First Catch Your Herring

First catch your herring. There are still plenty about: in Holland and Scandinavia fresh and pickled herring remain ubiquitous – a very palatable brand of cured herrings is sold in a certain well-known furniture store – and elsewhere in Europe a cured herring is not hard to find. We still have our kippers, if sadly less common than previously, but a good fresh herring is not so easy to find.

They are bony swine, herrings, but we used to put up with that. They were a staple of our childhood diet, rolled in porridge and fried in butter, as Mother had not grasped that there was a difference between oat flakes and oatmeal. We picked our way through the bones gladly enough and as far as the soft roes were concerned we didn’t know what we were missing, since they were spirited away for our parents’ dinner, to be eaten after we were tucked up in bed.