Memory should be so easy we’re told. In films it comes apparently so completely: in flashback scenes, iridescent with infinite detail. In books, whole pages of dialogue turned out, rendered whole, intact. In real life, not so much. An occasional detail. And even that segment, how much of it can you trust? Even of yourself?
There’s a few memories here. Judge for yourself which are real (if any) and which (if any) are not. I don’t make any guarantees. I offer no proof of truth. I believe in them, you see. Their veracity is mine to vouchsafe. Yours to decide.
Granddad Pop did not live to see his “hungriest grandson” turn his appetite into this blog. Neither he nor I would have even had that word in our vocabulary back then. Both he and Dot loved eating, cooking and sharing food. Trips to stay with them were a highlight; especially as they had money and we never had. Food was a way of showing love then for them. And now for my family.
Our friend, Mrs Kempton is in her 90s now; a life-long resident of the East End. Born and bred and married and lived and birthed and raised a family; all of that, only in Hackney. Barbara said “you don’t marry outside your borough.” We need to record her. A huge stockpile of memories that will be lost soon.
She talks about the conger eel. Choose the head end. Not the tail end. The tail end is all bony.
She speaks of the milky molt crab with colour on the bottom. And when shopping at the fish-monger, pop off the bottom shell to check
She ate Yiddish food as much as anything as all her friends were Jewish.
I remember the top floors, the detached mansions, the gated estates, where there were no ‘hard times’, where the better times pooled and set like jelly, the vaunted trickle-down somehow never coming to pass. But where are these top floors? Can any one of you remind me?