Christmas Reminiscences with Fouls

Last night I had a meal that inspired me. I have not had a worse plate of food all year. It was that style of Christmas meal that you have once or twice a December with a group of people with whom you are related through some institution.

Familiarity with this practice is engrained early in life. I remember a few such meals at primary school: there was one year where we were required to put in orders months in advance. There was a seating plan and table service – a glorious occasion, undiluted Christmassyness. Another year we were back to cafeteria service and by the time I got there none of the Christmas food was left so I was given Chicken In The Jungle with Smiley Faces. Chicken In The Jungle is food that belongs to a benighted future where the people no longer know what chickens or jungles are. There were posters next to the illuminated bain-marie stations of cartoon chickens galloping around a lush cartoon rainforest.

It was an exciting time to be nourished as a child: we were the first generation to be fed entirely on this kind of space food. Jamie Oliver put a stop to the practice a few years ago and children now grow strong on something called NutritionalSoup!: a consommé made from the garlic and rosemary tears that Oliver cried when he first encountered Turkey Twizzlers (themselves a genetic descendant of Chicken In The Jungle). The next generation to eat the way we did will be born on a Space Ark on a ten thousand year journey to find a new Earth. All the food will made from a substance called Recalibrated_Nuriton_5 which is formed by harvesting intergalactic dust and pressing it into patties.

The Christmas Feed tradition continued at high school. For a few years the caterers developed the unfortunate habit of serving us heated balls of wafer thin sandwich turkey. This was not a gratifying eat. The balls were accompanied by something called Tasty Gravy: a yellow liquid substance that perhaps leaks out of sandwich turkey when it is heated. There was an option to have either a Taz or a Freddo to compliment your meal. It was customary to feel glum once you had finished.

Which brings me to last night’s experience. The event was held in a pub near where I live. As I entered I spied a large group of people sitting in a conservatory. The atmosphere was effervescent and I approached eagerly. It did seem that they were involved in some kind of Christmas meal but it became quickly apparent that I recognised no one and this was not my party. Ten minutes later I found a side door outside that led to a dungeon. This dank place was crammed with people and saturated with noise. Bill Nighy's version of Wet Wet Wet's Love is All Around was playing at full volume and on loop; a boy sat knocking two bottles of wine together and yelling; many of the rest of the room’s inhabitants comprised a surging mass of pilgrims piling on to the bar. I hunkered down on a chair and through the stampeding hordes I perceived some oppressed faces that I recognised: this was my party.

Plates of food began to turn up sporadically. At one point I had before me a plate with a mushroom doused in cheese and a cold can of chopped tomatoes on it – this soon disappeared again. Not long after, I got my hands on another plate of food; it was the main event: the turkey meal. The plate's architect had sought to evoke Orkney: various items sat like islands in a brown sea of gravy. He also made a comment about the dangers of rising sea levels: surplus gravy cascaded off the plate and formed puddles on the table; puddles for someone to put their elbows in later on. The largest of the islands was an anemic, floppy wedge. It was a proud statement of the sovereignty of human will: the pallid slice possessed no properties to recommend it as turkey to a discerning mind, and yet it was turkey! It was turkey because we said it was turkey. Human beings are the originators of meaning in the universe! What we say goes.

By dividing the other things on the plate into smaller pieces using a knife and fork and then putting them in my mouth where I ground them down further using my teeth I was able to make a paste that I could swallow. Once this stuff had reached my stomach it did not cause me to be instantly sick: it seemed that it was food. There were a few exceptions. An appealing looking object that appeared to be a chipolata wrapped in bacon tasted of plasticine. So did the cauliflower.

Overall the experience was what it must be like for a ghost to eat. When eating the carrots, for example, I was dimly aware of apprehending something like the taste of carrots but this felt more like a memory than a living experience. It was a tantalising wisp of something once vital now forgotten.

What explains the popularity of this Christmas tradition? Red-faced people in paper crowns, a rambunctious mood, giggly colleagues: all these I like; all these could exist without crap turkey. Have a curry, have a hearty stew, have drinks and a buffet. Save the roasted bird for the big day. Not that there is anything particularly despicable about bad food per se. Disgusting cheesey things, low grade meat things and nonsense pies have their sickly gluttonous place. But these weak, tasteless roast approximations elicit consternation from high falutin’ gastrognomes and gobbling half-donner-pizza-and-chips fanciers alike. This is awful. It must stop.