Home life
Making a meal of it
Alice Thomas Ellis
Then there's breakfast. You have to eat the breakfast because you've paid for it even if you usually start the day with a mug of Coca Cola and a fag, and having downed all that starch and cholesterol you feel disinclined to do anything further. You want to go back to bed and sleep it off but you can't because there are people running round with dusters, emptying waste-paper baskets and making the beds up again (not
'How do you think 1992 will affect you?'
to mention re-filling the kettle from the bathroom tap — I bet they don't bother to go down and draw it from the well). The idea that the human race should commence the day with a heavy meal is, I think, erroneous. My metabolism tells me that, having ingested the child of the hen, a portion of pig and a lot of toast and marmalade, the only sensible course is to go and lie down for a long time.
Actually I didn't have any eggs. I've gone off them. They make me think of Russian Roulette and tiny time bombs ticking away, and we've known for ages that a surfeit of the things causes cardiac arrest. I heard a silly man on Any Ques- tions telling the nation they were perfectly safe if they were properly cooked — by which he meant boiled stiff or fried solid. Over-cooking is not the proper way to treat the egg. It is entirely incorrect. When you could trust the little brutes not to poison you (i.e. before the farming industry ap- plied progressive ideas to the concept of chicken-feed — and, in passing, I have often wondered why they don't just let all the chickens loose in the grain mountain), you had to handle them lightly and with consideration, in order not to lose your reputation as a cook. In order to retain your reputation as a caring person and your status of wife rather than widow, you had to limit the consumption of eggs by family members to two or three a week and they had to be good — runny yolks if boiled, moist inside if omeletted, and fluffy if scrambled; while a fried egg with lacy black edges like a tart's bra is a shame and a disgrace to the perpetrator and inedible to the consumer. And just try cooking custard or meringue 'properly'.
One morning on our recent stay in a hotel I decided to have fish — wholesome and not too heavy. A fellow guest, remov- ing a fish bone from his molars, warned that it might take some time. He had consumed his ration of toast by the time his haddock turned up. Nevertheless I said 'haddock' to the waitress and Someone said haddock too. She trudged glumly off and then returned to say there was only enough haddock for one. Being a Perfect Woman, nobly planned, I said he could 'ave the 'addock and I'd 'ave the 'am (Mary Kingsley always dropped her aitches too). And while the waitress clearly wasn't too happy about this she grudgingly agreed. One got the impression that the staff had formed some special bond with the haddock: they'd had it for a long time, were probably keeping it as a pet, and were loth to relinquish it to the gross appetites of the hotel guests.
Then I went for a walk along the coast with a tax professor in a force 11 courant d'air and when we returned we looked at each other and remarked that a brisk walk in these circs put the roses not so much in your cheeks as in your nose. Then we went into the Residents' Lounge and had coffee. I feel sick.
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