For obvious reasons, the exact location of “the future” has always been vague — mainly because, when one gets there, it has the disconcerting habit of suddenly becoming the present. However, one primary identifying marker of “the future” is the advent of the “three-course meal — in a pill!”. It’s what we were promised, as children, on
Tomorrow’s World. Jet packs for all, silver tunic minidresses and white plastic furniture, and meals in a pill. That’s what 1997 was going to be like.
But look! All of a sudden, it is 1997! It is the future! For although we might not yet have the technology for jet packs, or the legs for silver tunic minidresses, we do have a whole meal in a pill. Or, rather, a whole meal in a crisp. Have you looked at the crisps and snacks section in your local supermarket? It’s nuts — both figuratively and, in the case of the shelf where the salted pistachios are, literally. Where once a body had a simple choice between Ready Salted, Cheese’n’Onion and ChipStix — the flavours of kings — one now has to wade through what reads like the menu to the kind of local bistro Gordon Ramsay gets very angry about: “Oven Roasted Chicken with Lemon and Thyme”; “Game Chips with Duck, Orange and Ginger”; “Smoked Salmon with Horseradish and Capers”; “Gently Infused Lime and Thai Spices.” I keep expecting to see a “Finger Bowl” crisp, followed by a “Wine Menu and Discretionary Tip” crisp.
I’m going to square with you. On the micro level, I don’t think any foodstuff should have the word “gently” in it. “Gently” is a bit like “lovingly”. Or “aroused”. It’s not something I feel comfortable seeing bandied around near a snack. It sounds as if disturbing people have been stroking the crisp. While I like the idea of people taking care over what I eat, I don’t want to feel as though my eating it has just brought to an end an intimate relationship between a man and a potato. It’s not healthy to have thought so much about a crisp that you conclude your behaviour towards it has been, overall, “gentle”.
On a macro level, meanwhile, the whole idea of a crisp that tastes like an entire meal is, clearly, wrong. Are we so unimpressed by a simple, honest-to-goodness crisp that we have to hide it, ashamed, under “Asparagus and Fresh Black Pepper”? To me, a ready-salted crisp done up as “Ludlow Sausage with Wholegrain Mustard” is like seeing fresh-faced Jane Birkin in a corset and heels, wearing a false hairpiece. And smoking a crack pipe. It is defilement. More than that — it is a waste.
The taste of a potato — a good, British potato — fried, and then salted, is one of the most magnificent in the world. Every birthday my special breakfast is a classy, but nonetheless ready-salted, crisp sandwich. Then my special lunch is a ready-salted crisp sandwich, and my tea is a ready-salted crisp sandwich. Then I go down the pub and have some ready-salted crisps. There’s nothing quite like a potato treated with dignity, and respect for the old ways. You know where you are with a ready-salted crisp. Or, if you feel particularly racy, and the living embodiment of the lyrics to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now — “I’m a shooting star leaping through the sky . . . I’m a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva” — maybe salt and pepper.
On the other hand, both mind and body are discombobulated by every aspect of the ludicrous “Lamb With Moroccan Spices” crisp. What is it? What has just happened to you? You’ve apparently just sat down and eaten a steaming bowl of tagine — but yet it felt, so very much, like crisps.
It’s a trick! It’s like those hypnotists who pull rubes up on to the stage, give them a raw onion and tell them they’re eating a roast dinner, while the audience laughs at them. Anyone eating a Sausage & Ketchup crisp has basically been hypnotised by a bag of crisps — a fact that, evolutionarily, puts them slightly below chickens. And who is laughing at them? The crisps, that’s who. The crisps are laughing at all of us.
Do you know what the crisps are going to do next? They’re going to march on the whole spectrum of meals. While they’ve previously confined themselves to the dinner menu — steak, sausages, chicken balti — they will, pretty soon, move on to pudding. Cadbury Snaps — essentially a chocolate-covered Pringle — is the first shot across our bows, which will doubtless be followed by the Sherry Trifle Crisp, and Crisps à la Jelly. And then, in the very distant future — maybe 2001 — breakfast crisps. Coco-Pop Crisps, Bacon, Sausage & Eggs Crisps, Crisps of Tea and Toast. And then, at the end of days, Silk Cut Crisps, Gin’n’Tonic Crisps and Chewing Gum Crisps, for those who want to “freshen up”.
Personally, I think the time might well have come for us to look upon the issue of crisps’ mission-creep with a stern eye. I think, if we aren’t to face a future in which we are in perpetual bewilderment as to what a fried, salted potato actually tastes like, we need to draw a big line in the sand between the meal and the snack. We must demand: crisps that taste like potatoes; chicken baltis that don’t come in a 25g bag in a newsagent’s; a grasp on reality.
Paps don’t click fat chicks with perms
I was thinking of joining the thronging mob outside the house of Kate Middleton, our Queen of Hearts in Waiting. I might as well take a few shots of her while I’m down there — £1,000 a pop! I’d be silly not to — but it wouldn’t be the main purpose of my trip. No, I would be in the neighbourhood primarily to give her advice on how to avoid ending up in a fatal car crash in Paris at the age of 36, as everyone suddenly seems to have decided that she will — totally, when you think about it, irrationally.
1 Kate! Put on 3st and get a bad perm! After the initial headlines reeling at your “makeunder”, the press will lose interest in a fat ugly chick.
2 Similarly, eschew the inducements of designers or stylists, and wear a succession of frumpy outfits with resolutely dull shoes. Good to see you’ve actually been doing some work on this tactic under your own steam. More of the chintzy wraparound skirts from Jigsaw! Double your stock of uninspiring shoes from L. K. Bennett! Keep up the parade of almost insultingly off-trend cardigans from Kew, the shop for 58-year-old women from Hampshire!
3 Given past precedents, it might be wise to kill or otherwise dispose of Camilla Parker Bowles’s daughter — or, indeed, any granddaughters. Or, to be safe, great-great-granddaughters.
4 (And this is the big one.) Just don’t go to Paris.
Two-faced cow
A cow with two faces has been born in Rural Retreat, Virginia. You can see a picture of it on the following website: http://tinyurl.com/vyt3k. The potential for jokes is endless, really.
