I remember... the food we ate

By John Phillpott

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23 January 2008 11:30

This wasn't so much a smell, more like an invisible mist that hung in the air. It was a case of mutton meets spotted dick, encounters grey cabbage on the way, and then combines with jam roly-poly… yes, school dinners certainly left an indelible stain on my memory.

Or perhaps we should say tastebuds. Well, no we couldn't, actually - for the defining characteristics of school grub in the 1950s was that it was tasteless.

I'm prepared to believe that when the food was first cooked, a starving person would have found it quite acceptable. But I attended a village school, which meant that the daily rations had to be transported at least four miles in steel containers. These may have kept the contents hot, but that was about all. For when this overcooked sludge was eventually extracated, the meat had the texture of cardboard and anything called ‘greens’ was certainly someone's idea of a joke.  

Aha, you might say - nobody was forcing you to eat it. But that's where you'd be wrong - for the consumption of this once-steaming sludge was compulsory. Headmistress Mrs James made sure of that…

This formidable lady wore large frocks and when the wind blew she resembled a Spanish galleon about to engage the enemy - and that was us, of course. I was very, very afraid of Mrs James. However, she was at her sternest when it came to school dinners. You had to eat every scrap - not even the smallest left-over puddle of gravy was allowed.

One day, I was told to take my plate of unfinished food to afternoon lessons. It had been made quite clear to me that I would not be leaving school that day until all the rapidly congealing fragments of semolina pudding had been consumed.
“Think of all those starving children in Abyssynia, John Phillpott!” boomed Mrs James.

The meal I most dreaded was salad. I knew, even then, that green vegetables were good for you, but I always objected to the inclusion of live protein that could often be found lurking under a lettuce leaf.

In those days, the midday meal was called ‘dinner’ and in the evening it was 'tea’. This was always a far more appetising prospect, mainly because it was not only recognisable as being edible, but also freshly made.