In Praise of Dripping

 

Further to last night's post about tastes past, I'd like to chuck out there another memory, Proustian in its epicurean poignancy. One of the great ironies of the past few years has been the elevation of essentially working-class grub into the orbit of the chattering classes. Quite how the qualities of some of the greatest staples - delicacies, indeed - of this archipelago had hitherto escaped their notice is less a matter of speculation than proven historical prejudice; but there you go.

Many years ago, I was on a climbing trip to Derbyshire with some friends, one of whom was a Derbyshire lad, Bryan, whom I worked for at the time, and who was my climbing partner. A number of us stayed at Bryan's parents' house one night, including a particularly middle-class bloke, and me. Now, Bryan's parents lived in an almost carbon-copy of the terraced house that I grew up in, in Birmingham: two-up, two-down; eleven feet wide, the rooms a similar length. Not much bigger than a large doll's house, to be fair.

All but the one of us grew up in tiny houses, and the culture shock to the fourth of our number was palpably written on his face when we all squeezed into Bryan's parent's tiny living room at tea-time [for the uninitiated, working-class mealtimes, in those days at least, consisted of breakfast at some ungodly hour, dinner at twelve-ish, and tea at five or six: the main meal of the day]. Whilst still reeling from the realization that a huge number of people actually lived in houses probably smaller than his garden shed, the middle-class member of our party was greeted by Bryan's mom shouting from the kitchen, "Who wants dripping toast?"

The rest of us, naturally, shouted in the affirmative, whilst he actually posed the question: "What's dripping?", in all seriousness. After some brief explanation on our part, he agreed to try what to him seemed a somewhat outré foodstuff, and Bryan's ma brought out plates of said comestibles. I hadn't eaten dripping toast since I was a kid, and it was just one of those, well, Proustian returns to a sunny time past. Even the fish out of water had to agree it was mighty fine. My grandmother used to serve me up beef dripping toast when I was little, and I hold dear the memories of those long gone times. These days, thrice-cooked chips finished in beef dripping are quite the gastro thing: in my youth, that's what chip-shops served every night.