This blog entry is centred around a short text by the novelist E.M.Forster which is a fine piece of writing in itself, typical of Forster's lucid phrasing and acute observation.

Horrible food

Blogger Helvi Oosterman uses a brilliant quotation from the English novelist E.M.Forster to open up the subject of really nasty experiences of food.

Forster was returning to England from somewhere exotic, maybe India, on the boat train, sitting in

the dining car, he’s waiting for the breakfast to be served. He wrote about this episode later in Food

and Wine magazine; it was 1939.

“At last the engine gave a jerk, the knives and forks slid sideways and sang against one another

sadly, the cups said ‘cheap, cheap’ to the saucers, as well they might, the door swang open            5

and the attendants came out crying  ‘Porridge or Prunes, Sir? Porridge or Prunes, Sir?’

Breakfast had begun.

That cry still rings in my memory. It is an epitome—not, indeed, of English food, but of

the forces which drag it in the dirt. It voices the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness.

Porridge fills the Englishman up, prunes clear him out, so their functions are opposed. But           10

their spirit is the same: they eschew pleasure and consider delicacy immoral. That morning

they looked as like one another as they could. Everything was grey. The porridge was in

pallid grey lumps, the prunes swam in grey juice like the wrinkled skulls of old men, grey

mist pressed against the grey windows. ‘Tea or Coffee, Sir?’ rang out next, and then I had a

haddock. It was covered with a sort of hard yellow oilskin, as if it had been out in a lifeboat,         15

and its insides gushed salt water when pricked. Sausages and bacon followed this disgusting

fish. They, too had been out all night. Toast like steel, marmalade a scented jelly. And the bill,

which I paid dumbly, wondering again why such things have to be.”

Some breakfast that was. We all have been faced with inedible food at times, and Foster’s brekkie

has made me think of what has been my most horrid food experience.                                                         20

     If I had been forced to swallow the doughy dumplings mum sometimes added to her otherwise

excellent pea soup, I would now have to say that it was that soup. Luckily my darling sister loved

the dumplings and allowed me to slip them on her plate when no one was looking.

     Having to eat raw oysters for the first time and at a rather formal lunch was scary and somewhat

tricky, but a good white makes many unwanted things slide down easily. Then there was that                    25

dreadful cook in my primary school, and her even more dreadful food… I think that was IT, and

only some warm school milk to assist you to get it down.

     What about you, was it tripe, brains,or a crocodile steak?

https://oosterman.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/no-grey-food-for-e-m-foster/

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Reading

> When you have finished reading the text carefully, reflect about how the writing expresses the idea of how 'horrible' food can be.

> In particular, identify as many similes and metaphors as you can, particularly in the Forster extract.

> When you have identified these - how do they work? Make notes about what each simile or metaphor means, in depth.

> Be prepared to explain  your ideas in class discussion.

Quiz - detailed reading

> Carry out the following exercise, which is about understanding how pronouns refer back in the text.

Writing

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