Imperative cooking: the ring cycle
11,7, 40#14m. HOW MANY steamers can you pile on one gas ring? Before Mrs Anderson was Mrs Anderson she lived in hall at university. Her room, unlike mine, had a gas ring. It was, shall we say, an added attraction. For two years six-course dinners were cooked on one ring. One of the great enticements of marriage was the thought of four rings. In those days few couples 'cohabited' before marriage. This meant that setting up home and rings coincided with marriage. Which was a good thing. The early years of marriage have their troubles, and the joys of more elaborate cooking and eating vastly compensate for the odd tiff.
Today couples have the use of four or even more rings long before marriage and, I am told, much else. So what new joys marriage brings I don't know. Perhaps just disappointment. These gloomy thoughts were provoked during a brief stay on an island in the middle of the Indian ocean. I went to Mauritius partly for a conference and partly because I'd been told that they did a good curried monkey. I did not know before I went there that the main reason others go there is to honeymoon. Many of the mooners were from the north of Eng- land but there were French and Italians too. They were very unpleasant. They showed absolutely no interest in food. Although they looked very bored, I saw not one of them in the markets of Port Saint Louis. Very good markets they were too, at least for fish and veg. The variety of the smaller chillies was outstanding. And there are Indian markets, Chinese markets and Creole markets. Nor were the mooners for that is what the honeymooners did, moon about — to be seen in the local restaurants. They stayed in the hotel sur- rounds. Even in the restaurant there they pushed their reasonably good food about in a desultory way.
Only on three occasions did I see their miserable faces brighten. They used to turn up on the hotel beach about 11 o'clock. A couple would arrive wandering along the shore up to their calves in the clear water, lightly holding hands and looking down at their feet. I do not exaggerate when I report that one couple looked about to burst into tears. They would settle down on chairs and stare expectantly towards the hotel. Soon, another couple would arrive and sit with them. Further research showed these were no new holiday acquaintances: the four had come together on honeymoon. And this was quite general. In the evenings all the wicker chairs around the bar were set out in fours. When the two chaps had got their brides settled on the beach, each with a brightly coloured drink containing an umbrella and pound of fruit, they would stand up, look shifty, then set off to play golf together. As they turned away from their wives of a week and strode towards the tee, their gloom vanished and their faces lit up with joy. They returned at three and the glumness resumed.
The ladies were glum all day. They brightened briefly in the evening, as fol- lows. One couple would arrive at the out- side bar and sit up at the bar counter. He would drink several beers. She would have another glossy fruit drink (these persons are about 29 and 26 respectively). Both would eat half a pound of salted peanuts. Then the other two would arrive. He would sit next to him, with the brides on the outside unable to talk to each other except via megaphones. The chaps talked, perhaps about golf. Suddenly the band struck up. Jumping off their stools, the ladies grinned with delight and did a dance routine together. It was obviously something well rehearsed together in a club in North Shields. It was not attractive, with much quarter-turning and pushing out of the bot- tom, and an arm motion similar to that involved in the use of a mangle. During this the grooms drank on, embarrassed and sheepish.
On the third occasion, an Italian couple was on the beach. They had looked stony- faced for three hours. Suddenly he mut- tered some words to his bride. She went to the back of the beach and showered. Then she returned, stood behind him, bent over him and wrung the water out of her hair over his brow. Briefly he smiled with con- tentment.
Social analysts tell us of the damage done to children and the social security budget by the modern style of marriage. I had never before noticed the sheer misery of the thing. If only these persons could acquire a delight in good grub and return to the one-ring-four-ring sequence with its disciplines and eventual joys, everyone would be better off.
Digby Anderson
`You may call it "hide and seek", I call it stalking.'
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