It’s another election day and as usual the community centre is being used as a polling station. It’s a 17 hour shift for the council workers staffing the registration desks; although they can take breaks they aren’t allowed to leave the premises. Catching voters on their way in to direct them to the appropriate voting room is Jim, who sports a bushy Sam Elliot style mustache, and is dressed all in black with round-rimmed spectacles and a beret.
Jim emigrated to the UK from Australia back in the early 1980s with a dream. Jim’s dream was to bring rotisserie style barbecue chicken to England. It was all the rage down-under. What happened Jim?
“People weren’t ready for it,” he says, wistfully. “Do you remember Spud-U-Like?” I do remember Spud-U-Like. “That’s what everyone was eating,” he continues. Now we’re really going back in time. Spud-U-Like were what passed for fast food in the UK in the early 1980s. McDonalds hadn’t even opened their first store here yet. Wimpy restaurants were around, but they had waiters and table service. Kentucky Fried Chicken had made it over but they were still few and far between. These were the days before pre-packed sandwiches even. Most British people’s idea of fast food was a baked potato. And even that was a novelty. Which is why Jim and his friend thought they could come over and make a killing. They even had a secret rub recipe that they had paid $1100 dollars for (which works out to over 5 grand in today’s money).
“We’ll start small, we thought, open up one restaurant and build on things from there,” Jim explains.
“And how many restaurants did you end up with?”
“Just the one. And that only lasted a year. We couldn’t understand it. Rotisserie chicken was massive back home. Big bucks. But no one wanted them over here.”
“We just wanted baked potatoes.”
“Just Spud-U-Like. That’s right.”
It’s a grim picture of England isn’t it? I’d like to think things have changed since then, but Brexit (the disaster that keeps on giving) suggests otherwise. The English are not, on the whole, a nation of adventurous people. We do not welcome into our lives the new and unfamiliar easily. We are at heart a nation of baked potato eaters.
“Why did you stay here?” I ask Jim, who originally hailed from Queensland, Australia’s sunshine state.
“I liked the weather,” he says.
Community Corner 