Beans on toast is more a lunch or snack item (eg midnight feast). We might have beans with a full english breakfast (bacon, eggs, sausages etc), but not beans on toast for breakfast. And yes, Heinz is the default.
I think if you said ‘soldiers’ to any Brit, they’d assume toast you dig into soft boiled eggs rather than asparagus spears (which are called ‘asparagus spears’)
I have beans on toast for breakfast sometimes and it was a common breakfast order at the cafe I worked in, especially for kids, though it wasn’t actually listed on the menu.
It’s one of the classic ‘I want something hot but I don’t want to put much effort in’ foodstuffs, suitable for consumption at any time of day. Maybe grate a little cheese on top if you want to perk it up a bit.
…and a splash of HP Sauce.
May I just point out that ‘fag’ in the sense of “in English public schools, a junior who performs certain duties for a senior”, is now archaic and is not something practiced in today’s schools.
‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ introduced us to a public school system where junior boys were systematically bullied by the elders. Tom was roasted and tossed in a blanket by Flashman (later expelled for drunkenness) who later became a literary protagonist in his own right in the George MacDonald Fraser books
Agreed. To be honest, the word ‘fag’ seems to be slipping out of the language, I can’t even remember when someone last used it for its most common meaning, a cigarette.
The word faggott for homosexual appears to have evolved in the following way:
First meaning, a bundle of sticks used for making a fire. Mentioned several times above.
This became a slang word for a skinny, boney woman.
Then the slang shifted to mean an effeminate man.
Then shifted to mean homosexual.
Fags is still common for cigarette in Australia.
Fags was also the name of a candy cigarette [a white sugary stick about the size of a chupachup stick with a red end] that we used to ‘smoke’ last century. To completely and unambiguously disabuse the public of any connotation that children could be encouraged in smoking they cunningly changed the name.
As a slightly regretful part-time smoker from SW England, I can attest that it’s still fairly common down here - though with the younger generation spurning cigarettes, plus assimilating American slang, I can see it being on the way out.
The use of ‘fagged (out)’ to mean ‘exhausted’ or ‘bothered’ seems pretty archaic these days too - perhaps superseded by ‘knackered’ or ‘can’t be arsed’.
Hey, I’m in Brizzle too, I just don’t seem to know any smokers any more (apart from myself - part time only I promise!)
CS Lewis wrote about it in his autobiography and says one of the main duties in the morning was to go to bathroom and sit on the toilet so the seat was warm when the older kid woke up and was ready to go. They were also supposed to start a fire and toast bread over the fire. If the younger student displeased the older student they would be caned by the older student. Depending on which older student the younger kid got it could be horrible.
Are you sure it was C.S. Lewis? Roald Dahl gave pretty much the exact same account. He also used it as the basis for one of his short fiction stories: Galloping Foxley, adapted as an episode of the Tales of the Unexpected TV series.
It’s a staple of tales set in the public schools (aka, exclusive private schools), from Tom Brown’s Schooldays onwards.
Something toasted (with plenty of butter) has likewise been a staple for filling an afternoon gap, whether it’s a doorstep slice of bread, or muffin or crumpet. Still is in plenty of homes. I’m quite partial to a Marmite crumpet myself, especially on a dank winter afternoon.
And thereafter “inconsiderate douchebag like a Harley rider.”
I’ve also heard a derivation from the ‘bundle of sticks used to start a fire’ to ‘bundles of sticks used to burn homosexuals at the stake’ to referring to a derogratory term for homosexuals directly.
I saw the same, but not from any reliable source. You can’t believe everything you read in comics.
So everyone in ancient Rome, a well as all fascists, must have been homosexual.
Only the lictors.
You are correct, I was mixed up. At Lewis’s school the older boys were not assigned one young boy, but could order any young boy to do anything, the chore Lewis mentions is boot polishing. He also mentions that there were some young boys known as Tart who were used as catamites which is where I had assumed the other slang meaning came from.
My father who went to a minor public school in sixties to early seventies told me that when he went in to the school the practice was still in use, but had been banned by the time he left.
Is the term “fag” still used to refer to a log (such as you would put on a fire)?
In Return of the King, Tolkien wrote of Merry or Pippin or whomever putting too many fags on the fire.