Financial Times
Select messages from
# through # FAQ
[/[Print]\]

The CBB -> News & Views

#1: Financial Times Author: KarryLocation: Stoke on Trent PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 11:10 am
    —
Hope this isnt usurping Roisin's role, but this was just posted on GO

Quote:
This was in the Weekend FT (UK) and I thought others might enjoy the recommendation.

Quote:
My mum says fruit is good for me and sweets are bad. Please help me convince
her that she’s wrong.

Andrew, age 11

You’re quite right to be wary. From the Bible onwards, fruit is the
deceptive accessory of all who seek to misguide. Where the serpent led Eve
to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, all evildoers follow.

It wasn’t a square of chocolate or a stick of rock that the Wicked Queen
used to poison Snow White. No, it was a bright, sparkling apple. If Snow
White had eaten her five a day, even the prince wouldn’t have been able to
wake her from slumber.

But it’s not just children’s stories that warn of such evils. In the
Odyssey, lotus fruits drug the warriors on their journey home from Troy -
they crave nothing but to eat more; Odysseus has to lock them back on to the
ship to travel on.

In The Grapes of Wrath, an ad for fruit-picking jobs in California is only
the start of a path to poverty and murder. In Jeanette Winterson’s
semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the young
Jeanette has nightmares about the fruit her repressive mother favours; in
one dream, a demon sits inside the orange she unpeels. The more you search
for fruit, the more rot you find.

But the sweet-eaters of the fictional universe are a far happier crowd. The
girls of the Chalet School and Malory Towers hold numerous midnight feasts,
but nowhere do we hear talk of obesity or early onset diabetes.
The Famous
Five’s constant consumption of chocolate cake propels them only to solve the
next mystery. And in Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, sweets are the delight of the
soul, the food of dreams. What humble pear or banana could ever make that
claim? Eat on, I say.

bookdoctor@ft.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007


#2:  Author: Alison HLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 11:14 am
    —
Laughing Just finished Castle in Northumbria by Lorna Hill and they seem to be eating cake on every other page! Oh, to be able to scoff like that without putting on weight ...

#3:  Author: RóisínLocation: Ireland PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 11:39 am
    —
Of course you are not a usurper Laughing I love to see new articles up! Very Happy

What about the turkish delight used by the evil witch in Narnia, to tempt Edmund? Or Joyce's very serious illness brought on by guzzling a midnight feast? Or the ambiguity of sweets in Harry Potter (vomit-flavoured jelly beans...)? /devil's advocate Very Happy

In CS terms, I always thought they looked on fruit in pretty much the same way as sweets anyway. As in, they had to buy it as a luxurious extra. There is some scene where Joey says that once your pocket money is gone you won't be able to buy stamps, chocolate or fruit for the next two weeks. Especially during the war, maybe cheap sweets were more widely available than fresh juicy ripe fruit.

#4:  Author: JennieLocation: Cambridgeshire PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:20 pm
    —
Sweets were very much rationed during the war, Roisin, so they weren't widely available. Apples, grown in English orchards, were available, but bananas and other such imported fruit, were as rare as hens' teeth.

When I was about a year old, every child in Britain was given a banana. the government decided this as a treat for the children. My mother fetched our allocation of two bananas, one for my sister and one for me, and my father ate them both.

#5:  Author: RóisínLocation: Ireland PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:43 pm
    —
That's what I meant though, that an awful lot of fruit we take for granted today (hot weather fruit like bananas, kiwis etc) would have been even rarer than sweets, during the war.

#6:  Author: KatherineLocation: London, UK PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:49 pm
    —
Doesn’t Joyce get ill from eating raw bacon though, rather than sweet stuff?
On the other hand, Betty and Elizabeth have a huge stash of chocolate that they hand over in one of the later Tyrol books (I think they’re stuck on a coach and have to make hot chocolate or something) and it’s commented that they would have been ill if they’d eaten it.
I don’t feel good if I eat too much sweet stuff but I don’t get ill, just crappy feeling.

#7:  Author: LizzieCLocation: Canterbury, UK PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:20 pm
    —
Katherine wrote:
Doesn’t Joyce get ill from eating raw bacon though, rather than sweet stuff?


I think it was more the combination of the Sardines and Cake Shocked I have a feeling (vauge memory) that she stopped eating before the bacon and Thekla was the only one who actually ate that.

#8:  Author: Alison HLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:27 pm
    —
Thekla was the only one who ate the raw bacon (ugh!!).

When Grizel took some apples from the kitchen and Marie blamed Eigen, Joey said that Eigen'd get ill from eating too many apples.

There's also something in the hb of Theodora about Joey worrying that Felix and Felicity and Cecil might get ill if they had anything to eat/drink at Anna's friend's farm (although presumably the stuff was OK for Anna's friend to have!), but I think she was concerned about unpasteurised milk more than anything else.

#9:  Author: KatherineLocation: London, UK PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:14 pm
    —
And Gardener gives Mary-Lou apples in Three Go but she in only allowed to eat a couple that day. How come I can eat a pound of strawberries with no ill effects?

I once ate raw bacon; at least it was pancetta, which is basically just Italian bacon I think. It was in a pub and I was too embarrassed to send it back! I was fine but then I have been sick (due to food) twice in my life.


Last edited by Katherine on Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:16 pm; edited 1 time in total

#10:  Author: MonaLocation: Hertfordshire PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:14 pm
    —
Quote:
Thekla was the only one who ate the raw bacon (ugh!!).

I've often wondered if it was actually bacon, or some type of cured ham. I suspect English girls at the time were probably not familiar with Parma ham and the like and the disgust sprang from that. Thekla, on the other hand would be quite used to some form of cured ham.

#11:  Author: PatLocation: Doncaster PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:16 pm
    —
I used to eat raw bacon when I was a kid. I loved it, and it never did me any harm. This was ordinary rashers, so I accepted that that was what Thekla ate. I also had midnight feasts at boarding school and none of us were ever ill.

#12:  Author: JennieLocation: Cambridgeshire PostPosted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:58 pm
    —
I think that was EBD's own personal dislikes coming through.

But have any of you ever considered how much sweet stuff the young ones consume in 'Swallows and Amazons' and the rest of that series?

#13:  Author: TamzinLocation: Edinburgh PostPosted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 7:40 am
    —
Pat wrote:
I used to eat raw bacon when I was a kid. I loved it, and it never did me any harm. This was ordinary rashers, so I accepted that that was what Thekla ate. I also had midnight feasts at boarding school and none of us were ever ill.


I used to do this too! I thought I was the only weird person who ate raw bacon rashers. Like you they never made me ill though I shudder now to think about the germs that there could have been......

#14:  Author: Mrs RedbootsLocation: London, UK PostPosted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 7:02 pm
    —
Alison H wrote:
Thekla was the only one who ate the raw bacon (ugh!!).


I always assumed that this was some kind of Parma-style ham, which I don't like terribly, but can eat.

Quote:
When Grizel took some apples from the kitchen and Marie blamed Eigen, Joey said that Eigen'd get ill from eating too many apples.


Well, so he would be if he ate five or six in one fell swoop! Just because a little of something is good for you, it doesn't mean that a lot is.

Quote:
There's also something in the hb of Theodora about Joey worrying that Felix and Felicity and Cecil might get ill if they had anything to eat/drink at Anna's friend's farm (although presumably the stuff was OK for Anna's friend to have!), but I think she was concerned about unpasteurised milk more than anything else.


Well, speaking as one who contracted brucellosis from unpasteurised milk, I rather sympathise with Joey. Also, don't forget that until relatively recently (within my lifetime, I think, and certainly since the 2nd world War), drinking raw milk was one of the prime sources of TB. My father once said that in his childhood (1920s and 1930s) people had TB as often as they have cancer these days. He had to have a tuberculous gland removed from his neck when he was a very small boy, and this was quite common.

#15:  Author: Fiona McLocation: Bendigo, Australia PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:49 am
    —
Alison H wrote:
Laughing Just finished Castle in Northumbria by Lorna Hill and they seem to be eating cake on every other page! Oh, to be able to scoff like that without putting on weight ...


I remember being able to do that as a kid and not worry at all but now is a completely different story. Mind you portions were a lot smaller back then Wink

#16:  Author: Kathy_SLocation: midwestern US PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:54 pm
    —
Róisín wrote:
In CS terms, I always thought they looked on fruit in pretty much the same way as sweets anyway. As in, they had to buy it as a luxurious extra. There is some scene where Joey says that once your pocket money is gone you won't be able to buy stamps, chocolate or fruit for the next two weeks. Especially during the war, maybe cheap sweets were more widely available than fresh juicy ripe fruit.

I wonder if this traveler's observation from Eleanor Roosevelt might be relevant to the above. She's describing her honeymoon (1905):
Quote:
Fruit in England was very beautiful, very delicious and very expensive, and was not a food such as we considered it for the most part in our country, but a luxury grown by experts in particular spots especially prepared. They grew only small quantities of fruit, but they grew it to perfection.

I know 1905 sounds early, but keep in mind that Eleanor is only ten years older than Elinor.

#17:  Author: Liseke PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 9:16 pm
    —
In the early Tirol books and late Swiss ones, there's a number of incidents involving buying fruit from roadside stalls while out on a ramble or day trip - certainly an option for pocket money spending.

As for spending money on fruit, could the girls have meant tinned fruit, candied fruit or some kind of preserves? I'm tending towards thinking about Billy Bunter's purloined hampers or Katy and Clover's never-ending Christmas box. Clare Mallory mentions dates quite frequently, too.

It seems to me that the CS girls have very few opportunities to spend their pocket money. I expect that it was reserved for half-term excursions. We do see them buying small souvenirs, just not food. Either EBD considered it unladylike or it had to do with the fact that food was rationed in England for so long after 1945 that mentioning sweets would have been out of context.

Funny - we don't hear tales of a school tuck shop or sweet shop in the CS. Not even a small shop in which to buy chocolate, even in Switzerland. Odd to omit that. (I know, they did visit the Bourneville factory, but that's really it).

#18:  Author: PatLocation: Doncaster PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 9:18 pm
    —
there is mention of tuck boxes in the Swiss books. They had cakes and sweets in I think.

#19:  Author: RobLocation: Currently in a rainstorm PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 9:53 pm
    —
They certainly had both tuck and sweets in Changes as this is where the Dawburns and co get the food (but no sweets as that would be dishonourable Laughing ) for their midnight. Conversely they obviously didn't have tuck in Lintons as Thekla and Joyce et al have to buy food from Innsbruck.

I seem to recall (in Gay?) that whilst the school was in Armishire the school visited Parry's? (the shop that Grandma and family took over) to buy their sweets. I also have a vague memory that the school might have grown fruit whilst they were in England/Wales ... certainly summer fruits if not Apples etc.

I can't think of (m)any opportunities for the girls to spend their pocket money on the Platz - were there any shops up there at all?

#20:  Author: KBLocation: Melbourne, Australia PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 10:11 pm
    —
Rob wrote:
I can't think of (m)any opportunities for the girls to spend their pocket money on the Platz - were there any shops up there at all?


I can't think of any. At the school (any of the branches), I imagine the most common way for money to be spent would be fines for using the wrong language, rescuing items from Lost Property and late library fines.

#21:  Author: RóisínLocation: Ireland PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 11:11 pm
    —
And on wooden trinkets in half term hols! But they were only once in a while.

#22:  Author: Alison HLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 8:02 am
    —
I think it says somewhere that if you had your pocket money confiscated for the term then you were still allowed a bit for stamps and church collections.

In (I think) Island there are references to each form going on a shopping trip every so often - Bride says something about needing to buy some birthday presents - but in Switzerland they don't even seem to get that chance of buying anything.

#23: sweet tooth Author: kesLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:35 pm
    —
Katherine wrote:
And Gardener gives Mary-Lou apples in Three Go but she in only allowed to eat a couple that day. How come I can eat a pound of strawberries with no ill effects?

I once ate raw bacon; at least it was pancetta, which is basically just Italian bacon I think. It was in a pub and I was too embarrassed to send it back! I was fine but then I have been sick (due to food) twice in my life.


I read this as Ava Gardener gives Mary Lou apples, maybe it's time for bed!



The CBB -> News & Views


output generated using printer-friendly topic mod. All times are GMT

Page 1 of 1

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group