it just the gulls spewing at the sickening bulge of your second stomach?’
Feely, who of course takes his translating responsibilities very seriously, serves, temporarily, as a most-minor adjudicator. ‘She said You gangly bitch ,’ he repeats, his emphasis all up the creek, as if he’s speaking Hindi or Urdu or Pekinese. Then he pauses and shakes his cup-hand thoughtfully, ‘Whatever the heck that means.’
Ah. The innocence .
Patch, meanwhile – just check her out ! – is rubbing the grass stains off her knees, whispering something wholly reprehensible into little Feely’s ear and smiling like Buddha. The brat .
In our house (okay, in our hotel , you anal blighter), we never ever eat a proper dinner. We graze. We wander hither and thither, like Thompson gazelles, or dik-dik, just plucking and nibbling. We pick and mix. It’s kind of a low-maintenance familial buffet.
Big’s totally against proper dinners. On his list of priorities, the debunking of the very notion of a proper dinner comes extremely high indeed – just below an aversion to bestiality (although if feelings are mutual, he certainly might waver) and casual infanticide. In Big’s mind, The Proper Dinner is like a slap in the face to your bowel. It’s a digestive Pearl Harbor.
So our evenings are all rice cakes (Big imports them in bulk from the US – where apparently they don’t turn a hair at the concept of food-as-polystyrene – they’re so well up on healthy living), green olives, hummous and sugar-free peanut butter. For pudding: dried apricots and prunes reconstituted in warm water. No sweetening. Evaporated milk, if you’re lucky. Fennel tea ( great for the gut). Elderberry compress for the under-sevens.
Big loves Japanese fare, but only the stuff you can boil for five hours on the understanding that it’ll promise blind to hold its shape and remain tasteless, bright white and viscous. He’s into seaweed. Squid and wholemeal noodles. But only on feast days and weddings. Followed by ritual purging and emetic cleansing. Of course.
I know for a fact he thinks soy sauce is a Chinese conspiracy to keep communism unhealthy. And ketchup or HP? The Devil’s linctus . I mean did one man ever spend so much time considering the exact nature of the organic matter entering his intestine? Never mind the stuff he finally squeezes out of it.
But credit where credit’s due. Big was into faeces long – that’s literally ages – before it was really fashionable. (You’re saying you don’t remember all those articles in the style mags on feculence? The I-D defecation issue? You really don’t ? Where the hell were you?)
As I remember, Big must’ve been the world’s only potty-training father who took more pride in what was passed (I’m talking size, shape, consistency) than in the actual passing . The apex of descriptive phrases in Big’s bowel-related-vocabulary is (wait for it) pellet . The pellet – small, odourless, hard, plentiful – is the very ultimate in Big-gratification. If you use the word pellet in casual conversation his irises tighten. It delights him.
Did we rebel? Of course we did. We rebelled plenty. Barge especially. I mean this boy was nine years old before he knew ‘cake’ was a sweet thing. He was weaned on the rice and the oat and the fish varieties. He thought a sponge was something you washed your face with. He thought chocolate was a shade of brown. He thought nougat was… What is nougat, precisely?
And the rest of us? The gang ? Why the hell are you asking? We’re children . We get what we’re given and like it or lump it. Sometimes both. Everyone knows childhood is gastronomical slavery. No surprises there.
Ironically – I know this’ll kill you – that trusty Queen of Misery, M’lady Poodle, who by nature you might think would be a foodie revolutionary, is actually the most crushingly anal, hummous-spreading, sprout-eating, sugar-eschewing member of our culinary party. She is blessed with the
Feely, who of course takes his translating responsibilities very seriously, serves, temporarily, as a most-minor adjudicator. ‘She said You gangly bitch ,’ he repeats, his emphasis all up the creek, as if he’s speaking Hindi or Urdu or Pekinese. Then he pauses and shakes his cup-hand thoughtfully, ‘Whatever the heck that means.’
Ah. The innocence .
Patch, meanwhile – just check her out ! – is rubbing the grass stains off her knees, whispering something wholly reprehensible into little Feely’s ear and smiling like Buddha. The brat .
In our house (okay, in our hotel , you anal blighter), we never ever eat a proper dinner. We graze. We wander hither and thither, like Thompson gazelles, or dik-dik, just plucking and nibbling. We pick and mix. It’s kind of a low-maintenance familial buffet.
Big’s totally against proper dinners. On his list of priorities, the debunking of the very notion of a proper dinner comes extremely high indeed – just below an aversion to bestiality (although if feelings are mutual, he certainly might waver) and casual infanticide. In Big’s mind, The Proper Dinner is like a slap in the face to your bowel. It’s a digestive Pearl Harbor.
So our evenings are all rice cakes (Big imports them in bulk from the US – where apparently they don’t turn a hair at the concept of food-as-polystyrene – they’re so well up on healthy living), green olives, hummous and sugar-free peanut butter. For pudding: dried apricots and prunes reconstituted in warm water. No sweetening. Evaporated milk, if you’re lucky. Fennel tea ( great for the gut). Elderberry compress for the under-sevens.
Big loves Japanese fare, but only the stuff you can boil for five hours on the understanding that it’ll promise blind to hold its shape and remain tasteless, bright white and viscous. He’s into seaweed. Squid and wholemeal noodles. But only on feast days and weddings. Followed by ritual purging and emetic cleansing. Of course.
I know for a fact he thinks soy sauce is a Chinese conspiracy to keep communism unhealthy. And ketchup or HP? The Devil’s linctus . I mean did one man ever spend so much time considering the exact nature of the organic matter entering his intestine? Never mind the stuff he finally squeezes out of it.
But credit where credit’s due. Big was into faeces long – that’s literally ages – before it was really fashionable. (You’re saying you don’t remember all those articles in the style mags on feculence? The I-D defecation issue? You really don’t ? Where the hell were you?)
As I remember, Big must’ve been the world’s only potty-training father who took more pride in what was passed (I’m talking size, shape, consistency) than in the actual passing . The apex of descriptive phrases in Big’s bowel-related-vocabulary is (wait for it) pellet . The pellet – small, odourless, hard, plentiful – is the very ultimate in Big-gratification. If you use the word pellet in casual conversation his irises tighten. It delights him.
Did we rebel? Of course we did. We rebelled plenty. Barge especially. I mean this boy was nine years old before he knew ‘cake’ was a sweet thing. He was weaned on the rice and the oat and the fish varieties. He thought a sponge was something you washed your face with. He thought chocolate was a shade of brown. He thought nougat was… What is nougat, precisely?
And the rest of us? The gang ? Why the hell are you asking? We’re children . We get what we’re given and like it or lump it. Sometimes both. Everyone knows childhood is gastronomical slavery. No surprises there.
Ironically – I know this’ll kill you – that trusty Queen of Misery, M’lady Poodle, who by nature you might think would be a foodie revolutionary, is actually the most crushingly anal, hummous-spreading, sprout-eating, sugar-eschewing member of our culinary party. She is blessed with the
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