In praise of ... the DIY dinner service

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/24/in-praise-of-diy-dinner-service

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Contra the headlines, the killjoys of Liverpool are not quite killing the 150-year-old tradition of wrapping fish and chips in paper. You'll still be free to take a warm paper parcel home from the chippy, but the council wants outdoor tables provided with plates and knives in the (surely vain) hope that these plastic accoutrements to eating will not end up as litter. The story touches a nerve because – even as proliferating polymers are wrapped around food in ever-new shapes – we've lost the art of improvising a dinner set from whatever is around us. For the Vikings, or so the rumour runs, the thing in abundance was severed enemy heads, so skulls became drinking cups. A little more recently, before European regulation intervened, it was not any old paper but newspaper that wrapped up battered cod. OK, we have an interest here, but reuse is greener than recycling, even if not quite as green as the banana leaves on which Keralans dish up thalis.