Entering the 36th year of the noodle epoch

The world has been shaken by the death of the man who introduced us to the glorious age in which we now live.  I refer, of course, to Mr. Momofuku Ando, who has died in Japan, aged 96, of a heart attack.

His BBC obituary is here.

If it is has slipped your mind he is the inventor of the Pot Noodle (sometimes called the Cup noodle).

“He was a self-made man who developed an epoch-making instant noodle product and spread it to all corners of the world,” Akio Nomura, chairman of the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Kyodo news agency.

“Epoch-making”.  So has the Year of Our Lord 2007 been replaced by the Year of Our Noodles 36?

And the gospel of the “boil in the carton” noodle has apparently reached the whole earth in the previous 35 years.  Is this the end of history?  Surely, he was the perfect modern man (”self-made”) who managed to make the perfect modern food.  No cooking, no washing up, no nutrition, no history, no fuss.

Is it only in Japan, where embarrassment has effaced history and triviality is the only meaning, that epochs are made by noodles?  I fear we are only ten years behind.  Some of the “celebrities” we celebrate in the UK have achieved far less than the Colossus of the Cup Noodle.

May I wish you a blessed New Year and happy hot noodles.