Showing posts with label — Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) October 6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label — Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) October 6. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 6, 2026

SAMA HOOLE: A milk boy drank what he carried. It was one of the few perks. A pint on the cart in the dark, cream and all, every morning for 9 years.

Tallest men are from cow country.  --Cal Abasas 

The most famous British film star of the twentieth century spent his childhood delivering milk from a horse and cart, and by eighteen he was six foot two. He was born in 1930 in Fountainbridge, a slum district of Edinburgh that smelled of the brewery and the rubber works. The family had two rooms and shared a lavatory on the stair. As a baby he slept in the bottom drawer of a wardrobe. At nine he got a job before school on a milk round for the St Cuthbert's Co-operative dairy. Up at five, out with the horse, bottles up four flights of tenement stairs and the empties back down. At thirteen he left school and did it full time. A milk boy drank what he carried. It was one of the few perks. A pint on the cart in the dark, cream and all, every morning for nine years. His father was a lorry driver of ordinary height. The boys he had grown up with were small, as slum children were. He was a head taller than all of them. They called him Big Tam. He joined the Navy, took up weights, placed in the Mr Universe contest, drifted into acting, and in 1962 walked onto a screen as James Bond. His name was Sean Connery.

Nobody can prove what did it. But a child from two rooms in Fountainbridge had no business being built like that, and the one thing he had that the others did not was a milk cart. 

SAMA HOOLE: Tallow: Day 5 oil the same as Day 1. Sunflower Oil: Day 5 oil, a different chemical. The chip shop went from the fat that cannot oxidise to the fat that does nothing else . . .

Fried food was never bad for you. The fat was swapped in 1990 and the word fried took the blame. Same potato, same pan, same 180 degrees, same cook. The only thing that changed was what went in on Tuesday. IN TALLOW - No double bonds, nothing for heat to break. - Aldehydes above the pan: barely measurable. - Day five oil: the same as day one. - Smell: Sunday roast. - The chip carries out: potato and beef fat. - Your artery does: nothing. It cannot oxidise. - Your grandparents ate it twice a week and were the leanest generation on record. IN SUNFLOWER OIL - Two double bonds a molecule, breaking from the first hour. - Aldehydes above the pan: up to 200 times the safety limit. - Day five oil: a different chemical. - Smell: the chip shop at closing. - The chip carries out: potato and the reaction. - Your artery does: builds the plaque out of it. - You eat it once a week and feel guilty. The chip shop went from the fat that cannot oxidise to the fat that does nothing else, on the advice of a leaflet, and 30 years later the chip is the villain and the bottle has a heart on it.

Put the dripping back and the chip goes back to being food.