Ok I'm starting with a (homemade) joke to put you in a good humour and make up for the fact that I am massive slacker who hasn't blogged for a lifetime. A post is way overdue and I came home specifically to write, and yet I have still spent the last hour reading Game of Thrones instead. But it's really good! Reading inside, alone, on a sunny Friday afternoon? Massive slacker? Massive loser more like.
I don't expect that you need to ask what I'll be writing about today, having read all about it in the press. Oh those paparazzi scoundrels, hounding me day and night... No? You haven't heard? Ah maybe you don't get the Westmorland Gazette...and then read it all the way to the very, very end...
Well anyway, last week Nikki and I spent a day on work experience with Nik and Peter at Kendal Fish and Seafoods and I have to say that I think the biggest revelation of the altogether very revealing day was not that I am crap at filleting, or that pin-boning is like plucking eyebrows, it was that people who go into fishmongers buy fish. I mean, they actually buy fish! Or fishes even! No joke.
Ok let me expand *Lindsay gets a bit bigger*. Thanks. Now let me elaborate.
I pretty much assumed that there would be a line of people queuing up for the cod and haddock on offer, each one pulling a gargoylesque face at the gurnard, the brill, and the rest of the counter full of more interesting-tasting fish than cod. But I was a mile off the mark. The lovely fishmonger customers were giving cod the cold-shoulder and buying the more interesting-tasting fish! I wanted to run and hug each one of them, but that would have been weird.
Speaking of weird, check out these pics! (No offence, Nik!)
Interesting results though eh! But obvious now I come to think of it and oops, lookout here comes my latest theory...
If you have a bit of an appreciation of nice fish then there are two things you probably won't do very often, and they go hand in hand: you won't buy fish from a supermarket, and you won't buy cod (it's a bit of an unexciting fish which has done little to warrant its price except become overfished - that old chestnut!).
Whereas if you have no knowledge of nice fish, then you might do exactly those two things, simply out of a lack of confidence with / awareness of the alternatives available.
So I don't need to persuade fishmonger-goers to buy a variety of fish. Grannies sucking eggs and all that. What I need to do is persuade 'The Others' to go to the fishmongers, period. (Full stop). Just get them through the door and then worry about it...
And it would seem that there is a certain type of person that does not frequent fishmonger counters - the type of person who is under 60 years of age. Yep you know the ones, those people without grey hair... the problem as it might seem, is that glancing at a cross-section of the Kendal fishmonger customers would lead you to the conclusion that Kendal is actually a large retirement home.
(Oh I am being a little generalistic, but generally speaking, the general case was that the general customer was generally in their 60s - 80s. And of course we want to do a similar survey on a Saturday).
But how on earth to get the next generations interested in buying better fish? If you were sitting next to me I swear you would be able to hear my brain frantically trying to find an answer to this question, preferable one that is achievable in the next 13 months... Tick tock whirrrrrr "Excuse me, was that your brain making that noise?"
I'll let you know what I come up with!
Earlier I sent a text message which included the phrase 'I'm just trying to squeeze a blog out'.
What's happening to me?!
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