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School Dinners


Gus Mears

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I never had school dinners. I didn't question it at the time, and it's not until I was older I realised I seemed in the minority here. Nope, off I went with my Roland Rat lunchbox with beef paste sandwiches in and flask of orange squash. It was this one:

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We weren't dirt-poor, we weren't rich so I don't really know why I was always 'packed lunch'. I can't remember having a conversation about it.

I started wondering out loud to @Gus Mears whether the fried, salted and sweet school dinners of the 80s and 90s fed the 'deep fried, more cheese please and don't forget the chips' #EATCLEAN appetite. An child that enjoyed their deep-fried spam is likely to seek to replace that in adulthood, no?

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Times have certainly changed. This is what my kids had today

BBQ Chicken Fillet in a Brioche Bun
Pasta Salad
Potato Wedges
Grated Carrot and Sweetcorn
Nachos and Cheese*

Better than my lunch the little buggers. Has anyone ever felt the need outside of school days to make or eat CHOCOLATE custard. Absolutely gross. I loved school dinners too, and was gutted when I was switched to pack lunches in Year 5. Mum then packed me off with cut up carrots and peppers everyday (I did request this however) and things were never the same.

*anyone is genuinely interested in the whole menu for their term, happy to pop it in if anyone wants to see how things differ now

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1 hour ago, Gus Mears said:

Mine were desiccated rather than beefy. I think those are the only two official options. 

Yeah, the local authority didn't have the funding for varieties of people, so we got two great big lasses who looked like they were made of wadded up Mother's Pride packed onto a skeleton, and two breadless skeletons for variety.

I think I had school dinners for one wee, right in the middle of primary school — always had packing up, but my parents went away for the week and my grandparents came to take care of me, and my mum didn't want me going to school with a 1/2lb of pork scratchings for lunch, so she signed me up for the week. I'd always wanted to try it, but it was muck. There were only two consistencies, sloppy mud and concrete. Dessert was mint, though, thick custard and sponge pud.

After that week it was back to potted meat sandwiches, Um Bongo, and salt-and-shake.

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9 minutes ago, SpursRiot2012 said:

In secondary, at the first school, I used to sell my free meal ticket for things like yo-yos or Pokemon cards. 

I developed a bit of an eating disorder toward the end of secondary school, so I used to sell my packed lunch to Troy Leigh and use the money to buy oranges — he went on to become EDL and turn Oxfam away from his front door because they were helping African kiddies, I can't help but blame myself a little.

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In the days before Jamie Oliver bumped off Turkey Twizzlers and generally people not really giving a stuff what nasty stuff may be in there. They were alright when I started having them. Favourites was this really good pizza cut into squares and they were the best. I love a good tomato purée which they must have had in. Tasted really nice. Chips 2 times a week at one stage as well were awesome as they were one of few foods I could easily put away for someone who found it hard to finish in one sitting at home. On Tuesdays and on Fridays with fish for the Catholics. I recall having a massive one. I had to get my ruler out. 19cms. It was quite a sight. I'd have loved to have seen the spud that was cut from. Pudding wise, Loads of jelly was the norm for some people. I recall some terrific Arctic rolls. My memory is hazy with deserts. But I was more of a hot custard person with a cake. Can't beat it in the winter months.

The old dinner lady at school, Mavis (I think that was her name) was awesome, always popular, knew everyone's likes and dislikes as it was a small school, so easy to get to know everyone and she always said goodbye when she went home. She retired alongside a pair of teachers whom I didn't consider favourites but I could see their absences were a big loss like for example, they did the singing assemblies and they did it more popularly than the maths/music teacher who took over. Anyway, they did a retirement lunch for them one day and did a menu especially for them and everyone else as they had decades of service between them. Think they were close to 80 years between them.

For my last few years, I mixed between packed lunch and hot dinners. Wasn't the same after they changed school meal rules, but still had some good stuff now and then.

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51 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

All this custard talk and no mention of the pink shite? I'm not sure what flavour the pink was but it wasn't any kind of fruit like you'd imagine, it was just a generic synthetic taste.

Reminds me of the old Dave Chappelle routine about grape drink - sugar, water and purple. It was probably just custard and pink, but still a delight, just like pretty much all custards.

Ambrosia do a strawberry custard but it doesn't taste even slightly of strawberry, just regular custard.

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Some kind of mass produced blancmange probably.

My primary school dinners were borderline inedible most of the time when I was a kid and consisted of chilli & rice, so rice for me because I didn't like chilli for some reason. Sometimes chicken supreme with chips, so I'd end up on chips as I didn't like chicken. Fish, which I didn't like, so more chips and occasionally soup and a sandwich (tomato soup, cheese sandwich) normally followed by rice pudding or blancmange, jam roly poly or spotted dick and custard.

Eventually it reached a point where my Mum didn't see the point in sending me with £4.50 a week for not much food when she could send me with a packed lunch. Normally a sandwich, some biscuits, a yoghurt and a bag of crisps, always eaten in that order and accompanied by a flask of squash. Occasionally I'd get soup or beans in the flask and bread for dipping in lieu of sandwiches.

In the last three years of secondary school I lived a lot closer to school (it was on two sites), so would go home for dinner. Usually accompanied by 4-5 mates who all had permission to go home for dinner even though they'd come to school by bus and we'd draw the curtains in the house while we watched whatever mysterious grumble tape my then step-dad had secreted in the cupboard. Always taking care to rewind it to the exact point on the tape it was at upon insertion, for fear of our being rumbled.

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My earliest school dinner memories are pudding related. The first few years of first school (because three-tier schooling is how it should be) we had a dinnerlady called Mrs Luke, who would regularly make a rainbow cake that has never been able to be replicated, try as my mum - and later, I - might. It was good. Then for school Christmas lunch, she'd make the only Christmas Pudding I've ever liked, with this weird but delicious white sauce that again, I've never found anywhere else. She'd also put 5ps in there, so God knows how many kids swallowed small change over the years.

I was probably Year 2 or thereabouts when she retired, and it was downhill from there. The replacement resorted to things like kwesh every other day, alternating with corned beef concoctions, and I've never like a bit of kwesh, have I lad, nor could I ever stomach corned beef, so it was packed lunches for me until the move to middle school (three-tiers are the best).

Here was a glorious new thing I'd never heard of before. THE TUCK SHOP. Not only could you, once you'd reached the privilege of years 7 and 8 with its own playground, nip to the PE changing rooms where assigned year 8s would sell a variety of cheap crisps for 10p, but in the main canteen at break times were cakes and sweets and chocolate. The fudge brownie they used to do (which might have been similar to the chocolate concrete described above) is another that cannot be replicated by any other baker. Crispy at the edges, gooey as fuck in the middle, served in massive triangles. 

Lunch options would be written up on a blackboard in the canteen that morning so you'd know what to expect. Turkey dinosaurs were a regular, except when something important had happened with Newcastle United and the lunch menu would be replaced by massive text proclaiming "KEEGAN HAS RESIGNED" or something like that. 

My main memory of middle school lunches is Nanny Chips.

Nanny Chips resembled a slightly more melted version of Tubbs from the League of Gentlemen, and her job was the chips. She did chips. Don't ask her for anything else. CHUPS. 

"Can I have some smiley faces please"

"CHUPS"

And she proceeds to dig her spade into the tray and pile a mountain of chips on your plate.

"CHUPS"

We liked to imagine nothing gave her greater pleasure than that huge silver tray glistening with greasy chips every day.

"CHUPS"

Anyway, glorious as the CHUPS-or-nowt option was, I ended up on packed lunches again. I'd been off ill for a little while, and when I was ill, food usually got the blame. I'd recall the last few things I'd eaten and they'd be blacklisted forever because they must be what made me feel sick or bedridden or whatever. Haven't had a cheese toastie or a chocolate torte since I was about 11 because mentally I can't disassociate them with being up in the middle of the night with the sick bucket. Same thing still happens to me when I've gone through a period of anxiety attacks and can't eat anything except yoghurt and soup for about a month. Sourdough bread and katsu curries got added to the 'can't have those ever again' last year. Yay mental health. 

Back to middle school though, and once I got back from being ill I couldn't face the food, so packed lunches return.

Then it was high school (three tiers!) and another innovation - fucking SWIPE CARDS! You got a lunch card and put your cash on the machine (or they took cheques at the school reception if you wanted to do a week at a time) and used your card when you paid. Guess this was maybe a bully prevention tactic, but then again they could just nick your card instead of your coins. Not the bullies at our school though, they'd just give you a kicking and then try and set you on fire with aerosol. But, beginning of year 9, I was well up for trying this new method. The main dinnerlady from middle school had also moved up to the high school, so the brownies were still available, and for hot food you actually had a range of stuff. Most of it I can't remember, but Panda Pops were readily available as drinks and they did pizza slices that were only slightly worse than the horrible takeaway nearby. Nanny Chips was no more but there was still chips available every day - but you had an alternative if you didn't want them. Initiatives for healthier school meals must have started by this time (we're around the year 2000) but it must have taken a while for it to reach us because everything was still greasy as anything. And pretty samey as well. The novelty wore off quick and for the final time, it was packed lunches for me until GCSEs when the stress of it all put me off eating completely.

High school had vending machines as well. That was a revelation. Buy a packet of crisps, get the Tazo within, complete Tazo collection AT SCHOOL. Revelation.

CHUPS.

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Giggling like a loon at "CHUPS", but a swipe card for school dinners in 2000?! Bloody hell.

Just remembering now that you were allowed to leave the school grounds at lunchtime if you had your parent's signature in your planner saying you could. I don't remember anyone's ever being checked, but that was the rule - I think I probably (badly) forged my Mam's signature in mine, because I started going out into Beverley most lunches.

Most kids went down to a sweet shop near the school, and usually nicked stuff. They started enforcing a rule that only two kids in school uniform were allowed in the shop at a time to try and put a stop to it. There was a greasy fish and chip shop near there too, which I probably went to more often than not. I went more into the town itself a few times, though what I'd have got to eat is a mystery - probably a pasty or something. I remember walking down the street once, catching sight of my Dad coming the other way, running as fast as I could down a side street and vaulting over a wall so he wouldn't see me. The effect being somewhat ruined by, moments after I saw him, my mate also catching sight of the old man and bellowing my name at the top of his voice to let me know. The pillock.

That secondary school had vending machines, too. Somewhat incongruously in the Sports Hall. One of them was positioned opposite the stairs, and there were always rumours that someone had managed to charge into the machine so hard that it spat out loads of free drinks, so many a break was spent hurtling myself down stairs into that thing to no avail.

 

The secondary school I ended up at in Jersey must have done school dinners, but I don't remember them at all. I must have been on packed lunches by then. They had vending machines too, but only Year 11s could use them. We had this big empty room that was ostensibly a social space for Year 11s, but had fuck all incentive to spend any time there other than that kids from other years weren't there. Someone smashed up the vending machine once, just breaking the glass to nick what was inside. Teachers kept the entire year in that room until someone fessed up, and no one was speaking. After half an hour, the door opens, and the lad who did it walks in with his hand wrapped in toilet paper after he sliced it to fuck punching through the glass. Whole room erupts in cheers and applause.

 

My Mam ran a youth club when I was a kid, and youth club meant TUCK SHOP. Twice a week access to Panda Pops, Skips and whatever else, bliss. Every now and then she'd take me up to the Cash & Carry with her, where the prospect of industrial quantities of fizzy pop was enough to make me think this was a worthwhile day out.

Few years back, I went on a stag do to Sark - an island with a population of 600, and no cars. We figured we'd do a pub crawl of its three pubs. Turns out that the third pub is only open on weekends, because it's in the same building as the only school - in the week, it's their canteen/tuck shop, but on weekends it's a pub, but you can still just buy all the tuck shop grub. Sat in tiny chairs with a pint of bitter and a packet of Transform-A-Snacks, upstairs from a Maths classroom.

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