When I was at school the accepted method of tying a winter scarf was identical to the first stage of tying a neck tie – one end over each shoulder, crossed over, and then the uppermost tucked around, behind, up and through to form a simple knot.
These days there is a new way to wear a scarf. One should double the scarf, put the loose ends over one shoulder, the loop over the other and tuck the loose ends through the sloop creating a simple slip knot.
This sartorial innovation has only been with us for the past few years and yet it is easy, straightforward and so blindingly obvious a way to wear a scarf that it is astounding that it was never thought of in the past!
Now, I know what you’re thinking and, no, I’ve not taken leave of my senses and set off on an Adventure in Fashion!
It’s just that recently, what with the awful weather, I have mostly been wearing a scarf in the “new improved” style and wherever I look everyone is doing the same. On the street, on TV and in magazines. How so? Why? Who said so? I don’t even know when I started doing it!
Fashion it could be said is dictated by style-gurus and designers whose bizarre catwalk creations are the inspiration for the next season’s high-street trends. In some senses this must be true. There are always trendsetters, people in the public eye and companies whose ideas and style-choices are instantly adopted and copied by their admirers – although I’m not sure my butcher has had that many requests for Handbag a la Ga-Ga! At best this is flattery through imitation and at worst it’s cynical manipulation. But let’s not get onto the subject of that man and his reality TV talent shows!
The cynic in me believes that, for example, the annual obsession for this-year’s-must-have-toy at Christmas is more manufactured than anything else. By creating a demand and then deliberately limiting supply one can foment a craze for something out of nothing which must be good for the manufacturer if nothing else. If it makes the National News then the PR payoff is incalculable! Another piece of Heston’s Xmas pud, anyone? What? Didn’t you get one?
But things like this new way to tie a scarf are undirected, unfocussed and just seem to have arisen spontaneously and spread like benign viruses. The real fashions and trends that colour and add interest to our lives are never really those that are dictated by the marketeers and impresarios but those that seem to have a life of their own and reflect the times we live in, they are the real definers of the zeitgeist, if you forgive such pseudness!
Social psychologists call this type of thing a “meme.” Memes are the informational equivalent of genes. Memes are specific, they replicate, they evolve and they have a life of their own. Attempts are made on the web to actively create memes (I saw one called “take a photo of yourself with your head in a fridge”) but these aren’t real memes in the same way that surreal catwalk get-ups aren’t real clothes. The holy grail of marketing is of course to be able to dictate consumer behaviour from a central point, but all too often we humans and our memes have other ideas!
Food is no different to couture in this regard. There are fashions in food (Ooh, sun dried tomatoes! how positively eighties, darling!) and there are plenty of culinary designers whose lead we love to follow. Let’s face it, if Jamie mentions Tonka beans on the TV then the Tonka growing industry are in for a bumper year! This is of course why the food retailers love working with celebrity chefs – a guaranteed boost in sales of whatever ingredients he or she mentions this week.
This month, then, I’m not sure what will happen to the sales of Cod.
If you’ve seen Hugh F-W’s TV shows about the state of the fishing industry and fish stocks then you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s pretty horrendous – the wastage, the critical stock levels, the wholly inappropriate Common Fisheries Policy. Hugh’s suggested solution is that we should make an active choice to have something other than cod, salmon or tuna then next time we want some fish.
Now, cards on the table, I absolutely support this without reservation for all of the enviro-political reasons in the programme but even if all that were put aside I would be arguing the case for you putting a broader range of fish in your shopping basket for culinary reasons alone.
Sea bass, mackerel, John Dory, gurnard, breams, soles, dab, plaice, hake and haddock to name just a few are not only alternatives to but are all superior in flavour to cod, salmon and tuna. Don’t get me wrong, cod is a lovely fish but its subtlety is lost in fish and chips. Precious cod deserves to be treated with a little reverence! Salmon is just over-farmed to an industrial degree and being grown to a price means that what was once a delicious treat has become a ubiquitous, flavourless pink protein pile on the plate. Yet here in North Dorset there is a farm that produces Arctic Charr – a fish easily the equal of the best salmon in my book.
The problem is I’m not sure how the deeply-ingrained meme of “cod’n’chips” can be easily supplanted, however well-meaning the efforts to do so.
Martyn at Something Else Fishy in Milborne Port, has for a while been offering sea bass and mackerel – with chips – alongside the usual suspects and has now moved to 100% line-caught Haddock. He tells me that he loves the idea of extending the range further but there has to be a demand for it to be possible.
And that’s where we come in, I suppose, to create the demand.
So if you haven’t already, try tying your scarf in that new modern style and start to get to know some of those wonderful, sustainable fish! Of course, if you’re unsure what to do with fish, if bones and scales mean you never buy fish to cook at home…well…I do run a cookery school you know! My seafood day could open up a whole new world for you.
