Addendum 

And indeed the Christmas concert I saw some days ago seems to be indeed an old one as due to corona...
https://www.cinetelerevue.be/p/952174782/andre-rieu-christmas-in-london
https://www.axs.com/events/374657/andre-rieu-rescheduled-tickets

yes that tricky "internet"...

At least we'll be able to eat straight bananas to follow our humble pie.

brenogler wrote:

... to follow our humble pie.

Nobody is eating humble pie here, Brenogler. Time now just to stay sane and carry on - so nothing new, then, for most of us.

Also time, I would suggest, to shoot the elephant - humanely, of course.

There are now so many elephants in this room that I would not suggest you use the shooting option. At this point eliminating all the elephants thus far accumulated, however "humanely", presents much the same logistical challenges as the SS reputedly encountered in planning their so-called "final solution". Ammunition, after all, also has to be paid for.

If humble pie is (for reasons not readily comprehensible) "off the menu", are we to take it that all Brexit related gastronomical idioms are equally unwelcome? I mean, having bitten off more than they can chew are all Britons now magically excused from having to eat their own words? Is Britain now so extremely "out to lunch" having been spoon-fed notions of having one's cake and eating it that its denizens would rather bite their tongue than face up to now taking their medicine? Is it trifling or pie-in-the-sky to suggest that eating crow, though indeed a bitter pill to swallow, might in fact be the first step to at least acknowledging the just desserts arising from such a dog's dinner? A fine kettle of fish and all as it may be, and while fully recognising the apparent futility of crying over spilt milk, surely it cannot hurt to admit your goose has been well and truly cooked and that you are all, like said bird (including all those turkeys who voted for Christmas), now well and truly stuffed?

At least acknowledge that you now have a lot on your plate. After all, it's alimentary my dear Watson!

Well, the proof of the pudding (right old Eton Mess it was, too) is in the eating, so perhaps the final course we Brits offer should be a dish best served cold - economically speaking, that is. 


EDIT: not sure whether the smiley should be removed or not. Will leave it for now.

EDIT 2: Have removed the smiley. Might put it back later.

Economically speaking, Britain is now poised to wreak revenge (for what, one wonders, and how)?

Admitting a unicorn into a room already replete with pachyderms probably renders your injected smiley rather superfluous, I reckon. Samuel Beckett at least would have recommended the dramatic scene should be executed completely po-faced to "preserve the humour in aspic and extracted by a discerning audience later at their own pace". Apollinaire on the other hand might have approved of the emoji's insertion - his technique of "planting" an audience member during performances with instructions to guffaw loudly at moments of extreme pathos challenged the boundaries of humour in its day and elevated absurdism to heights far exceeding mere theatrical effect, long before Johnson & Co adopted his gimmick as the basis of their political style.

Am I the only person in this room worried about the obvious - ahem -"sanitary" challenges presented by an abundance of elephants and unicorns in an enclosed space? To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius - "My shovel may be sturdy and my resolve intact, but it is still wise to know when the task ahead exceeds the capacity of either".

There is also a little Dumbo in the straw - a curiosity of my own, really - ahem - it seems that Britain leaving the club will make no difference at all to the other members apart from a bit more room in the lounge - is that a truth? Will their days be brighter as ours in UK apparently will grow ever darker? To be honest I don't think we ever quite fitted in - as also in the dreaded song contest when we tried to design stuff that would appeal to Europe for the occasion and failed miserably ... yet otherwise a trend setter in the musical world. Right I'll get back in me box.

No difference? It has done quite a bit of damage to Ireland already (remember them?), and is set to do more. And some of that damage may be something a tad uglier than mere impoverishment.

Revenge "best served cold", I suppose, for having had the gall to win the Eurovision more times than Why-Home-Mini? Who knows these days what pisses Britons off any more, at least if the "popular press" is anything to go by? Did, for example, the disgruntled masses being denied a chance to assemble in the Royal Albert Hall to belt out a rendition of "Rule (taker) Britannia" in the middle of a pandemic eventually stage the riot they threatened, or did you all muddle through that crisis too without shooting yourselves in a foot that must now already resemble a colander? Have the 42-pounders of the Royal Navy Immigrant Detonation Squad yet been discharged against a "frog pêcheur" who had the temerity to pluck a halibut from inside that portion of sewage discharge which will be forever sovereign territory of the septic Isle? (French trawlers are conspicuously bad at "muddling through" cannon-fire). Are the bananas there still curly?

We, with all the room afforded to us by your glorious exit (cue a "bong" from Ben), can only watch and wonder where the rage will be directed next ...

Good music once though, I'll grant you that.

Patriotism - an interesting notion. Britain does not have a national day - but it has one song that blocks noses and always raises blood pressure. Bits of the Kingdom have their own National days - and lots and lots of patriotic songs - some real tear jerkers too that do not upset anyone. England does not have a National day that is observed with such verve - nor songs to gel the emotional ties. Yet anything  just being English seems to upset many....... this does not upset the English who are used to it and are mildly amused by it also....... which makes them even more annoying. Much as I annoy nordmann, I suppose...... my breathing in and out is only just about condoned.... provided it is hang dogged with shame for the sins of our forebears.... and on going transgressions, of course. 

Ireland has its own share of patriotic fervour and  a well defined identity  manages to get along in the EU with its  bit of overriding fiefdom and the celebration of its own identity  is not condemned by anyone...... we all like getting invite to a St Pat's day booze up.

We of the shot ridden feet find them easier to walk through muddied waters...said she who comes from the region where mud splatchers were once used on the flats. Muddling through the muddied waters - is actually quite a  skilful ploy. Back in my box then - bolt the lid.

Some Idiot Out There wrote:

Well, the proof of the pudding (right old Eton Mess it was, too) is in the eating, so perhaps the final course we Brits offer should be a dish best served cold - economically speaking, that is. 

Crikey, it was just a joke - rather a witty riposte to all nordmann's food-themed digs, I thought. Well, I thought it was quite witty at the time. Not chortling to myself now. Have removed the smiley.

I had three Irish grandparents - my paternal grandfather loathed the English, yet married an English girl, my poor grandmother. The other Irish forebears stayed in Ireland and never spoke to my Irish mother again. Her sin was that, a good Catholic girl, she still married an English,  or rather a half-Irish, Protestant who hated the Irish.

It was a mad world I was born into, my masters, and still is.

My sense of smell and taste has gone all funny - everything tastes of burnt cauliflower cheese. Oh heck (honestly).

Temperance wrote:

Crikey, it was just a joke - rather a witty riposte to all nordmann's food-themed digs, I thought. Well, I thought it was quite witty at the time.

As is how I took it, and a good joke too, as were Nordmann's food-based puns, though he missed the cherry on the top, especially cherry-picked of course. So I'm not sure what everyone is blathering about now. The UK has supposedly won a titanic victory so why are you all still moaning? Anyway, onwards towards those promised sunny uplands where the unicorns gambol and play.

Patriotism, Priscilla? Samuel Johnson, whose famous "scoundrel" quote is often misunderstood to mean a criticism of all patriotism when in fact he was targeting emotive use of the term for nefarious ends as practiced by the then PM William Pitt, could still never have imagined patriotic scoundrelship of the order that converts bananas into rallying cries and poached herring into a declaration of war. If such is the best expression of patriotism a nation's people can muster between them then it is a blessed relief to all and sundry that their "national day" is kept low-key.

Good to know you have found a use for colander-feet. Now, if one can only find a purpose for disfigured visages spitefully deprived of their own noses, maybe something positive can indeed be rescued from this misguided descent into patriotic fervour. It might at least make for an interesting interval act in the Eurovision.

EDIT: Burnt cauliflower cheese is not to be sniffed at, Temp! Seriously, douse yourself in Vitamin D and keep well away from anyone who looks likely to burst into a loud phlegmy chorus of "Britannia Waives The Rules". And smoke like a chimney - nothing dispirits the lurgy more than laughingly daring it to do its worst and race you to the finish line. It worked for me at any rate. Keep safe!

EDIT 2: As witticisms go I had missed the cherry scent, I admit MM, due to the abundant aroma of sour grapes that I maybe mistakenly had detected.  Puns, like lemons, rarely benefit from being strained.

Gosh! Yes! Well! Yeah!   I have just realised my and the English reason for being..... it is to annoy the Irish and French. Have wasted much time  and opportunity there. I shall search for a plant that ought have 4 leaves as a  token..... what a daft notion that is. perhaps soused herrings make for a better symbol but only about .05% of the population know of this treat..... being soused has several meanings of course - such a daft language for having not enough words that some have to double up.
Have diagnosed Temps by telephone and she sounds reasonably normal......unless that is a symptom.

Happy New Year  Res Hist - bring on the next elephant.......

Well, sounding "normal" is hopeful, I suppose.

Yes, here's to a better and friendlier 2021 for the world - and no more rogue elephants.

And here's a nice poem from dear old Alfie Tennyson. Load of sentimental Victorian claptrap, I suppose some might say, but perhaps we need a bit of something vaguely hopeful. Was going to post Hardy's Darkling Thrush, but it's just too grim. I just hope that hope itself isn't the new elephant.

Thank you Temperance for this poem, which I and perhaps some others interpret as a message of hope. Whatever happens in life there is always hope for the future.
We have in Dutch and I think also in French a proverb "zolang er leven is, is er hoop"/"tant qu'il y a de la vie il y a de l'espoir"
(wherever there is life there is hope)


I am nearly sure we learned in our English lessons at school about Alfred Tennyson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson








Not sure that we learned about this poem, but it is in the style of our European  romantic period too. It is therefore perhaps that I so much like the great operas of the late 19th century...

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, we have a saying "Where there's life there's hope" in English so I wonder if it's an expression known in many languages.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Paul, we have a saying "Where there's life there's hope" in English so I wonder if it's an expression known in many languages.

 
Thanks for the just translation LiR. And now I see that I translated the Dutch/French expression wrongly. Literally translated both in Dutch and in French is it, if I am right this time: As long as there is life there is hope.

Kind regards from Paul.

And as in ' Land of Hope and Glory'?   Mmmm words enough to turn the management puce. Possibly belongs in the Political Poetry thread along with some stirring national anthems..... the French one comes to mind.  But one should not pan Pandora during a pandemic....I'm off - perhaps I need some coffee.

I have been overcome with a shameful sense of schadenfreude this morning. It has been reported that the hallowed Food Halls of Marks and Spencer - in Paris, France - are running out of the very popular foods we send there. There are no delicious English cucumber sandwiches to be had - not even for ready Euros money.

Serves them right.

Don't mean it really - just a little joke.

Same here in Oslo where "ICA Gourmet" sells 90% British stuff - probably the only ICA branch that actually makes a profit - and has announced it will be closed for a while pending the suicide squad either coming in off their ledge or more likely for good when the same lemmings try muddling through a plummet while learning that the International Law of Gravity unfortunately still applies.

However it's not the natives who are pissed off about this (90% British also describes their customers), and I assume the same applies in Gay Paris.

Oh, rhubarb, nordmann. Here is the Independent:


Pas Seulement La Nourriture, Mais La Nourriture M&S.


Chicken jalfrezi ready meals, Percy Pigs and Per Una underwear return to the Champs-Élysées today a decade after Marks & Spencer's retreat from Paris prompted protests and the opening of a book of condolences.

The peculiar affection for the British retailer remains undimmed in the French capital, where the store's chief executive, Marc Bolland, announced its return to the 8th arrondissement.

While some shrugged off the opening of the outlet, a loyal following of well-heeled French housewives were pressing their noses up against the windows in anticipation yesterday.

"We love their sandwiches, little cakes, shoes, trousers," said Chantal Bruno and Nicole LeClerceq yesterday. "When the shops closed before, we went to London because we couldn't bear not to have M&S clothes. Paris is not the capital of style, Marks & Spencer is," they added.

Crikey, that last bit from Chantal and Nicole about M&S being the "capital of style" is a bit over-the-top. But the food...

But we have taken back control of our biscuits and of our Percy Pigs - so the French must now learn to live with it and muddle through without our Dodgers Jammy and nos Cochons de Percy.

Going back to "Where there's life there's hope" I found something online which gave an origin though it is "while" rather than "where":-

"Modo liceat vivere, est spes
While there's life, there's hop
- Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor) by Publius Terentius Afer" also known as Terence.

If anyone feels inclined to read the whole blog post here is a link https://www.bookbrowse.com/expressions/detail/index.cfm/expression_number/486/where-theres-life-theres-hope

I watched an item on the news earlier today about hauliers having to fill in time-consuming documents for the customs authority post-Brexit but then that was always going to happen after leaving the EU.

Temperance wrote:

Chicken jalfrezi ready meals, Percy Pigs and Per Una underwear return to the Champs-Élysées today ...

I hope Nicole & Co snap up the Pigs while they can. Turns out their innards are German, so are now subject to tariffs since they're coming from the UK under a false flag. Apparently only the plastic wrapper is "true blue" (I know - the photo doesn't do them justice).

Percy Pigs in Ireland hit by Brexit red tape as M&S warns of tariffs



In a short while Nicole and Chantal, like the rest of us still in the first world, will simply just have to get used to treating ourselves with a little Rosaschweinesüßigkeitener. Not really in the same class of confectional elocutary concision as "Porky Percies" or "gob stoppers" and, like "gob stoppers", they may not quite roll off the tongue - but will still be just as addictively saccharine and porcine in equal measure on the way down.

Percy Pigs are German?

Over the years you have delivered some devastating blows to my various belief systems, nordmann.

But this takes the biscuit. You will be telling us next that M&S does not really exist and never has done. 

Everything is a myth, invented either by the Romans or the British, or both.

I admit defeat.

Your comment reminds me of the gammon (I think that's the current term) who was interviewed through the window of his BMW in the wake of the Brexit "referendum", waxing lyrical about how the country would return to its imperial glory as long as everyone bought British.
"But you're driving a BMW", the reporter observantly noted.
"Yep! Always Beamers, me. Never would use any other make!" the gammon squeaked patriotically.
"A German car?" the reporter tentatively inquired (she wasn't sure where this was going - though just about everyone watching the interview was way ahead of her).
She received a withering look from the gammon who slowed his diction down to patronising tempo and demanded of the young cub "And just what do you think the "B" stands for darling?"
"Bayrisch?" she correctly remembered.

There was a split second in which one could just about see the faintest glimmer of some profound and tragic realisation begin to ignite somewhere in the bloodshot depths of his eyeballs' viscous humour (about the only humour one can attribute to such specimens), but then just as quickly it extinguished itself with much the same impressive alacrity with which the window, the German vehicle, and the gammon retreated into the sunlit uplands in a cloud of carbon monoxide emissions (Volkswagen would have denied the last bit).

"Gammon" is just about the worst, insulting thing to be called in the UK - or likened unto - so thanks for saying I remind you of such a prat, nordmann.

Have a lovely weekend.

I had already corrected my sentence's grammar before you posted, Temp, having read it again once I submitted it. Emphasis now on "your comment" and not "you" as you can see (ie. substance of topic and not character of topic-substance-contributor).

I can predict the altitude of your dudgeons with uncanny accuracy these days - years of practice!

I will have a fantastic weekend - between lockdown and snow drifts I am anticipating an unperturbed descent into cabin fever. Hope yours is equally serene!

I would respectfully suggest that "gammon" is a horrible thing to call anyone, whatever his or her politics. Interesting article here about this particularly unpleasant use of a porcine noun.

Gammon

I notice that the piece mentions that Dickens used the term - I've tracked it down. It's from Nicholas Nickleby:

Mr Gregsbury - the Original "Gammon"

The time had been, when this burst of enthusiasm would have been cheered to the very echo; but now, the deputation received it with chilling coldness. The general impression seemed to be, that as an explanation of Mr. Gregsbury’s political conduct, it did not enter quite enough into detail; and one gentleman in the rear did not scruple to remark aloud, that, for his purpose, it savoured rather too much of a 'gammon' tendency.

The meaning of that term—gammon,' said Mr. Gregsbury, 'is unknown to me. If it means that I grow a little too fervid, or perhaps even hyperbolical, in extolling my native land, I admit the full justice of the remark. I am proud of this free and happy country. My form dilates, my eye glistens, my breast heaves, my heart swells, my bosom burns, when I call to mind her greatness and her glory.

As the New Statesman article notes, Gregsbury was a pompous and corrupt fool, and the term "gammon" was also Victorian slang for "bullshit". Clever old Dickens - but perhaps these days calling someone a "Gregsbury" - if we must insult our political opponents - would be a subtler, if a tad more pretentious, form of abuse.

But does such ill-natured abuse actually get us anywhere?Does it make anything better? I don't think it does. I'm all for wit in political debate, but not for verbal violence. But had better shut up before I put mon pied in it as usual.

PS Still no cucumber sandwiches/Percy Pigs anywhere, not even Barnstaple, let alone Paris. Will life ever return to normal?

When it comes to Brexit I reserve the right to use as violent a language as I deem fit to describe those within your society, Temp, whose own callous and casual disregard for violence (actual, not linguistic) to be suffered by others as long as they could pursue their "little England" fantasies was hardly "ill natured abuse that does not get us anywhere" but "ill natured abuse that delivers us all somewhere very nasty indeed". Which is why I would also not call you a "gammon", or even a "slipper gammon" (that's those smaller cold cuts one ends up eating for weeks after Christmas), and hastily amended my previous post even before you responded to it knowing your propensity to take things as meant for you when they were anything of the kind (what the Irish call an "English" trait, though that's a whole other category of ill natured abuse with its own sliding scale of deservedness).

For the record, my own "første jul middag" this year was a lovely gammon shared with fellow bubble members - Danish of course (the gammon, not the bubblers). They produce by far the best sort, "world beating" in fact, and even did so in Dickens' day though that concept would have been just as beyond the Gregsburys of his time as today. And yes, I'm still working my way through the slippers.

However, as your suggestion was respectful if misguided I will reciprocate with an equally misguided, but respectful, apology should my gammon reference have caused you any offence. And if you think the confectionery pig shortage is bad, wait until you see what's about to happen to clothes in the UK now that the Asians can't profitably contribute to keeping you warm any more.

Start catching anything in your vicinity with a hairy hide, I would advise - I hear it only takes a hundred and fifty rats to make a passable stole. By next winter you could be ahead of the game (literally) and quids in. Just don't even think about trying to sell them online to the Irish though, it's against Johnson's new regulations as well as being a little too gammon even by Mr Gregsbury's standards.

Actually, we have sheep here, nordmann. They share their woolly coats with us. We even knit stuff from it. Knitting like an unpaid factory hand  I have just now made 16 beanie hats for a charity shop. Scoff so ye may, but people are growing vegies for the first time - and I discovered the splendid rapeseed oil after half a life time of  using olive oil for everything apart from my birdseed porridge made with sunflower oil for the queue outside by the bird table.

We also are encouraged to buy cloth made from linen which I think is grown hereabouts.... there's much flax grown here anyway. It may be for the seeds which people need to keep going/ slow down their gut .... not sure which . It really is a trial knowing so little about everything.

Of more importance at the moment is the fact that warehouses and shops everywhere are piled high with clothes that no one will buy because they are not going out and are making do slobbing about the place in favourite really warm and comfortable stuff.  But of course blame someone else for it if you will. No one ever seems to blame what caused uneasy dissatisfaction with the Brussels form of government. Of course not. They are great, perfect, beyond criticism, managing their vaccines as well as they do everything else.... not like our lot who managed only 2.4 million so far.... But then, like Temp.  I voted Remain. We are just having to put with what happens next... they did manage to  give me 2 jabs ... but you may well be excused for quoting as a shining example of how cocked up this my tiny, finished, tin pot island home and its self seeking, daft, govt really is.

Priscilla wrote:

Actually, we have sheep here, nordmann.

Don't I just know it.

Oh, please stop it, you two. Things are awful enough without constant sniping and getting at one another.

Go and disinfect the curtains or something.

I'm going to binge watch the entire Black Adder series now: we must not lose our senses of smell, taste or humour, else we are lost indeed.

To quote some song I used to like: "Have your lost your senses? Here, have mine."

Lambs to the slaughter - each and every one of us. dreadful island to be stuck on. Mark you, I have caught less malaria, dengue fever and typhoid than I did abroad - and there are fewer snakes in the garden, trees and the dark patches out back best left alone. I have not have to live in curfew time as yet or lost sleep from guns in the night - the odd bomb outrage or the jack boots on the cobbles of earlier times abroad. I do not fear the hammer blow on the door at night nor the dominant rules of unelected people living in a far off place.. the  local elected ones are more than enough. And best of all I am not blinkered by the wise depths  of my own opinion. Having voted one way and lost, I will try my best to make the winning vote succeed because that is to my advantage also. But that comes of my being raised on love and not hate, on conciliation and not ongoing outrage, on accepting tolerance and not over weening superiority.

So of course you may know a humble sheep like me when you meet one.... may the Gods be praised we are so very unalike. I reckon its much harder to be me than to be you, tho. There can be nothing more comforting than a self righteous deep rooted faith in one's knowledge of other's failings. Lucky ol' you.

of course your opinion does not phase me a tot - and you know it. An odd kind of friendship.

Oh   dear, Temps, and we were just getting into the swing of it. My   reply above was sent before I read your  Blesssed are the Peacemakers, stuff.
 

I agree about the curtains - no idea what may be lingering in mine.

Priscilla wrote:

So of course you may know a humble sheep like me when you meet one.... .

Your obviously sincerely expressed humility is duly noted.

Your description of "abroad" will also strike a chord with everyone who lives there too, I reckon. If we weren't locked down here I'd run out and check your uncannily astute observations with the neighbours. It always helps to see ourselves as others see us.

Priscilla wrote:

Oh   dear, Temps, and we were just getting into the swing of it. My   reply above was sent before I read your  Blesssed are the Peacemakers, stuff.
 

More like "Bored are the Peacemakers": sadly my blessed - or blessed-signalling - days are well and truly over.

I wish we had a good history argument to get our teeth into instead of one another. Black Adder has just decapitated Richard III  at Bosworth (by mistake) - ah, happy days.

You are of course right - all very childish. My  concern ought be with the problems of mutating viruses. Every year we get a different  flu jab based on the experts world visits and exchanges of info of how the virus has mutated and what is likely to be the year's worst. 
It is an awful thought that this virus  is perhaps doing the same and that different vaccinations will have to be designed for millions of jabs every year.

The giddy dismissive head in the cloud noddies who cannot stay indoors and as clean as possible endanger everything we know.  I am used to  buying food in tropical bazaars = long before fridges and supermarkets and packaging. It meant  that on your return, a shower with all clothes put in washing machine immediately, shoes left outside and hosed down, all food washed in 'pinky' pot permangenate (sp?)  or soapy boiled water and thoroughly cooked ..... and being veerryy careful of fruit and salad...... even the limes in me Tom Collins were soap washed. For about 40 years of my life every drop of water used in our house was boiled.... including for teeth. When you have to do it you can - and you wash hands all the time - we still do because it is a habit now.

So    for me it is no hardship to be extra careful because I did it for years long ago..... and didn't get hepatitus too often  but did often get gut rot - assorted varieties. But that was nothing to what this virus can do. Being unable to breathe is no joke or light matter and a few missed beers in the pub is a cheap price to  pay for not having to suffer it.

Priscilla wrote:

You are of course right - all very childish.

Well, being childish sometimes keeps us sane. I know it helps me (sort of).

The first series of Black Adder is actually rather irritating and extremely childish: I'm fast forwarding to the Black Adder II, the series that Ben Elton wrote. If I remember correctly, the later series are much funnier.

But back to the our friendly little Elephant.

I do hope we are not now - on top of every thing else - going to have a War of Jenkins' Butty. The Guardian's account, not as hysterical as those from other media outlets, has noted the Dutch customs chaps were actually just doing their job very efficiently. Rather ironic that "danger of pathogens being introduced into the Netherlands" by the poor trucker's lunch was mentioned. I should imagine that letting the sandwich in, but making the haulier return whence he came, would have been a safer option.

But It's Lovely Danish Ham on a French Baguette!

Ah, I see the Dutch gammon detector is working fine then ....

(Sorry couldn't resist)

Legal Disclaimer: Any similarity between the gammon stated in this bad joke and actual persons alive and reading this post or dead and still reading this post is purely coincidental and unintentional on the part of the author.

Legal Disclaimer about the Above Disclaimer: No animals, with the possible exception of one pig, were harmed in the making of the above Disclaimer.

The ham sandwiches are hardly a casus belli but all the additional paperwork and uncertainty now required must be affecting small businesses on both sides of the Channel. I wonder how the little 'English Emporium' in nearby Cérèt is managing. It's a tiny shop, no bigger than my dining room, run somewhat oddly by a French couple, and as it's name suggests, it stocks English food specialities.Though they always have Heinz beans, Birds custard powder, Branston pickle, Colmans mustard and HP sauce etc, all these can anyway be bought in larger French supermarkets, so I suspect a lot of the Emporium's trade is in the fancier stuff, for presents and the like, such as tins of Dundee cake, Quality Street assortments and bottles of genuine Scottish malt whiskey. Ceret is only a small market town but it does have a relatively large British population, but these are mostly middle class, retired or second home owners; the sort of people who are more than likely to extol the delights of the local French wines and cheeses, than demand Boddingtons beers or Cheddar cheese (both of which are also sold in the local Intermarché anyway).

I've only been in the 'English Emporium' once, a few years ago, when I wanted to get a haggis for Burn's Night: he didn't have any and didn't know the significance of the date, and so ever since I've made my own. I'm not sure exactly how they operate but I rather gather they used to just make a run with their van back to the UK every couple of months or so, to stock up from a wholesale warehouse near London, so I'm guessing the new customs regulations and charges will severely affect their business. If I were them I'd be looking to develop into a 'European Emporium' with Belgian/Bavarian/Bohemian beers, German sausages, Italian pasta and olive oil, Greek honey and olives, Viennese patisserie, Polish vodka, Spanish tapas, ... and Norwegian fermented fish products (well maybe not those), because I can't see the purely British specialisation continuing to be profitable.

Norway, which has access to the European single market but is not part of it, has been slapping tariffs on UK goods all the time and the British immigrants here still keep the specialist outlets in business even at the inflated prices (Red Leicester is a luxury cheese here and costs about £10 for enough to stick on two sambos), so it might be possible for them to struggle on. However, as you say, the profits are really to be made more from specialist items than ordinary branded goods, which I reckon have to be imported in great bulk to make it worthwhile at all.

I had a Scottish mate here who used to smuggle me in some haggis every New Year - that is totally illegal to import in most European countries because of its potential to wipe out half the population if it escapes from captivity - and he got caught once. He managed to persuade the customs that it was no more harmful than white pudding or plastic sossies and they believed him. However the tariff on these chilled products was still around 150%, and they would also have to be tested by a local vet before they could be released from the airport's vaults, so he simply wished them a happy hog and left the airport haggisless.

I learned today what a "haggis" is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis

And if I understand it well it is not English?...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

Actually Paul, although nowadays considered to be typically Scottish, the earliest written recipe for 'hagese' is from Lancashire (North-West England) and occurs in the verse cookbook 'Liber Cure Cocorum' written around 1430, which is about 50 years before the first written reference in Scotland. Haggis continued to regulalry appear in English cookery texts up to the 19th Century, and was clearly as loved or loathed in both England and Scotland, as it is now, as Gervaise Markham's 'English Huswife' of 1615 says, "That pudding which is called the Haggas or Haggus, of whose goodnesse it is in vain to boast, because there is hardly to be found a man that doth not affect them."

Here's the original 1430 recipe from 'Liber Cure Cocorum', which as I mentioned was entirely written in verse - probably to help apprentice cooks learn it as they chanted the lines together under the supervision of a master cook.

For hagese.

the hert of schepe, the nere thou take,
tho bowel nowt thou shalle forsake,
On the turbilen made, and boyled wele,
Hacke alle togeder with gode persole,
Isop, saveray, thou schalle take then,
And suet of schepe take in, I ken,
With powder of peper and egges gode wonne,
And sethe hit wele and serve hit thenne,
Loke hit be saltyd for gode menne.
In wyntur tyme when erbs ben gode,
Take powder of hom I wot in dede,
As saveray, mynt and tyme, fulle gode,
Isop and sauge I wot by the rode.

It tastes better than it may sound. Many many years ago I had a very elderly cook who suddenly asked after Christmas if he might star preparing for our haggis dinner on Burns Night. It seems he had served in a British Army mess until Independence - and was very pleased to  be back in the old routines (roast one day, Shepherds pie the next etc.) having seen the bazaar offal market I declined saying we were invited out that night.... and I think we were to a Burns night where if you drink enough the poetry  becomes befitting and the food tolerable. I used to make it even worse for folks by sometimes giving a speech.

The best bit of haggis is what Scots taught me about gravy for it - a full tot of scotch poured over it - makes it really nice.

But we of the island to not have to get this wholesome dish imported the butcher has them - including a vegan one made from guts of many beans, at a guess. 
We can also  easily and cheaply get Red Leicestershire cheese.  So we may even survive for a tad longer than predicted.

Vegan haggis eh? Bleurh. Mind you the late 15th century Harleian manuscript No. 279 has the recipe for a haggis-type pudding made by suffing the stomach of a porpoise:

Puddyng of purpaysse. Take þe Blode of hym, & þe grece of hym self, & Ote-mele, & Salt, &  Pepir, & Gyngere, & melle þese to-gederys wel, & þan putte þis in þe Gutte of þe purays, & þan lat it seþe esyli, & not hard, a good whylys; & þan take hym vppe, & broyle hym a lytil, & þan serue forth.

Now I bet you won't be able to get one of those past the sanitary control officials at Dutch Customs.

Strewth - I haven't got a pan big enough for a porpoise  stuffed or plain - nor stove either. By God these olden's had style. One could have such fun  in a group each taking a different delicacy to show the  Dutch official. Who will take the Res Hist Gannet jar? I might go for  a plastic  box of eel and liquor which is served in a local takeaway hereabouts. Anyone join me to liven things up on a dull day in the customs shed?

Surviving solely on Red Leicester is a strange use of the term "surviving". It's like being condemned to an eternity in Hell and then congratulating yourself every day there that you are "surviving" the experience. As purgative as it is Purgatory - horrible stuff.

The funniest "stoopid Brexiter" one in the news here is the guy stopped in the Gardermoen green channel a few days ago who was told he would have to pay around 5,000 kroner excise on all the booze and fags he had brought with him from "blighty". When he loudly complained that he f@%king knew Norway wasn't in the f#&king EU and that therefore the Brexit deal didn't f*@king apply to f*¤king Norway (while calling the customs officials a string of English expletives related to "opportunistic money grabbing persons of dubious parentage" that they can now add to their vocabulary - Norwegians like acquiring other languages) they politely agreed completely with his assessment of international customs legalities, patiently informed him in easy to understand words that the excise requirement had in fact existed in its current form since 1946 so the "f@¤king deal" indeed had nothing to do with his current predicament, and graciously showed him where the nearest ATM was located.

Being a survivor, yes,  you sum it up well. I do daily bless the times when I enjoy certain foods that I went without in some places for years - and for many other things too..... such as safety. When you have gone without for over half your life because of circumstances then you do appreciate being a survivor. If this is hell it ain't bad, actually. Pass it on.
  I had to take  a  case load of cheese as my gift to Norwegian friends on my last visit to Oslo.  And wine..... Unable to carry the sort of quantities that might be appreciated I resorted to  several of the best quality boxed wines I could get. 
 I once took a wine box into a land that did not allow wine of any quality... I was not stopped for it but an official  at the xray place  asked if I knew I had an empty box in my luggage. In all honesty I said I did not know that I had an empty box in my luggage and trotted off with my case. Did he know or what?