I'm Not Eating Any of That Foreign Muck: Travels with Me Dad

288 Pages·2006·1.29 MB·English

by  Brian Thacker

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I’m not eating any
of that foreign muck
(travels with me dad)
Brian Thacker
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First published in 2005
Copyright © Brian Thacker 2005
All rights reserved.No part ofthis book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic or
mechanical,including photocopying,recording or by any
information storage and retrieval system,without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.The Australian
Copyright Act 1968(the Act) allows a maximum ofone chapter
or 10 per cent ofthis book,whichever is the greater,to be
photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or body
that administers it) has given remuneration to Copyright
Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
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National Library ofAustralia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Thacker,Brian,1962- .
I’m not eating any ofthat foreign muck :travels with me
dad.
ISBN 1 74114 531 7.
1.Thacker,Brian - Journeys. I.Title.
920.71
Typeset in Australia by Bookhouse,Sydney
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group,Victoria
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Contents
Contents
Introduction vi
England
1 Glutinous rice cakes with Sayur Lodeh and
chilli sauce for breakfast anyone? 3
2 Chicken tikka masala (food that looks like diarrhoea) 25
3 Butt & Oyster’s fish and chips 37
4 If it’s Tuesday,it must be bangers & mash 44
5 Steak with just a hint of mad cow’s disease 50
6 Death by chocolate 59
7 Death by fried lard 67
8 Animal-all-sorts pie 76
9 Cockles,whelks,mussels and jellied eels 82
10 Mushy pea fritters and a nuclear accident 94
Gibraltar
11 Judias en salsa de tomate(baked beans on toast) 113
Spain
12 Deep-fried tripe in hot paprika sauce 125
13 Goat’s balls and real lettuce 133
14 Fish,chips and stewed bull’s penis 141
15 McGazpacho and McTapas 152
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IV CONTENTS
Malta
16 Maltese cave pizza 165
17 Freshly cooked cute fluffy rabbit 176
18 Lemon f___king chicken 184
19 KFB (Kentucky Fried Bunny) 193
Sri Lanka
20 Fish head curry and brain masala 207
21 Dead spiders covered in pubic hair 220
22 You can stick your devilled chicken right up
your Kyber Pass 229
23 Hoppers and rotty botty 245
Singapore
24 Volcano burgers and exploding arses 261
Port Melbourne
25 Calamari with weed salad 277
Acknowledgements 280
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To Harry and Judith
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Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
My Dad has two fingers missing on his right hand.He nibbled them
off one day while he was chewing his nails.Or at least,that’s what
I believed until I was seven.
When I eventually figured out that nibbling on your fingernails
didn’t result in the loss of any digits, Dad told me what really
happened.Apparently he got his fingers jammed in a machine gun
during the Second World War.
The only problem with that tale was that Dad had never fought
in any war.But just after the war he was a cook on a submarine in
the British Royal Navy. That was how he really came to lose his
fingers—cutting up some carrots and missing.
After a few years,in which I only ever sliced up vegetables with
the utmost care,I finally found out the truth.Or so I thought.
For about twenty years I was under the impression that Dad
lost his fingers in a machine on a motorcycle assembly line at the
BSA factory in Birmingham,England.It wasn’t until recently that
I discovered the real story behind Dad’s mysteriously missing digits.
Mum and Dad were over for dinner one night and—as I was
cutting up some carrots—I said,‘So Dad,how old were you when
you lost your fingers at the BSA factory?’
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INTRODUCTION VII
‘I didn’t lose them at BSA,’he said.‘I lost them in a moulding
machine at a plastics factory.’
What I really discovered that evening—or what finally dawned
on me after all the false impressions I’d been under—was that I
actually didn’t know much about my Dad’s life at all.
Dad and I talk a lot. It’s just that we talk a lot about football
and not much about anything else.Most of our conversations are
about Manchester United.We can talk for hours about whether Ryan
Giggs should play as a midfielder or a striker.I’ve tried on a number
of occasions to get Dad to talk about his life but there have always
been more pressing matters to deal with...such as whether
Manchester United would beat Wolverhampton Wanderers in the
Carling Cup.
I did know some things about Dad’s life.I knew he was born
in Britain in Royal Leamington Spa,Warwickshire,in 1931 and that
he was one ofeight children including four brothers named Jimmy,
Johnny,Freddy and Gerry.Dad’s name is Harry.I also knew that
Dad had spent time in a children’s home when he was young and
served in the Royal Navy as a cook.He met Mum at a dance hall
in Birmingham and emigrated to Australia with four kids in tow
in 1967.I knew that Dad had an irrepressible love of feeble puns,
tasteless jokes and tall stories and a penchant for wearing socks with
sandals.In fact,when it came to reliable biographical information,
I knew more about Ryan Giggs’s life than my own father’s.
I decided then that as well as wanting to know more about my
Dad,I also wanted to really get to knowmy Dad.I decided I would
take him on a physical and emotional journey back through his early
life. When I explained my idea to him he wasn’t exactly wildly
enthusiastic:‘I suppose I couldcome...but I’m not eating any of
that foreign muck!’
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VIII INTRODUCTION
I took Dad to the pub for lunch to get an abridged version of
his life so I could plan our itinerary and I learnt more in that
afternoon than I had in the preceding forty years.I learnt that his
Mum died when he was seven and,because his Dad was stationed
in India with the army,he was sent to a children’s home.I learnt
that he joined the navy at fifteen and was stationed in different
barracks at far-flung places all over Britain. And, although I had
already known he had been stationed in Malta, I didn’t know he
had also spent long periods in Gibraltar,Sri Lanka and Singapore.
The little jaunt back home to Mother England I was planning had
suddenly turned into an around-the-world adventure.
At least (and at last) I would find out who my Dad really is,and
in the process discover a little bit more about who I am.Our two-
month odyssey would take us to his birthplace;the children’s home
in Warwick;the naval barracks in Wiltshire,Yorkshire,Kent,Suffolk,
Gibraltar, Malta, Sri Lanka and Singapore; Mum and Dad’s
honeymoon hotel in Blackpool; my birthplace in the suburbs of
Birmingham;and to the Butlins Holiday Camp in Minehead where
we spent our summer holidays when I was a kid.Of course,if we
happened to go past Old Trafford along the way, it would be a
criminal waste not to pop in...
I hoped that in our two months travelling together I’d finally
be able to get Dad to open up and tell me who he is and how he
got that way—and,more importantly,that we would finally be able
to resolve whether Ryan Giggs should play in the middle or up front.
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[[LC 1 M=23p1.795 A=6]]
England
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