Hot Licks!
By: Stuart James
Tags: Red Nose Day, Poverty, Thankmas, The Weekly Knob, Food

Hot Licks!

Part-copied by me, not long after its publication, from a 1977 illustration by Simon Stern for The Hobyahs by Joseph Jacobs. One day I may finish this.

Some people say I have a waste problem. I tell them it’s because I have Button genes.

While readers won’t have much trouble with that statement, listeners will need it -ahaha- spelling out, so here goes: my maternal grandmother’s family name was Button. I’ve mentioned this before (again, listeners, you’ll just have to trust me, there’s a link). And I hate to see food wasted. This can cause argument.

My mat. GM. was a significant but distant presence in my early life, as she lived in another country, six thousand miles away. I spent a few months either side of my fifth birthday with her there, where she taught me to read and write, and she spent a similar period in my family home when I was about ten. (In between those times she would send me regular parcels of the funny pages from her Sunday newspaper, which is how I learned about American culture — Blondie and Dagwood, Li’l Abner and whatever lay between. I have a lot to be grateful to her for.)

Anyway, when she stayed with us, she developed (or, as it now seems to me, revealed) a habit of offering to take everyone’s plates to the kitchen at the end of the meal. Some time into this arrangement, my mother or father or I followed close behind for some reason, and found Granny licking all the plates clean.

Now, be advised: this was my mother’s kitchen, in England in the 1960s. Food was not that scarce, portions were not that small, that anyone in my family went hungry. On the other hand, it was unheard-of for anyone to leave food on their plate: my mother would not serve anyone with something she knew they wouldn’t eat. Granny was licking up the last of the gravy, scouring the scrapings of mashed potato that cutlery left behind. From everyone’s plate.

We made a joke of it. If I’d licked my plate I’d have been chastised for my rudeness; I know because I occasionally did, and was. Where Granny was concerned, it was different. Licking plates was just what she did, and it was funny, because we all agreed so. Nobody asked, and I never wondered, why she did it. It was half a century before I found out about her childhood.

In the late eighteen-hundreds, as now, opinions differed over whether poverty should be alleviated or punished. Municipal authorities, tasked with operating workhouses for the relief of the destitute, balanced the argument by providing both alleviation and punishment at the same time. My grandmother first entered Lambeth Workhouse at the age of two. Ten years on, she was still there.

For all I know, licking one’s plate was encouraged in the workhouse: Oliver Twist was a documentary. Not eating every scrap of food on offer, however poor its quality, would mean going hungrier than necessary. Wasting it would amount to a sin. My grandmother passed that rule on to her children, and it came down to me. I’m the go-to guy when there’s a mixing-bowl to, ahem, clean, and I have an armoury of spatulas to assist me in the task. Not much goes down the kitchen drain in my house.

I like a clean plate. I’m known for it. When I’m done only the definitely-not-edible, the bare bones, remains. It’s almost as rare now as it was in my childhood for me not to finish a meal. I take a dim view of restaurants that serve far more than most people can manage, because I know I will try to eat it all regardless of the physical discomfort. My mental well-being demands it.

I was never as poor as my grandmother must have been. I’ve been hungry; I haven’t starved. The first time there was too much month left at the end of my money, there was at least some backup food in the cupboard. The second time, I applied for, and was granted, a credit card, and after far longer than I might have predicted, I was able to do without it. Now with more years behind me than my grandmother achieved, I’ve got everything I need. And still, I’m sometimes tempted to lick my plate.

I don’t, of course.

Well, not if anyone’s watching.

The Weekly Knob writing community proudly joins #Thankmas and Red Nose Day with the publication of our Charity Plate edition. All donations made through THIS LINK go directly to The Full Plate Project, making sure no hungry child or family faces an empty plate this holiday season.

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