With the dank, fetid winds of manmade climate change blowing our way and worries over Russian military ambitions there has been much talk of Armageddon. And I have to say, it doesn't look like much fun. Obviously there's the grisly business of mass death, the general collapse of civilisation and the loss of broadband services around Nuneaton. But there's another rarely discussed but much more serious issue: once we doughty survivors have dragged ourselves from the smouldering rubble and brushed ourselves down, what exactly are we going to do for lunch? Post the apocalypse, what will be on the menu?
I was given cause to think about this by the news that 20,000 crop samples from more than 100 nations have recently been deposited in a "doomsday vault" in the Norwegian Arctic Circle. The facility, dug deep into a mountain, is designed to withstand all natural and human disasters for centuries. That's terrific; I recognise that at some point we will have to start ploughing the fields again. But for those of us left alive, the ones who have managed to trudge our way north, it will be a hideous disappointment. We'll force open the blast doors of the global food repository only to find what amounts to a warehouse full of muesli.
That will never do. It will merely make us feel gloomier. We will need something properly sustaining. We will need comfort food. I've thought long and hard about what the UK section of the repository might look like, and I've come to the conclusion that it needs to be things that remind us exactly who we, as a nation, are. We must abandon any notion of ourselves as sophisticated cosmopolitan types with a taste for pot au feu and Iberico ham. We will need to go back to basics.
For a start we will need crateloads of bacon. By which I mean the cheap stuff that leaks white phlegm when you fry it. We will need house bricks of cheap sugary white bread, and barrels of brown sauce. Post the apocalypse we are going to be gagging for bacon sandwiches, of the sort drunk students make when they get home after a night on the Strongbow. The cheap bacon sandwich is the "in case of emergencies break glass" of comfort food.
After that we can get a little bit more exotic and nuanced. Obviously that means Findus crispy pancakes, and in particular the chicken curry flavour: a crisp breaded shell the colour of Sunny Delight; sweet-salty gunk inside. What's not to like? There's a temptation to supplement that with Pot Noodles. I can see that there's a convenience point here. They do only require a kettle. But we need to be a little more ambitious, which means only one thing: Vesta instant chow mein. As a child, one of those made most things better.
Finally we will need dessert. There's only one contender: Angel Delight. Butterscotch flavour. You may have other candidates for the post-Armageddon comfort food repository and I'd love to know what they are, but I think I'm on the right track. For here is the truth. Only by knowing exactly who we are can we hope to rebuild. Only by going back to basics can we start again. And anyway, as everybody knows, a cheap bacon sandwich is the solution to everything, including the end of the world.
