IT'S OVER

Yes folks, it's all over. Hooray! And more to the point, there's nearly £250 for Kidney Research UK safely in the kitty, and thank so much to everyone that thre some spare coins in the slot as you've changed the lives of thousands of people this christmas.

I don't want to go on forever about what I did, and in some respects here is the best, and last, word on workhouse food. Enjoy.

It is Christmas Day in the workhouse,
And the cold, bare walls are bright
With garlands of green and holly,
And the place is a pleasant sight;
For with clean-washed hands and faces,
In a long and hungry line
The paupers sit at the table,
For this is the hour they dine.

And the guardians and their ladies,
Although the wind is east,
Have come in their furs and wrappers,
To watch their charges feast;
To smile and be condescending,
Put pudding on pauper plates.
To be hosts at the workhouse banquet
They've paid for — with the rates.

Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly
With their "Thank'ee kindly, mum's!'"
So long as they fill their stomachs,
What matter it whence it comes!
But one of the old men mutters,
And pushes his plate aside:
"Great God!" he cries, "but it chokes me!
For this is the day she died!"

The guardians gazed in horror,
The master's face went white;
"Did a pauper refuse the pudding?"
"Could their ears believe aright?"
Then the ladies clutched their husbands,
Thinking the man would die,
Struck by a bolt, or something,
By the outraged One on high.

But the pauper sat for a moment,
Then rose 'mid silence grim,
For the others had ceased to chatter
And trembled in every limb.
He looked at the guardians' ladies,
Then, eyeing their lords, he said,
"I eat not the food of villains
Whose hands are foul and red:

"Whose victims cry for vengeance
From their dark, unhallowed graves."
"He's drunk!" said the workhouse master,
"Or else he's mad and raves."
"Not drunk or mad," cried the pauper,
"But only a haunted beast,
Who, torn by the hounds and mangled,
Declines the vulture's feast.

"I care not a curse for the guardians,
And I won't be dragged away;
Just let me have the fit out,
It's only on Christmas Day
That the black past comes to goad me,
And prey on my burning brain;
I'll tell you the rest in a whisper —
I swear I won't shout again.

"Keep your hands off me, curse you!
Hear me right out to the end.
You come here to see how paupers
The season of Christmas spend;.
You come here to watch us feeding,
As they watched the captured beast.
Here's why a penniless pauper
Spits on your paltry feast.

"Do you think I will take your bounty,
And let you smile and think
You're doing a noble action
With the parish's meat and drink?
Where is my wife, you traitors —
The poor old wife you slew?
Yes, by the God above me,
My Nance was killed by you!

'Last winter my wife lay dying,
Starved in a filthy den;
I had never been to the parish —
I came to the parish then.
I swallowed my pride in coming,
For ere the ruin came,
I held up my head as a trader,
And I bore a spotless name.

"I came to the parish, craving
Bread for a starving wife,
Bread for the woman who'd loved me
Through fifty years of life;
And what do you think they told me,
Mocking my awful grief,
That 'the House' was open to us,
But they wouldn't give 'out relief'.

"I slunk to the filthy alley —
'Twas a cold, raw Christmas Eve —
And the bakers' shops were open,
Tempting a man to thieve;
But I clenched my fists together,
Holding my head awry,
So I came to her empty-handed
And mournfully told her why.

"Then I told her the house was open;
She had heard of the ways of that,
For her bloodless cheeks went crimson,
and up in her rags she sat,
Crying, 'Bide the Christmas here, John,
We've never had one apart;
I think I can bear the hunger —
The other would break my heart.'

"All through that eve I watched her,
Holding her hand in mine,
Praying the Lord and weeping,
Till my lips were salt as brine;
I asked her once if she hungered,
And as she answered 'No' ,
T'he moon shone in at the window,
Set in a wreath of snow.

"Then the room was bathed in glory,
And I saw in my darling's eyes
The faraway look of wonder
That comes when the spirit flies;
And her lips were parched and parted,
And her reason came and went.
For she raved of our home in Devon,
Where our happiest years were spent.

"And the accents, long forgotten,
Came back to the tongue once more.
For she talked like the country lassie
I woo'd by the Devon shore;
Then she rose to her feet and trembled,
And fell on the rags and moaned,
And, 'Give me a crust — I'm famished —
For the love of God!' she groaned.

"I rushed from the room like a madman
And flew to the workhouse gate,
Crying, 'Food for a dying woman!'
And the answer came, 'Too late.'
They drove me away with curses;
Then I fought with a dog in the street
And tore from the mongrel's clutches
A crust he was trying to eat.

"Back through the filthy byways!
Back through the trampled slush!
Up to the crazy garret,
Wrapped in an awful hush;
My heart sank down at the threshold,
And I paused with a sudden thrill.
For there, in the silv'ry moonlight,
My Nance lay, cold and still.

"Up to the blackened ceiling,
The sunken eyes were cast —
I knew on those lips, all bloodless,
My name had been the last;
She called for her absent husband —
O God! had I but known! —
Had called in vain, and, in anguish,
Had died in that den — alone.

"Yes, there, in a land of plenty,
Lay a loving woman dead,
Cruelly starved and murdered
for a loaf of the parish bread;
At yonder gate, last Christmas,
I craved for a human life,
You, who would feed us paupers,
What of my murdered wife!"

'There, get ye gone to your dinners,
Don't mind me in the least,
Think of the happy paupers
Eating your Christmas feast;
And when you recount their blessings
In your smug parochial way,
Say what you did for me, too,
Only last Christmas Day."

Thank you and goodnight.

Wednesday, the day before normality resumes.

Breakfast: 1 pint porridge, 6 oz bread
Dinner: 3 oz bread, 4 oz met, 8 oz veg
Supper: 6 oz bread, 1 pint tea


So it's back to bread then. Bread bread bread. Lovely bread.

Only joking, it's rubbish.

Today was a day of lasts. For instance, the last time I'll have to have a whole pint of bloody porridge first thing. I said it before and I'll say it again, it's not possible to ingest that amount of stuff at such an hour. The Porridge isn't a problem in itself, it's the bread. Milky oats and bread? No sir! No I say!

Lunch again, was the meat and veg combo, again, which was passable again. And lo, the tea and bread. For the last time, also, which is a relief.

I can see though why workhouses were, well, in a funny sense of the word, 'popular'. The diet (especially of the urban poor, and even more especially of the urban homeless poor) would have consisted almost solely of begged, stolen or borrowed food. The workhouses.org.uk site gives a good idea of the hand to mouth existence on offer (though the articles by the 'social explorers' of the time seem to comprise almost totally of the old 'cheeky but lovely cockney bootblack' type of noble poor. Who swears a lot). The food in the workhouse - poorly designed, tasteless, bland and soul crushing as it was - offered at least some guarantee of nourishment, and it's surprising how many vagrants actually rated the quality of the gruel at differing institutions.

It's a case now where I think (well, after yet more bread on the morrow), that I might appreciate food a bit more - not just for its existence, but for its variety and quantity as well. And for its lack of consistent quantities of wholemeal bread and gross slop in pints.

Tuesday (the real Tuesday, rather than Tuesday 1A yesterday)

Today was the big day. The biggest day of the week. The day to eclipse all days. For today was MEAT PIE DAY.

MEAT! IN A PIE! WITH NOT A BREAD ROLL IN SIGHT!

My tongue could not handle the strain. I hadn't really appreciated it, but my tongue had got used to the taste of bread - I've even started to become aware of the nuances in taste of bread, so to get hit between the teeth with the combo of meaty beef and potato was a bit of a shock.

I'm starting to worry about how I'll cope after this now. Will I be able to handle the garlic at the staff meal on Thursday? And what about Curry? And lager?

Eeep

Tuesday:

Breakfast: 1 pint porridge, 6 oz bread
Dinner: 1 pint soup, 6 oz bread
Supper: 1 pint tea, 6 oz bread

Look at that! Look at it! There's almost no solid food today!

Now we're onto the home straight, I've found myself thinking a bit more about the realities of what I'm doing. This diet, for me, is a bit of fun, a test to see if it can be done. But I realised today that for thousands of people, this was life. Dull predictability, enough sustenance to keep you living and working to make it worth the parishes while to pay for you. Enough to make it better than starving to death, but not enough to make it the first resort. What happens is you start planning your activities around food - for instance, today I went to the shops first at lunchtime, so that the soup lasted longer into the afternoon. They wouldn't have had that choice.

There's only a few days to go for me before I'm back on a varied, flavoursome diet. What's that line in Band Aid - ''tonight thank God it's them, instead of you?''

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday

Breakfast: 1 pint porridge, 6oz bread
Dinner: 14oz Rice Pudding (and treacle sauce)
Supper: Yet more bread (though with butter - special workhouse treat!)

This is getting depressing. I was actually looking forwards to rice pudding as a treat. And it was, indeed, a treat, and I can see how it would have ended up being the major treat of the week as well. It's sweet, for crying out loud! This is a diet almost totally devoid of sugary food and I bet this would have totally knocked their socks off as well. It did mine! Having said that, it does feel like you have some kind of mouth problem as I don't seem to be eating a hell of a lot of solid food. It's like being six again!

The only problem with tinned rice pudding, by the way, is that there's no skin on it.

Other than that, the main problem is the monotony of it all. There's just no variety - three days in and suddenly all the novelty has gone and it's a cycle of samey-samey from now in. I'm only doing it for a week, and it's sort of sad to think that people had to do this for months, if not years on end.

Sunday - well, it was sorta like Friday, only with added Cocoa. Had first food pangs today in the bus queue, when one lad was stood next to be eating a full Whopper meal from Burger King.

We almost had the spectacle of me grobbling for a chip he dropped. So it's come to this. I am slowly turning into a human pigeon.

Two days in...

Breakfast: 1 pint porridge, 6oz bloody bread
Lunch: 3oz bread, 4oz meat (MEAT!), 8oz veg
Supper: 6oz bread, 1 pint tea (WITH SUGAR!)

Oh cripes. A pint or porridge. A PINT. I don't mind Readybreak, but lets face it, Readybrek is for quitters. People who can't hack proper oats. I tried proper oats. Blimey. It was almost like eating 'stodge' in a mug, only with a milky sheen. I don't mind the porridge though, it's the bread that's annoying. I actually only ate 3 or my regulation 4 rolls this morning cos I couldnt face munching through it. What can I do about the bread? Wholemeal without any manner of drink to go with it is night on abominable - but I can't work out what I could get away with. The only white bread going in the 1870s would have been heavily adulterated with chalk or alum and that might do bad things to my bottom. Ahem.

I might bake my own. Now that'd be a laugh. After the soda bread.....unpleasantness..

Lunch was a riot - Asda stewed steak, tinned potatoes, peas and carrots. Mmmm! It looked.....awful Seriously bad. In the worst way. But (and maybe it's the diet of nothing but bread) it tasted fantastic. The beef was really beefy and again, I could dump the bread in it and forget it was there. And I wasn't hungry at all again.

I haven't weighed myself, but this diet seems to be working.

And tomorrow - 14 OUNCES OF RICE PUDDING! AND BUTTER! AND TREACLE! HOORRAAYYYY!

So, one day down. Six more (ish) to go.

THURSDAY:

Breakfast: 1 pint Cocoa, 6 oz bread
Dinner: 1 pint soup, 6 oz bread
Supper: 1 pint tea, 6 oz bread

That's a lot of bread, right there. It's a lot of bread. A LOT of bread. I don't think I've ever eaten as much bread as that in my life. At least not as much bread without any tasty additions such as butter or marmite. Mmmm, Marmite! Please!

Breakafst was...bloody awful. You just can't mix cocoa and wholemeal bread. You just can't! It can't be done! It's sick inducing! It's like drinking a hot chocolate milkshake while trying to eat bread. But the thing is, it stopped me being hungry. Period. Not a bit of hungryness right up to lunchtime. All hail the Board of Guardians.

One thing I did notice though was how bloody tired I was. Normally I have a cup of tea or coffee first thing, followed by another at about half ten. Today - nothing. I was so bloody sleepy! I was like a pensioner who'd had his sleepy pills, followed by a big roast dinner and a pint of Guinness. This made work slightly harder than it probbably ought to have been.

Oh, and the vomit-soup. It was fine! Not lovely, but fine. Sort of vegetably but at least it soaked up the bread. And lo, I was sated!

And the big news of the day - I CAN HAVE SUGAR IN MY TEA! LET JOY BE UNBOUNDED!