It is the privilege of morose middle-aged moaners like myself to sweeten a bitter outlook on modern life with fond and admittedly selective memories of a distant youth. (You might have noticed?) What occurred to me today as I submitted to the urge to eat a beef Pot Noodle, is that I was eating something which fully encapsulates the feeling that - contrary to New Labour's stolen D:Ream anthem in 1997 - things have only got worse. By 'things', I don't mean ALL things, of course. It's quite useful not to have to change plugs anymore and I guess the internet has some benefits; but most stuff is RUBBISH compared to before. Have you tasted a beef Pot Noodle recently? It tastes nothing like it did in 1989 and in that sense it is the ideal metaphor for the slow, inexorable descent into this abyss of rubbishness in which we reside.
For one thing, it is far less beefy tasting. There used to be the equivalent of a stock cube's worth of artificially flavoured powder, some of which you'd fail to mix in with the water properly and that allowed for a tasty treat at the end of your Pot Noodle as you scooped up a dried morsel from the bottom inside edges. Not even real beef tasted as good as beef Pot Noodle. Maybe the fuckload of salt they put in it helped; and that's another thing missing these days. Pot Noodle used to be a tasty meal to match those microwave roast dinners from the 80s or at the very least it was a hot snack, like having a packet of crisps, only warmer and with rehydrated peas in it. Sadly, I have to report that these days it is bland and unsatisfying.
Much like popular culture in 2019.
With such a range of means of broadcasting artistic entertainment to the masses it is little wonder that the 'quantity over quality' factor leaves us saturated with so much bland popular culture. Today's mainstream popular music - at the height of which stands Ed Bloody Sheeran - lacks beef favouring AND salt. It is watery, insipid, bland and sometimes so bland it just irritates you by the fact that it merely exists and you are aware of it.
My theory is that they've reduced the salt and artificial flavouring in beef Pot Noodle in a condescendingly misguided act of altruism in order to protect 'vulnerable' people with little money and shit diets (due to shit food shopping choices) from getting heart disease and clogging up the under-funded NHS. If I am being (even more) cynical about the link between NHS funding and keeping people healthier, it's worth noting that a daily diet of (salty, beefy) Pot Noodles in 1989 would give you a heart attack that would probably leave you brown bread; whereas now, people survive heart attacks and cost a fortune in after-care.
I myself ate Pot Noodles almost daily at university, mainly as a cheap (45p) alternative to getting up early enough for breakfast in the hall of residence, and managed to stave off a heart attack by balancing my diet with burgers, beer and cigarettes. Not just any Pot Noodle, as some tasted absolutely crap (Sweet and Sour? Fucking hell, that was a precursor for the blandness of all future Pot Noodles), but specifically beef, that chicken one in the green tub with soy sauce and equally delicious, but sadly no longer in production, Chedder cheese and tomato. Again, the disappearance of the Chedder one serves as a metaphor for much that has gone out of life since those days, you know, like the freedom to offend people without them calling you a Nazi or a 'something-o-phobe', or good manners, or people acknowledging when they're in the wrong, or a sense of duty over a demand for entitlement, or walking down the street without staring at your phone and expecting everyone to walk around you, or healthy arguments over issues without regressing to polarised over-simplistic soundbite opinions hurled abusively at each other, or people calling you 'sir' in a shop instead of 'Bruv', or virtues instead of virtue signalling, or trousers worn around your waist, or diving being perceived as cheating in football rather than an effective strategy, or MPs speaking with more dignity than 5 year olds, or pop music that had some bloody SALT AND BEEF to it. THAT is what I think about when I lament the disappearance of Chedder Cheese and Tomato Pot Noodle.
But I'll try not to be too nihilistic about modern life. Knowing that it would taste bland and unsatisfactory like the year 2019, I added salt to that Pot Noodle that I ate today and do you know what? It tasted just a bit more like 1989. So maybe there's some hope for society as well.
Next time, I'll add a beef stock cube as well.
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