I look forward to my weekly volunteering stint at our food bank. It’s become something around which I build the rest of my week, something I prioritise above most other things. I can run through the old cliches about why I like volunteering, in that I genuinely want to put something back into a country that has generally been very good to my mostly migrant ancestors, but most of all I just love it. And, as usual, a small bunch of people, who have become my friends, just enjoy what we do. Helping to ensure people don’t go without food feels like a worthwhile thing to do. It’s quite a contrast to what happened at Windsor Castle the other night.
King Brian hosted German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at what the BBC described as “a glittering, Christmassy state banquet at Windsor Castle.” It’s part of the state visit. Glitzy is certainly one way of describing last night’s menu. Take a look at this:
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Tartlet of hot smoked trout with langoustines, quail eggs and shellfish sauce
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Windsor partridge supreme wrapped in puff pastry with confit cabbage and port sauce
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Crushed carrots and swede
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Assortment of winter vegetables
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Baked Alaska with blackberry, vanilla and raspberry ice creams
There was a special cocktail for the event, made with cherry brandy and chocolate, which was meant to evoke the classic retro flavour of Black Forest gateau.
That all sounds pretty disgusting to me – I’d have asked for egg and chips – but what struck me was the sheer number of guests. 150 people wined and dined with Brian, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Prince William and Kate Middleton. Add to that a military parade on the manicured lawns inside Windsor Castle, with 850 service personnel and 150 horses taking part and this was not a cheap day out. And who paid for it? Let’s put it this way: it wasn’t King Brian or any of the royals. No. It was you and me.
Now I appreciate that in terms of what the country actually spends on everything, the expenditure for Brian’s posh night out is relative peanuts in the grand scheme of things, but the contrast with what I shall see tomorrow is gob-smacking.
If Brian and his guests were eating tinned meat, with tinned potatoes and tinned vegetables, all washed down with a glass of squash, followed, if they were lucky, by a tin of rice pudding, his Big Night Out might resemble my somewhat quieter affair. But it’s not half a world away: it’s a whole world away.
Yes, I do understand the arguments about how the royals exercise ‘soft’ power by way of attending such meetings, which are purely ceremonial, but with the best part of 14 million people in food poverty I find the whole quite revolting. It will be the precise opposite of the world I live in every week at our food bank.
Allow me to be controversial. If the government can pay for very rich people to eat very posh food, then why can’t it ensure that poor people can afford to eat at all? After all, the royals overcame the same odds as we did to be born at all: one in 400 trillion. It’s just their even greater luck to have been born into extreme wealth and privilege. Why should Brian and co be happily tucking into their Windsor partridge supreme wrapped in puff pastry with confit cabbage and port sauce when the people I’ll be helping tomorrow will be choosing between baked beans and a tin of spaghetti?
Not that I am in any way opposed to us being on the best of terms with our German friends. Au contraire, Queen Victoria was married to Prince Albert, a German gentleman. We’ve had our differences over the years, that’s for sure. However, maybe I’d have preferred it if Brian hadn’t dipped into his formidable savings and paid for the banquet himself.
The banquet and the food bank is Britain in a nutshell. I fear that we will still be talking about this in 50 years when William’s son has Brian’s job. And I fear that millions of desperate people will be using food banks, too.
