozenge shape tin with a metal pull ring on the top.

I flicked the pull ring up off the surface of the tin’s lid, with the help of a knife, and then pulled the ring back and slid the lid off the tin, to be honest the contents of the tin did not look very appetising, the tin contained the little corpse’s of the dead fish’s with their heads and tails missing, they were all squashed together with a reddish tomato sauce covering their little bodies.

I put the tin under my nose and said to wobble “ it does not smell that bad “.

So using two fingers, I picked up one of the little bodies, and closed my eyes, and then popped it into my mouth, wobble was watching me like a hawk as I chewed the little fish, I will have to admit it tasted a lot better than I thought it would.

After swallowing the fish I said to wobble “ MMM, that’s not bad for a dead fish, these are ok to eat “, and then the feeding frenzy began.

We both started to stick our fingers into the small playing card size tin, grabbing as many fish as we both could, this apocalyptic style feeding frenzy was over in seconds, we emptied the tin and wobble ended up licking the tin clean, we both sat there licking the tomato sauce off our fingers.

I have never eaten any sardine fish since that day and never attempted to try it again, but I have to admit that little tin of sardines was delicious.

( Photo 3 ) . A typical tin of sardines with the handy ring-pull.

On another occasion after we had walked back from town there was nothing to drink alcohol wise, left in wobbles house, normally we would leave the odd couple of bottles or cans in the fridge, but this time the fridge was bare, sometimes we would just finish the night off with a mug of tea, but this night we were still thirsty for a proper drink.

The only thing that was left alcohol wise was an old demijohn filled with homemade red wine that was given to wobble by someone, because the wine did not turn out as it should have, whoever gave wobble the wine knew wobble would drink anything.

At the time he was given the wine, it was far too dry to drink, in fact just smelling the wine was enough to put you off red wine for life.

The demijohn of wine had been in wobbles attic for many, many months, possibly even years, the idea was to leave the wine mature and over time it would hopefully become more palatable and more pleasurable to drink, I do not drink wine myself, but as they say, any port in a storm.

So the wine was the only drop of alcohol in the house, I remember wobble saying “ that wine in the attic must have got better with all the time it’s had to improve, we’ll give that a try “.

Wobble climbed up into the attic, and brought the dusty demijohn down, it was the last resort, and possibly a very bad choice.

When he carried the demijohn down with him, he was not careful with the way he handled it, and all the sediment that had settled at the bottom of the large bottle had been disturbed and had mixed itself up with the rest of the wine, and was now floating around in small clumps, and it also made the wine a strange pastel red colour with all the bits floating around, and some of these bits were quite large, large clumps could be a better description then bits.

( Photo 4 ) . A photo of myself in Wobbles kitchen, with two meals ready to go, the possible ingredients for this meal looks very much like Heinz’s beans or ( beanz`s as it is written on the tin can’s label ) in tomato source, topped off with melted Caerphilly cheese on a bed of white long grain rice, with a salt option for seasoning, this is me guessing, its anyone’s guess really.

With no other option available to us, we decided to give the wine a go.

The wine was so dry when wobble was first given it that it was impossible to drink, I’m not a wine drinker, so I’m no expert but I think this strangely coloured liquid was not going to win any prizes at the county show.

The wine being in the attic all those many months or years had not helped in any way with making the wine tastes any better.

The only way we could stomach drinking it was by putting a whole bag of Tate & Lyle 1 kg Bag of sugar into the demijohn, we did start with a small amount, then a quick taste and then adding more sugar, we repeated this procedure until all the sugar was in the demijohn, and believe me when I say it did not make it taste any better, it was still far to dry to drink, but we did manage have a few glasses, I think we may have been very sorry in the morning

( Photo 5 ) . Myself displaying two strange looking meals that consist of green rice, spam pieces, and one dish with a large dollop of tomato sauce, i have no idea why wobble needed to stand on the kitchen counter when he took this photo.

( Photo 6 ) . A photo of myself eating another selection of meals in Wobbles living room, with his partly stripped Suzuki GS 1000 in the corner.

( Photo 7 ) . Wobble again with two unidentified meals.

( Photo 8 ) . Myself proudly displaying two more meals that maybe spaghetti with some yellow sauce at the center ( possibly a pot noodle ) surrounded by some kind of meat or cheese.

NOTE

I have been informed that Cochineal is red in colour, and not green, what the green stuff was, I have no idea, maybe it`s best not to know. :)