Low life
Shopping lists
Jeffrey Bernard
If, in a thousand years time, sociologists and anthropologists — let alone plain apologists unearth the sort of shopping list that I aave to queue up behind in Lambourn then it Will probably strike them that they have unearthed the root cause at the bottom of the decline and fall of the English 'lower Orders'. Squeamish readers are advised not In read on as other people's tastes may cause distress, but here is the week's intake as Purchased by a deeply unattractive and averagely rhapsodically happy woman. k It runs: 2 packets of custard creams, 6 bags of crisps, 4 large bottles of Coca-Cola, 2.ons of rice pudding, 4 Lyons apricot fruit Pies, 3 tins of evaporated milk, 1 tin each of tangerines, peaches, pineapple slices, 2 large loaves of sliced bread, 1 jar of lemon 1 packet of Jaffa cakes, 1 packet of irozen chicken pieces, 1 lb ox heart. After all that has been boxed up, there is a visit to the newsagent where the Sun, the 71/ Times, 40 Players No. 6 and an LP of the Abba is bought. Finally, there is the call to the betting shop for a 10p yankee on Steve Cauthen's first four rides at Bath.
Meanwhile, digging in the atomic-bomb scorched dust where once Old Compton Street stood, the colleagues of our Lambourn excavators may be puzzled to find a typical Saturday shopping list as carried by West End Man in the 1970s. This may puzzle them for a while until they discover a letter nearby in a mummified brief case bearing BBC letter heading. The list comprises: 1 bottle of Chianti, 1 packet of spaghetti, 1 avocado, 1 packet of Ryvita, 1 lb of strong coffee, lb of Floris truffles, a sprig of fennel, 2 nectarines, 1 carton of Gitanes, a tube of instant sun tan lotion, 1 tube of KY Jelly, a copy of Plays and Players, a bottle of Givenchy aftershave lotion, 1 pair of silk bikini briefs, a bar of Pears soap and a Maria Callas LP. At this point the archaeologists will think that there may have been a master race or certainly an effete species made so by malnutrition and the strain of constant creativity. Unfortunately, having stuffed and mounted Lambourn Woman and Soho Man in the Natural History Museum, a spanner will be not so much thrown in the works as dug up. This will be ,t he result of another dig in the Marylebone High Street area where the skeleton of a young woman will be found. From the European Sunday News, 24 June 2079. 'Scientists are investigating the body and belongings of a young woman believed to have died in the last war a thousand years ago. A shopping list consisting of 1 lb sunflower seeds, 1 lb of lentils, 6 cartons of yoghurt, lb bran, 2 bottles apple juice, a copy of New Society, the Radio Times, the Penguin John Donne and an LP of a Mozart Flute Concerto were found by the body. 'Remnants of cheesecloth clothing and some remarkably well preserved sandals were found near the body.
'Professor Brien of the Fleet Street Institute told television cameramen on the site, "What puzzles us is the fact that the poor girl was wearing no knickers when she ',died so suddenly. We're working the theory that she might have been "artistic" or what we now call insane."
'Meanwhile, more scientists are still interviewing the man found alive in a cave in the Mendips and believed to be well over a thousand years old. He was discovered by an oil prospector, Fred Robens, two days ago. Mr Robens told pressmen, "I wandered into this cave and found him surrounded by deep freezes. He seemed quite annoyed that I'd found him. The freezes were filled with fillet steak and chocolate cake. He was surrounded by a mountain of cigarette ends and Playboy magazines and he had a fixed smile. "Scientists are working on the theory that his longevity is due to 'happiness' or, as we call it now, insanity. Professor Brien .,'said, "The fact that he has been left alone by sociologists for a millenium obviously hasn't done him any harm and, being in the cave when the "big one" went up, protected him from the lethal fallout ofcustard creams, avocados and sunflower seeds."
Previous page
