3 ms·
There's a great sequence in Bill Forsyth's "comfort and joy" where somebody records their ice cream van jingle on a kids toy xylophone and plays it through a ha
by ggm 2mo ago
There's a great sequence in Bill Forsyth's "comfort and joy" where somebody records their ice cream van jingle on a kids toy xylophone and plays it through a handheld PA. Just the right degree of mind-numbing repetitiveness and decibel ear busting noise.
It's fictionalised from very real British experiences with ice cream and fish and chips, working class communities, Italian family business, crime. And of course deep fried ice cream. I worked in an Italian migrants coffee bar/greasy spoon as a dish pig in 1970s edinburgh, the local chip shop and ice cream scene was almost entirely Italian, in some parts of Scotland going back to the end of the 19th century.
For some people the "99" from a van with a squirt of raspberry sauce is a key childhood memory, a lift from the darkness of intergenerational mass unemployment, and rainy day holidays on stoney beaches.
Gelato is posh. Mr Whippy is what poor people ate.
- pasc1878 2mo agoM r Whippy and 99s are still there (although called flake now) having had them on a few of the recent hot days
- ndsipa_pomu 2mo agoAlso of note is that the "99 flake" ice cream features in the manifesto of Count Binface - he wants to reduce their price to 99p.
- roryirvine 2mo agoContinuing the political link forged by Margaret Thatcher, who worked on the emulsifiers used in Lyons Maid's Mister Softee soft serve product. And that was very much not the golden age of British ice cream - the original UK soft serve, Walls' Mr Whippy, was a mix of lard, sugar, whey, emulsifiers, and artificial flavourings. Mister Softee used coconut fat & palm oil instead of lard, which proved to be more successful and modern Mr Whippy now has a similar recipe. (There's an earlier American product also called Mister Softee, but I believe that was based on cream mixed with corn syrup so was quite different to the stuff from UK ice cream vans)
- flir 2mo agoI wasn't allowed the soft-serve stuff (Mr Whippy). My mum didn't trust the machines not to be little food poisoning incubators. (And it looks like she was right: https://researchportal.ukhsa.gov.uk/en/publications/the-microbiological-quality-of-soft-ice-cream-from-fixed-premises/ https://researchportal.ukhsa.gov.uk/en/publications/the-micr...) You know, this is probably why I never got slushies, either.
- pseudohadamard 2mo agoWas there ever a Mr.Chainy?
- flir 2mo agoI think he taught geography.