Rashers and rain
I was sitting here this morning when the memory of a taste flittered across my tongue.
It was a sudden taste of well fried rashers.
I quite often get these ghost sensations. It could be a smell, a taste or a sound. They come and go in the bat of a belfry and always bring memories of some past event.
The fried rashers taste brought back great memories of holidays in Connemara. The fact that rain is pelting against the windows might have helped the memory too, as it always seems to be lashing rain in Connemara.
I’m not a breakfast person. Breakfast for me is a mug of tea. Or coffee. Or whatever. A lot depends on what I was at the night before. Heh! Even the thought of a cooked breakfast generally turns the stomach and I steer well clear of them.
On holidays however, I tuck into a breakfast with relish [or tomato ketchup?] and it is an essential start to the day. Just about every day I would tuck into a large fryup of rashers, sausages, black pudding and a fistful of mushrooms. Fucking weird, or what?
Having had the fleeting memory, I then started on the solid memories of holidays in the past. Naturally holidays fall into two categories – those in France and those in the West of Ireland. The former are memories of supping coffee or bierre in the blazing heat of Summer, while the latter conjure up images of wet. Wet clothes. Wet views. Lots of wet. And cold.
It is very unlikely we will be going on any holidays this year. Normally by this time, everything is well planned and ready to go, but this year, with Sandy’s wee problem we just don’t have the heart.
There is no real need for a holiday anyway.
All I have to do is close my eyes, feel the damp chill in the air and listen to the rain battering off the windows.
It’s so easy to imagine that I’m on holidays in Connemara.
Rain on the caravan roof, Calor gas, gas mantles for the lights, carrying the slops to the pit after dark, camp shop for the morning paper, steam trains thundering by overnight, sitting in the car looking at the sea whist waiting for the rain to stop. It didn’t. Thought those years would last for ever. They didn’t.
Thanks for that GD. Happy sad.
Days of innocence in a Golden World?
I remember those gas mantles. They were grand when you bought them as they were waxed. Once they were used, they would turn to powder at the slightest touch, and my Dad would get all grumpy and drive off looking for replacements! I can see, hear and smell those mantles now. Kids these days wouldn’t have a clue what we are talking about!
Years ago on a marketing course, the trainer produced a raw sausage from his suit pocket and passed it around. This symbolic flaccid dick went into every hand and back to yer man. Then he challenged us to market a specimen like this and make it attractive.
The legend of course, is the actual marketing man who, “Sold the sizzle, not the sausage”. The Irish holiday is all sausage and no sizzle while it’s French counterpart is more sizzle than sausage. Personally, I wouldn’t risk either, particularly at this time of the year !
John – I’m surprised you remember anything from a marketing course. I used to quietly sleep through them. As for passing a sausage around…. did he have a dirty mackintosh on by any chance?
Odd.