I don’t think about the Romans once a day. Fish heads though – unforgettable.

Posted: June 2, 2024 | Author: samsywoodsy | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: cooking, Culture, fish, funny, history, Humour, legacy, roman-empire, roman-history, Romans, rome, Weird |Leave a comment

And if you do, don’t.

The Romans, however, did.

The Romans were entirely obsessed with the Romans; either in the form of making more Romans or removing (violently) those who stubbornly weren’t.

It’s quite something to have an obsession with greatness, such as the Roman empire. I like that. It must be nice, but I don’t have the know-how to be obsessed with helpful things.

Perhaps people, apparently mainly men, look to the Romans for some form of inspiration. ‘Getting things done’ – like the Romans.

Roman roads are still here, a fair few feet down perhaps, but they remain and seem to remain serviceable as a road, despite the millennia. That’s something to aspire to.

The famed military strategy of the tortoise defense (‘testudo’ – leave it to the Romans to make it sound more testicular): positioning a group of soldiers with shields above and at all side, is one that makes sense to a lot of people. So much sense that it makes us presume the Romans were particularly clever, because they put shields on top and all around; the kind of genius idea that everyone thinks of.

And of course, there is the sheer size of the empire, which went forward and conquered at will before sensibly stopping at Scotland and building a wall.

I suppose they also stopped at a lot of other places – like Africa. Having colonised the northern-most reaches of the continent, they must have decided that was enough and that there was no need to start hacking at the undergrowth.

So they stopped. And that, like stopping at Scotland, was probably a good idea in terms of ensuring longevity.

A solid option – longevity.

That’s not me though. I don’t get it.

I’m not Mr Longevity. I’m a breaker.

The Romans built roads that have lasted thousands of years.

I have, however, just failed with fish heads.

£1.50 for two large salmon heads. What could go wrong?

There was a suggestion that it might lead to the contents of a stew, or a stock. Not that I’d be keen on either of those things as an actual outcome, but I was determined to at least do something well.

Not only did I make a proper meal of it (in the perjorative) but it ended up looking like a dog’s breakfast (again -perjorative) that I wouldn’t even feed to my dog, for breakfast or any other meal.

I really gave it a go. I did.

In anticipation of my nature overcoming my ambition, I watched YouTube videos before beginning, trying to understand the right cuts, and the meat to aim for, and the endless cartilage to avoid.

But whilst those Japanese chefs and fisherman (and whatever the profession in between those to is – very Japanese) were samuraing the whole salmon with an array of exquisite and bespoke weaponry, I just had a steak knife.

By the time I was done, I wondered if animal rights still applied post-mortem. Judging by what I put it through, and by what I put through it: no dead thing should have to endure that.

I literally made it deader.

I hacked, I sawed, I made it talk like a puppet mannequin to see if that would cheer me up, but nothing worked and I remained buyouyed only by the fact that, despite not being able to actually get any flesh off the carcass, my son’s wish at being able to see inside the heads was granted.

Well, truth be told, I did manage to lift some flesh from it, but that was:
1. Weird because the limited variety of knives I employed weren’t effective and I resorted to pinching and tearing (perhaps even teasing) the meat from the constant cartillage with my fingers.
2. It resulted in such a demur little mound of meat that it in fact demoralised me more than the fish would have if it could ghostly re-visit it’s earthly remains and understand its longest lasting legacy would be the whiff.

The whiff.

Oh, the whiff.

It was the first thing my wife said to me when she came home. “Sam, what’s that smell?!” followed by seeing what I was doing: “OH MY GOD“.

Then she shut the kitchen door on me and led the children away to not be tainted by it.

It reeked, even overcoming the stench of my own failure.

Abandoning the project, I took the fish heads and the many pieces of fish head outside to the bin so that it could become the neighbourhood’s problem.

I then washed my fingers, sprayed them with aftershave, antibacterial gel, soap-shampoo-shower gel, bath-shower-basin, until after a couple of days I had to resort to chopping onions to overcome the salmon’s legacy.

What would a Roman have made of this?

Something longer-lasting, probably.

Like a temple dedicated to when the fish heads were easily and violently defeated and turned into fish-stock.

The Romans, and I, we’re not the same. So, I tend not to think of them.

But, and this is obviously the ego in me speaking, whilst the Romans were highly accomplished at most things – I’ll bet no empire on Earth could such a mess as I did with those fish heads.

We’re fumigating the house on account of the whiff.

All doors and windows open.

I think I’ll think about those fish heads till the day I die.

Maybe my kids will too. Sorry; legacy.

Sam

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