Fake 53

When my father's father grew fruit for market about a hundred years ago, the fruit was packed for market in wooden boxes. Boxes of various sizes and shapes, with the owner's name, that is to say the grower's name, stencilled in black on the outside. I imagine the idea was that most of them got returned for re-use, rather like the wooden pallets of today.

And during my childhood, the apples and pears that my father grew in his turn, were stored in such boxes in the garage attached to our suburban home.

While now, many years later, such boxes are not so much used by the people who grow our fruit and vegetables, rather they are used by the people responsible for the décor in cafés and restaurants to give an impression of the country, of people who grow stuff, natural, wholesome and organic. Not an E-number, flavour enhancer or preservative in sight. This despite most of us knowing full well that that the food and drink on offer is actually the product of some more industrial, more factory like operation - and probably chock full of said E-numbers, flavour enhancers and preservatives.

With this being an example taken from the convenient café-canteen in the basement of Central Hall in Westminster. More particularly, an example taken from the buffet lunch being laid out in a room adjoining for the teachers attending a conference which gloried in the name PiXL6.

How do they persuade the health and safety people that all this rough, sawn timber does not harbour all kinds of bugs? Does it get popped into a special sterilizer every night?

Reference 1: https://www.pixl.org.uk/pixl6. Clearly a very slick operation, with membership buying you, inter alia, '4 personalised meetings with a designated Associate who will help implement PiXL strategies successfully in your school'.

Group search key: wsa.