We watch quite a lot of imported history docos, most of which come from the UK.
Recently I've noticed an increasing emphasis on being 'British' (whatever that is), and have put that down to a reaction to the psychodrama that is Brexit.
I've also noticed an increasing number of articles in UK online newspapers about what to do with all these cans people are hoarding - something that interests me given that I spent a large part of my life as a trainee adult living on vegetables, grains, beans both canned and dried, and the inevitable canned tomatoes. (Margaret Thatcher's economic downturn and being a penniless graduate student had a lot to do with it - that and having a girlfriend at the time studying the ethnobotany of the late neolithic and early bronze age diet)
But anyway, back to the docos. Last night we watched Britain's most historic towns, and last night's episode was about Dover in the second world war, and inevitably there was a section on wartime austerity and rationing.
As always in these sequences, one item was tasted and pronounced 'quite good' and something else that looked like a cross between a fatberg and an elephant turd studiously avoided.
But this did get me thinking - during the Greek economic crisis people returned to a postwar austerity diet to save money - will the Brits do so in the event of shortages and chaos during Brexit?
And equally, given our dependence on having food trucked all over the country (raspberries in mid-winter? really?) is there something we too can learn from British wartime austerity to eat more sensibly and frugally ?
Recently I've noticed an increasing emphasis on being 'British' (whatever that is), and have put that down to a reaction to the psychodrama that is Brexit.
I've also noticed an increasing number of articles in UK online newspapers about what to do with all these cans people are hoarding - something that interests me given that I spent a large part of my life as a trainee adult living on vegetables, grains, beans both canned and dried, and the inevitable canned tomatoes. (Margaret Thatcher's economic downturn and being a penniless graduate student had a lot to do with it - that and having a girlfriend at the time studying the ethnobotany of the late neolithic and early bronze age diet)
But anyway, back to the docos. Last night we watched Britain's most historic towns, and last night's episode was about Dover in the second world war, and inevitably there was a section on wartime austerity and rationing.
As always in these sequences, one item was tasted and pronounced 'quite good' and something else that looked like a cross between a fatberg and an elephant turd studiously avoided.
But this did get me thinking - during the Greek economic crisis people returned to a postwar austerity diet to save money - will the Brits do so in the event of shortages and chaos during Brexit?
And equally, given our dependence on having food trucked all over the country (raspberries in mid-winter? really?) is there something we too can learn from British wartime austerity to eat more sensibly and frugally ?
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