"I'll Have the Lumpy Bumpy", by Kerry McFall

Ramsgate Harbour is a small town that will go down in my personal history as the place where menus offer Bubble and Squeak (steamed cabbage mixed with mashed potatoes, then fried – in other words, leftovers), Lumpy Bumpy (Griff says it’s like Chocolate Banana Pudding on Oreo crust without the bananas and with lots of whipped cream), and yes, even Spotted Dick (still working up the nerve to order that one, but we are told it’s another pudding dessert that has something to do with raisins)!  My theory is that these titles were made up while Mummies were trying to figure out how to persuade their little Verucha Salts to stop screaming and beating Mummy over the head and put their school uniforms on, “What about a nice bit of lumpy bumpy, Darling?”

The first time I ever heard of Bubble and Squeak was in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the Disney movie.  I thought it must be macaroni and cheese, but no, in this case it must have been Mummy trying to come up with a fun name for some pretty yucky leftovers…

Ramsgate also has a beautiful harbor promenade with really good restaurants, a beach, and berths for lots of yachts.  Their claim to fame is the “Miracle of Dunkirk“, where local fishing boats were used to rescue stranded soldiers in WWII. The “Providence”, which brought 2800 soldiers to safety in 30 straight hours, is shown in my sketch at the edge of the harbour wall.  It’s a little boat, it’s a big ocean:

"Ramsgate Harbour" by Kerry McFall

 Such stories are common here, each region having more than one example of how the human spirit and body can stretch and clinch and persist in trauma, most from one of the World Wars, but those are just the newest stories, here the history goes back for eons.  We can never be reminded often enough that we are all immigrants, or migrants, and that the “wars to end all wars” didn’t actually end the gluttony and greed…