Singular life
Weak stomach
Petronella Wyatt
Iread somewhere this week that a for- mer Romanian count whose family is descended from Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula, is in trouble in Germany. Ottomar Rudolphe Vlad Dracula has been forced to flee his castle in a German village after neo-Nazi death threats and arson attacks.
The 60-year-old has lived in the village for six years and turned his castle into a tourist attraction, bringing money into the economically depressed region in former East Germany. But local youths have tried to set his castle on fire ten times and paint- ed swastikas on the walls.
What do neo-Nazis have against vam- pires, one wonders? Maybe they think vam- pires look poofy or something. In the meantime, poor old Ottomar was doing good works. He was persuaded to take part in collecting blood donors by the German Red Cross which decided that someone allegedly descended from Dracula would be a good joke to draw attention to the need to give blood. Since then the parties at Castle Dracula have attracted more than 12,000 guests who made financial as well as blood donations.
The harassed count now thinks that Britain would be appreciative of his efforts. `I would work with someone to create another Castle Dracula,' he was quoted as saying. 'Britain has a lot of castles and old stately homes which could benefit from being turned into a Dracula home. I am the only person in the world with the name and I am going to use it for good causes.'
One could think of a number of places that would benefit from this. Britain has by far the creepiest houses and the most cadaverous-looking aristocracy of anywhere in Europe. Most dukes, not to say mar- quesses, already resemble vampires. Their diets would be familiar, too: underdone meat, game and black pudding, very like Transylvanian blood sausage.
Someone recently made me eat black pudding for breakfast. The result was dra- matic and instantaneous. I excused myself and rushed to the loo. I was there so long that my host nearly telephoned for the police. Recently I have concluded that my stomach is a weak spot. This is due entirely to my own greed and avarice. When I was 14 my parents took me to an expensive restaurant in Paris. They had one of those set menus — you know, the one on the last page, the menu gourmand, with about 16 courses including petit fours and coffee. My father bet me £25 that I couldn't eat all of it. Naturally, I took him up on his wager. But what came was a crise de foie. At two in the morning I awoke in my hotel room con- vinced I was dying. It was one of those awful sensations when you want to retch but nothing comes. This endured for about three days. For a week after that I could eat nothing but boiled eggs. Ever since then my poor feeble stomach has rebelled against rich food, even spicy food. I have to eat like an invalid or someone with false teeth: poached or grilled fish and chicken, boiled vegetables and olive oil.
This is fine in Italy, but not so serendipi- tous in France. I was wary, therefore, when I went over to Paris on the Eurostar last weekend. Pathetically, I asked the waiters, like Buckingham Palace officials, 'I hope there's not garlic in this?' Actually, there were a surprising number of things one could get in Paris with no garlic. Like mac- aroons for instance. There is a coffee- house called Ladure on the Champs Elysees that makes fresh macaroons every day in a variety of startling flavours. As you eat them you feel like Marie Antoinette, sitting under painted ceilings. No one but the French would eat biscuits in a church.
It is not true, as the English newspapers claimed, that the Italians cook with garlic, except in New York. New York, surprising- ly, given its Italian population, has the worst pasta restaurants in the world. Lon- don has the best. Few commit the cardinal sin of putting garlic in pasta. I have an Ital- ian friend who went to Harry's Bar and pulled the chef out of the kitchen, saying, `Tonight we are going to cook proper Ital- ian.' I'd like to take him with me to New York next time I go.
A doctor suggested to me that my weak stomach was the result of once having been frightened during a meal. Thinking about it I recalled having gone to stay with friends in Ireland. We had gathered for dinner in the dining-room, and were eating the soup, when the host rushed out of the room and then rushed in again with a blunderbuss. On reflection, though, the most frightened person of all was the cook.
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