THE GOOD LIFE Pamela VANDYKE PRICE
Sometimes, so as to attempt to stop myself grappling with the insoluble, such as money (lack of), ironing basket (three feet deep), car (midden-like condition of back and boot of) and self-culture (on the Day of Judgement Gabriel will ask me about the eighteenth century, lieder, garden flowers and bat and ball games and I shall simply have to go Below), I Turn my Mind Off. Unfortunately I then have to turn it on to something else, or it churns up even more fearful pondering points, and therefore, on a recent occasion when I was all crabbed under the dryer, in an attempt at least to look less like a mangy Pekinese, I was a sucker for one of those bright transatlantic publications that offer to solve all your problems with a flick of the page.
This one, however, merely presented me with a whole set of difficulties that never seemed to have come my way at all — and I was just about to start worrying about them and why I hadn't had them, when a calm glow of illumination began to spread over my psyche, simultaneously with the heating-up of my scalp. Because this was all about ' What turns you on — or off — a person?' and with a soothed sigh I realised that, although the compilers of this supposedly exciting compendium were ever so worked up about sex and porn and perversions and frustrations, we noshers who toil and moil (the OED says "paddle in mud ' for that, which should settle us a soupcon, n'est-ce pas?) don't have to go in for all these plastic apparati, slinking into dubious venues, and agonisings via the Sunday supplements, the GPO and the consulting couches of mittel-Europeans. We've got it, actually, on our plates. What turns one on, I mean. Years ago I wrote that if I wanted to know what a man would be like in the bedroom, I'd get him to take me out for a meal. Happy the advantage of even more years! Now I
gastronomically.
simply want to know what a person's like Everything, in one way at least, begins at the teeth. What turns me off? (As regards 'on', all of us can go happily on learning, but, as with clothes and writing, it takes more time, more know-how and costs a lot more money.)
I can't see myself being even momentarily interested in anyone not interested in eating and drinking. Is there a greater insult than to say to a host (somebody did once to me, over a wine of which this was the last bottle in existence), 'It's nice, but I'd as soon drink pub plonk, if I had to '? Or to drop the menu with an I don't really mind what I eat,' sigh? Then there are the ' You choose' — 'No, what'll you have?' ditherers, and the people who when they ask me out, say 'Here's the wine list,' or ' I always have —, indicating either that they haven't taken the trouble to find out v.'hat I might like or that I'm not special enough to bother about. There are the hostesses who don't invite people like me ' because I'd never dare cook for you,' and the hosts who try to make me guess the (usually) foul wine they offer in front of a lot of people who will think me boorish if I refuse, rude if I say what I really think, and stupid if I make an intelligent mistake. There are the insensitive who pile more on your plate when you've refused a second helping, and the tactless who tell you that such-and-such a writer is correct and you are wrong when you dare to say they could have added salt after they've forced you to utter a comment 'as frank as you like.' I know them all well — from tasting them via platter and beaker. Happy hours could profitably be spent — but the sincere lover of food and drinl: never needs advice on how to spend them — in debating just what that dinner of herbs really consisted of. (And how craftily the translators have implied that the dreary old stalled ox wasn't free-range — and the hatred involved with him was unquestionably due to the sheer boredom of coping with the mighty hunkage thereof and the prospect of all those inhibiting left-overs.) But I have to share my discovery about the dressing — whether for herbs or lettucP. The theory was propounded to me that, when you mix the seasonings for a salad largely consisting of greenstuffs, you should then mix in just the oil and turn the salad in this thoroughly. Finally, and only finally, should you measure the small amount of vinegar or lemon juice required, sprinkle this on and turn the salad again. The idea is that the greens don't wilt and the vinegar truly seasons the salad, already coated with good oil. I can only say that I've tried comparative dressings — and oil on first every time from now on. It is especially effective with a Cos or Webb's Wonder lettuce. But you must have good vinegar.
Of such are the little pleasures that turn on the gastronome. None of us seems to get time — or feel the need — for all these other convolutions. Even Grimod de la Reyniere, who, poor thing, had his baby fingers nibbled off by a sow, which might make anyone a fraction warped, didn't go in for woodshed nastinesses. I wonder — have the social do-gooders ever considered food and drink therapy?
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