Home life
Blue flu
Alice Thomas Ellis
There is a particularly spectacular sort of flu going round at the moment and I use the term advisedly. You think you've recovered from it and roll out of bed when — whang — it boomerangs and gets you again. Caroline is an expert on the subject. She has suffered from it since Christmas and says it is called Singapore or Blue flu (because it inclines the bearer to suicide) while in New York it is known simply as It — which speaks for Itself. She also points out that one of its unwelcome side-effects is to make the sufferer appear hypochon- driacal and/or a liar, since if somebody invites you to the opera on — say — the 10th of the month and you decline on the grounds that you have flu, and they then ring up two weeks later to ask you to dine and you repeat that you can't because you've got flu they tend to disbelieve you and take umbrage, or despise you for lack of backbone. It seems to fall into the same category of excuse as saying you can't have lunch next month because you'll be going to a funeral.
This is the armpit of the year, dank, dark and unwholesome. Today there was a bit of thin watery sunlight and I foolishly imagined I was well enough to go shop- 'Roland Rat's well qualified, he's a puppet.' ping. I tottered home physically and emo- tionally exhausted with a box of mussels in garlic butter. I think it is in The Pumpkin Eater that a lady embarks on a nervous breakdown by bursting into tears in Har- rods. I do it in Marks & Spencer which is a touch down-market but Harrods is too far. I had to lie down when I got back. Patrice is also afflicted. She had to go and buy food for Gloria and Jasper, her dogs, and the first thing she saw as she dragged her ailing form to the dog-meat shop was another dog who had been run over. In her state of health it was the final straw, and she addressed our Maker as follows: 'Right, you old Slacker up there, that's it. You're obviously looking the other way and I'm off.' The suicidal aspect of the illness was uppermost. I tried to reassure her by describing my own exactly similar symp- toms, but our conversation was not a cheerful one. I wish I'd thought of suggest- ing that she'd merely stayed at home and rung Lord Avebury.
I am absolutely fed-up with the whole business of food and cookery. The last thing I prepared was a horrible chilli con came on Sunday. So many tins of stuff go into this dish that one always makes too much and nobody likes it anyway. I tried to give it to the cats but they didn't fancy it at all. The tin opener broke on a tin of cat food the other day and I haven't been strong enough to buy another one so I expect we shall all starve to death, if the flu doesn't finish us off. Nigella was so right in her piece of 3 January. For those of you who haven't been listening she spoke of a book called Entertaining in Style by Prue Leith and Polly Tyler, which was full of hair-raising notions such as 'Bistro Nights for Twenty' and 'Punk Parties for Forty' with amazing tips on how to drive yourself mad arranging the decor — never mind the food. She said it would make the authors of Darling You Shouldn't Have Gone To So Much Trouble take to their beds for weeks. Now Caroline and I are the said authors of this masterly work (a sort of cheat-and- slut's handbook) and if we'd seen Enter- taining in Style and if we hadn't already been laid low I can state categorically that that is precisely the effect it would have had on us. We had always thought that Entertaining with Elizabeth Craig (1933) was the ultimate in exhausting suggestions. Her Heather Tea for instance, `. . . go out and rob the common of its purple glory . . . then hold your party indoors under a chandelier hidden in a shower bouquet of heather, tied in place with tartan ribbon.' It goes on and on and on with heather- coloured china and napkins and note-paper and Scotch bun and three sorts of tea and sandwiches and ices and 'rolled bread and butter with curls of young cress creeping out at each end . . .' and the mere thought of it makes me feel ill. I'm going to go and lie down again and if anyone wants any- thing to eat they can go and ask Prue Leith or Polly Tyler.
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