Three Colours Red: Part 1, Red Kola

It's funny how the taste of something can act as a kinda time-machine and wheek ye right back to a time and place long in the past.

I was oot the back cutting the grass the other day and had a sudden urge for a boatil o Red Kola. I nipped over tae the wee shop on the green and got maself a boatil. Back at the hoose I opened the top and took a swig. And there I was back in the past.

The taste o the Red Kola took me right back to my Gran & Grandad's hoose in Craigentiny back in the 70's. Right back to a Saturday night there, when a young bobrob and I sat in front of an old black and white TV as the regular monotone voice of the boy on Grandstand announced the fitba results. Ye couldnae talk durin the results as ma auld Grandad sat there wi his coupon on his knee and checked off the results. Any conversation during this ritual was met with a "Shut yer erse, son" from Grandad and a wee hit oan the back o the heid.

Me bobrob and ma cousins sat on the carpet balancin' plates o homemade chips on oor knees, and glasses ful of Red Kola, waiting for the familiar sound of Dr Who to emerge from the tinny TV speakers. Then it was complete silence broken only by the sound o chips being munched and Red Kola being sooked doon, as we went on another adventure wi Dr Who!

Red Kola is braw! My old Gran always made sure there were boatils o Barrs fizzy juice in her hoose. I hadnae tasted Red Kola in years, but that boatil the other day was great! Times have changed tho. The deposit on the glass boatil is now 30p! Imagine! Back in the day when we drank the stuff at the High Wall you only got aboot 2p oan an empty. But you had to be careful wi boatils you found at the High Wall, cause Curly might have beaten you to it! God knows how he managed to get diarrhea into a boatil or a can but he did! And even the corner shop wouldnae take one back in yon kinda state!

Cheers

Arkos

Foods of the High Wall #2 The Donkey's Welt Tube

Not technically a "food" this one, mair o' an unwanted by-product. These things were forever turnin' up on yer plate back in the 70's.

Nowadays meat is quite sterile and quality control by the faceless supermarkets has meant that every bit o' meat ye buy fae them is roughly the same size, shape and weight. Folk are ower squeamish these days. Foot and mouth outbreaks, mad coo disease and the media frenzy that feeds off them have meant that if someone finds anything on their plate that is different, then they are right roond tae the supermarket kickin up a right stink.

Back in the day you used tae find aortas, bits o ventricle, ligaments, grizzle, string and awthing in yer dinner. "Just eat it" was the instructions from oor parents, "It'll no do ye any harm" or "it's just part o' the meat".

At school the auld dinner hall joke was that the big tube in yer stew was a urethra of equine origin, or a "donkeys welt tube" as we called it. If you bit into the donkeys welt tube and spat it oot you got the pish ripped oot o' you all day by yer mates. It was one of those daft slaggings like the haircut slagging but ye just had to take it. You knew that someone else would get one later in the week and you would be off the hook and would be right in there wi' aw the guid one liners.

Arkos was telling me the other day that he can trace the origins of his vegetarianism back to findin' a beauty o' a welt tube in a Frey Bentos pie. Big Jessie that he is, if ye ask me.

Foods of the High Wall #1 Heinz Kidney Soup

My Maw was for ever feedin' us this pish. I had in fact blotted it out from my subconscious until a recent conversation wi thon bugger Arkos brought it aw back.

I then got to thinking that maybe it didnae exist after all. A mythical thing "like Unicorns or Eskimos" as Homer would say.

In fact it was hard to find any reference to the stuff even when ye Googled it. So I concluded that either A) it didnae exist, or B) an entire generation had chosen to wipe it from the collective psyche en masse. Bad food denial on a global scale.

But then I found this, proof indeed. Lurking just under the Heinz beans & baconburgers and there it is. Heinz Kidney Soup. This was on Flickr and was taken at a place called the Museum of Brands in Notting Hill. Good to see an auld tin o' West End Grill in there too.

Now what I recall aboot Kidney soup was that it was gritty in texture and tasted shite. Not only that ye but were never allowed tae leave the table until ye finished it, no matter how much ye gret.

This is the reason we care not to remember it in the same way that we might wax fondly aboot Bazooka Joes, Lucky tatties and Quiz bars.

This process is called "dissociative amnesia" and is commonly seen in trauma survivors. It is basically memory distortion to do with repetitive traumatic experiences. It is why major "one-off "traumatic events like a sair accident can often be recalled easily, whereas painful repetative experiences like sittin' at the tea table forcin' than pish doon as it went cauld, cannae. Yer dissociative defenses kick in big time and you blot it oot yer mind.

And that my friends is the psychology behind why we still fuckin' hate the very thought of Heinz Kidney Soup.