Porn

No, unlike this, this isn’t anything to do with Erik. I was just … as is my wont … idly musing about things as I wandered home from the chip shop¹ when one thought led to another and here I am.

A number of years ago, I was reading a discussion online about Pat Cadigan’s views on what pornography is.

A guy called Marius Watz proposed, in his analysis, that she used the term to signify any form of information that has no real relevance to the consumer, but which is consumed as a psychosensual ‘goodie’ — examples he gave were food-porn, tech-porn, catastrophe-porn, sex-porn, porn-porn, etc.

And my thoughts turned to foodporn and it dawned on me that lePatron may have been sneakily laughing up his sleeve at us all this time, by posting pix of his food with words rather than celluloid/pixels.

Mind you, iirc, he posts pix of them too⁷.

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¹ It’s Sunday and I had an unfortunate contretemps with the washing machine earlier² … and the iron … and some cups … and the recycling … so I decided to treat myself to some chips³, Pimm’s and ice cream.

² Roy will tell you all about the dangers of white goods, I’m sure.

³ That’s ‘French fries’ to you Zone 3 dwelling morlocks⁴.

⁴ You know nothing about them⁵.

You have to be British to understand the true meaning of the word.

Fish ’n’ Chips isn’t even three (or even 2.333) words … it’s an institution!

In fact, I’d go so far as to say it were akin to a religious observance.

You can be as cosmopolitan as you like … for as long as you like … and still never learn to think of fries or crisps when someone says ‘chips’.

It’s in our bone-marrow.

I’ll happily turn my back and say “Fuck you, England, Ireland, Scotland and that other place, wherever it is they shag sheep” … deride everything British to everyone who’ll listen for the rest of my life … but the second you suggest ‘chips’ and it turns out you mean ‘crisps’ or ‘fries’ my scorn will know no bounds.

I will kidnap you and transport you to the U.K., keep you locked in the cellar, blindfolded and force-feed you all three until you can tell the difference between fries and chips by the sound they make in the paper alone (before they’ve been unwrapped) and until the mere mention of the word ‘chips’ makes you salivate like Niagara Falls and the sound of the fries or crisps makes you weep with disappointment afterwards.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that conceptually it’s a single word to us⁶.

⁵ They’re not even French!

⁶ When I was a kid and my dad asked me, in my turn, one evening what I wanted, I replied “Saveloy and Fish’n’Chips” and it wasn’t until he told me not be greedy … that I couldn’t have both saveloy and fish … that I realised that you could even say the word “chips” without the “fish’n’” … that you didn’t eat fish’n’chips but fish and chips.

That’s how much a part of out national psyche it is.

I may well ... hope very much to … leave the U.K. again in the not too distant future and have no intention of ever returning — I shall probably die in some far flung corner of some far flung foreign land (as long as it’s a far flung corner of a teeming metropolis that is), and be happy to do so.

I may never eat chips again for as long as I live.

But I’ll never not want to eat them … never not sigh heavily every time I’m obliged to make do with fries … never not sigh wistfully when I open a bag of crisps.

You can no more be British and not want to eat proper chips than you can not want to breathe.

And anyone who says otherwise either isn’t British or is a paedophile — it’s unnatural!

There’s a special place in Hell for those who call fries/crisps “chips.”

And the best thing about is that they are already living in it.

⁷ He’s probably a millennial⁸.

⁸ I wouldn’t put it past him.