Peaches

A few random thoughts inspired by last night's dessert.

A few years ago, the idea of anybody naming their daughter Peaches would have been considered distinctly odd.  Then Bob Geldorf did it.  I'm not sure that anyone has followed suit, but by now it doesn't seem particularly odd any more.  Especially when you think of some of the other names that children have been saddled with.  Yes, I know that last sentence should really read, "Particularly when you consider some of the other names with which children have been saddled" but who cares?  Anyway, other strange names.  Two children at my grandson's school were named Scooter and Box.  I have to wonder what possessed their parents.

I think the funniest name I have come across - and this is true, I swear it - belonged to a customer whose surname was Pisitpong.  Just to make matters worse, his initial was I.

       "Mr Sandman, bring me a dream.
       Make her complexion like peaches and cream."
Why on earth would anyone want a complexion like peaches and cream?  All sort of blotchy red, yellow and white?

Way, way back we didn't get fresh peaches in this country; we could only buy them in tins.

On the occasions when we were invited to my grandmother's for Sunday tea, the tinned peaches would be in the centre of the table, decanted into a large fruit bowl.  After we had eaten the required two slices of bread and butter, we were served with peach slices in smaller fruit bowls, part of the set with the large bowl.  The special fruit spoons (including a matching serving spoon) would have been taken from the padded box in which they resided when not in use.  These were rather oddly shaped spoons, not unlike these:

(Does anyone ever use fruit spoons these days?)  Cream was never served.  Perhaps it was unobtainable, or maybe simply too expensive?  Instead, we poured evaporated milk on the peach slices and thought we were eating peaches and cream.