Large lament for ladies of the land
By
Sheryl-Lee Kerr
THERE was a time when fat was a good thing. In those days, toast
came liberally with dripping and salt; a “fried slice”, as Rumpole
would say, was a crunchy essential accompaniment to breakfast's fry-up of
eggs, sausage, tomato and bubble and squeak. If you remember that
time like yesterday because it was yesterday, then I suspect you probably
know who Clarissa and Jennifer are.
Indeed, you could well have their life-sized cutouts mounted lovingly on the kitchen table for daily homage. If so, then my thoughts are with you in your time of loss.
Last week, seventysomething fellow columnist Max Fatchen ambled by my desk to inform me, heavy of heart and clutching his tweed hat tightly to heaving chest, that the current Two Fat Ladies series had, gasp, finished.
Max, I don't think he'd deny, like my good self, has never had an
aversion to the fat of the land. (Indeed, he managed to successfully
woo me this Valentine's Day with the immortal words “Though my
waist be 49, will you be my Valentine?”'. Well, who could say no to that?)
But it was true love when he slapped eyes on the two ladies who give
nutritionists chest pains on sight with their relish of all things
fatty. Indeed, there was a joyfulness in the way these comfortably
robust, motorcycling matriarchs cheerily kept on dolloping into
recipes more and more full-fat milk, pure butter and double cream.
It was cholesterol-driven, stroke-riven, indulgent insanity - in other words, fun. Indeed, many came to revere the bingo's dinkum 88 gals.
But, alas, all wicked things must one day end...
I wondered how the Fat Ladies mourners would fill this void now?
Would there be hordes gathering on lonely hillocks around South
Australia in gumboots, frocks and leather musing to the bored sheep
about how “jolly good” the weather's been and how “splendidly”
calorifically decadent supper would be?
Would they suddenly break into a cheery ditty of archaic origins in
cut-glass British accents as they regally unfurled their bacon
strips and then wombled off in search of fatted calves?
Well, I did find out later that Max is coping better. He tells me
mournfully he's trying out a new cure - consolation through caramel.
Good lad.
And may you all keep that chin up through thick and, er, thin.
SLK NOTE: Since this column appeared, Jennifer Patterson passed away. She will be sadly and gastronomically missed.
© The Advertiser & Sheryl-Lee Kerr, 12 MAY 1998