Slop-Squelched Sandwiches

The Office-Worker’s Lunch – October 2009

Office workers’ eat the most extraordinary things for their lunch, or at least the shops give them the opportunity to. There is a serious academic study to be done.

I have alluded before to the way in which the lunch eaten by office workers in London changes with the times; it evolves, according to what is the current norm, what is available, and how the shops that sell a worker’s lunch can set up a USP, a Unique Selling Proposition. London will tend to lead the way where others come to follow not too much later.

In Strutton Ground market, Westminster, in October 2009 I was looking at what is on offer in Simply Sandwiches – a shop that is clearly owned by someone whose family originates from India, Bangladesh or Pakistan. Among the filled baguettes on offer are:

‘Chilli BBQ Egg Salad’ and

‘Falafel and Chilli Mayo’.

Both would be far too sloppy for my liking, but then I am not an Westminster office worker. The flavours sound a bit post-modernist, they may well be a portent of things to come. I shall keep my eyes peeled, whenever I can, for what the office workers are consuming, and to see whether, in terms of pure yeach!, Chilli BBQ Egg Salad can be bettered.

More on sloppy sandwiches at Squelch Up Your Lunch, Children.

Gloating Suits

Broadgate Ice Rink, London, November 2007

I wandered to where Broad Street Station used to be, now called Broadgate and containing offices of finance institutions surrounding an arena in the centre of which is an ice-skating rink, where at lunchtimes, certain of the office workers come to ice-skate.

This particular day was cold and windy and there were just three people on the rink. Had you put it on the telly, people would have said it was unrealistically absurd, and would have laughed, had the programme been labelled as comedy. For there was a young woman in sweatshirt and jeans, who skated round and round backwards, ie in reverse, like walking backwards, and every so often she crashed towards the side where she took a swig from a paper cup of coffee. Then there was a man in a red overcoat, who looked like he had his hands in his pockets, though in fact they were just by his side, and like the woman he was a proficient skater, but just glid around in his overcoat. And in the middle was a man in his blue office shirt and suit trousers, his sleeves rolled up and an inverted V of sweat-marks on his back, and he was trying to practise skating jumps. He held his arms out in a pose of balance, and when he felt himself suitably poised, he jumped and tried to turn in the air, landing uncertainly and with feet flailing and just about staying upright. Around the rink stood groups of gloating young office workers in their dark-grey suits, holding paper cups of coffee and some a flaking pie in a paper bag, and with their greasy hair and sneers were waiting for the jumping man to fall over, so they could all cheer and jeer and snigger. Lots of coffee and food stalls about too, but I didn’t buy anything despite it being lunchtime – felt a bit nauseous.

There are pics of Broadgate Ice Rink (though not this occasion unfortunately) on my Flickr photostream.

The March

September 2005

On Saturday a march assembled at Parliament Square and walked to Hyde Park where there was to be a concert with speeches. The theme of the march was to protest about the presence of British troops in Iraq. It included, as ever, a sprinkling of Workers of the World Unite proponents, which seemed a little irrelevant to the subject in hand, together with the Rama Krisha Temple lot jingling their bells, and quite a few bearded chaps in robes who periodically put their copy of the Daily Mirror on the ground facing east, bent over, and rested their head on it, with their bottom in the air.

An elderly couple came and sat by me on my park bench. ‘Nice to see so many young people on the march’, said the lady. ‘Yes’, I replied, out of politeness. I asked where she and her husband had marched from and they said Parliament Square, which was quite far enough and now it was time to sit down and eat a cheese sandwich from a plastic bag in their rucksack. I asked if they’d seen my friend Chris, who was playing the saxophone in a band and they said they thought they had, very good the band was too, in Whitehall. Older men wasn’t it? Yes. Oh yes, very good they were. I had to meet some friends in a café in Marylebone High Street at 3, so could not wait for Chris to march by tootling, or to watch any more unlikely-looking people pass by, so I wished the couple a happy concert, which they said they didn’t intend to go to, finding it much more pleasant to sit in the park instead, which indeed it was.

Python in St James Park

April 2004

23 April 2004 was a warm and sunny day in London. On emerging from a meeting into the sunshine at about 3pm I walked across St James Park which was, as you’d expect, jam-packed with people doing all sorts of things from feeding the ducks to practising their poi balls, though perhaps none more remarkable than the man who’d decided to take his python for a walk. In fact he’d been intercepted by the police and was being watched over by a silent policeman in a flak jacket while he, the man with the python, sat on a low fence looking sullen. The python wasn’t looking like it had any emotion as pythons don’t, except rather fat so whether it had just eaten one of the ducks I can only speculate. The policeman in the flak jacket, who had some support from two more of his profession standing back rather, looked a little worried while trying to stay in charge. I’d have liked to have hung around to see the outcome and possibly found out how the man had got the python there in the first place, whether he’d brought it on the bus or the tube for example, but as ever when I’m in London these days, I had another meeting to go to. It was quite a sizeable python.

Javoll sind wir noch ein und auch gedoppelt

June 2003

Our periodic trips to Westminster for meetings began last November when the leaves had long since left the trees and I was intrigued to find that in a public garden just off Horseferry Road there were some ginkgo biloba trees. These trees are associated with the name of Goethe, I think he had one or more in his garden in Weimar and he wrote a romantic poem associating his love for an 18th century muscular German matron with the double leaves of the ginkgo. As one we are doppelt, it ends, or words to that effect. Romantically-inclined Germans go all soppy over it, or did, I’m not sure they do still, though they might. You can also make an infusion from the leaves of the ginkgo that is said to ease muscular tension when consumed. Never tried it myself though will do when chance pertains.

Anyhow, during the winter, we were unable to identify which of the trees in this charming London public square was the ginkgo because they were all bare of leaves. But now, in the sunshine, we can see them shining out and so pay homage to the great man. There we were, Hilary and I, in our suits and carrying our laptop cases, saying: ‘ooo look, there it is, javoll sind wir noch ein und auch gedoppelt’, while the scantily-dressed office girls sat on the grass, wondering what the bloody hell these idiots were finding so interesting to point at. Then we got the number 88 bus to the next meeting.

Much as we were tempted, we did not have the courage to steal some leaves from said tree to make an experimental infusion, though might manage it one day, when fewer scantily-dressed girls are sitting on the grass pretending to eat their tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches, eyeing us so critically.

Have you noticed the change in office workers’ sandwiches over the years? Increasingly, they have become full of a whitish sloppy substance, to replace the smooth but not sloppy pink ham and fish paste of yore. We get these slop-filled sandwiches whenever a meeting we attend has sandwiches laid on. I find them not too bad but a bit overfull of ingredients that all taste pretty much as one. I’m not sure if I closed my eyes whether I could say if I was eating avocado, prawn and mayonnaise, or chicken tikka massala. Some of them have a bit of dried-up bacon in which acts as a variation on the texture, which can be a nice change. But every day? One must eventually turn into an homogenous white slop, based upon the theory that what you are is determined by what you eat. They’re popular though, so perhaps it’s me that’s out of line with what goes on in the world. White slop rules, OK. OK?

More on St. John’s Gardens in Westminster on my Ginkgo Biloba in London page.

More comments on the social history of office workers’ lunches on my Slop-Squelched Sandwiches page.