Cheese

Published in the Idler 2003


Practical Idler

Cheese Review

Grandma Singleton’s Extra Tasty

The soft gold colour, and yielding crumbly texture belie the hidden strengths of this singularly assertive cheese. Unless you intend to blight your afternoon with meetings, this pungent date-killer is strongly recommended as a fortifying lunch time snack.

Nose

The cheese gives off the kind of honk that the cartoonists from the Beano indicate with wavy green lines, fainting dentists and gasping kids with pegs on their noses. However, in the same way that a damp Labrador’s head or your oldest trainers are strangely pleasurable to sniff, so the ripe blasts from a slab of Grandma Singleton’s quickly become delightful, evoking feelings of warmth, comfort and potent vitality.

Flavour

Initially delicate and mellow, like a good farmhouse cheddar, becoming increasingly fruity and intense. Just when you’re beginning to feel that the cheese has bitten you rather than the other way around, a warm whisky-like glow spreads round your gullet, and life seems suddenly kinder.

Drink

Strong brown tea, red wine.

Best eaten with

Thick brown bread, tomatoes.

Best tried in

Lancashire, South Cumbria.


Sam Jordison