Feasting on the remnants of my edible Christmas presents in the course of the in any other case frugal month of January, I skilled a frisson once
Feasting on the remnants of my edible Christmas presents in the course of the in any other case frugal month of January, I skilled a frisson once I opened the field of Thorntons ‘Continental’ goodies.
For anybody who grew up within the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the phrase ‘Continental’ carries with it a waft of balmy air from the Mediterranean, a way of longed-for glamour, pleasure and breakfast on a balcony, unavailable on this wet, cut-off island. I’m questioning whether or not, as we go away the EU and return to being a small nation throughout the water from a many-countried, hotter landmass, the phrase ‘Continental’, and the idea, will come again into use. Do different small international locations throughout our bodies of water from giant continents have this idea? Do Madagascans communicate of glamorous gadgets from mainland Africa as ‘Continental’? Do Sri Lankans name Indian issues ‘Continental’, or maybe ‘sub-Continental’?
Of all of the Thorntons ranges, the ‘Continental’ choice was at all times essentially the most attractive. It has (and nonetheless has) silhouettes of Milan Cathedral, St Peter’s and the Acropolis spherical the sting. ‘Impressed by travelling throughout Europe seeking wealthy and delicate style experiences’, Thorntons dreamed up the darkish Italian Panforte, the cupcake-like Dutch Speculoos, and the Spanish Turron that is available in squishy white slices. The flavours, I admit, appear slightly brash and over-sweet on this age of Rococo and Prestat, however the air of glamour clings on.
Keep in mind the Continental quilt? The Continental breakfast? The Continental tent? How we fantasised! The Continental quilt launched an entire new lifestyle in mattress: carefree abandon and downy flinging, after centuries of mendacity inflexible beneath tucked-in sheets and itchy blankets. The Continental breakfast made you think about you had been on honeymoon in Antibes. As for the Continental tent, it had rooms. What a breakthrough from one-bedroom-only tents! Out of the blue you possibly can sit within the living-room of your tent and look out of the window whereas enjoying Monopoly. To find out about these unique, new-fangled gadgets was a cultural signaller.
Typically ‘Continental’ gadgets weren’t all they had been cracked as much as be. The Continental breakfast, for instance, quickly grew to become a mere euphemism for a not-cooked breakfast, touted by British inns to economize. It was a bit dismal, and everybody missed the eggs and bacon. The restaurant I longed to go to in Canterbury within the 1970s was the Continental Grill. Its signature dish was the Combined Grill: a frightening array of charred items of meat, together with liver, garnished with one giant mushroom and half a grilled tomato. Not fairly as Continental because it aspired to be.
Continental pillows had been bewildering. There have been two sorts: the primary had been sq. pillows, which don’t actually work, as you need to transfer your head midway down the mattress to relaxation on one, inflicting your ft to stay out on the different finish. The opposite type, immortalised in Lucian Freud’s portray of his bleak honey-moon in a Paris lodge room with Caroline Blackwood, was the ‘bolster’ pillow, locked beneath the underside sheet so that you couldn’t simply flip it over for a longed-for blast of coldness in the course of the night time.
As Britain grew to become more and more built-in into the EU in the course of the 1980s, the adjective ‘Continental’ was outmoded by the invented prefix ‘Euro-’. A few of us sighed, wishing that the lethal uninteresting identify of the brand new European foreign money might have been one thing extra romantic, such because the Continental shilling.
However no — ‘Euro’ took over. The Continental Grill closed down, as did many inns with that identify. Of their place got here a brand new world idea: inns calling themselves the ‘Inter-Continental’. That identify had not one of the light, Riviera allure of ‘Continental’. ‘Inter-Continental’ urged jetlagged businessmen flying in on Cathay Pacific and ordering shark-fin soup from the room-service menu.
Just a few inns referred to as the ‘Continental’ managed to cling on, and nonetheless do to today. Effectively completed them. There’s a Continental Resort in Hounslow. I visited it final week, and was reminded, as soon as once more, of the slight sense of anticlimax while you’ve been constructing as much as the thought of one thing being Continental. Nothing mistaken with this 1970s-built lodge, and the Romanian bar waitress was totally charming, however the overwhelming sense was of brown: brown carpets, brown armchairs, brown slatted wooden partitions, and brown padded leather-based behind the banquettes within the empty restaurant. There’s a Resort Continental (spot the unique adjective-after-noun) in Whitstable, whose menu lettering is charmingly 1920s-Agatha Christie.
Realising that the phrase ‘Continental’ was turning into barely antiquated, the Continental Resort in Plymouth modified its identify to the New Continental Resort, and the Bentley Continental (automotive) modified its identify to the Bentley New Continental. These had been canny acts of reinvention, slightly like New Labour.
It could be pleasant if the prefix ‘Euro-’ might now be phased out…