Monday 4 January 2016

Alternative Lyrics to Well Known Songs 43 - Just Give Me Mince Pies

(Based on Alex Party 'Don't Give Me Your Lies')

This song is the lament of a working class pie lover; a pie lover who shops at a bakery that turned it's back on the traditions of it's home country, and (shock horror) started baking foreign foodstuffs!  [grumbling of disapproval]  "Boo!  Give us back our pies!  We love our pies!  Pies, chips, mushy peas, cold tea!  We want pies!  #Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land... #"

Alas elevating foreign things over indigenous things is something that frequently happens in England amongst the snobby element of the middle-classes who think themselves a cut above the working man.  Oh yes, in 21st century England snobbery is alive and well, it didn't die out with the Victorians, it just.. evolved..

It's evident in the most fundamental of foodstuffs: the daily bread.  In the Medieval period bread was divided into two types: brown and white.  Brown, unrefined bread was for the peasants, and white refined bread for the middle and upper classes.  During the industrial era the price of bread went down and working class people could afford to buy white bread, formerly the privilege of the middle class.  So what did the Middle-class do in response?  They started eating brown and wholemeal bread!  They started proclaiming the virtues of bran, and fibre, and roughage where formerly they loved the purity of the white loaf.  Why?  Because of snobbery!  The poor working class man had stepped in onto their home turf.  They'd interluded onto the holiest of hollies, they'd despoiled the sacred flower of.. um.. flour!  And as a result of middle-class snobbery they felt compelled to relocate to pastures new, or in this case breads a-new.  Brown loafs became their daily bread.  And it's why there is such a profusion of brown breads: artisan bread, seeded breads, bread with sun dried tomatoes, wholemeal bread with omega-3 fantastico-enriched olive oil from le pretencioso valley in Southern Italy, in supermarkets instead of bog-standard 'bread'.  The multitude of brown breads that we see in our supermarkets is there because of snobbery.

Bread is not the only working class food that's looked down on by the middle-classes.  The entire diet of Northern Europe is given the "Urgh!  How revolting!" treatment.  In the UK it's vogue to trump the Mediterranean diet because it is supposedly exceedingly nutritious, more so than any Northern European diet.  But this is twaddle.  A load of baloney you could say!  One only need to compare the Mediterranean diet with Northern European foods to see that they are pretty much identical, and have been for the past millenia.  The Hanseatic League trading community was based on the trade of oily fish (herring) from Scania, Beer from Northern Germany, and grain from Eastern Europe, all foods that are in the lauded 'Mediterranean diet'.

Mediterranean diet    Northern European Diet
Oily fish                       Oily fish (herring was a favourite in Netherlands and East Anglia)
Pasta                           Bread (bread and pasta are both made from wheat)
Wine                            Beer (both are alcoholic)
Fresh vegetables        Fresh vegetables (greens are greens wherever they are grown)
Olive oil                       Butter (recent studies have shown butter & lard to be very healthy)


So one is then forced to ask "Why do the middle-classes choose a foreign diet over their indigenous one if they are practically identical?"  To which the only proper answer is: "Snobbery my dear fellow."
 
Real men however are not affected by such vanities as snobbery, because they can respect difference, be it horizontal difference (like in the caste system), or vertical difference (like in natural hierarchies).  Men they respect difference.  They don't engage in disdain of others, or ostentatious advertisement of self.  If there's a hierarchy then it's not a hierarchy that looks down.  It's a hierarchy that simply is.  Stephen Hawking's smarter than me.  I'm never gonna win a Nobel prize, (not even for sarcasm!) and that's fine.  Some people are better than others at certain things.  That's just the way it is.
 
To start looking down one's nose at others is snobbery, in simple words: it's just not the done thing.  So we'll leave the snobbery to the foolish element of the middle classes who want to elevate/distance themselves from the working class.  The working classes who live beside them, who breathe their same air, who grow their food, who build their houses, who share their same haplogroup.  Instead of being snobs we'll enjoy what we do, eating pies, mushy peas, white bread or whatever that may be.  Condescension, as they say, is beneath us.
 
Now that's over, we'll move onto this weeks 'Alternative Lyrics..' song.  It is a light-hearted and seasonal (but late) song about a pie lover who shops at a bakery that turned it's back on the traditions of it's home country, and started baking foreign foods.
 
I'll probably re-post this later in the year, BEFORE Christmas.  You know, IN SEASON.  Like any SENSIBLE person would.  (Sotto Voce: God.. I'm such a numpty some times...)


Play the music video above and sing along using the alternative lyrics given below.


# Just Give me Mince Pies #
You make me so mad, oh what can I say?
You used to-bake for England, but then you turned away.
I tried so hard to carry on, but I just need some, need some short-crust love.
Now you're trying to say "come eat my brulee."
But don't you know, I just need, I just need mince pies.

 
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.

 
Pies don't mean nothing to you.
(Nothing to you.)
Filo puff pastry, is all you think to do.
I tried so hard to carry on, but I just need some, need some short-crust love.
Now you're trying to say "come eat my brulee."
But don't you know, I just need, I just need mince pies.

 
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.

 
Just give me, just give me, just give me.
Just give me, just give me mince pies.
Just give me, just give me, just give me.
Just give me, just give me mince pies, oh yeah.

I tried so hard to carry on, but I just need some, need some short-crust love.
Now you're trying to say "come eat my brulee."
But don't you know, I just need, I just need mince pies.

 
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.
Just give me mince pies, mince pies, give me mince pies.



[End of lyrics.]

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