We’re all in the same can

Sometimes we are at our funniest when we are not trying to be funny and this paradox reminds me of an incident in my early childhood. From my youngest years I was interested in words and I often had a dictionary nearby to help me with my reading and I listened carefully to the adult conversations around me, but of course I would sometimes mishear what had been said.

One Sunday when I was seven or eight, we were sitting down as a family to the routine roast dinner (served at lunchtime of course) and it was customary in our family to discuss the issues of the day over this meal. This week the conversation seemed to be centred on racial prejudice and discrimination. I cannot remember what events had prompted this topic; it must have been around 1964 so perhaps appalling incidents in North America had filtered through to our north Yorkshire dining room. Anyway, I was listening avidly to the conversation of my parents and older siblings while I scraped the disgustingly sweet apple sauce off my roast pork. Dad had just said something along the lines of “it doan’t matter nowt what colour a bloke is; it’s what kind of a bloke he is that matters”. I saw this as a good cue for my contribution to the discussion.

“Yes,” I said sententiously. “After all, we are all roman beans!”

I knew by the ensuing silence and the exchange of puzzled glances across the table that I had said either something very profound or something very stupid. My eldest sister Anne was the first to respond, asking with unfeigned curiosity, “Geoffrey, what precisely do you mean by ‘roman beans’?”

“Well, people of course,” I explained (with great patience I thought). “It doesn’t matter if you are Chinese, or African, or English; if you’re a person, you’re a roman bean!”

Another short silence ensued, to be broken by my eldest brother Adrian clapping his hands:

“The lad means ‘human beings’!” he pronounced. There was general hilarity around the table then, while I reddened and in my mortification actually swallowed a forkful of apple sauce without retching. At the same time, ever the exhibitionist, I was a bit pleased to have been the source of some entertainment.

Of course, I now know that there are such things as roman beans, but I’m sure they’d never been heard of in North Yorkshire when I was a nipper and so I am ignorant to this day how I had managed to transmute ‘human beings’ to this leguminous sound-alike. But even now, whenever issues of race are raised, I find myself muttering “we are all roman beans in the same can!”

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