Dear LPG readers,

I found myself with a keyboard and fingers at the ready after a trip to visit someone at the hospital earlier today. 

Lewisham Hospital allows visitors between 2 o’clock in the afternoon and 8 o’clock in the evening, and I don’t live too far away. Perhaps this makes me feel the necessity to visit family, friends and acquaintances whenever I know someone is there for a while, especially if they don’t get many other visitors.  

One day not so long ago, I happened to be there when the evening meal was served, and the first indication that it had arrived had to be the smell. I cannot put my finger on why. Still, although you cannot help but recognise it as a solid meal, there is a marked difference between this odour and the aroma you would expect at home, in a restaurant or even in a fast-food outlet.     

My visited patient’s tray arrived soon after that, and the meal, once balanced on that over-bed table, suggested real promise until the cloche was lifted. Even though she had pre-ordered, what was underneath reminded me of those school dinners that we had back in the mid-1950s: a very nutritious meal (even though we students were not aware of that at the time), which looked somewhat lacklustre, to say the least. I remember my school friends being young students who considered most of the main courses more of a mini punishment than a break from lessons. Perhaps, for me, that was because the meals that my Jamaican mum offered us at home were even more different than most back when I was young. 

When I shut my eyes and inhaled during that hospital visit, I could see the minced meat, a couple of over-boiled potatoes and something green on a plate or perhaps a plate of soup. There would have been a few other similarly unappetising choices. I remember our head mistress’s rule. She would say that every student had to eat ‘A little bit of everything’, and in those days, the dinner ladies did a lot more than dish out the food and clear the plates. They had to let us leave the table when they decided our plates were suitably empty. I had a friend who we would stay with all lunch hour because she always had trouble getting her meal near finished. It was a curse in the summer when we wanted to be out playing, but we did not mind missing the cold and snowy playground in the winter.

Afters was the highlight of the meal. I was not a fan of semolina (fly spittle – as we called it), but I did not mind spotted dick and custard or the odd plate of jelly or rice pudding.  

I now take my grandchildren to school on the odd occasion when their parents can’t, and lunch often comes up in our homeward-bound conversation. According to my 6-year-old grandson, things are different now. He tells me about his main meal choices, such as sandwiches, and his personal favourite is Mac and Cheese, but I get the impression that his love for them is no more heightened than mine was back in the day.  

The main difference seems to be that they are made with more of a lunch feel today. However, I am sure that, no matter how long ago, the nutritional value has always been equally, if not more, important than the taste, whether you are looking at your dinner from a hospital or school point of view. 

DT, Lewisham. 

DT has found some then and now examples of what happens during school lunchtimes in an attempt to jog a few memories…

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