What hummus has to do with hummus

When this question was posed on my other blog, I think my initial response was "Everything and nothing, much the same as anything else, really" and a general reluctance to get trapped in even the tastiest of feedback loops. But this was wrong. Or at least only partially right. Anyway, it's probably not what Ferdinand de Saussure would have said. Nor an etymologist. Nor perhaps even a food obsessed historian (assuming he didn't have his mouth full).

First, the obvious semiotic observation: just as we all (in the English speaking world) have agreed upon the word "semiotic" as the sound or symbol which refers to, or indeed signifies, the state of being only partially an idiot, so the word "hummus" is only an agreed (and less tasty) substitute for any substance which bears some base resemblance to a dippable blending of chickpeas, sesame, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice.

However, we can't stop there. The question then arises, at what point does the signifier cease to refer to the signified - is "hummus" still hummus if, for instance, it contains barely even one chickpea but instead quite a few broad beans? Moreover, is there a Platonic ideal for hummus, and if so can we get the recipe? Or are the Greeks still mad at us over that Marbles thing?

And even that isn't the full story. Let's look now at the etymology.

According to Wikipedia, the first recorded use of the word only goes back as far as 18th-century Damascus, which of course isn't even in Greece, and it was actually spelled like this: حُمُّص بطحينة (ḥummuṣ bi ṭaḥīna). In fact, "hummus" is only our closest approximation, and you'd have to ask someone from Turkey for decayed organic matter from the ground before you'd get what you were after (which indeed someone must have done because it was apparently from Turkish that the word first entered our language).

To go back further, though, requires that we turn to those masters of informed (but often mostly baseless) speculation: the historians. And, erm, recipe book writers, apparently: 12th century Egypt, says one food botherer. But slightly more believable is mention of a much nuttier variant, which also swapped vinegar for lemon juice, found in a 13th century Arab cookbook called Kitab Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada bi-Pukka by Djami al-Ivr.

Perhaps I was right, then, when I said "everything and nothing" - "hummus" is not entirely hummus, yet what is hummus anyway, and is its history (or lack thereof) not somehow visible in "hummus", if you look hard enough? - but at least now I know why. Even if I am suddenly a bit peckish...

(I really should have thought about that danger before I started this nonsense).

~~~~~~~

On an almost completely different tangent, look at this:


I suppose one day people will wonder where so many of these things came from. Maybe they'll call themselves etsymologists.

What it has to do with Pearl Jam

This is usually a hidden track, apparently, which is probably for the best:



And here's what happens if you play it at the wrong speed:

Reggie Perrin: the remake

At first I assumed that this series would contain very little hummus - most likely none at all in fact, since I always have very low expectations of remakes. But, as with Doctor Who, it seems my pessimism was misplaced (not that Doctor Who had much hummus in, it just wasn't rubbish).

Let us examine, then, what Reggie Perrin has to do with hummus.

In the early episodes, I'll admit I feared my suspicions had been depressingly accurate. Not even so much as a glimpse of a chickpea, not even when there was a party. Worse still, the more I watched the more I found myself hoping not to see one. Any hummus that might appear here would doubtless be underwritten and unconvincing, it might even wobble like the set, and I don't think I could cope with that. Bad hummus makes me very dispirited.

But no, I needn't have worried. Soon enough, something about the internal power dynamic of the show began to ring familiar. A tang of garlic entered the televisual air... Was it? No, it couldn't be... Yes! It was! I could almost taste it!

On this show of crudely cut minor characters, I finally realised, but one thing existed that hadn't been woefully underwritten, one thing that wasn't so bland it could have come from ASDA, one thing mordantly sitting right at the centre of it all, one thing that somehow made it all just about worthwhile if you could ignore the rest: Reggie Perrin himself, came the epiphany, was a hummus among crudités! A giant, rubber-lipped, big-eared, morose hummus!

True, a couple of the characters - the Wellness Woman, Geoffrey Whitehead, Reggie's Mum - could, perhaps, be tolerable enough in their own right to count as, say, carrot batons. But what is a carrot without hummus? It's just a slightly sweet orange stick that hasn't realised it's full potential.

The celery sticks? The slightly limp bits of cucumber?

As in real life, the less said about them the better, probably. But I suppose something has to be left beside the empty tub at the end of the party. And as Reggie stands there, at the end of the series, stark naked on a stark, grey, empty British beach steeling himself to stride fatefully out to sea, is that not what it is? The end of the party?

Ultimately, then, perhaps this is how the show is best understood: as an extended riff on what is too often the place of hummus in modern Britain. A glorious, bitingly flavoursome hummus, some largely disappointing crudités, and a room full of braying idiots who'll laugh at anything and everything because they're probably drunk and got in for free - we all know the scene - and how joyously postmodern to implicate the studio audience in a satire of themselves!

And all this in primetime! It's almost enough to make you believe in BBC1 sitcoms again.

You actually checked?

Wow.

Even I didn't really believe me...


Well anyway, it won't be every day. That's for damned sure. (Or possibly any day).

UPDATE: Okay, so it'll be at least one day. Though I'm still damned if I know why.