My strategic plan for 2014 included the creation a new shop area selling traditional foodstuffs made in the village of Unreason. Sadly, a quick bit of research on Wikipedia has suggested that the ancient county of Unreasonshire is a bit of a culinary wasteland. I managed to identify an 'Unreasonable Sausage' but the recipe has been lost in time following the extinction of the Eurasian Brown Bear and the Norman Conquest (the two events may be unrelated but I'm not so sure - anyway the result was a more garlic based cuisine).
Undaunted I decided to follow the great British tradition of ... inventing traditions. Thus we now have a well stocked Unreasonable shop full of historically accurate local foodstuffs. The trick is to present the past with confidence. The advantage of a museum is that it has a perceived voice of authority. A museum is a museum, therefore my museum is the same in the public mind as the British Museum or the Smithsonian. I assume that these museums know what they are doing and that most of what they present isn't made up. Thus the intellectual rigour of the great national museums of the world allows me to get away with murder. I mean murder in the philosophical sense rather than literally... certainly after complaints from the local police authority about the plans for my new interactive crime and punishment display based on the Game of Thrones...erm I mean the Wars of the Roses.
Instead in 2014 summer season the Museum of Unreason has exhibitions on everything except World War I. In fact the August 2014 exhibition will be called 'Don't Mention the War' - a celebration of the fact that John Cleese's VW Beetle broke down by the village green in 1975 on the way to Weston-super-Mare, whereupon he beat the recalcitrant vehicle with a Juniper bush. Thus the greatest British TV comedy of the 20th Century, Fawlty Towers, was born. I've been training the volunteers to goose step up and down the museum to the sound of Hitler's speeches in preparation.
Anyway I digress. The first event of the year is happening over Easter to launch our shop. It is the 1,125th Olde Medieaval Unr'ason Foode Fayre. It is a reinstatement of a traditional event held annually from 889 to 889 instigated when Alfred the Great burnt the Unreason Barm Cakes.
The traditional Unreason foodstuffs on display and available to sample are:
- Bongers and Mush - hemp sausage and sweet potato
- Spotted Cock - Chicken with currants
- Toad in the Hail - Iced frog
- Fish and Chips - battered cod and deep fried potato slices
- Cottage Pie - Baked roof thatch
- Unreasonable Hotpot - stewed Lancastrians
- Bubble and Squeak - roast mouse in washing up liquid
- Ploughman's Lunchbox - Meat and two veg.
- Jellied Owls - Strawberry jelly laced with caffeine
- Hot Cross Bunnies - more of a pastime involving hot pokers - but the results are often edible
The traditional Unreason drinks are:
- Unreason Farmhouse Cyder - Gooseberry Cider and Cyanide
- U.P.A. - Unreason Pail Ail - a hoppy light beer made from sheep dung - named after its side effects
- Whiskpee - traditional stills are still to be found in the outside toilets of many Unreason cottages.
- Unreason Grope Whine - Unreason is too far north for grapes to grow successfully to create vintage wines, but the local produce was used to power the early mechanised tractors until the accidental addition of whiskpee means that this nourishing drink now powers many Formula 1 cars. Sip with care.
- Laud-a-Bomb - Brandy mixed with morphine and nitroglycerin mixed by monks from the Benedictine abbey of St. Borstal's (a pint of this is what made me miss the whole of March)
The local hospital is on alert and all police leave has been cancelled. So come along for an event that will not linger long in the memory and result in guaranteed colonic irrigation.
However there is a broader lesson to be learned here. The government is worried about social cohesion and the break down of society. What keeps a community together is a sense of shared identity that is primarily rooted in the past. Whether this past is historically accurate or not is irrelevant. Thus museums have a duty to make up a past that is better and more inclusive than real life can provide. Thus by making up the past, we preserve the future and what better service can a museum provide than that. At Unreason we do it by identifying and pandering to British drinking culture and increasing societal obesity - and so everybody wins.
Next Month in Unreason:
Beating the Bounds and Well Dressing - come and join us for the traditional hunting down of immigrants with baseball bats and throwing them down wells. A pastime enjoyed by the stout yeomen of England since the founding of UKIP in 1993.
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