The prison incident (with spring greens and sky blues)

We were wandering around the old town the other day, the day of the eclipse, not that that was primarily why we were out. It was the first properly warm and sunny day of the year, with bright blue skies up above, and shirtsleeve temperatures down below. A sunny day? Well off we go! Yeah, yeah, lovely and all, PlaidCamper, but the title is “The prison incident” – so come on, spill!

I’d tell you an eclipse tale if we had one, but being just outside the zone of totalitarianism, we weren’t going to get full darkness. No, it was the zone of partial socialism for us, and it worked well enough. Eerie twilight fell, the birds went silent, a breeze picked up, temperatures dropped briefly, and a few minutes later it was over. Special, but nothing like the amazing scenes my brother sent from his zone of totality. Uh-huh, ok, but the prison incident?!

So no, we were not on the Plains of Abraham for the eclipse, but for a day to wander under the blue sky and in the almost greens. The plains are beginning to look a touch less brown and slightly more green. Hooray!

Greens are good – but they do have to be the right greens. The right greens, PlaidCamper? Yes, the right greens! Let’s tell a story and let’s call it “The Prison Incident!” It’ll come with a cinema style warning. Some scenes may upset readers/viewers of a sensitive nature. This is not for the faint of heart. Cue the movie trailer voiceover tone: In a world where brutal institutionalism is the norm, there comes a young hero wearing NHS spectacles and a slightly grubby school uniform. This is a tale of one man fighting injustice, taking on the system, unyielding in his belief that— Nope, no, cut, cut, cut, can’t do it! It’s not that exciting. It’s not even set in a prison. You still here?!

Shall we just tell the story? Try again? Ok. There’s no arguing that greens are generally good for you, unless you’re (sometimes sensibly) an obstinate six or seven year old. Picture the boy, a schoolchild recently arrived at his new institution, and sitting alone in a dining hall. In front of him a plate of untouched and slowly congealing “greens” – what sort of green vegetable they might have been six hours earlier (for that, surely, was when they first went into the boiling water?) is simply impossible to tell.

Under the watchful eye of two grim faced prison guards, oops, I mean school dinner supervisors, the young prisoner was quietly sobbing as he waited for his mother to arrive. He’d eaten the creamed potatoes without vomiting. He’d even kept down the browned mince and gravy, including the gristly bits that couldn’t be chewed into full submission. But the greens? Greys? No, no way, he just couldn’t do it.

He had watched his new friends clear most of what was on their plates – how?! – and be allowed outside. The hall had emptied. It was now just him, the guards, and the plate. He could hear playtime laughter coming from the yard. He tried again, lifting a fork of greens but, oh boy, the smell, the look. No, he genuinely couldn’t. Still the guards insisted. He wasn’t going to leave the table until he finished his food. His mother had been called! Did he want to disappoint her? Eat your greens, child! Stand off. Stalemate. Congealed plate.

His mother arrived, believing her child had been misbehaving. Not beyond the bounds of possibility – he wasn’t a difficult child, but trouble could find him, as it could with any young one. And, like any young one, he was sometimes curious to see where trouble might lead him, explore the boundaries and find out how far he could step past them. But this wasn’t one of those times.

So yes, his mother arrived, quite prepared to chastise her boy for any wrong doing, and encourage him to behave as expected. Yet when she saw what was happening, she was incensed. The guards did not understand her anger. She’d been called in to help wrangle the new inmate. The issue was the inmate refusing to eat as instructed, could she not see that? The mother asked the guards to look closely at the untouched heap of greens. Would either of them care to eat what was on the plate? The guards looked a bit uncomfortable. Well, erm, actually, no.

To be clear, the inmate’s mother was a very firm believer in not wasting food, and she didn’t entertain food fussiness or fads. If she’d cooked something, you were going to eat it, end of. However, she was also consistent with if she’d taken the time to cook and present a meal, then it should and would be edible, appealing and nutritious. Edible, appealing and nutritious. All three, always. Anyway, back to the prison scene.

The prison governor was summoned to sort out the ugly situation and to placate the angry mother. Those two guards were in her line of fire, not somewhere you wanted to be. It did not look like ending well. But wait! The governor turned out to be an actual reasonable person, and saw to it that reason won the day. He listened to the mother, heard about edible, appealing and nutritious. He looked at the plate of uneaten greens. Edible, appealing and nutritious? Well, given the evidence, that was that.

(An aside in a post and story and week full of asides – the head teacher of the school in question was a genuinely splendid man. He was close to retirement, and did so deservedly a year or two later. I hear he encouraged the young prisoner in this tale to read, read, and then read some more. Don’t know a word? Sound it out, give it a go! Look it up in a dictionary! And he didn’t laugh when fatigue was sounded out as fat-ee-goo. The young prisoner in this story still looks back fondly, smiling when he remembers that wonderfully inspiring and gentle man…)

The old governor assured both the angry mother and the young prisoner that never again would an inmate be forced to eat something he could not keep down. He listened to the young prisoner say he had tried, sir, he really had, but all that happened was retching and gagging. (Would you believe the inmate was in fact quite fat-ee-goo-ed as a result of all the retching?)

Happily, the now smiling young inmate was released into the yard to join his peers. He continued to eat school dinners, and the menu continued to include, from time to time, creamed potatoes, mince and greens. The difference was that students were able to politely decline a serving of something they did not wish to eat. Phew! He was forever grateful to his mother, for what she did as described above, and also for the many other ways in which she is a great mother.

There’s no real point to this tale – maybe, at a stretch, the notion that things don’t always have to be difficult, and small changes won’t cause the sky to fall in? I was prompted to write it after I walked past the open window of a nearby house the other day. Out wafted the cooking scents of browning mince and boiled greens. Scout was slightly perturbed by my gagging and retching. We barely made it home…

Aside after aside this week, so let’s have another. Unlike fresh greens, watching or reading too much daily news isn’t good for me, so I think I’ll be cutting back again. It’s hard to balance trying to be informed with maintaining some optimism in the face of what is reported… Anyway, what is it that ails people like Sunak or Johnson, or Putin, or the mango hued man and all their supporters? Othering people, bombing civilians, denying climate change, denying elections, gerrymandering, telling verifiable lies – to what end? Wanting more money, more power, more attention, as if the flaunting of wealth and power is a measure of success? Really? That’s what you want?! Goodness! Alright, that’s the last of the asides for this week.

We’ve been all over the place in this one, haven’t we? It wasn’t a straight line, but there you have it – the prison incident! Could it be an almost true story?! And yes, there are far, far worse things happening daily out in our present day real world, but wouldn’t it be nice if a plate of inedible greens was the (not particularly) worst thing ever to happen to a child, any child? (Most) of us have had it pretty easy, haven’t we?

Strangely, somewhat inexplicably given what happened, in the more than half a century since the prison incident, the now not so young ex-inmate has always enjoyed eating his greens, with an odd over-fondness (as far as his other half is concerned) for most greens – kale, chard, broccoli, sprouts, spinach, string beans, mange-tout, avocado and all.

Time to finish up – easier to finish this up than that old plate, let me tell you. Yes, we had an enjoyable old town day earlier this week, with a few spring greens and wonderful sky blues!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

PS Do you want to hear the one about school dinner semolina pudding? Thought not – I’d be retching too…