THERE’S A GHOST IN MY HOUSE [127]

Trying to take a complex philosophical concept, that I am only just beginning to understand, and trying to apply it to chocolate, to make it easier and more palatable, may well be the most literal possible example of biting off more than I can chew. However, with long-gone brands, and their tastes, still on the tips of many tongues since childhood, there may no be easier place to start.

What am I talking about? A word that has come to mind a lot recently has been “hauntology,” which was coined in 1993 by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. It is a play on “ontology,” the philosophical study of being, of existence and reality, of how things can be said to exist – the French “ontologie” and “hauntologie” sound identical when spoken. The idea that existence can be haunted comes from Derrida, in his book “Spectres of Marx,” ruminating over how Communism can be said to have failed, with the Soviet Union having been dissolved in 1991, despite Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels opening “The Communist Manifesto” with the idea of Communism being a “spectre... haunting Europe.” If that is the case, the idea of Communism, if it is a ghost, couldn’t be dead – and if it appears in the present, it cannot be said to be of the past either.

I already feel lost, and yet that may be the point, because hauntology essentially replaces the notions of ontology, that there must be something that, well, “is,” and replaces that with something which is neither present or absent, relying on language in order to describe any of it – Derrida was already known for his work on the deconstruction of language in texts, so hauntology was seen as an extension of this work.

How do you apply this theory to chocolate, then? Consider the way chocolate is often talked about: chocolate doesn’t taste as good as it used to be, chocolate bars have become smaller, and we wonder why our favourite bars have never been brought back. The notion of chocolate, as it exists today, is literally haunted, for many people, by the notion that there is a perfect definition of chocolate that either did exist, or may have never existed, forever out of reach, but without a way of moving forward into the future to create something entirely new, you must reach back into the past to recreate something, or create a pastiche – nostalgia leads the way.

This was where I thought Cadbury was heading when their new “Darkmilk” bars were announced. When I first heard of the possibility of eating a dark milk chocolate bar – a darker kind of Dairy Milk, or a smoother-tasting Bournville – I thought, oh, they are trying the Gambit bars again. The Gambit only lasted for a few years in the 1980s, but its literal gambit was blending Dairy Milk and Bournville together, giving you all of both, rather than the best of both. From the taste tests I conducted with family and friends, Cadbury appear to have created something that some people may not have tasted before. In Australia, where Darkmilk first launched, it is also available with chips of dried raspberry – that would be the real game-changer for me.

MY PINK HALF OF THE DRAINPIPE [14]

Here is all I knew about semi-detached houses: I live in one; they are a quintessentially British way to build a place to live; and they are less desirable than a detached house, but more than a terraced house or flat. The last of these made me wonder what kind of question "semis" are trying to solve, and why the answer means they make up about a third of all the housing stock in the UK.

The desirability factor can be seen on the map of any town, from as early as the nineteenth century – semis became a compromise between the rows of terraces found in the centre, and the larger detached houses found on the outskirts, where land was cheaper. This distinction has been muddied due to the spread of new semi-filled suburbs and estates, and the houses themselves being built at a lower cost, or lower standard. 

This is where I lose the point on why we build semis. If you look at one of the most important early examples, the Grade II-listed 3-5 Porchester Terrace, London W2, it is designed to look like a substantial detached house, with a colonnade topped with Grecian urns masking the front doors placed on opposite sides. The designer, John Claudius Loudon, better known as a landscape gardener, wanted the houses to appear as one, giving a sense of dignity to both, rather than each simply being a mirror image of the other.

The semi my mother grew up in, a simpler, more mass-produced post-war design, did keep the front doors on opposite sides, but this was already rare enough to look quite strange, and it annoys me to see how a later occupier has since moved its entrances around to the front, matching what others did to theirs in the same road. But, as extensions, white UPVC windows and loft windows have also been added through the road, the original look was lost long ago.

Regardless of how they now look, semis most adequately fill the need to cost-effectively build a house where someone would actually want to live. They came with a desire to make the area they were found better, giving rise to both front and back gardens, bringing running water inside the house, model towns like Port Sunlight and Bournville, the Garden Cities, cul-de-sacs, building societies, and the mortgage. The semi remains the British middle-class dream, even if you don’t want to think in those terms.

…and yet, semis also exist in across Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada and even the United States – what was their thinking? All I know is, when singing “Santa Baby,” Eartha Kitt (or, if you like, Kylie Minogue) wanted Santa to “fill my stocking with a duplex and [cheques],” they could have set their sights a little higher than just a semi-detached house.