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Critic's
Corner
With resident
food critic Justin Hadley out of the country enjoying sausage, egg and
chips in Halkidiki, we asked Chris Horton to step into the great man's
shoes and offer us a resume of the cuisine offered at local rivals Griff
and Coton in the recent first team match. Until 1989, Griff used to host
County games for Warwickshire CCC - could we expect a first class tea?
Picture the
scene - a former county venue on a sticky, yet overcast day. It was a
tough afternoon with the bat and we had worked up a small appetite
in
the conditions. I wouldn't have said that I could eat a horse but after
forcing this fare down, by God I wished I could have done. The choice
of sandwich was pretty standard - plain ham, cheese or egg. Not a lot
on the way of filling and not a vast amount in the way of quantity
either.
The bread was white to minimise on taste as well as cost and the ham
wafer thin to the point that the pig it came off is probably still
alive and
well such was the impact on the animal of removing such little meat.
The fact that there were insufficient sandwiches available was offset
by the
fact that they were that poor, nobody could stomach more than three.
Luckily, teas are multi-faceted and we had the relative luxury of some
Kwik-save "No-frills" meatless sausage rolls, two packets of Aldi "crisps" and
a bag of bacon fries somebody left half eaten from behind the bar during
the week to fall back on.
For dessert,
there was little to tempt a starving Ethiopian with let alone 22 hungry
players plus umpires. For some peculiar reason, doughnuts had been purchased
and cut in half. This could only be to cut costs as I am quite sure that
anyone who is fit enough to play cricket for 100 overs on a Saturday afternoon
is more than capable of burying a whole doughnut, except maybe Manny.
You may have
been able to produce a reasonable tea for ten pounds in the past but
it is a lot more difficult these days - inflation has evidently by-passed
Heath End Road. Efficiency savings have not though. They have turned
up
en masse and bulldozed their way through the toilet door and into the
kitchen. The tea bags are doing some sterling work - some sources claim
that this is their third season in the pot. The innovative idea of
using
saucers instead of plates not only reduces washing up costs, but limits
a player's "take" to the size of the carrier. And the close
seating arrangements and television all help in reducing the possibility
of people going up for seconds - should they be brave enough to do
so.
Formative
plans to further reduce costs next season include measures such as eating
off hands instead of saucers, a cup-share scheme whereby two players share
the same cup of tea, and a novel cake-raffle idea. Famished players bid
for a quarter of a doughnut with the money raised going to help a local
charity. Another madcap scheme involving putting laxatives in squash during
the first drinks interval was deemed too costly by officials as the increase
in toilet paper usage would make it uneconomical, despite possible savings
at tea-time. A recycling project involving something about home-made chocolate
logs was flatly denied by the Committee.
Ironically,
the only tea worse than this one is possibly the one at Ratcliffe Road
where Manny Alcock performed the magic-less miracle of disguising 10 packets
of cheesy Wotsits as a cricket tea. While one Wotsit may well have fed
him for anything up to two months, the skeletal pad merchant was once
again found guilty of judging people by his own miserable standards.
Could we
expect a first class tea at Griff? Could we arse.
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