Low Culture Podcast sampler: The Ploughman's Lunch

This is a taster for the main Quietus Low Culture Podcast, released each month exclusively for our subscribers – you can find out about all the other perks they get here. "Taster' is the right word, too. Back in the stressful early days of The Quietus John and Luke would often cheer themselves up by heading to the shops to purchase the constituent parts of a ploughman's lunch – the traditional trio of bread, cheese and onions. But then, as the site expanded, so did their culinary horizons, and they branched out into Europe and beyond, inventing the French ‘homme de charrou’, the Spanish ‘arado de hombre’, and so on. Regular readers and listeners will know that the site’s founders are big believers in pushing the cause of neglected or threatened culture, so when they heard tidings that the ploughman's lunch was in a state of crisis and decline, they knew they had to act and make it the subject of The Low Culture Podcast. So in this month’s episode, Luke and John leash their horses to the nearest gatepost, untie their neckerchiefs from a stick, and unwrap their ideal ploughman's lunch (a giant slab of cheddar, freshly baked bread, at least three onion-related items) as they discuss the storied history of this most humble repast. Although John was unable to find a ploughman's lunch being served in the pubs of Rotherham, the town where the modern plough was invented, it was in William Langland’s 14th century poem *Piers Plowman* that we arguably encounter the first reference to what would become the ploughman's lunch. The vernacular meal occasionally appeared in the history books and wider culture until the 1950s when, due to stringent wartime rationing, it had fallen out of favour. Concerned by this cheese calamity, the Milk Marketing Board encouraged pubs to serve cheese with beer by codifying the ploughman’s lunch – and this is the dish we know today, much messed around with, and now threatened by rising prices, and competition from hipper alternatives. But is the ploughman's a culture war issue, a symbol of a Britain that never was? These are the important matters we’ll chew over with our pickled onions and cheese, that perfect combination of fat, salt and acid, in this month’s episode. While listening, subscribers will be happy to know that they’ll be getting a discount in the planned Quietus Ploughman’s Lunch Cafe – the ploughman’s fight-back begins here. Thanks to Alannah Chance for producing the podcast. Support the work of tQ by becoming a subscriber here.